I'd like...

...to be the next Harper Lee. Write one, truly great book, largely autobiographical, deny all publicity and interviews, and be left alone to enjoy my private life.

Deal?

The thing about truthful flashbacks...

...when you are writing a book about your life, which is not yet over, is that the lives of many of the characters in the book are also not yet over, and it is a sensitive thing indeed to write about the living. That is my excuse for why I haven't posted a book exerpt for so long.

Tonight though, just a dozen thousand words from the end of my goal, I wrote a piece which did not involve anyone I currently know, so I feel safe posting it.

Enjoy the insanity of my past life!

She had to get away from him, had to leave that table NOW!
She mumbled, “I’m going to the restroom-”
not that diction would have helped him hear her, so lost in his precious baseball game was he, and away she dashed, as if a demon was chasing her. The women’s room door yelped closed behind her as if her terror had been transferred to its worn and smoke scented surface.
Inside the musky chamber there were three under dressed blondes gabbling away at the mirror as they put on their faces. They all stopped long enough to eye her, decided she was “safe” and moved back into their conversation. She entered the first empty stall, trying not to take deep breaths. Damn she HATED that smell. The door wouldn’t stay closed, of course, and with the tribe at the mirror she just couldn’t draw more attention for switching. She sat down and propped one foot against the door to keep it shut. Her head in her hands, she waited them out, trying to take shallow breaths, trying to remain calm, trying to think how she was going to get out of this one.
This was going to go down Monday morning at the office as one of the worst blind dates she’d had, and that was saying something. No car-no job guy was a favorite, while many of the girls enjoyed the stubby one that demanded in a loud pissed off voice that the waitress at the trendy downtown bistro bring him the container of oil they used on the French fries so he could assure himself that no meat by products were involved. There was the guy that took her to the Chef Boyardee fake Italian restaurant and then insisted they walk the eight blocks to the game in the rain. There was the guy that admitted he was gay and lived with his mother who did his cooking and laundry. Yes, her listof blind dates were the Monday morning highlight at work, giving all the comfortably married and happily singled something to snark about. She hadn’t minded, in fact enjoyed the adventure of it all herself. It sure beat sitting at home alone every night, watching out her knee level window as couples strolled down the street on their way home from a cozy walk around the city lake.
But this…well this wasn’t just an entertaining story, it was much worse. And why? Because NOTHING is why. It was the date that was no date. He didn’t pick her up, first off. Most of her cautious 30 something friends thought this was a good thing, alarmed as they were when date after blind date she let them pick her up at her apartment. No, he insisted she meet him at the sports bar he named quickly and then hung up. She had to look in the phone books for both cities before she found it in the suburbs of the farthest one from her. No problem, she was an expert at public transportation, deciding years ago after the divorce which left her with no car and no money that she would rather do without their expense.
When she arrived by the two buses she needed to take to get to the suburb she knew nothing about, he was already seated, which made him hard to find since she’d never seen him before. This was the early 90’s and there were no cell phones are emailed photos to bring her up to speed before they met. She just knew him by his own description, “Tall, blond, athletic, good looking, a young 30” No one sitting alone fit that description in her mind. Of course there was a large blond man sitting at the bar with two women, but he was clearly not waiting for a date…which should have been when she turned around and left. After waiting at the door for 20 minutes, the chump at the bar turned around for a moment, saw her, and waved her over. Turned out that WAS her date. The girls with him were friends from work, did she mind if they joined them? He of course didn’t wait for an answer, or for her to introduce herself before he moved to a table closer to the TV he was already engrossed in.
An hour later, she still sat at the table the foursome had moved to, still had no drink or food, as they didn’t bother to order for her or let her order for herself the two times the waitress had come to refill their ample drinks, listened still to them laugh about private jokes from the warehouse where they worked together, still watched them watch a baseball game on the TV over her head (“you don’t mind do you, you don’t seem the baseball type”), as the popcorn they were hurling at the “bad” calls by the ump drifted down on to her head. No more. Unnoticed, she had mumbled her excuses and hid in the bathroom.
And here she sat, cowering, fighting the door that wanted to open and expose her hiding spot, trying to figure out how to get out of this one. The trio at the mirror had finally left and the stank room was finally quiet. She ruminated on his inept description of himself. Athletic, if you counted arm chair quarterbacking, his gut strained over his pants, his arms hung in a doughy heap from his shoulders. He had plenty of that blond hair he had mentioned, it was greasy and messy and flowed two inches below his collar, which was turned inside out. There was a hole near the left hand side of the collar in the front, and he poked at it while he talked in a way that turned her stomach. He’d picked his nose twice, which was half as many times as he’d grabbed the breasts of the shorter of the two coworkers. He’d chosen to just glance at her chest, and only once. She’d guessed he hadn’t seen anything worth returning for, and based on the shape of the coworker, she came to understand that understated was not his preference.
Like a fool she was caught. She had counted on getting a ride to the bus stop from him, and now she was looking at a five mile walk to the transfer point, as the suburban route only ran one direction and only until about half an hour ago. She could call a cab, but only had five dollars in cash, having used the majority of her dollar bills and quarters in getting here. The cabbies didn’t take checks and she didn’t use credit cards, so she was good and stuck at this point. And starving. She exited the stall and drank some lukewarm water out of the palm of her hand to cure a dry throat and then ducked back into the stall to think.
She cursed herself, for her foolishness, for her predicament, for her decision not to own a car. She just COULD NOT go back out there, she was frozen to the seat, her whole being rejecting the idea of another minute spent in the company of those goons. It was at this point that she lifted her head from her hands, wiped her eyes and in trying to get a grip, glanced at the wall to her right. Graffiti reading could be amusing, and it took her away from her current predicament. She read about Nancy + Sam = LOVE 4EVER and the size of Mike’s manhood and that Nikki was making the rounds. She’d always wondered who these people were who had time to sit in a bathroom stall and record their darker thoughts, and now she sort of understood. She felt a kinship with all the young things that had felt so trapped that they wanted to leave behind a message of desperation for those that would come after them.
She thought about it for a moment. No need to be hasty. She had spent her whole life until two years ago being good. Or at least trying to make amends when she wasn’t good. She didn’t curse. She didn’t play the field, although she was sure her parents thought she did. She had lived with a man for six months after her divorce, and they were dating, so she was sure that everyone assumed they were sharing a bed. They weren’t, but she had grown tired over a year ago of explaining herself, so she just let people talk. In the end she was glad they were wrong, because he had been sharing his bed with someone, and when she found out she was crushed. She couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been if she had given herself to him. It was bad enough standing up to him and making him leave, then finding another roommate to help with the rent. It exhausted her anew just thinking about those early days. Her new roommate, a woman, had been a much better roomie and when she married a year later they had parted friends. She had subsequently decided to give up the whole roommate gig, and found a gold mine of an apartment when bike riding to work one day, closer to the lake, larger, and because it was a smaller company, at nearly half the price. She loved her place, felt she could stay there forever, it fit her and her lifestyle so well.
Her walk down memory lane was rudely interrupted by a large guffaw entangled with a high pitched shriek that snaked under the door from that lovely table from which she had recently escaped. Yes, back to the moral dilemma at hand—to deface or not to deface, that was the question. Yes, she was just about angry enough. Still propping one foot against the door to keep it shut, she grabbed for her purse and rummaged around for a pen. Of course, she only had a pencil. Her favorite .05 mechanical pencil, the one she had switched to after the divorce when she decided she never wanted to write anything permanent again.
“WHO CARES!” she shouted in her head, and pressed the lead hard against the thickly repainted stall wall to break the tiny lead. Then, teeth gritted, for she hated the sound of metal grating on metal, she began to etch her message. First she dug in about shoulder high, the most important word of her message H E L P. The sound of the paint flaking off and the scritch of the metal on metal set her teeth on edge and as she tensed against the sound she lost her footing on the door and it flew open just at the hallway door emitted another patron. As she jumped up to reclose it the contents of her purse dumped out and rolled and skittered across the floor in front of the interloper who stepped on her sunglasses and broke them under her heel.
“Oops, sorry” the interloper apologized and started to help pick things up.
“Never mind--” she rushed out in horror and accepted the remaining whole items, scooping the plastic pieces into the trash.
While the woman went into a stall and closed the door she washed her hands at the sink, pretended to brush her hair, applied chapstick, and fumbled around trying to look like someone hard at work in the mirror. Would the interloper think she had forgotten to flush she worried, debating on whether going to flush now would make the problem better or worse.
When the interloper exited the stall, did her own ablutions and left the bathroom she darted back into her stall, wedged the door shut with a small pad of paper, and continued with her defacement. She applied the ever diminutive word “I” and then moved down below the H to keep her message in a neat quadrilateral space. A M came next and then T R A P P E D. She added a nick of an exclamation point to deliver the emotional side of her message, moved to another line under the A and scratched in S A V E and the final M E.
Later she realized it couldn’t have happened exactly like this, but it seemed to her that the very moment that she finished the center horizontal arm on the letter E that the lights flickered and then went out. In the dark, which lasted a second, two, three, four…she realized she heard no sound from the TVs and stereo in the bar, the sounds of which had been a muffled roar through the door of the bathroom. In fact, she realized she didn’t hear and people talking either. Could she hear them before? Of course she comforted herself, remember the guffaw? It seemed deafeningly quiet now.
All this happened within the span of 45 seconds, and her breathing grew more rapid as her ability to come up with logical explanations started to fail her. She again heard the complaint of the door as to was pushed open and a deep, purposeful voice said, “Do you need help?”
She hadn’t realized it, but when the lights had gone off she had stood up and pressed her back against the wall to cover the carving she had been making. She toyed with the idea of remaining hidden and silent, and then realized that she could hear herself breathing raggedly and that a deep red light emanating from the exit sign in the hallway was lighting the bathroom interior enough to make her pants and black heeled boots visible beneath the stall door.
The voice took another step into the room and called out again, “I know you need help. I don’t want to alarm you, I’m not a stalker or anything, but I’ve been watching the antics of that idiot at your table all night while I worked, and I realize you would have left a long time ago if that was an option. Can I call you a cab or something?”
She found it odd that the voice hadn’t commented on the quiet in the bar or the lack of light. As if he could read her thoughts, he offered, “We closed an hour ago, but I didn’t see you come back out, and as I was heading to my car it hit me, you might be stuck in here and didn’t realize how late it was.”
She was alone with this voice? His words couldn’t be called on to make sense in her reality. How did she end up staying in here this long? She started counting back quickly. It had been a little before seven pm when she had arrived to meet her date, nearly seven thirty when he finally acknowledged her and then maybe another hour before she escaped to the bathroom. Didn’t bars usually close at 1pm? She wished she knew more about that sort of thing, but it wasn’t in her experience to frequent them, being raised by teetotalers as she was. Surely she hadn’t been in here for over four hours? The voice cleared his throat. “I’m probably not helping your situation, so I’ll leave and go turn the lights on and call a cab. I just need to know you aren’t physically hurt. If you are okay, I’ll call back in when the car has arrived and then you won’t have to sit out in the bar with me until it comes. Okay?” and the door punctuated his remarks as it slowly closed behind him.
There was something in the tone of his voice, something in the surreal nature of the whole evening that clicked in, and it was if her words carved into the stall wall were tattooing her back with their message. She was being saved. She felt safe. Making a decision, slowly she pushed off from the wall, zipped her pencil into her purse, pulled a hand through her hair and pulled the pad of paper from the stall door so it fell open.
She stood uncertainly in the stall opening, not knowing if she should make further strides in the dark or not. She hated the pitch blackness that enveloped her when the door shut, no longer getting any light from the exit sign, and as she had since she was a small child, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Somehow if she was shutting her eyes the dark seemed less of an affront. Two minutes that felt like two hours later the door groused open again. The noise partially obscures the voice as he is explaining, “Its on a timer, the lights, if they aren’t turned off manually by 2am they shut off automatically. We only have a few moments before they go off again.” The message complete, the door now propped open again by his arm, the voice finds her whimpering with her purse clutched to her chest and her eyes closed. What he does next is stupid, and he knows it, but he also knows somehow that it is the exact thing she needs.
He takes two giant steps to reach her and before the door groans closed behind him he is enfolding her in his arms. He quietly and firmly speaks into her ear, “The lights are back on now.” She relaxes, and, of course, her purse therefore plunges to the ground again, again spilling its contents everywhere. He takes a step back to help her pick things up at the same moment she does the same and they knock heads so hard she sees bright points of light at the center of her vision for a few seconds.
Suddenly the tension, the anger, the whole ridiculous evening rushes out of her and she laughs so hard she can hardly breathe. The voice is rubbing his forehead where a bright red spot has emerged above his aubergine eyes, and his ample lips emit a low laugh that quickly elevates to match her near hysteria, as he thrusts his square chin skyward. The voice bends again, this time to the side careful to avoid her and continues picking up her things. Her laughter holds her helpless, continues in rolls, until she is leaning helpless against the wall and wiping her eyes.
By the time the purse contents are put right and he hands it back to her, standing to his full six foot four inch height, she has slowly started to settle down. In another moment they are both enveloped in quiet, but with a smile on their lips. She looked him directly in the eyes and thought, with a twinkle in her own, I am being saved. Then she reaches out, takes his left hand in her right and pulls him toward the stall she realized she had begun to think of as her home.
She pulls him through the doorway and past her, then pushes his captured hand against the wall. “I did this tonight” she confesses as she ran her fingers across the letters, next to his inert hand. She then takes his long fingers again and pulls them along the sharp edge of her message as if teaching him a kind of Braille. He has to stoop a little and press his body against the opposite wall to read it, but then he stands again and intertwines his fingers in hers. “You are safe now.” is all he says. It is enough.

I have...

...continued to write, I just haven't been writing anything that is even remotely worth posting. At this point I am at about 24,500 words, about 500 words behind schedule. Hoping for an improvement in words and writing tonight!

Goes Before KC Trip Day One

now that I have figured out what this rambling thing is about, I will be creating pieces that fit inside the original 30 page document. So hold on, we are going to jump around quite a bit for the remaining 19 days...


She stood at the closet, doors flung wide, trying intermittently to shake loose the nightmare and to plan her wardrobe for the day. She hadn’t had that particular terror visit her at night for years—knew that it must be linked to the fact that she was headed on this journey into the past, yes, that was why it was now resurfacing.
But wait, she remembers, of course she has set out her clothes for today, all ready to go as soon as she woke. She closes the door on the closet carefully, its contents fairly emaciated anyway as she is all packed for the week. She had carefully considered what she wanted to wear on the long car journey, which warranted comfort, balanced with the desire to look her best as she met her friend for the first time in 27 years.

One pant leg after another, noting as an aside her increased balance—all those workouts and runs were paying off even at this late stage in her life—and her mind thus satisfied moved back to the disturbing dream.

She had had this dream on a routine basis for as long as she could remember. Of course, that was not as long as most people who were her age. She had heard her friends speak of memories from their second and third year—considering it a fault, she did not often tell them that her first memories started ten years later than theirs.

Creamy turtleneck sweater pulled over her wild hair, she plugged in the straightening iron he daughter had taught her to use. She glanced in the mirror to determine how much work was ahead of her—was gratified to see that the color her daughter had applied in the salon last week had tamed her tresses a bit, and she’d probably only have to yank the branding hot iron through her hair for a half hour or so to get things under control.

Control—now there was a word that probably spoke a bit about the dream. She’d been tested and analyzed and advised like so many of her mates in the 90’s, and so she knew the jargon. Chances were, they said, that the lost memories were a protective device called into service by her mind. They slyly implied that something quite shocking had happened to her—but no, she was not going to turn that trip trap over in her mind again, no time, not if she wanted to stay on schedule. Still, while brushing her teeth the dream came back to her. She had noticed that running water always stimulated her mind, she got great ideas in the bath and while doing dishes, and even, if she was not fighting her gag reflex, while brushing her teeth. Another mystery that, why was she so sensitive to anything being in her mouth? Of course, anything other than food and drink that is, she seemed to have no problem keeping that down she observed as she patted her ample belly. Ah, that belly, they had grown to be close friends by this time, as they had been in each other’s company for over 22 years, it arriving and settling in to stay right about the time of her second child’s birth. They went through rough stages, at times she hated it, especially when the answer to, “Oh, when are you due to deliver?” had to be met with the honest, “Eight years ago.” She was practical though and realized she was fortunate to have extra long legs. Fortunate that she carried her weight primarily in one spot. She daydreamed again about finding out she was carrying a benign 15 pound tumor in there. Being told it could be taken out simply in an overnight at the hospital, followed by eight glorious weeks spent recovering in the company of a swarm of books and a carafe of coffee. Ah dreams, what a crazy one that was, she didn’t need a psychologist to tell her that. As if the accumulated troubles we pick up along the years could be cut out in a moment, and all put back to right and leave no damage behind.

She sighed. The nightmare from last night catching her attention again. The setting was an odd one, the sewing room in her grandparents home in rural North Dakota. Everything was beige, which is probably accurate, her grandmother not being the cheerful sort, nor one to be concerned about decorating. She knew from asking her mother, that she often slept in that room when they went back to Grandpa and Grandpa’s house, back to North Dakota where she had been born and her brother, and where she had lived, right next to the grandparents, and then on a farm a few miles away until she was seven. Seven years, and yet she has only one small memory that she thinks might be her own.

Like the dream, it is another setting near bedtime. She thinks it is a summer evening, for the light is fading but has not yet left the sky. It is looking in the window, warming the wooden built in drawers that march down one wall of her room, and she hears her mother making comforting noises of cleaning up dishes in the kitchen, occasionally entering into conversation with her father. The feeling she has when drawing up this memory is a complex one of comfort and discontent. Perhaps she petulant about having to be in bed before dark, but also enjoying the familiar sounds of her parents taking care of the business of their home. It is a mere wisp of a memory for sure, and may still be proved to be not her own, for she can almost hear her mother telling the story and showing her a picture. But no, she will claim this as her own. They moved from that yellow house next to Grandpa and Grandma’s when she was not quite six, so that would be a nice early memory to be able to claim. Still, she is unsure.

That time feels so lost to her. The location of the houses, the things they did during the day, the schools they attended, all these facts are supplied by her mother on the occasions she seeks to reach back to that time. So is this nightmare about the sewing room a fragment of something from her past? She doesn’t know, is never sure. It certainly doesn’t make sense; she is sleeping on a little cot there, it is late afternoon or early morning. The light coming in through the high awning windows enters the room weakly and at a deep slant, that is how she knows the time. Of course in northern North Dakota, in winter, this could be very early in the afternoon indeed. She does find it entertaining and a bit perplexing that the quality of the light is so integral to both the dream and the memory. Was this an early indication that she would have interests in the finer things, painting and photography, literature and music of the enduring sort?

She hears her little boy stirring in his bed, and hurries to pack up her toothbrush and the few other toiletries she left out for the morning. Her last bag is now by the door, the rest already in the car, again to assure a quick exit. Was she allowing enough time? She hadn’t made this trip in a decade, and hadn’t factored in any road construction.

Road construction – that phrase again pulled her back to the dream, for a type of construction is taking place there. First, the young girl on the cot, herself she had always believed, hears the sound of a washing machine chugging and sloshing a load through its paces. This sound is regular and insistent, and she realizes it has the gallop of a heartbeat as well, a heartbeat that is getting louder and faster as the little girl wakes. Right from the start there is a feeling of fear, getting stronger as the various elements unwind. She peeks open an eye and sees her grandmother’s sewing machine first. This helps her know where she is, but doesn’t explain the noise she is hearing.

And then, on the edge of her vision she sees that it is neither a washing machine or a heartbeat she is hearing, for the sound is syncopated perfectly to the bricks. Yes, the room is filling up on the inside with red bricks, mysteriously appearing like a video game just in time to stack one level at a time around and around the room, faster and faster. Although the windows are high in the wall, they will be covered over soon, and the door is already half inaccessible. This scares her, terror engulfs her to the point of making a scream impossible, breathing difficult. Still, the mounting bricks march on.

This is usually the point where she wakes, and it is also now the point where her hair is straightened and the iron, is tucked into an outer pocket of her final bag to finish cooling. A flash of orange and her little boy has flown into her bed, burrowing beneath the pile of pillows and making his usual morning squeaking noises. She grabs him and gives him a morning tickle and then a quick kiss, and turns around to find her husband stretching awake and hoping for his own greeting. The joy of snuggling them both chases the dregs of the dream away, and it doesn’t reenter her mind again.

Ten minutes later she and her husband enter the elevator, he carrying her final bag, always the gentleman. She must look worried, probably the residue of the dream, because for once she doesn’t feel her normal panic setting in upon heading out to try something new. Still something is in the air and he asks, “Are you worried?” She kisses his cheek and returns, “Worried about what?” wondering what he has sensed. “That we are going to kill each other when you are gone?” he quips, bringing to the forefront the volatile place the relationship between her husband and her youngest son has reached at this stage in their lives. “No, I think you will get along famously.” She makes the words a prayer and sends it to her God. Positive thinking does in fact make a difference, and God certainly can work that minor miracle. He chuckles, holds open her door, tucks her case in the backseat and wishes her a safe journey. And then she is off.

KC Trip: The End

It is almost over. This is the thought that invades her mind before her eyes have opened to greet the day. As always, as soon as the first thought enters her mind, she removes to prayer and this line is delivered plaintively to her Maker. It is before she has had time to remind herself to look for the good in everything. It is while she is still off guard against negativity. I want more she breathes to the Creator, and I love what I have been given, thank you for what I have been given. Yes, now she is more fully awake, now she is striking the proper tone, the tone that she will take with her into the new day.

A smile now reaches her lips, the ghost of the one that guided her to sleep last night, and she snuggles deeper into the warm covers for a last minute of indulgence. It is early, and they went to bed late, much later than her in fact, and so she is surprised when during this last extravagance she realizes that voices are issuing forth from the kitchen below. Why how can they possibly already be awake? She doesn’t like to admit it, but she prides herself on being the one-with-stamina. The one who impresses all with how she can keep going and going. Yet in this she is clearly being shown up by her old school friends. Affronted, the last half of that indulgent minute is dispensed with as she hurls herself purposefully out of bed, hastily pulling the sheets and pillow cases off into a neat pile for the laundry. Another second is afforded to sadness as this action reminds her she will not sleep here again. She comforts herself by reminding , while she dresses, that after a time, she will sleep again in her own home, after snuggling with her lovely little family, and she is back on the positive side of the fence.

She is a snob, there is no two ways about it, but she ameliorates this by poking fun at the very things that make her thus. As she bounces down the stairs to see who has beat her out of bed, she therefore mocks her horror at this aloud, and easy laughter pervades the room, just the tone she had hoped to set. Quietly though she acknowledges only to herself the fact that she is the only one who dressed for the day and packed all her belongings, bringing them to the foot of the stairs, so in a way she can feel calm in the fact that she is still somehow ahead of the game. She is not proud of these thoughts, so makes more fun of herself in another tack, just for good measure and settles in to a nice cuppa with the two mates that are up.

She easily lets her mind glide over the facts, which are that Chris is already hard at work cooking a grand meal for them to eat in an hour or so. Glossing over the facts that might tip the scales away from her again is her especial skill, and they all pick up where they left off, remembering the past, both shared and otherwise. She had walked in on a conversation about childbirth, a landscape they have all crossed, although not while in each other’s lives. She loves hearing the stories and sharing her own, and soon the fourth of their party joins them. They head back out to the deck, another beautiful day is in store and like all true Midwesterners, they recognize their duty to enjoy any agreeable weather, knowing it is likely that tomorrow will bring something entirely different.

The time passes quickly and soon the fifth and final player in their party is motoring down the drive. From the first glance she sees how this last performer will play his role—he is destined to be the successful one. She has heard that he worked hard to be thin and well groomed at each of the previous class reunions. His car is one designed to give the impression of a car one is driven around in, and it takes a second look to realize it is mostly a disguised standard import. It sweeps around the curve, and there is a pause as they all wait at the balcony rail for him to emerge. In those few moments what is he collecting? His thoughts? His courage? A final look in the mirror? Then the door opens and out he comes and all his hard work is not lost. It is not only her breathe she hears sharply drawn in, although the others have met him once or twice in the ensuing quarter century. In school, Doug had been one of only two boys in their class that received any attention whatsoever, although not the type of attention he probably sought. Doug and Chris, friends all through school as far as she knew, were the cream of the crop, and a weak crop it was. She believed it was commonly this way, that most of the boys her age were a bit of the doddering fools. Blushing often, uncomfortable in the company of women, even the unformed women of their class, lost behind the girls who had better grades, better ways of communicating, and better visions of what a boy they would date would look and act like. Amusingly there were several from the class a year behind theirs that fit the bill and it must have further enervated them to see the girls run past them into the arms of those they saw as pipsqueaks from the junior class.

But Doug and Chris were in a different situation. Secretly, many of the girls did want to catch their eyes, but on the face of it they were so enjoying the male companionship that they received from these two that they mostly did not seek them out for a date. His glorious smile emerged as soon as he exited the car, and although this tall, slim, urban stranger surprised her, the smile brought it all home. She tried to remember as everyone exchanged greeting hugs, if she had thought of him in a romantic way…it seemed easy to believe now, but she thought perhaps she had not seen his potential in high school. She remembered he tended to come across as pudgy, although she didn’t remember him being actually fat. When discussing various classmates that turned out to be gay, she got things mixed up and she inadvertently put his name on the list. She was corrected soon after, but she was even now seeing how she could have made that mistake. He cared about how he looked, he paid attention to details that most boys his age not only missed, but couldn’t have cared less for, all the girls adored him in a brotherly way. Signs enough. She was glad this particular set of thought remained unspoken, she realized with horror the unfairness of them and moved back into the group conversation, shivering at her prejudicial inner remarks.

They decided to eat the breakfast that was now ready, and sat ‘round the formal dining room table complementing the chef and getting reacquainted. She found herself less in charge of the conversation as she was used to—upon reflection this was actually very common when the group grew beyond one or two others. It was partially why she so hated parties and other large gatherings—she found herself lost and adrift most of the time at these affairs. In this case she just enjoyed the ebb and flow of the talk, taking in all the extra knowledge this group had of her past—Kim and Doug especially seemed to have an encyclopedic memory of all that had transpired for the years they had schooled together. She found out she used to send many coded messages to members of her group, a fact that completely shocked her, as she did not for a minute remember this. After a time they retired to the media room where Chris shared a slideshow of family pictures and they searched Facebook with the big screen television displaying the results as they looked for more classmates. The group was soon divided into two invisible categories; those who found their dearest memories were firmly imbedded in the halls of their high school; and those who could not imagine that being the pinnacle.

They took a break to take group photos outside, Chris’s husband now home was pressed into service as photographer, this being a large part of his career, they weren’t concerned that the outcome would be undesirable. She knew she needed to hit the road soon, and so snapped some additional family photos and began to detach herself from the group. Others were also reaching the same conclusion, so her goodbyes grew long as it was decided all would leave at once. At first she was a little annoyed by the delay, she may have lived 2/3 of her life in Minnesota, but she was not one for long goodbyes. But when she found her eyes misting up with sadness at the prospect of leaving this lovely week behind she was glad for the bustle and distraction it all brought.

Heading out of the city an hour later, into yet another rainstorm, she tried to sum up and review all this trip had meant to her. Lost friendships rekindled, enjoyable touristing, great entertainment, meeting the new and the old were all wonderful. But mostly what she had been given on this trip was herself. For years now her life had been fractured. The utter horror of her first marriage and all the drama that surrounded it served as a bunker, keeping the territory she had already traversed a country away from the person she had become in the aftermath. She had believed that person dead and gone. She had assumed that she had been foolish, unworthy of remembering, inconsequential. What these four old friends had been able to give her was a sense of a girl she knows she would have liked. She saw through their eyes someone who knew where she wanted to head, and was making progress in that direction. Someone who showed the world she was sure of herself. Someone who mattered to the lives of at least these four. Someone who would have mattered to her. What a gift this trip had been in that fact alone.

She turned on the third section of Capote’s classic and lost her 45 year old self in the landscape and storyline, content not to think more on her life for the space of time it took her to head back to her home.

The Participles of Imprisonment

Why do we teach our children incorrect words for things? Nappy and Uppy and Night-Night. Is it so that we can keep them to ourselves, a private language code to hold them to us a while longer?

Scott and I never did this with Andrew. Perhaps we should have named him Samuel, because even before he was born we felt it: that he did not really belong to us, but was lent out, until it was time to return him to his Maker.

We told him rabbit and fish and cookie, and when he played them back to us as bunny and sheesh and keecoo we said no, this is the way you must connect with all that is outside of us, we rejected his private language. We drew him to the bigger world.

Eight years later we see him daily asking for new words, hearing them pronounced, taking in their meanings. Each word draws him farther away from us, gives him one more brick in a path that will lead him on his own journey.

As he spends more time with his peers, he begins to use words to harm, not just as a way to draw things to himself. We try to take a balanced approach, not forbidding some words as “bad”, but making sure he knows their real meanings, and expecting him to reach deeper for what he is really trying to say.

We read about how to be better parents for the special type of learning that Andrew excels in, and work hard to not apply labels that will limit him. Again our goal is keeping him free to explore the depth inside of him and how he can take that to the larger world.