End of Semester Hallucinations
I woke up on the plains, the grass up to my hips, wearing a dress I had never seen.
I woke up on the plains, the grass up to my hips, wearing a dress I had never seen. It was white and strapless, with ruffles that wrapped around my shoulders and a loose bodice, the skirt cut just below the knee. Of course, with the warm blades of grass pushing against me, I felt the cut of the dress more than I saw it.
I was not as worried about the fact that I did not remember how I got there as I was about the fact that there was an old-fashioned shotgun in my hands.
As if I was in a movie where the audio lagged behind the video, once I noticed the gun, the sound of gunshots suddenly filled the air. I hadn’t realized how quiet it was before that moment.
I threw my arms into the air, shotgun in both hands, barrel balanced parallel to the sky, trying to surrender. Bullets struck my forearms and I yelled out in pain as blood began running down my arms. The dress was turning red and suddenly I was sinking, sinking, sinking . . . until the earth swallowed me up and everything went dark. All I could feel was the shotgun slipping out of my hands as it refused to come with me and the strange sensation that nothing was beneath my feet . . .
I land in a new world convinced I must be in Wonderland. That is until I see a faded yellow brick road stretching out before me.
There’s really nothing to do besides start walking down the path. What else does one do when faced with a yellow brick road?
Mist made the air heavy around me and trees reached up and over on either side of me. There was no sky. There was just grey and black and white and the yellow of the road. My dress had mysteriously returned to its original color, all signs of blood gone.
I walked for ages without any change in scenery. Unnerved by the eerie quiet, I called out for the familiar residents of Oz, but no one replied. All the world was quiet until suddenly I was at the edge of the ocean. The bricks just disappeared into the waves without so much as a sign. I couldn’t even hear the gentle cries of the water hitting the shore until I was less than a yard away.
Without hesitation, I walked into the water and let it swallow me up just like the earth had done.
When no portal opened, I tried to move my arms and legs, my lungs beginning to burn, my mind racing from the realization that perhaps the magic had run out, perhaps the rules of reality were going to suddenly start applying and in that case, I most definitely could not breathe underwater — but my body had become frozen, my limbs heavy as lead. I sunk down, down, down, unable to do anything, even to stop my mind from spinning with the terrifying truth of —
I wake up in a cold sweat, panting and gasping for air.
I’m at my desk.
I’m in my dorm room.
My usual t-shirt and jeans have replaced the dress. My hair is dry. My arms and legs are uninhibited and no wounds mar my flesh.
Suddenly, the dream seems so absurd.
Then I look down at my desk and remember exactly why I hadn’t fought or questioned the dream: the alternative was three presentations, two papers and the test that my professor is squeezing in right before finals.
When the room starts filling up with water, I don’t fight it. Honestly, I’m not even surprised. I just watch my notes crumple and my laptop sputter and close my eyes for the next adventure.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/end-of-semester-hallucinations/
Breaking Up with a Demon
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked her. She still hadn’t let him into the house, and he was starting to get rather annoyed. It was cold and dark and it smelled like a storm was coming, and he was not about to do the whole standing-outside-a-girl’s-house-in-the-rain thing. He supposed he just wasn’t the romantic type when it came to things like that.
Her glare only intensified. “I’m hoping you’ll spontaneously combust.”
He smirked and said, “That’s not how that works, darling,” but she didn’t laugh. He frowned. Okay, he thought. Let’s try something else. Silently, he reached out to her mind and said, Okay, so on a scale of one to ten, how bad would it be if I—
“At least a twenty,” she said out loud, cutting him off. “And stop that.”
“What? You usually like it.”
“Yeah, well, usually I haven’t spent the day hearing from every girl at school about your romantic exploits.”
He did not say, “What are you talking about?” because he knew she would simply take that as an insult to her intelligence. Instead, he said, “What did you hear?”
“You’ve been cheating on me with Ines since August. Before that, it was Betty. Who knows about before that.” She stamped her foot in frustration. “You’ve been lying to me basically since we met, haven’t you?”
He shrugged. “Only about the inconsequential things.”
“Sleeping around with other girls isn’t what I would call ‘inconsequential.’”
“Look, you know I care about you. I would take a bullet for you, but when you’ve been around as long as I have . . . what can I say? You get bored.”
“It doesn’t mean anything when someone immortal offers to take a bullet for you,” she told him. “That’s like me telling someone I’d take a punch for them. I mean, it probably wouldn’t even hurt you that badly, would it? More like saying you’d allow yourself to get a papercut for me.”
“Just because I’m immortal doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain. And don’t try to deny the anguish caused by papercuts.”
She groaned and almost slammed the door in his face. But instead, she clenched her fists, closed her eyes, and whispered, “I trusted you.”
“Don’t blame me for your mistake,” he whispered back. But there wasn’t any malice in it. Well, there was as little malice as there can be in a snarky remark from a demon. Believe it or not, he really was trying. “You knew who I was.”
She sighed, leaning against the doorframe and looking at him one last time. “I know. I did.” And she hadn’t been the type of girl to think she could reform him. She hadn’t seen him as a challenge or even as a rebellion. She had simply seen that even someone as lost as a demon could have a hint of good in them. She’d used to see it when he looked at her. Now, she only saw the evil.
“Lie to me one more time,” she whispered, voice shaking.
“Dorothea . . .”
“Do it.” Her voice was firmer now.
He sighed and there was genuine pain in his eyes. He couldn’t remember what it felt like to have a heartbeat, but he felt like this might be the closest he would ever come to finding out. Completely deadpan, he told her, “I love you.”
She swallowed her pain, her relief, her screaming broken heart— her wishes that it could be true. She shoved all of it down into the pit of her stomach, looked him in the eyes and said, “Thank you.” Then lightning split the sky in two and thunder rumbled over their heads as the heavens acknowledged her backing away from the brink of condemnation. She closed the door in his expressionless face just as the rain began to pour.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/breaking-up-with-a-demon/
“Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love.”
You know how some people have things they just really love?
You know how some people have things they just really love? Like the guy from “Looking For Alaska” who loves last words or your weird uncle who collects guitars he can’t play? The people who never threw away their baseball card collections and never returned all the rocks they collected from their mom’s front yard?
I’m one of those people — but not about last words or guitars or baseball cards or rocks. I like palindromes. You know, like “a man, a plan, a canal, Panama?” Read that backwards and it still says the same thing. You wouldn’t believe how many cool palindromes there are out there. It’s kind of a rabbit hole once you get into it. Believe it or not, it led to me learning some Latin.
Well, you see, the palindrome rabbit hole led me to the concept of the bilingual palindrome. As far as people know today, there seems to be only one sentence that is sensical in one language going forwards and then in a different language going backward. What’s even better is that the sentences are, like, Shakespeare level — which is how I ended up dating a poet for three months.
You see, this cute guy started coming regularly to the coffee shop I work at, and I really wanted to talk to him, but all he ever did was sit there reading poetry. So, one day, after he caught me watching him and asked if I knew anything about poetry, the only thing that came out of my mouth was—
“Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love.”
And suddenly, he thought I was a poet who wrote this because he’d never heard it before because the average person doesn’t go around memorizing bilingual palindromes.
So, of course, the next thing my brain jumped to was that “Anger? ‘Tis safe never. Bar it! Use love,” backward is “Evoles ut ira breve nefas sit; regna!”
Which is Latin for “Rise up, in order that your anger may be but a brief madness; control it!”
And when I said that, my credibility as a poet was pretty much solidified in this guy’s mind, his eyes wide with wonder. Plus, I was a barista who knew how to make trendy beverages, so I was basically this guy’s dream girl.
It was a pretty great three months. We went to parks and laid in the sun while he read to me aloud like we were in a Nicolas Sparks movie or “Pretty Woman” or something. But as the three-month mark rolled around, he started questioning why I didn’t have any new poetry. He didn’t like the idea that someone caught up in a whirlwind romance such as ours would be battling writer’s block. Emotions feed creatives or something like that. I don’t know, guys, I’m a business major dropout.
Anyway, when I couldn’t hold out anymore, I couldn’t think of any poetry that he wouldn’t recognize and what ended up coming out of my mouth was—
“A man. A plan. A canal. Panama.”
So, yeah, that’s the story of how I got picked up by and dumped by a poet, all because of my love of palindromes.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/anger-tis-safe-never-bar-it-use-love/
A Modern Mesozoic
When I first saw her, she was standing outside in the middle of a snowstorm — arms out, head thrown back, coat unzipped.
When I first saw her, she was standing outside in the middle of a snowstorm — arms out, head thrown back, coat unzipped. The occasional car would pass by, and she would just keep standing there, perfectly still. I wasn’t sure at that moment whether the moment was beautiful. It was the kind of moment where you don’t know if someone is soaking in the world’s beauty or wallowing in its everlasting pain. I stood on the sidewalk across the street from her for a whole 10 minutes until my ears were numb and my fingers were red. Then I walked over and asked her what she was doing.
Without looking at me, she said, “Calling out to the sun’s rays like a lightning rod, darling. I’m redirecting the bits of warmth we have left into the ground so that the flowers can awaken and spring can come sooner.”
I didn’t know how to respond other than, “Do you want to go to dinner with me?”
That got her to turn her head, although her arms remained stretched out as if she was pinned to an invisible cross. There was a playful constellation of freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose, and her eyes were such a light blue that they almost turned grey, just like a winter sky.
“Will you buy me pizza?” she asked.
I nodded. And then we went on our first date.
Some people have these grand, Hollywood-esque stories of how they met and then settle into a “normal” relationship. This girl didn’t know how to do “normal.” She didn’t tell me her name until the third date, even though I asked at least a dozen times.
“I’ll tell you when you’ve earned it,” she’d say. “Names are precious things, you know. Shakespeare got it wrong. We should all be as tied to our names as John Proctor screaming about his at the end of ‘The Crucible.’ We should be much more protective of them.”
At the end of our third date, I found out that her name was Patricia Jo-Ann Lee. She liked to go by Patti. “With an ‘i’ instead of a ‘y’ because it invites curiosity and suspicion,” she explained. “Curiosity because it makes me seem interesting and suspicion because it makes me seem extra and dramatic and maybe even a little hipster.”
I was never quite sure what she thought “hipster” meant. Sometimes it meant indie music and nerd glasses, but other times I swear she used it interchangeably with words like “emo” and “whimsical,” as if all three should make you think of the exact same type of person.
Patti meditated every day because “chaos killed the dinosaurs, darling.” She tried to get me to do it with her, but I was never able to keep my eyes closed. All I could do was watch her. She’d get as still as she’d been that first day, except she’d look so much smaller folded onto her lavender yoga mat. She wasn’t the kind of person to say “om” or anything like that. It was total silence, beautiful and heartbreaking and addicting. I could have sat there forever. But after a while, she’d always say, “I can feel your eyes on me,” and eventually, she stopped asking me to meditate with her.
I guess that kind of stuff was why it was so shocking. When she drove her car off the side of the road, I mean. Into that ditch. She never denied that she did it on purpose. She never confirmed that she was disappointed to be still alive when the first responders got there. She never told me why any of it was true or false, or why she would answer some questions but not others. She only ever told me one thing about that night.
We were sitting in her hospital room; her parents had gone to grab food, and so it was just us for the first time since it happened. I squeezed her hand, and I was about to tell her how glad I was that she was alive, how much I wanted to help her stay alive, how much I loved her. But before I could get any words out, she said,
“Chaos killed the dinosaurs, darling. Why shouldn’t it kill me? Do you know how much chaos is going on inside my head? A life-eliminating meteor doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
I thought for a moment, unsure what to say. Finally, letting go of her hand, I said, “Pretend to be meditating.”
“What?”
“Just sit as much as you can like you would if we were back in your dorm room and you were meditating.”
“Daniel, I stopped meditating months ago.”
Is that the real reason she stopped asking me to join her? I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Just do it for me, please.”
With a sigh, she straightened up a bit, closed her eyes, and made little o’s with her thumbs and forefingers.
“Feel my eyes on you?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I never take my eyes off you. No matter how much chaos there is on the inside or the outside. You’re never like the dinosaurs, unsuspecting and hopeless without help. You can always ring the alarm if you feel like a meteor is getting close, and I swear I will shield your body with mine if that’s what it takes. And you can trust that if I see the chaos before you do, I’ll ring the alarm myself. The chaos won’t kill you, darling. It will only make you stronger and stronger until you evolve into something so spectacular that no one will even talk about dinosaurs anymore. They’ll just talk about you.”
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/a-modern-mesozoic/
Diary of a Girl
“Okay, so based on the way these sticks here are broken next to this pattern in the dirt and the direction of the wind, I’d say they went left.”
Nov. 2
“Okay, so based on the way these sticks here are broken next to this pattern in the dirt and the direction of the wind, I’d say they went left.”
My eyebrow quirked in amazement. “You can really tell all that from this?” I gesture to the forest surrounding us.
Kenny smirked. “Of course not, you idiot! Myra sent me a text. We’re supposed to meet them over by the cafe.” He stalked off toward the path leading east, his hiking boots making crunching noises as they smothered the fallen leaves.
I’m sure it doesn’t surprise you to learn that I am not much of a hiker. I came on this trip to hang out with George. Now I’ve spent the better part of two days wandering around with Kenny and his lame sarcasm, which he thinks is so funny. Meanwhile, Myra is probably getting all cozy with George while they wait for us to catch up.
Yours truly,
Tired and Annoyed
Oct. 31
Who plans a camping trip starting on Halloween? Like, what? This can’t possibly be a good time to be out here tramping about and acting like we know what we’re doing. At least George is here. He’s so dreamy and sweet. If only I could get Kenny to stop interrupting every time I get a chance to have a real conversation with George. That clown has some sort of attention deficiency, and if he doesn’t start leaving me alone soon, he’s going to cost me my chance. Myra looks like she’s about ready to swoop in on George any minute.
Yours truly,
Dates Should Be Indoors
Nov. 1
That idiot Kenny threw my backpack into the river and then lost it in the current! Now we have to search for it while George and Myra go check into the cabin we’re supposed to stay in for the second half of the trip so we don’t lose our reservation.
Yours truly,
UGH!
Nov. 4
Day two in the cabin. Day two of watching Myra scoot closer and closer to George. Day two of brainstorming ways to get myself between them. Day two of plotting Kenny’s untimely demise.
Yours truly,
Two Days Left
Nov. 5
George said something weird while we were cooking dinner. He said Kenny has a thing for me. That he teases me as a way of flirting. What is he, nine? Is he going to throw sand in my face if we get too close to the ocean?
Yours truly,
Confused and Ignoring the Weird Warm Feelings from Kenny Possibly Liking Me
Oct. 24
Oh my goodness! George asked me if I want to join him and some friends on a camping trip next week! One of the people is that guy Kenny from the bar. He’s always seemed alright. Quirky. Myra is going, too. I think she has a boyfriend, so I should be able to have George all to myself! It’s going to be perfect!
Yours truly,
Excited!!!
Dec. 25
I took Kenny home with me for Christmas. My family loves him. I don’t really want to talk about it.
Yours truly,
Not Sure How I Ended Up Here, but I Might Be Falling In Love
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/diary-of-a-girl/
Compassion, Beauty & Honesty
When she finished telling him the tragic story of her life— with the names of every person changed, even her own, as if it was nothing more than a recitation of a novel she’d once read— she sat back in her high back chair and watched him.
When she finished telling him the tragic story of her life— with the names of every person changed, even her own, as if it was nothing more than a recitation of a novel she’d once read— she sat back in her high back chair and watched him. He was young and lithe, a boy growing into a man, with kind chocolate eyes. She was old and tired, a woman who knew her days were numbered, who might be mistaken for a ghost if the lighting was just right.
She could see the story traveling from his ears to his brain, seeping into his consciousness and gliding through his processors. He was thinking, trying to figure out what to say. Waiting didn’t bother her. She had told him as much before beginning the story. She wanted his honest opinion on a not-so-simple matter: was the girl in the story a good person? Was she a worthy protagonist?
Finally, taking a deep breath, he said, “She made mistakes, but we all do. She may not be a hero, but she is human, and perhaps that is better.”
The old woman closed her eyes, feeling tears begin to well. The words were like a warm shower of clean water after 40 years in a desert. They were a heavy weight lifted off the chest of a woman who nowadays struggled to even reach up to open the door of her kitchen cabinets after having been weighed down for so long. With her eyes still closed to hold in the tears of relief, she whispered, “Thank you.”
“Why do you care so much?” the boy asked before he could reconsider. “About the girl, I mean.”
The old woman smiled sadly, allowing her eyes to open and focus on the boy’s gentle, well-meaning face. He was so innocent. He had so much life left to live.
“Because the girl in the story, the one I called Mary and the one you called human, she is me. I am her. Her story is my story, and you have judged it in a way that I thought no one ever would.”
“Why did you not tell me it was the story of your life before you started telling it?”
“Could you have told me to my face that I was a horrible person if we’d reached the end of the story and that’s what you thought of the girl who lived that life, who did those things?” The woman shook her head in a way that she meant as a compliment but the boy took it as a judgment against him until she said, “I doubt it. You are far too kind.”
“I do not have to be kind to know you are not a horrible person, ma’am.”
The old woman tried to think back to a time when she might also have believed such a bold statement. She said a quick prayer that the boy before her would hold on to his idealism longer than she had been allowed to. It would take him down a much prettier path.
“Compassion is what creates beauty in brokenness,” she told him softly. “There is a myth among us that sadness and heartbreak and pain can be beautiful. Yet we only ever see that beauty in the pain of others— whether it’s a novel or a television show or a story in a magazine. We cannot see the gentle curves of our broken-down bodies, the pure humanity in our strained faces. We can only recognize it for what it truly is on the face of another, separated from our own pain and yet deeply felt in our own hearts. We can only see the beauty from a vantage point of compassion. You have had compassion on my story; I have seen it on your face. It is the closest to forgiving myself that I have ever come. You have given me quite a gift.”
The boy was stunned into silence. When his mother had told him their elderly neighbor needed him to visit her this Saturday afternoon, he’d assumed she wanted him to lift or fix something. Not take her confession. Not bear witness to her absolution.
“Why me?” he asked the woman. “Why not one of my sisters?”
She settled even deeper into the plush cushions of her chair, cushions that had soaked up tears of grief and pain and regret for so many years, but today drank tears of forgiveness and hope. Of rebirth.
“There is honesty in your eyes,” she told the boy. “It has been there since the first day your mother brought you to my house. Grace in your body, kindness in your voice and heart, but honesty in your eyes. That deeply rooted honestly was about the only thing I could trust after all this time.”
The boy absentmindedly pressed the tips of his three middle fingers to his temple and let them brush against the corner of his eye. When he said his own prayer, he asked that he always have the courage to act upon the honesty this woman had seen in him, had expected of him— had needed of him.
“Thank you,” the woman said again.
The boy smiled. “My pleasure, ma’am. Truly.”
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/compassion-beauty-honesty/
Move-in Day
When Asher and Noah Brown decided to move out of their parents’ house and get one of their own, the reactions were mixed.
When Asher and Noah Brown decided to move out of their parents’ house and get one of their own, the reactions were mixed. Their friends said brothers don’t buy houses together. Their father practically leaped for joy. Their mother did little to hide her tears and hugged her sons tight. The brothers assured her that they were only moving ten minutes away to a nearby neighborhood.
Their new home was a two-bedroom, two-bath split-level with a detached garage. “That would be a pain in the winter,” Asher had said when they first looked at the house.
“I’ll shovel it,” Noah had offered, already sold on the house’s interior potential. He wanted to flip the house and sell it in a few years.
“If you shovel all the snow, I’m in,” Asher had said. And so they signed the papers and moved in two weeks later to the day. Since the aforementioned winter had not yet arrived, the brothers propped the front door open to ease the process of carrying in their boxes. Once they began the actual unpacking of belongings, they promptly forgot about the door until they heard an unknown voice say,
“Knock knock!”
Both Asher and Noah looked up from their respective boxes to find themselves faced with a heavy-set, bald man holding a six-pack of Bud Light.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” the man said, holding out the beer. “I’m Doug. I live two doors down to the right. Well, right if you’re facing the house from the street. I think it’s south, but don’t quote me on that.”
Realizing he had no idea what direction was south, Noah took the beer from Doug and muttered a thank you.
Having a bit more tact, Asher said, “Nice to meet you, Doug. I’m Asher, and this is my brother Noah. How long have you been in this neighborhood?”
Doug grinned. “Long enough to give you all the dirt, if that’s what you’re asking, Asher. The family between our houses have like seven kids, all too young to drive. If you aren’t careful, you will be asked to babysit. On your other side is an old couple who spend half the year down south. Surprisingly, the summer, not the winter. Across the street is Diane. She’s a bit nutty, but she’ll loan you anything you need. And me, well, I’m the quiet neighbor with the big freezer in this thriller we call Suburban Life.”
Asher and Noah exchanged worried looks, unsure what to say. Finally, Noah said, “I . . . I like kids.”
Doug laughed in a way that did nothing to relieve the building tension. “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Chong will love that. They pay babysitters pretty well, but trust me, you’ll want alcohol to make it through that gig. If you run out, I’m usually pretty well stocked. Just swing by my garage.”
“O-okay. I’ll do that sometime,” Noah stammered.
Doug gave a disquieting grin, a two-fingered salute, and then spun around and walked out without so much as another word.
“You didn’t seriously just agree to go to his house?” Asher asked.
“I think I might have.”
“You won’t really . . . ?”
Noah shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Wouldn’t that mean . . . ?”
“Probably.”
Asher rolled his eyes. “Your tombstone will read, ‘Killed by his own idiocy.’”
Noah shrugged again. “We’ll see. Depending on how much snow we get this year, I might be driven to go visit Doug in hopes of getting out of being the only person shoveling it.”
“Could’ve just agreed to look at a house with an attached garage,” Asher muttered.
“Where’s the fun in that? At least now we get to be a part of the thriller called Suburban Life.”
Asher shook his head. “I think I’d rather be cast in the sit-com.”
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/uncategorized/move-in-day/
Chaos and Calm
Two sisters stood on the doorstep of their childhood home, fully grown and only partially ready to depart.
Two sisters stood on the doorstep of their childhood home, fully grown and only partially ready to depart. They had always been together, two sides of the same coin, but now they were heading in opposite directions. The outcomes of their journeys had long been prophesied: one headed toward chaos and the other toward calm. Neither truly knew which was which, but each had hope of a certain outcome.
The first sister, the elder and quieter of the two, was heading south. Her rose skin was destined to gain the golden glow of the coastal sun; her brown curls were destined to lighten and bounce. The second sister, younger but bolder and perhaps wiser, was headed north. Her dark features would not lighten; her freckles would not gain siblings from days spent lounging in the sunlight. The first wore a whimsical gingham the color of sky and denim and cloud. The second wore a sensible black sweater with an eye-catching v-neck of fire. They met eyes before taking those first steps in opposing directions, but they did not say goodbye.
The first sister made her way lazily, first to Georgia, then Texas, then Mexico. Somewhere along the way, perhaps in Tennessee, she picked up a pair of rose-tinted glasses and never took them off. Everything was in hues of gold and peach, and life was like warm honey slowly dripping from a tilted spoon: she never knew when she’d finally hit the ground, but she knew it was coming. As the song says, “Falling feels like flying till the bone crush.”
The second sister took a train from Philadelphia to Montreal. She learned to speak French and wear red lipstick and let her eyebrows grow thick. Best of all, she learned to dance. She met a man who would spin her across the floor from sunset to dawn and love filled her chest for the first time in ages. Perhaps she did not wear glasses like her sister, but she began to see things just as rosily despite the cold and wind.
The first sister found love the moment she finally hit the ground. It was a love built on new beginnings and it led her so far south that suddenly she was north. But with the steadying hand of her love grasped firmly in her own, she was at peace.
The second sister kept dancing until one dawn’s light shone upon a harsh truth she’d worked so hard to blind herself to: her partner had always loved another. The music stopped and the rosiness was gone and she ran until the earth curved beneath her feet. By the time she ran into her sister, her tears had run out. But the pain was still there.
Two sisters stood on the doorstep of the last place they had expected to see each other. Despite having believed themselves fully grown in the past, they had done nothing but continue to grow in their time apart. Their reunion could not have come at a better time.
Each sister, one too eager to share her joy, the other too tired to keep holding in her fears, announced to the other, “I’m pregnant.”
Nine months later, the first sister gave birth to a beautiful little girl just days before her sister did the same. Despite their different paths, they had come to the same spot and yet the prophecy remained fulfilled.
“Hello, little Chaos,” said one mother to her daughter.
“Hello, little Calm,” said the other to hers.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/chaos-and-calm/
The Myth of the Flowers
Once upon a time, Demeter saw her first rainbow.
Once upon a time, Demeter saw her first rainbow. The colors burst across the sky, blending and dancing above her. As she laid in the plain green grass, a strange sadness grabbed hold of her. Demeter wished for such beauty to come down from the sky and into her own realm. Gaia heard her wish and whispered an offer into Demeter’s mind. Smiling, Demeter nodded her head, and the matter was settled.
For the next twelve months, Demeter traveled the earth. She spent one month in each place and granted the gift of a precious flower to each. Her first attempt, in Ukraine, produced a small white flower. Beautiful as it was, Demeter lamented its lack of color. Coming home to Greece, she spent the month of February creating luscious, vibrant violets. They were so spectacular that purple forever became the color of kings and queens.
Demeter carried on her adventures, giving Northern Europe daffodils and Eastern Europe daisies. The flowers sprouted everywhere, wild and delicate all at once. In Turkey, Demeter gave birth to lilies, and in the frozen ground of Alaska, roses took root and bloomed. The lotus flower she created for India was so beautiful that it dominated the art produced in that land for centuries.
For a while, Demeter explored the Western Hemisphere, still so untouched by the gods. To California, she gave the poppy, and to Mexico, the morning glory. Down in Argentina, she framed the pathways in marigolds that created the illusion of setting the earth on fire. She took a brief trip back to the Old World to gift the chrysanthemum to China, but then she returned to North America, coming to rest in the middle of the continent, in an area now known as Missouri.
The year was reaching its end, and back home, the faithful women were honoring Demeter with the festival of Haloa. She imagined the women dancing across the threshing floor, the flowers she had spent the last year creating decorating their hair. Demeter wanted to create something that would finish the long year of labor rightly, something that would sweeten further this bittersweet time of year. Even as mortals praised her, she was about to lose her precious daughter to the Underworld once more. Blasted pomegranates! How she loathed them!
And then, in the midst of her rage, genius struck her. What better path of action than to create a better version of the pomegranate? Something red and fruit-like, yet holding the beauty of the flowers she was so skilled at creating. Dancing across the American plain, she began sprinkling the earth with holly. First Missouri, then the rest of the continent and, eventually, the whole world. There was scarcely a single region in which it refused to grow. Demeter covered the lands with them and then finally returned home to Greece. Sighing as she regarded the fruits of her labors, she felt a sense of peace settle deep in her chest. And she waited for spring’s return.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/the-myth-of-the-flowers/
License Plate Game
There’s nothing quite like a four hour road trip with your new ex-boyfriend.
There’s nothing quite like a four hour road trip with your new ex-boyfriend. As we drove in silence and sulked, I kept telling myself that this was only a reminder from above that breaking up with Tristan had been a good idea. Yes, everything is a blessing in disguise. I thought maybe if I told myself enough times, it would start feeling true.
Here’s what no one tells you about following your boyfriend to an out-of-state university: after you break up with him, he’ll still be your only ride home for Thanksgiving break. Sure, everybody said it was a bad idea. Sure, everybody said we wouldn’t last the first semester. But no one had warned me about Thanksgiving. That would’ve actually been helpful!
Really, what I should have done, is waited to decide he was an idiot until after I had bought a car. I sighed. Oh well. At least it was almost Black Friday. I wasn’t sure if that applied to cars, but maybe it did. If there was a good enough sale, I could buy a car and only have to live through this four hour nightmare once.
“What are you sighing about?” Tristan said, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Nothing, sorry,” I mumbled.
“What?”
I held back a groan. There had to be a way to make all of this more bearable. I thought for a moment. “Why don’t we play a game?”
“I’ve already played a game with you, and it didn’t go so well.”
“Oh, don’t get all metaphorical. I just want to play some sort of dumb driving game. Like finding things that start with each letter, or I Spy or the license plate game.” Anything to stop the seething silence.
He sighed dramatically. “Fine. License plate game.”
I nodded and turned myself toward the passenger window. “Missouri doesn’t count because we’re there.”
“Well, we’re only an hour from Illinois, so that shouldn’t count either.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
I rolled my eyes. I don’t know what he was fine-ing. He was the one who was getting his way!
I watched helplessly as dozens of Missouri license plates rushed past my window. Come on, come on . . . finally! “I see Indiana! Red Toyota.”
Tristan glanced toward me. “I see it.” He gestured with his head toward the other side of the highway. “I just saw a Colorado go by in the other direction.”
I grinned. “Wanna know something I recently learned about Colorado?”
“No.”
“Come on! It’s fun!”
“What class did you learn it in?”
“Intro to chem.”
“Then I doubt it’s fun.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with chemistry! If anything it’s . . . statistics.”
“You do remember that I’m an English major, right? Statistics isn’t my idea of fun either.”
“Oh, I remember, Mr. Metaphor,” I mumbled.
“Not helping your case.”
“I’m just going to tell you anyway.”
He groaned.
“Colorado is one of sixteen states whose abbreviation is also the abbreviation of a chemical element on the periodic table.” I grinned.
He scoffed. “That was your fun fact?”
“Yep!”
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
“I don’t know. Live a more informed life.”
He gave me a look, lips pursed and eyes humorless.
I shrugged. “Oh! There’s one from New York! Wonder what they’re doing in Missouri.”
Tristan mumbled, “Probably not playing the freaking license plate game with their ex-girlfriend like a couple of middle schoolers.”
“I heard that!”
“Good!” A pause. “There’s Iowa.”
Against my better judgment, I smiled. I then groaned dramatically, just in case he’d seen it. Wouldn’t want to give any wrong impressions — I still thought he was an idiot. But maybe this drive would help us build a bridge over the chasm of history and frustration and pain between us. I didn’t really want to cross over it again in any permanent sort of way, but it’d be nice for it to be there. It’d be nice to not hate the one person on campus who was from home, who knew me from before we all became our college selves.
I turned on the radio, keeping the volume low enough that we could still play the game. A bright green semi whizzed past us. I said, “That one was from Nebraska.”
“Nice,” Tristan said.
The silence we settled into as we waited for the next state suddenly felt much less suffocating.
Originally published in The Index, Nov. 2020.
Don’t Do Drugs
The man walked onto the stage with a stiff sort of respectability. He was old, at least 80, and his black suit was at this point more of a charcoal.
The man walked onto the stage with a stiff sort of respectability. He was old, at least 80, and his black suit was at this point more of a charcoal. Just like him, it had seen better days. There was a slight limp to his step and hardly any hair on his head. Wireframe glasses sat perched on his nose and I imagined the lenses being half an inch thick. When he reached the microphone, he cleared his throat.
“Thank you, so much, for having me,” he began, putting so much emphasis on the words “so much” that you could almost hear the commas he no doubt had written on the piece of paper wobbling in his hands. Seriously, this guy was supposed to be an exciting speaker who would convince us to be better humans and grow into mature adults after graduation?
He paused to cough before continuing. “I once sat where you are sitting today. A member of the first graduating class of this prestigious academy, I spent my 17th year taking many of the same classes you are taking now.”
Then something amazing happened, or at least that’s what we all believed: he went off-script. A dazed look came over his face and he said, “Don’t you find that phrase interesting? ‘My 17th year.’ It’s straight out of some old stuffy novel and it’s said as if it’s the simplest sentence in the world. But what does it truly mean? During your 17th year on this planet, you are still 16 years old. Your 17th birthday marks the completion of that year, not its beginning. But the words make us think of a 17-year-old, don’t they?
“The notion gets even more fascinating when you consider that age is a cultural phenomenon. Not in the strictest sense, of course. My biology makes it clear that I am much older than all of you. Rather, I am speaking of the way in which we conceptualize and calculate our age as being a cultural sort of endeavor. Did you know that your age would be different had you been born the exact same day but in South Korea? Allow me to explain.
“In South Korea, a baby is one year old the day it is born. As I understand it, a person’s age does not then continue to be changed on their birthday, but rather on the first day of the new year. Everyone’s age changes at once. January first comes around and every single person in the country, regardless of their actual birthday, adds a candle to the cake, so to speak. Therefore, it is entirely possible that a child born seven days prior could be considered two years old. It’s fascinating, really. Reminds us that time is a law of nature that we have managed to also make our own as humans. Gravity is what it is, the color of the sky is not in our control, but time! Perhaps mankind’s greater feat in subduing the Earth is making time so much our own that many believe it to be wholly manmade.”
Honestly, the auditorium was dead silent. I mean, you could have heard a pin drop. It went from snickers about this place somehow being a “prestigious academy” to mindblown, this-dude-is kind-of-onto-something, never-saw-that-coming silence. I could hear my mom’s voice echoing in my mind, telling me not to judge a book by its cover. This guy might as well have been the walking advertisement.
As if suddenly reminded he was holding it, the man looked down at his paper. He stared at it for a moment before looking up and saying, “Oh, well, where was I? Oh, yes.” Then he looked back up, stared at the crowd in a way that kind of made it feel like he was making eye contact with all of us and none of us, and said, “Smoking is bad for you. We smoked when we were students here, look at us now. Don’t do drugs. Thank you for having me. Goodnight.”
Then he walked away, not acknowledging that it was ten in the morning or that the assembly was supposed to last another thirty minutes, leaving 200 high school juniors and seniors dumbfounded in a way most teachers only dreamed of accomplishing.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/dont-do-drugs/
The Final Installment of Inktober
Tasha slinked along the side of the space station’s central corridor.
Tasha slinked along the side of the space station’s central corridor. Her black t-shirt and leggings stood out sharply against the white and silver features of the space around her. Mentally cursing her forgetfulness, she reminded herself that camouflage worked a little differently here than back home on the city streets. It would be impossible to miss her dark form if someone walked by. She needed to act quickly.
Crawling across the floor, she made her way toward the main computer station. The precious thumb drive felt heavy in her pocket. Tasha was no wizard with a computer and it had cost her a pretty penny to have the proper coding placed onto the quarter-sized plugin. This better work, she thought.
She was a mere two yards away from the computer station when two worn boots appeared before her face. Looking up, she found herself eye to eye with Ivan. His red T-shirt somehow managed to blend into the space more naturally than her black one. Tasha held back a groan.
“What are you doing?” he asked calmly. There wasn’t even a hint of humor in his face.
“Searching for something I dropped.” Tasha stood and dusted off her pants with her palms. “I think it’s lost for good.”
Ivan quirked an eyebrow, unconvinced. He remained a stone wall before her. She peered around him to see if the computer remained unused.
“So, you going to let me by?”
Ivan said, “Why should I? You reek of trouble.”
“Come on, buddy. Be a pal.”
He was clearly not a fan of this approach. Tasha wasn’t either, but it had been worth a shot. A red switch caught the corner of her eye and a new, more devious method of getting what she wanted occurred to her.
With a shrug, Tasha said, “You’ve left me no choice.” Then with a single swift motion, she flipped the switch, bent her knees, and then sprung into the air just as the false gravity gave way and all that was not tethered to the ground began to float. With the technique of a trained swimmer, she made her way to the computer station. Struggling to stay close enough to it, she did her best to steady herself by gripping the desk with one hand as the other fumbled to plug in the thumb drive.
“Tasha, get away from there!” Ivan commanded, but it was too late. Suddenly, ominous music blared from the speakers throughout the space station. Tasha watched as Ivan slowly realized it was Darth Vader’s theme.
“Happy Halloween!” Tasha cheered, a childish smile taking hold of her lips. She unplugged the thumb drive, but the music kept playing, looping again and again through foreboding notes. Slipping her illicit cargo back into her pocket, Tasha said, “Until Star Wars Day!” She gave Ivan a two-finger salute and then floated away to bask in the confusion, dismay and levity that was taking over the space station’s populace as Ivan fumbled to find the way to turn the music off.
To his surprise, his efforts only brought a pre-loaded message onto the screen: a black and orange digital poster that read, “Come on, Ivan! Cut loose; take a moment to embrace the dark side. This is all for you, buddy. All for you.”
The Inktober prompts that inspired this story were buddy, hide, music, float, shoes, ominous and crawl (Oct. 25-31, 2020).
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/the-final-installment-of-inktober/
The Fourth Installment of Inktober
Frustrated with incompetent workers and suffocating in the heat of the kitchen, the chef stormed out of the restaurant’s backdoor and marched down to the beach.
Frustrated with incompetent workers and suffocating in the heat of the kitchen, the chef stormed out of the restaurant’s backdoor and marched down to the beach. The stretch of sand was largely vacant on that chilly October afternoon. The water lapped lazily at the shore under the chef’s watchful, judgmental gaze. Slowly, his raging heartbeat began to slow toward contentment.
He had moved to the coast because he specialized in seafood. The calming effects of the ocean were simply a happy byproduct. One his workers should be thankful for, he thought. Imagine his mood swings without this nearby place of peace.
Yet suddenly, the peace was rudely interrupted by a high-pitched cry for help. Conscience forced the chef to scan the surrounding area for the owner of the voice. He followed the sound to a large pit dug into the sand, presumably by some strange act of the sea. In it, a young woman struggled under a labyrinth of netting.
When she caught sight of the chef, she cried, “I’m trapped! Please! Help me!”
His fingers twitched helplessly at his sides. The pit was deep, and its sandy edges looked anything but stable. He could jump down to her, but how would he get her back up?
“Can you toss up a corner of the net?” he shouted.
Setting her face with determination, the girl struggled to do as he asked. After several minutes of work, a clump of wet woven flax landed at his feet. The chef quickly picked it up and told the girl to hang onto the other end. He then steadily dragged his corner farther and farther from the edge of the pit, the threads beginning to rip from the strain as he steadily raised the girl up to freedom.
“I’m free!” she squealed, and he turned around to face her. At the sight of her, the wind was immediately knocked out of him. The girl had skin the color of wet sand and hair that flowed like falling autumn leaves down her shoulders and back. Coral was stuck in her hair in various places, adding bursts of delicate yellow, pink and blue to the fiery red strands. But most striking of all was the long cerise tail that grew downward from her torso.
The chef grew dizzy at the sight. Possibilities swam through his mind, coming at him from all sides. Perhaps he was sleeping? Perhaps this was all a dream? Maybe it was an effect of his temper? How long had it been since he had eaten anything? And, at the darkest recesses of his mind, the culinary possibilities of that deep reddish-pink tail tantalized him. The coral warped into a sort of garish. Imagine the acclaim that would be afforded to the first chef to create a dish with such magical origins! And with such limited supply, oh what exorbitant prices he could charge! He’d make enough money to leave all those idiots in the kitchen behind him for good!
All of this and more flashed through his mind as he took in the sight of the mysterious, wondrous creature. She smiled at him with unknowing gratitude and then plucked a piece of the coral from her hair. Without a sound, she blew into it like a whistle. The chef could not hear its music, but the ocean did. It reached out a gentle hand and carried her away, back to her watery home.
And the chef trudged back to his unfulfilling life at the seaside restaurant, still uncertain whether he could believe his eyes. At the very least, it had not been a dream, he thought as he laid down to sleep that night. Not unless all of this was a dream.
The Inktober prompts that inspired this story were trap, dizzy, coral, sleep, chef, rip and dig (Oct. 18-24, 2020).
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/the-fourth-installment-of-inktober/
The Third Installment of Inktober
You would think getting caught in a sandstorm on a date would make it the worst date I’ve ever been on.
You would think getting caught in a sandstorm on a date would make it the worst date I’ve ever been on.
But I’ve been on some pretty bad dates.
This particular date didn’t start out that bad. He was boring but in an endearing sort of way that made me willing to listen to him blabber on. I was doing an internship in Kuwait that semester and we had met at work. His work seemed to be his life. Personally, the first two weeks of this internship had made me want to switch fields. We were taking a walk and he was talking about financial management and I was thinking about taking a poetry course when I got back to the States when suddenly he grabbed my arm and said, “Do you have a scarf or something with you?”
It’s Kuwait and I didn’t want to look like a total tourist so yes, I had a scarf on hand at all times. I was about to ask him why he cares when he pointed behind me. Turning around, I saw brown clouds rolling toward us, enveloping everything in their path. It was like watching CGI in real life, and for a moment, I thought that I was about to be cursed by the Evil Queen or something.
“Is that a sandstorm?” I asked, rather stupidly. To be fair, I was experiencing a bit of shock.
He pulled out a canteen and asked for my scarf. I obliged and he poured out some of the precious water over the silk.
“Wrap it around your head and cover your mouth and nose,” he told me.
I followed his instructions. The slippery fabric clung to my face and smelled like sweat. It felt more like a second-skin than armor. I didn’t have much time to think about how disgusting it was, though, because he had my hand and was dragging me toward the nearest building. I stumbled after him as everyone around also scrambled toward shelter. Our chosen outpost turned out to be a bank. I noticed a cookie table in the corner. Silver linings for every type of cloud, it seemed, even sandy ones.
Suddenly, day became night. Everything was tinted a burnt orange color. I found myself holding his hand, even though he was boring, even though I didn’t anticipate a second date. If I changed my major, I wouldn’t need to finish this internship. I thought about all the other places I could be — reading poetry in New York City, boarding a rocket in Ukraine, studying ancient religion in Peru. Anywhere that wasn’t a desert. I was quite certain at that moment that I would never again entertain the idea of living in a desert.
Of course, three years later, here I am, teaching English to children in Kuwait. I go home at night to the boring man who saved me from my first sandstorm. We share a home, three children, and a hedgehog now. Quite to my surprise, he got a lot less boring during that sandstorm. He grabbed cookies for us and sat me down and told me about his grandfather teaching him what to do in a sandstorm. He told me why he was in finance and listened to why I didn’t want to stay in it. He agreed that I was meant for other things. When suspicion crept onto my face in response to that comment, he amended it: “Better things. Things that make use of the light inside you.”
When he proposed, he called me a light that not even a sandstorm’s darkness could snuff out. I mean, how could I say no to that?
The Inktober prompts that inspired this piece were disgusting, slippery, dune, armor, outpost, rocket and storm (Oct. 11-17, 2020).
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/the-third-installment-of-inktober/
The Second Installment of Inktober
Lisa had been drawn to the record shop’s front door by the sound of music flowing out of it, but upon seeing it, she had second thoughts.
Lisa had been drawn to the record shop’s front door by the sound of music flowing out of it, but upon seeing it, she had second thoughts. Following the sound of the music had taken her down a street she was not familiar with, and she saw a rodent scurry past her and around the corner of the shop. The worrisome possibility that it was headed inside poked at her mind. Still, finding the record shop was rather fortuitous. Her brother’s birthday was approaching and he was going through a phase that admired everything vintage. Surely a couple of records would catch his fancy.
She threw open the door and shuffled into the small store. There were narrow rows of tables covered in boxes filled with dusty records. At the very back, a man stood behind a counter upon which sat a register. He was reading a newspaper and had not looked up at Lisa’s entrance. All she could see of him was the top of his bald head, snippets of the black material that covered his shoulders and arms, and his pale hands. His fingers seemed unnaturally long as they held the paper perfectly still. A flash of bass reminded Lisa of the reason she had been brought there, and she noticed that a large vintage radio sat behind the man, blaring out hits from the 1960s.
As Lisa flipped through the records in the boxes nearest to her, she quickly surmised that not much in this building besides herself was from after 1975. Uncertain what her brother might fancy from that era, she picked the two records that had the most interesting covers, barely noticing the titles or the bands. She marched over to the man at the counter, hoping to finish this errand quickly. It would be getting dark soon and she was a good city block from her car.
Despite Lisa’s proximity, the man still remained focused on the newspaper. She cleared her throat. Rather frustratedly, the man put the newspaper down and looked at Lisa expectantly. It was then that she realized he was wearing a three-piece suit and thin orange tie. That tie looked like the only thing in the whole place that was new.
He took note of the records she had placed on the counter and smiled. His teeth reminded Lisa of the rodent she had seen outside.
“Splendid selections,” he murmured. “Simply splendid. I do hope you enjoy them. We do our best to only have what our customers need most.”
Not sure what to say, Lisa quickly paid the man and left without taking her change. In her rush, she bumped into one of the tables and something clattered to the ground in front of her feet. Looking down revealed the object to be a small dagger with a shining silver blade. Lisa did her best to hold in a scream, turning it into a slight whimper and ran out of the shop.
“Do come again sometime,” the man at the counter said as the door swung shut.
***
Lisa’s brother loved the records and desperately wanted to see where they had come from. When she refused to take him to the store, his desire only grew. She reluctantly drew him a map, placing a thick black X where the store had been, but she would not accompany him. The rodent man’s face still flashed in her mind every time she closed her eyes.
Her brother returned to the spot two weeks after Lisa had discovered it, on a chilly October afternoon. Yet when he reached the spot which the X marked, all he found was a brick wall. Puzzled, the boy looked to his right and left, but the entire block was empty. Not a storefront in sight.
When he centered his gaze before him, he noticed a small bit of weathered graffiti. In stenciled block letters someone had painted, “You already have everything you need. Do not hope for more.” It was all in black except for the word hope, painted in a bright orange that seemed untouched by weather and time.
The Inktober prompts that inspired this story were radio, blade, rodent, fancy, teeth, throw and hope (Oct. 4-10, 2020).
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/the-second-installment-of-inktober/
The First Installment of Inktober
The wind wisped along the shoreline, snaking its long fingers into the crevices of the cliffs and ruffling the women’s carefully styled hair.
The wind wisped along the shoreline, snaking its long fingers into the crevices of the cliffs and ruffling the women’s carefully styled hair. On most days, the only creatures that accessed this small strip of beach were the wind and fish, but on this day, the Culpepper sisters made an appearance. It had been a lifetime since they were last here; they could feel the echoes of their childish squeals and broken dreams in the sand as it crunched beneath their bare feet.
The sisters were quite surprised to find the weathered ladder down the cliffside still standing. Were matters less pressing, they may have decided it looked too near collapse to bear their weight, but the thought had not passed their minds until they were already on the beach and they realized that the ladder also had to carry them back up to the realm of civilization the cliff held on its back. Best to unload the bulky bundle in their arms as quickly as possible.
They carried the human-sized roll of thick canvas to the edge of the grey water. For whatever reason, the fish felt called to this beach. Bluefish and flounder circled their ankles in the shallow water.
“Are you ready?” the first sister asked the second.
The wind stole away her reply, but the sisters knew each other’s hearts well enough to forgo verbal confirmation. With a heavy huff of breath, they unloaded their burden into the October waters. The splash only nearly avoided them; the hems of their chiffon skirts floated in the water like petals of silver shadow roses. They watched the waves accept their gift with solemnity. In return, it released for them two tiny pearls, Cinderella-blue in the light of the chilled dusk of autumn turning to winter. For fear of someone divining the origins of the pearls, the sisters left Poseidon’s gift cradled in the sands of their youth and ascended the ladder as if none of this had ever happened. The pearls sit there winking in the dusty sand to this day. The ocean refuses to take them back.
The Inktober prompts that inspired this piece were fish, wisp, bulky (Oct. 1-3, 2020).
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/the-first-installment-of-inktober/
Raising Daughters
It was with shaky fingers that William dialed his mother’s phone number.
“give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
It was with shaky fingers that William dialed his mother’s phone number. His wife, Cassie, was already on the phone with her own mother in the room next door. They had decided it would be best to break the news in a way that allowed both future grandmothers to hear the news at the same time. That morning’s doctor’s appointment had led to quite the announcement.
William pressed the phone to his ear just in time to hear his mother’s sing-song voice say, “Hello?”
“Mom, it’s me.”
“William? Oh, hello! How is my beautiful daughter-in-law? Taking good care of that baby I hope!”
“Yes, Mom, Cassie and the baby are good. We just got back from the doctor. Remember, I told you we’d be able to find out the gender soon?”
“Oh! Yes, yes, I remember now. So? What’s the verdict?”
William rolled his eyes. Sounded like Mom was back to watching too much Law & Order. “We’re having girls, Mom.”
A cacophony of happiness resounded in his ear. But as his mother fully comprehended what William had just said, it was suddenly cut short. “Wait, girls? Plural?”
Surprising himself with a smile, William affirmed her hearing, “We’re having twins, Mom. Two baby girls.”
***
From that day on, William’s mother required daily phone calls. She wanted to know how Cassie was feeling, but she didn’t want to bother her with questions by calling her directly. She wanted to know everything there was to know about the babies, but she didn’t seem to understand that they don’t get new information every single day. And most of all, she wanted to give William advice.
“You need to make sure you set up the nursery in a way that will make handling both babies as easy as possible. Consider the paths you set up. There needs to be room for each of you to change a baby at the same time, et cetera.” You’d think the woman was an expert on raising twins, even though William was an only child.
When the due date was about a month away, William’s mother decided it was time to visit the parents-to-be. Cassie’s parents only lived about thirty minutes away from them, but William’s mother had moved to a retirement home on the coast not long after William’s father passed. It was a four-hour drive, and since she didn’t drive anymore, she took the bus the entire way. When she finally reached her son’s front door, she was in no mood for small talk.
“Where’s Cassie?” she said bluntly, forgoing a greeting or commentary about her journey.
“At the park,” William said, slightly stunned. “Doctor said it’s good for the babies to get that fresh air and walk around.”
“Why didn’t you go with her? Actually, never mind. It’s good you didn’t. Best to talk to you alone.”
That was never a good sign.
They sat down on the living room sofa and William’s mother pulled a large scrapbook out of her bag. “William, do you know what this is?”
He shook his head.
“It’s our family story. Your history.” She opened it up and began flipping through the pages, yellowed by time and covered with all different types of handwriting in various colors of ink. William had never been one for history, but even he had to admit it was quite a sight.
“My dear son,” his mother said, “raising daughters is different than you might expect. You are not just raising them for the world. You are raising them for themselves. This world will be hard on them. It will pull them in all different directions. You are there to help them create their path. You are there to make them strong by showing them what it is to have a different strength than their own and see it as good. You are there to show them what kind of love they should accept when their womanhood begins to be noticed by the world.
“Look at these pages. Almost all of them were crafted by women. Most men don’t have the care and patience for scrapbooking. That’s no matter. But they must have some level of care and patience to love their daughters right. Teach that to your girls when they’re young. Teach it to them with their very names.”
William’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about, Mom?”
She smiled. “Look at all of these names, William. We don’t know how to pronounce half of them anymore. Americans, we are lazy. English tires us out. We don’t think to learn how to pronounce names like the ones in this book and therefore we lose their beauty. Give your daughters names like these. Make certain that anyone who wants to be close to them has to try from the outset. Has to listen to her and learn to speak her language.”
***
Almost exactly one month from that day, Cassie gave birth to two healthy, smiling, beautiful little girls. As the new mother fawned over her babies, it fell to William to fill out the birth certificate. His mother found him sitting in the waiting room, carefully spelling out the names he and Cassie had chosen.
“May I see?” she asked.
He nodded and handed her the pages, careful not to smudge the fresh ink. In strong block letters, the names read Schuyler Maryann James and Saoirse Rose James. His mother smiled.
William said, “Cassie plans on calling them Sky and Ro as nicknames, but I think I’ll stick to their full first names. A wise woman convinced me that it’s a good way to raise them strong.”
His mother placed a hand on his shoulder, her smile growing. “And a good way to remind yourself you have the strength, patience and care to stand by them every step of the way.”
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/uncategorized/raising-daughters/
Flower Bugs
So I’ve got to tell you about these two sisters that live in my hometown. Mom says they’re two flower-children who didn’t know how to get on with their lives once the sixties ended.
So I’ve got to tell you about these two sisters that live in my hometown. Mom says they’re two flower-children who didn’t know how to get on with their lives once the sixties ended. She thinks they’re stuck in time, but I’m not so sure. Surely they were once younger than they are now and at the very least their cars are definitely not from the sixties. That’s the first thing most people notice about them, their cars. But let me back up.
The sisters go by Poppy and Mae, but they say their real names are Karma and Janis. Mom works for the town lawyer and she says those are fake names they gave themselves in the sixties to show their commitment to the movement, like some counterculture altar call. According to Mom, their real names are Penelope and Margaret. The fact that the names everybody calls them nowadays are so clearly tied to their real names is another reason I don’t think they’re actually stuck in time. I don’t think they think it’s the sixties; I’m not even sure they wish it was the sixties. I think they just like to hold onto the best parts of the sixties. Like the clothes. And their cars.
Like I said, their cars aren’t from the sixties, but the only reason I know is because I’ve been inside one of them and the interior was too fresh. If a car had been around for fifty years, you’d think the seat cushions would show it. But those cars are new in every way besides the smell. The smell isn’t the reason people notice them, but it’s tied to it. You see, Poppy and Mae each have a Volkswagen Beetle; Poppy’s is a pale yellow, Mae’s is bright orange. And every summer, they paint their cars.
You can smell the paint and turpentine for weeks on end, from May to the end of June if the winds are stagnant for too long. The cars always remain their native yellow and orange, the sisters just add on to what they started long before I was born. They paint flowers, more of them every summer. Poppy’s car is like a meadow, with green grass and long stems, while Mae’s is more psychedelic, with blossoms of all colors, shapes, and sizes. She let me add a little sunflower when I was little. She’s never covered it up, either, just brightened the yellow from time to time. Mae likes to say it watches over her when the sun isn’t shining. I painted it right under the handle of the driver’s side door.
One Christmas I asked for colorful, flowy pants like Poppy and Mae wear. My mother just about had a stroke, but my older sister Julie found me a pair in a thrift store the next town over. When I told Poppy and Mae about it, they said they shop there so often they know the owner by name. I think that’s another thing they miss about the sixties or just the past in general — I think they miss the times when things were slow enough and consistent enough that you learned people’s names.
Everybody knows everybody’s names around here. Our town has a population of less than a thousand. Most days, I want to run away from it the moment I turn eighteen. But the sisters always make me pause.
“This town is the closest thing you’ll ever have to the days of love and flowers and lazy summers,” they like to say. “The breeze in these parts is fresher than in any other.”
And I trust them on that second part because if anyone knew the breezes of the earth, it’d be them. Their flowered bugs have carried them all over. I think they’ve owned seven different ones between the two of them — all the colors of the rainbow duly reflected in their purchases. Julie says when she was little, Poppy’s was bright blue and Mae’s was red and she called it Lady. Lady was the only bug the sisters have ever owned that wasn’t painted in flowers; Mae wanted it to have polka dots instead. But that car broke down between the time Julie was old enough to remember it and the time I would have noticed, so it doesn’t seem like it lasted very long. Maybe the decision to not let it bloom into a garden strangled its roots.
Either way, Poppy and Mae always smile. They say life is too short to frown. They tell me that if people could smile and love and sing when the Vietnam War was going on, nothing ought to stop us now. That’s what I tell myself on the days I hate this run-down town the most. Nothing ought to stop a smile from blooming on my face. On those days, I go out in the yard and lay down on the hammock Mom bought the one time she left this town — a school trip to Mexico when she was in the eleventh grade — and I let the wind touch my face and restore my soul. And I lay there rocking and smiling until happiness blooms.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/flower-bugs/
Focusing on Someday
Today I am so sad that I feel like I will never be happy again.
“Today I am so sad that I feel like I will never be happy again,” read the cautious cursive letters in my old diary. The date was exactly five years ago.
I remember that day. I remember crying in my college dorm room, clutching my pillow, wishing I could just go back to sleep and not wake up again until the pain was gone. Wondering how my heart would ever feel whole again. College can seem like the most inconvenient time to be depressed. There’s always something you need to be doing. Always another homework assignment waiting on the desk. Always another meeting on the schedule.
That day was the first time I sunk that low, but it wasn’t the last. As time went on, I would learn that what comes after college also feels like the worst possible time to be depressed. I would learn that there is never a good time to be sad because we never want to be sad. Not that kind of sad. Sometimes we want to cry, sure, so we turn on a sad movie. But we never ask to be so completely deep in the sea of sadness that we don’t know which way to go to reach the surface. We never ask to feel that out of control. Us humans, we like control.
Yes, it’s true that day five years ago was a new low point for me. But it was also the first time I looked at the words that had spilled out of me onto the page and decided I would do everything in my power to stop feeling that way. It was the first time I picked myself up, the first time I started swimming because even finding out that I was going the wrong way would be better than just continuing to sink— continuing to drown.
And the funny thing is, when I’m not looking at this diary, I don’t think back on the last five years and see the bad. I don’t look back on it as the time when I struggled with emotions I had never expected to feel, had my heart broken time and time again, and lost people I never thought I’d lose. I look back on the last five years of my life and I see all the reasons I had to be happy. I see the joy of finding that love could enter my life again. I see the good memories I had before the goodbyes. I see the journey during which I learned to conquer my anxieties and depression instead of letting them conquer me. I look back on the last five years and my chest swells with pride because look at me now. Look how far I’ve come from thinking happiness had become unattainable.
There’s a knock at the door behind me. I close the diary and slip it into the desk drawer. Turning around, I find my mother standing in the doorway, looking at me with such a pure smile on her face. Her eyes glisten with tears of joy.
“It’s time, sweetheart,” she says.
I look down at my hands, folded in my lap, resting on a sea of white. On one hand, a diamond full of promises sparkles with hope. On the other, a small daisy on a tarnished silver band reminds me of the promise I made to myself so long ago. The promise to always keep swimming.
I wish I could go back to the girl who wrote those words, that broken cry for help, for some sort of sign that she was wrong, and tell her it would get better. Tell her that, in five years, she would be wearing the prettiest dress she had ever seen, getting ready to walk down an aisle lined with everyone she loved. And maybe the person standing at the end of that aisle wasn’t the one she had desperately wished would come back to her, or the one she had fallen in love with next, or the next, but the person standing at the end of that aisle was so deeply worth the wait. Maybe the guest list wasn’t exactly what she would have predicted back then, but now she couldn’t imagine it being any other group of people. I wish I could have told her that she had what it takes to keep on swimming and swimming until she found a future worth continuing to live for. And that no matter what sadness the future holds, it would hold happinesses sevenfold. That you only learn how happy you can be once you’ve seen how sad you can be. Thankfully, I had other people there who could say it for me, even if I wasn’t ready to believe it yet back then.
As I step up to the door that leads to my future, my father takes my arm and says, “You ready?”
I smile like I never have before, I smile for all the past versions of myself that couldn’t remember how, I smile for all the times I picked myself up off the bathroom floor, for all the times I decided to keep swimming. I smile and I smile and I know someday I won’t feel like smiling, but for today, I don’t have to think about that. Because today I am ready to be happy.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/focusing-on-someday/
Exposé: Squirrel Spies
After months of intense investigation coupled with immersive study in Squeakonese, I finally have conclusive information to report to you.
After months of intense investigation coupled with immersive study in Squeakonese, I finally have conclusive information to report to you. Some will skip over this exposé in favor of the latest serial killer or celebrity scandal, but believe you me, this is the real breaking news. What I have found will change everything.
Squirrels have long been a subject of conversation on American college campuses, but none have dared the sort of investigation I have undertaken. In truth, the largest stumbling block for most would-be researchers has been communication. In a shocking linguistic and cultural lapse, to this day no one has made a lexical translation of Squeakonese to English. In this so-called globalizing world, we humans have completely ignored the massive squirrel population. There are over 200 species of squirrels in the world and at least five of these reside within the United States (Gardner). Personally, this reporter finds it insulting to this major American minority that such an oversight has been allowed to persist. For this reason, I undertook the daunting task of learning to translate Squeakonese myself. I did this largely with the help of “The Emperor’s New Groove” and “Phineas and Ferb.” Really, of all major corporations, The Walt Disney Company has done more for squirrels than any other company.
Once I had mastered the complex language of Squeakonese, I went out into the field and began forming relationships with squirrels on Truman State University’s campus. It was not particularly difficult. These squirrels are extraordinarily comfortable with humans; they are very nearly domesticated. But what began as lighthearted conversations about acorns and lawnmowers took a disturbing turn after about two months. I can now confirm what many have speculated about behind locked doors for the last decade: the squirrel spy ring. You may be dismayed to learn this is in no way connected to the Organization Without a Cool Acronym.
I do not have exciting news for those of you who are waiting for proof that the United States Government is behind this either. It seems that this is a completely squirrel-driven enterprise. Don’t worry, though. My next project will be on birds, specifically pigeons.
From what I could understand, our gross disinterest in the squirrel population is not reciprocated. As reported by Gizmodo Media Group, squirrels are constantly and consistently observing their human neighbors (Goldman). It seems that over the course of the last two hundred years, the squirrel population has learned and improved upon our concept of the democratic republic and is well organized and interconnected throughout the continental U.S.. The path to this impressive governmental structure began with special units dedicated to human studies on, you guessed it, college campuses.
Once they became satisfied with their own organizational and political prowess, they turned to formal espionage. In all reality, we should not be surprised; all nations eventually develop a national intelligence organization of some sort. And while it took the United States did not form the first iteration of the Central Intelligence Agency until over one hundred and fifty years after George Washington’s election, the squirrels continued the trend in industrialization that tracks a faster development in tandem with a later start (“History”). They have had an active and well-structured spy organization since the 1830s, perhaps thanks to their observations of the Culper Spy Ring (History.com Editors).
If you would like to learn more about my findings, please purchase my new book “Friend or Foe: An Introduction to Squirrel Spies and Rudimentary English to Squeakonese Dictionary.” It can be found at any major bookseller except Amazon because (spoiler alert) Jeff Bezos is in fact in league with the squirrels.
Works Cited
Works Consulted
Dindal, Mark, director. The Emperor’s New Groove. Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2000.
Originally published at https://tmn.truman.edu/blog/lifestyle/expose-squirrel-spies/