The fireflies were fairies.
The mermaids ruled the bath.
Tea time was with the teddies.
Her voice tinkled when she laughed.
But now the room is silent.
She never stops to pour the tea.
Her imagination stolen,
by time, the master thief.
Image source: Patchworkmoose via Etsy
My American dream didn’t turn out quite the way society planned. I’m 28. Unmarried. No children. I live with my boyfriend, or as I like to say, domestic partner. Our partnership was made “official” by a notary at Bank of America, who after stamping and signing the form we gave her, handed it back with an arched eyebrow and these four cool words:
Good luck with that.
Now we’re getting a house. We’re getting it together, but the mortgage is only in my name. And don’t get me started on how much that confuses people. The mortgage guy, the inspection guy, the closing attorney. They all need a man to talk to, a man’s name to write down on their paperwork.
Then there’s the confusing notion that we’re buying a three bedroom home for our non-growing family. Despite the fact that he’s never met me, our roofer decided we needed to put up a fence in the backyard to protect the children we don’t have or want from wobbling helplessly into the retention pond. (Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.)
But none of that skepticism or confusion or presumption has made us any less excited about our first home.
She’s a blue two-story charmer in a suburbia section of Charleston. From curb to chimney, she holds so many corners of our revamped American dream.
Like having a mailbox of our very own. And a doorstep to receive packages when we’re not there. A kitchen table to sit down at for dinner—even if we never do. A backyard with a patio . . . and mosquitoes the size of your thumbnail. Enough space for our sweet pups to run around. And stairs they’ll undoubtedly use for racing. Room to store Christmas decorations. A place to put up a tree. An office where I’ll have a hammock chair. An informal living area. An even less formal den. Enough closet space that I can actually stock up on wrapping paper when it goes on sale. And enough space between us and the neighbors to allow for a good old-fashioned yelling match every once and awhile.
No, my dream is not quite cookie-cut from the same seersucker cloth as most southern belles, but it’s a dream just the same.
And I know there will be breakdowns. Mortgage payments scare the mess out of me. And I only have to make 360 of them before I really own anything. The HVAC will go out one day. The water heater too. (God bless us if those two things happen anytime near each other.) We’ll outgrow our extra 600 square feet before we even get moved in. And we’ll panic when something breaks and there’s no online portal to put in our maintenance request.
But from now until the closing date, it’s still my dream home, as perfect as I could have ever imagined it.
So we’ll take all the “good luck” we can get, even if it’s coming from judgmental notaries. And we’ll embark—with an embarrassing amount of optimism—on life’s next big adventure.
The only one that comes with hazard insurance and a termite bond.
I missed all the signs: apathy, coldness, secrecy, guilt. I shut my eyes tight, pretending it wasn’t true, clinging to us like a fool.
When I finally let go, I didn’t need a sign anymore.
But I did have one for you.
Image source: Zumlerr.com
I heard a woman say,
“The Holocaust makes you think
of two things:
concentration camps
and the number six million.
And nothing in between.
But the Holocaust
was everything in between.”
She was a survivor.
She survived the terror,
the horror,
the everything in between
that was in fact
so gruesome,
we simply cannot imagine it.
The unbearable darkness
that humankind can unleash
on its very own.
~
Now 70 years after that brutal war ended,
headlines brag
of an 89-year-old Nazi guard,
charged with 158 counts
of complicit murder–
one for every trainload of prisoners
that came under his care.
Appearing in court with a cane,
he’s held with dementia, but no bail,
and waits to suffer the consequences
of his teenage actions.
Of things he did or did not do.
Of people he killed,
or did not stop others from killing.
Of acts he committed out of terror,
and horror,
and survival.
~
We all applaud as he’s taken away in shackles
and a green jumpsuit.
Because if this man is guilty,
then maybe we are less so.
But little do we know
that sacrificing one guard
for six million souls
will do no more to even the score
than removing a teardrop of saltwater
will help to dry up the sea.
Perhaps if we focus our anger,
and sadness,
and remorse,
and regret,
on understanding
the beliefs,
and culture,
and values
of others,
perhaps then,
we are freed
from the prisons of our histories.
~
And we can all become survivors.
Mr. Unger had his back turned when a student’s physics book crashed to the floor.
Whipping around, he threw himself on the ground.
As he rose moments later with wet eyes, an onlooking wall poster offered a silent explanation:
“Freedom isn’t free.”
Did Faith tear you to pieces?
Did Hope sink your soul?
Did the Love you made room for
leave you broken or whole?
Did Life give you minutes
or moments or regrets?
Did Grace set you free
or did you already forget?
I used to go to church all the time. Sunday school. Sunday service. Luncheons. Wednesday night supper. Choir practice. Youth group. I drank holy water growing up the way I drink red wine today.
But until this past Monday–Memorial Day–I hadn’t been to church since my Mother’s funeral in December. Not for Christmas. Not for Easter. Not for Ash Wednesday. Or Good Friday. Or Bad Fridays. Or any damn Sunday in between.
But on Monday, at 2:30 in the afternoon, I found myself on a wooden pew of the Circular Congregational Church in downtown Charleston.
I was there for a free concert, part of an annual performing arts festival. The Festival Singers, an a Capella group from Georgia, were scheduled to perform.
The sanctuary filled quickly with locals and tourists and family members and friends. The pews groaned beneath our weight. Bearing all the burdens we didn’t even know we carried.
Arriving early to ensure I could find a seat, I waited. Filled my lungs with deep, tense breaths. I steadied my trembling hands by clutching the purse in my lap. I told myself I could make it.
I held it together through the powerful opening number. Through the Funeral Ikos, devastating as the words were. Through the Polish folk songs from the Holocaust. Through the African spirituals. I held it together through the standing ovation. I heaved a relieved sigh, undetected among the thunderous applause; I was going to make it.
Then the music director turned to the audience. It is tradition, he explained, to end the show with Amazing Grace.
And that’s when I felt my chest swell. Like a raging river was rising up inside of me. And the beat of my heart matched the pace of those waters crashing against my rib cage. A dull, familiar throb pounded at my breastbone, just beneath my collar.
Because that’s where I carry my grief, my guilt, my pain.
A tall, slender soprano stepped forward to lead with a solo. Her voice cut through the humid Lowcountry air with piercing clarity and precision and ease.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
My river found its way to the surface. Slipping down my cheeks in quick, sloppy tears. I struggled not let out an audible cry. Not to visibly shake.
But I did nothing to stop those tears from coming.
I cried for my love-hate relationship with religion. For needing it now more than ever, while feeling it slip further and further away.
I cried for my own wretch of a soul. Wading blindly through the waters of doubt and grief. No grace in sight to save me.
And though it should have been a day when I cried for those who gave their lives for this country, I cried instead for the woman who gave life to me.
As that unwavering soprano voice soared along the arches in that sacred space, I let the words wash over me.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares
I have already come.
‘Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.
I let the tears take with them even the smallest salty portion of my sorrow.
That moment of release was all the grace I needed.
Photo Credit: “Circular Congregational Church Charleston SC” by Steven Hyatt, available for purchase at The Churches of the World
I pet sat for my dad last week while he was in Alaska. He has three dogs: a decrepit beagle, a mutt that suffers from OCD, and a bulldog puppy.
During the day, I made every attempt to work remotely in between cleaning up messes the oldest one let slip and retrieving lost tennis balls for the OCD one and removing the world’s friendliest bulldog from my lap.
Each moment was truly an adventure.
One day about halfway through my stay, during the middle of a conference call, the pack began barking in deafening unison. I exited the house into the backyard, apologizing the whole way to my colleagues on the other end of the line, who had all stopped mid-discussion from the shrill disturbance.
Once outside, I began pacing the cold, wet patio as we wrapped up the call. At one point, I approached the patio’s edge and saw what at first looked like a dog toy discarded on the ground.
It was not a toy.
It was a chipmunk.
And it was not in good shape.
And by not in good shape, I mean it was dead.
Being the skittish young woman I am–the kind who would rather drown a roach in aerosol hairspray than attempt to hit it with a shoe–I screamed. I waited until I hung up the phone, of course. And then let out a rapid series of staccato yelps.
At this point, the bulldog, who had followed me outside, also discovered the chipmunk. And I knew I couldn’t just leave it there.
I grabbed two nearby buckets, normally kept for poop scooping, and proceeded to try to collect the lifeless body into one of them using the other one as a makeshift sort of shovel, letting out more of my quick-fire screams every time I made any sort of progress, and apologizing out loud to little Alvin or Simon or whoever it was the whole time.
Eventually I managed to get it into a bucket. Thinking that was going to be the hardest part of the ordeal, I began searching for the best place along the fence to throw it over. (My dad’s house is next to an undeveloped swampy area on one side, in case you’re wondering if I was going to throw the corpse into a neighbor’s yard.)
Holding the bucket as far away from me as my arms would allow, and at shoulder height so I could not accidentally glance inside, I proceeded to walk down the yard’s typically innocuous incline toward the fence. It had been raining all week and with the bucket distracting me from the ground below, I never saw the thick pile of wet dog shit waiting for my foot’s impending arrival.
I stepped in it. And I mean I stepped aaaaallllll in it.
My feet immediately slipped out from under me. And in what had to have been the longest tenth of a second in my life, I fell on my ass, sending the poor deceased chipmunk sailing through the air.
It was then, while sitting on the ground covered in shit from my knees to my bum, and next to the corpse of that dead chipmunk, that I had a moment of gratitude.
For me, finding a dead chipmunk is a bad day. Finding a dead chipmunk and then having to dispose of it is a very bad day.
Finding a dead chipmunk and having to dispose of it and then sliding to the ground in a pile of wet dog shit while simultaneously launching the chipmunk through the air? Now that’s just funny.
So I l picked up my pooper-scooper-turned-chipmunk-hearse and laughed that little critter all the way to the other side of the fence.
I guess on some bad days, what you really need is a little more shit.
“Lousy, good-for-nothing scarecrow. Blasted crows peckin’ every damn tomato the frost didn’t nab.”
“Ain’t no point in fussin’ if you cain’t do nothin’ ‘bout it.”
“Betcha I can scare ‘em off.”
“Howd’ja figger?”
“I’ll make that there scarecrow look more like you.”
Photo credit: WildnisPhotography via Etsy
Gargleblaster #160: Answer the question “Why do birds suddenly appear?” in exactly 42 words.
When I first moved to Charleston after graduating college, I took an unpaid internship for a small advertising agency. To make ends meet, I worked nights at a coffee shop.
That particular coffee shop was situated between an organic food supermarket, a yoga studio, and a day spa. So I never quite understood why it became the gathering spot for members of a local AA support group, consisting mostly of rough-edged men, many of whom were warring with addictions to drugs much heavier than alcohol.
Each evening, among our customers sporting yoga pants and toting canvas grocery bags, the AA crowd gathered on our patio. They smoked cigarettes and slurped coffee and tipped with heavy hands.
There were those who had been sober for longer than I’d been alive. And white-knuckling twenty-somethings just trying to survive rehabilitation by holding their breath. More than once our tip jar was stolen by customers who’d relapsed. One night a regular was found on the steps of the neighboring public library, dead from an apparent overdose.
Some of them opened up to me, their cheerful night-time barista with no lifelong struggles to overcome, no scars on her arms worth hiding. Over the sounds of steaming milk and singer-songwriter tunes, I heard stories of triumph and failure; I witnessed victory and defeat firsthand.
One of my daily encounters was with a man named Damon. He had eyes as stormy as swirling shots of espresso and a jagged voice. His skin was tanned and calloused and thick from years in the sun and bad decisions and worse consequences. I longed to peel back all his layers and see what stories lived inside.
It took months to win him over, but eventually, he let me in. I went from serving him coffee over the counter to bringing it to him at the end of my shift. We discovered each other in between sips of iced americanos.
Damon was the first man I connected to after the conclusion of a painful six-year relationship, the majority of which was spent struggling to get out of it, only to fall back in. I realize now it was my own sort of addiction.
Even though my time with Damon only lasted a few weeks, he restored a confidence in me that was shaken by countless infidelities. He assured me my lack of scars didn’t make me lackluster.
We talked every day until one day we just didn’t. And one day became two. And two became three. When I finally heard from him, he confessed that he’d messed up and had a beer.
I suspected it was probably more than that.
Damon continued to spiral in the only way an addict knows how–down and quickly and out of control–by lying and stealing his way to oblivion until he was finally arrested. And that’s how it ended.
I’ve now hung up my green apron for good, but I miss serving coffee to all those warriors. I miss seeing the fight in their eyes. I miss the connection I had with Damon.
Thinking back, I wish I could have done something to return the favor for the way he filled up my rehabilitating heart that spring. For making me see that some scars are beneath the surface, addictions take many forms, and not all support groups are held in Sunday school classrooms. For helping me break free from my own struggles, even as he was sinking back into his.
And most of all, for showing me how to love not in spite of flaws, but because of them.
Photo credit: LaurenLemons via Etsy
writeamuck 