"Beach Ride"

“Let’s ride to the beach!” I said, one foot touching the ground and the other poised on my bike pedal ready to take off.

“Which one?” Dad asked.

“We haven’t gone to Headlands for a little while,” Mom said. 

And off we went. Usually it wouldn’t be safe to have a conversation in the middle of a street, but ours was different. The strip of pavement serviced only two houses, first our neighbor’s yellow sided one and then ours with darkly stained wood, before dead-ending into the woods. The water line was aimed up in the air after our driveway creating a fountain which would coat the branches of a nearby pine tree in ice come winter. 

We turned right, onto Jordan, passing the old baseball fields. They hadn’t been used for baseball for about twenty years. Now they were the grassy meadow home of a herd of approximately forty deer. As we rounded the curve–proclaimed by black arrows on reflective yellow signs–the field turned into an old pine tree farm. The precise rows occasionally sullied by one of the sixty foot giants crashing down to their grave. 

The pine trees gave way to the wet marshland that surrounds our little island of sorts, tall reeds reaching up and bushy cattails swaying in the breeze. Most people didn’t think of Headlands as an island, but there were two ways to get to it and both required you go over a bridge. It just wasn’t as obvious because of the surrounding marsh which just looks like four foot high grass. Every few years some stupid high schoolers will catch the marsh on fire. The fire spreads with incredible speed through the dry tops of the reeds, sending up huge clouds of black smoke. But then it just grows back.

We slowed our bikes to turn right again. Headlands Road used to go all the way along the shoreline with grand houses overlooking Lake Erie, but then the houses on one side started falling into the lake and soon several sections of the road followed, leaving only a fragmented remnant of itself. I started testing my brakes, just to be sure they wouldn’t fail me. We were about to go down the hill and I didn’t like losing control of my bike and crashing, which had already happened a few times. 

Right next to the road was the sledding hill which would become littered with children in winter but was currently serving as the hangout of several pairs of Canadian geese and their growing goslings. My parents flew past me, peddling on the downhill, racing to the entrance. I glided at my more leisurely pace, swooping around the curve and onto the bridge over Shipman’s Pond. A couple of boys sat on the edge fishing and a man and his wife paddled further out in kayaks. 

Rounding the second curve, the beach entrance came into view. The highway literally dead-ended into the beach entrance so I was careful to check for absent-minded drivers flying past the stop sign. Swerving past a family of ducks waddling from one stream to another, I finally caught back up with my parents. We wound our way through the parking lot, being careful to avoid the sandy patches before stopping for our final reward–the rocky pier stretched out and was finally crowned by the white lighthouse with red roof. The sunset spread across the sky, reflecting in the unusually calm water. A hush fell on the beachgoers as the flaming ball dipped to it’s final farewell.

Tree Thoughts

I've been thinking lately. About trees, careers, dreams, growth.

We have different stages of life. That is good, but stagnating is bad. It's the people who seem frozen in one stage that concern me. I have a friend who has had several different careers. Every six to eight years he would switch to something fairly different. From engineering to sales to being a triathlon race director to being a lifeguard to being a paramedic to being an account manager. That is the kind of life I want to live.  That is the kind of life that it seems you would look back on and feel the least amount of regret.

I love climbing trees, but there is one here at school that just is leagues above the rest. It is my absolute favorite one to climb anywhere. From the outside it is a perfect "tree" shape, a rounded out triangle. From the inside it is a maze of intertangled branches forming almost a spiral staircase. As soon as you know which branches to duck under and which ones to climb over, you start to see all the possibilities. There are branches that are perfect for looping you arm around and taking naps, or standing, reading, sitting, lying down, and the list goes on. The leaves are all on the outside, creating a green dome around you and the branches cradling you sway as the wind rustles through them, sending down a swirl of little green helicopter seed pods. These create a carpet at the base of the tree, a perfect nursery shaded from the sun's fierce glow where inch high seedlings begin to unfurl.

I want to write. But (as you may notice from looking at the blog archive dates on the side) as soon as the semester’s class let out and I stopped getting assignments to write, my mind has been functioning as a black hole, sucking away any idea fragments that slide past and funneling them into far away oblivion. That’s not good. It really doesn’t bode well for my dreams of writing. Why can’t I just be inspired enough to write on my own? I also feel that I can’t write anything good on purpose (even when I can get words onto paper). If there is anything good, it’s a complete accident. I’m walking into a major that will definitely stretch me and teach me a bunch of things that I need to learn and that’s great, but also very daunting.

I have this problem. I think it comes with being an extreme dreamer. I’ve also heard that it is related to my personality (INFP creating the acronym I Never Find Perfection... hmmm...). Whatever the case, I can be extremely passionate about something, latch on to it and pursue it completely, but then once I’ve started getting into it, I get discouraged and lose interest in it, finding continuing on that track to be nearly impossible. Tie that with being incredibly future minded and you get a mess. I really want to major in English–I promise. Really. But right now I’m taking a bible class, moping about not having any writing ideas, drawing out completely useless floorplans, and trying to sort through future plans. I’d like to get my MFA in creative writing (haven’t taken any classes as an English major yet) but I’d also like to get my Master’s of Divinity and become a chaplain at a children’s hospital. That could be my steady job so I could write, too. But my day job was going to be being a college prof. Why did I want to do that again? And why a chaplain? Right now I’m about the last one of my friends that I would go to for advice or counsel or comfort, etc. (Yeah that makes sense, doesn’t it? I detach myself from myself and wonder among my friends and decide to sit down and have a conversation with myself... no, just kidding.) Or I could move to England. Or do all of it, piece by piece. But what first? Oh whatever. Conclusions are elusive and currently irrelevant. Why can’t I just focus? Like on finishing writing the paper that’s due next week? ...

Looking up at the dome of the leafy cathedral

Creative Writing Manifesto

Creative Writing Manifesto

I am a writer. I sit at the keyboard and words flow out from my fingertips, racing each other, vying for a place on the page. 

I struggle with consistency, mute until the deadline, then rushing to capture the torrent in writing. This usually happens late at night or mid-morning. 

I am paralyzed by bright, sterile places. My mind goes blank and the words freeze up in my head and on the page. Instead, I long to be in touch with nature or withdraw into the dark. 

I need human noise to be quiet. Then words can flow into that silence and stories make sense again. Sometimes I loop The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe soundtrack. The haunting yet hopeful melodies unlock my mind as well.

I want to make a habit of getting up earlier and writing, making it a top priority. I know I need to practice writing regularly so it becomes more and more natural.

I use writing as a healing catharsis from depression, a release from frustrating circumstances, forcing me to reach deeper and persevere through. If I’m upset, I will be agitated and restless until I can sort through my jumble of thoughts on a page.

I love stories. I am intrigued by the idea of character development, that a character could begin to do and say things that I didn’t tell them to do or say. That thought thrills me.

I realize that there is a contract between the reader and me, but I also hold a contract with myself. If I’m not interested by what I’m writing, I find it extremely difficult to continue.

I jot down ideas as I read, things that I find interesting or springboards that inspire me to write. I also make up stories about people as I pass them on the sidewalk, recording unusual snippets of their conversations.

I appreciate the empathy that writing brings. In understanding a character that you wouldn’t necessarily agree with, you can then be more compassionate in reaching out to other people you meet who are similar to that character.

I am not a writer because I have published books. I am a writer because I write.

Car Craziness

So my van wouldn't start for 20 minutes when I was supposed to leave for school- no turning over, nothing, just not starting. My dad has been working on it all weekend and charged the battery today, it shouldn't be dead. We call him on his way to work. Looks like the only chance is to push the van to be even with Mom's van. 


My mom and I go out to the driveway and start to push it but it doesn't budge. "Okay," I say, "we have to do this together. One, two, three." We push and it rolls. Called Dad back for instructions on how to jump it. "Well be sure you're completely dry." I look up at the downpour all around me, rain from my hood cascading onto my nose, and the down into the inch deep puddle coating our driveway and the stream taking over the yard. "I don't think that's going to work well, Dad." "Well get a towel and try to dry your hands as best you can." I duck back inside, grabbing the nearby dog towel and try to dry my hands but as soon as I move the water from my sleeves applies another generous coating to them. As I lean over the battery, drops bounce from my hood and onto the battery so Mom holds the towel from the hood of the car to over my head. I obsessively dry and redry my hands. 


"This is the dangerous part," comes Dad's staticy voice over the phone. "Only touch the insulated handle." After much cajoling, the clamps decide to remain on the temperamental metal. "Now start your van." The vans are parked too close together so I slide into my passenger side and reach the key over to the ignition, but it won't turn. I slide to the drivers seat and try again but with no better luck. "What do I do if the key won't turn in the ignition?" I ask. Dad immediately responds, "Is it the right key?" I look at the incorrect engraved symbol and reach into my pocket for the appropriate one. The van starts right up.


My mom thinks that the alternator is draining the battery but tells me if I just keep it running, I should hopefully be okay. She adds that I might lose my headlights partway there and if I do I'll have to pull over and get it towed.


Picked up Cora with no problem. Two hours to go in our trip and the battery light comes on. Keep hoping it will get there okay, check headlights on passing cars bumpers to make sure they're still on. 


Drive into Cedarville and almost park in a handicap space but remember the last time the police officer yelled at me for doing so. "It's okay," Cora says. "We don't have that much stuff, we can carry it." We drive around back instead and go to back into a space and Cora says, "Wouldn't it be funny if your power quit now?" Boom. Nothing. I quick stepped on the brake before we rolled down hill and turned to her saying, "You mean like that?" So with the help of a passerby we pushed the van the rest of the way into the space. It's a little crooked, but hey! :) We made it! :)

"Marywood"

When I first came to Marywood, the music camp I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. Then I saw where I’d be staying: in the four-car garage of an old mansion, built in the early nineteen hundreds. It was every sixth grade boy’s dream! The garage door wasn’t used anymore and the inside now was set up with bunk beds, but still, it was really cool! The counselor, John, was my french horn teacher for the next two weeks. His quarters were in the hallway between us and the bathroom and were as generously spacious as what a Navy crewman might hope for at sea. One of the nights, John told us about how he got mugged downtown and then chased down the mugger, pleading for his horn back. He explained how that was the way he made a living and talked about going from paycheck to paycheck until the guy finally agreed to give the horn back in exchange for a watch and a $30 cash card!

Now it was the Sunday afternoon of the final performance and all 40 of us were very excited and kind of nervous. Mom and Dad had come and taken me out for lunch. I just needed to warm up before the concert. Walking back into the garage, I didn’t notice anything out of place. I grabbed my horn from my bunk bed and tried to toot a few notes, but it wasn’t playing well, at all. “John?” I called, heading into the hallway, “am I doing something wrong? I can’t play my part.”

“Let me take a look, try playing again.” I blew into the mouthpiece but the rich ringing tone that should have followed was alarmingly absent. “Whoa,” he said, looking closer. “Let me see that a second.” I held the horn out to him. “What did you do to your bell?”

“My bell? Nothing, it was just laying on my bed, why?” I bent to look over his shoulder and realized that where before the bell had just had a bunch of dents in it, now the metal was quite crunched in.

“These braces are broken, too,” he said, twisting the horn back and forth a little to show me how the horn was moving when it should have been perfectly solid and still. “We’ve got to try to do something to fix this before the concert! Help me look for some tape or something.”

We started searching through our own stuff and the camp miscellaneous drawer. “Here’s some scotch tape,” I called.

“Looks like that’s going to be about the best we can do for now,” he said coming back around the corner. “Let’s see how it will work.” After trying to tape it back together, he handed it to me. “Try playing something.” I started playing my second horn part for one of the pieces that would be on the concert. It didn’t sound good, but it was a lot better than before the tape.

What neither of us counted on however, was how scotch tape would react with water. Not to long into the concert, the tape was rendered fairly useless by the moisture from my breath and the sound reverted back to the gurgling air noise.

After the concert, the camp director apologized profusely to my parents, explaining how the kids in the juvenile delinquent home across the street made a practice of sneaking over to Marywood once a summer and doing some act of vandalism. “Unfortunately,” she said, “it would appear that Chris’s horn was this year’s victim.”
    My parents sent it out right away to be repaired. When we went to pick it up, the repairman turned to me and asked, “So, have you been missing a pencil?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I answered. 

With a laugh he pulled a curved pencil out from his desk, handing it to me. “I found this jammed three-quarters of a turn from the bell! I have no idea how it got up that far but your horn should play a lot better now!”

The next day I headed in for my regular horn lesson. The perfectly smooth bell felt foreign to me in memory of it’s previously dented existence. 

“Alright,” my teacher said. “Play me the scale you’ve been working on.” I tried, but wasn’t able to play in tune at all. “What happened to your playing?!” While I explained the events of the past two weeks as best I could, he leaned back in his chair, scowling. There was a long pause and he finally said, “Your parents have got to get you a new horn!” 

"Misty"

The four year old girl ran towards the looming shelves of toys, roughly pulling a gray wolf with yellow eyes down and slamming it along the floor in harsh galloping motion like waves pounding a jetty. “Gabriella-Nicole! Time to go. Come take Mommy’s hand and we’ll get some ice cream!” The girl responded to the sing-songy voice coming from the other end of the Bar Harbor, Maine tourist shop and I watched with horror as she violently threw the wolf pup across the room and ran the other way. 

Quietly stepping out from my position of relative safety by the wall, I skirted around little tables with puzzles and beads towards the still figure. The pup had bounced off the shelf and was laying in a rather painful looking position on the floor. “Are you okay?” I whispered, kneeling down to assess the damage. She seemed fine. I scooped her up and petted her reassuringly before carefully placing her on the shelf. 

My dad had said I could get one of the wolf pups, now I just had to choose. The options can be overwhelming when you’re six. There were wolves with blue eyes, yellow eyes, green eyes, and brown eyes and some were sitting, some laying down, and some with looser legs so if you held them off of the ground, it looked like they were standing. We had come into the store earlier–before I had gotten permission to buy one–and I had decided that I would probably get one with blue eyes in the seated position. As I looked at them now though, I was struck by how similar those ones were. They seemed lifeless and, well, stuffed! I turned back to the recovering pup I had just put back on the shelf. I hadn’t been planning on getting one with yellow eyes. Then a terrifying thought struck me. What if Gabriella-Nicole came back? What if she tried to hurt the one with yellow eyes again? 

I looked again at the blue eyes pups, all sitting in uniform rows, wave after wave staring past me with a blank expression, then back at the one with yellow eyes and she looked back. Her head was cocked at me as if to gently inquire. I lifted her from the shelf once more, cradling her in my arms as I walked back to where my dad was looking at postcards of whales and lobsters near the counter. 

“Find one, Joy?”

“Yes.”

“What will you call it?”

I looked down at the soft gray figure in my arms, contemplating for a second before answering, “Her name is Misty.”

When they rung up the order, they rolled Misty in tissue paper and placed her in a white paper bag. As we walked towards the door, I said, “Hold on a second,” and crouched down next to the bag, easing Misty out of the tightly wrapped tissue paper and crumpling it up so she could perch on it. When her head was poking out of the bag to my satisfaction, we continued down the street in the salty air.

***

That was how Misty and I met. Since then she has accompanied me on innumerable trips, staying in hotel rooms, at camp, sleepovers, and relative’s houses and being a faithful comforter through tears or after one of my frequent nightmares. We were separated by an evil force called a pre-med major and a silly notion on my part that such majors didn’t have such close friends as Misty accompany them. Now that has been corrected and Misty once again occupies her rightful place on my bed.

"The Settlement"

“Mr. Andrews!”

“I gave you my answer Emily, I’m sorry.”

She ran after him anyway. “You don’t understand.” He turned abruptly to face her, catching her off guard. “No,” he said firmly, “That’s where you’re mistaken. You are the one who doesn’t seem to understand here.”

“But people’s lives!”

“Are their responsibility...Not ours.”

He restraightened his suit coat and strode down the glass hallway.

Emily didn’t try to follow him. Arguing would just be pointless. She leaned up against the cool glass window looking out at the Massachusetts autumn. Orange and red leaves swirled down from the dark branches, covering the grass and sidewalks. That they would fall was inevitable. Was it the same with the lives? Inevitable? Mr. Andrews came out the downstairs door, crossing over the leaves to his gold Ferrari. From the other side of the courtyard, the groundsman was blowing leaves off the sidewalk. “Remove them!” Emily said out loud, then quickly ducked her head and glanced around to see if anyone had heard. The hall was empty. That was what she would have to do, though. Her attempts to remove the threat had failed. This was her only option now. She fast walked back to her office to make the last minute flight arrangements. She could leave first thing in the morning. Hopefully it would be enough time. 

That night sleep was elusive and fitful at best. Her bags packed, she cleared security with no trouble at all. Nestled down in her seat on the plane, she took out her blank notebook and a pencil. Sketching was always a release for her, but now no ideas came. The blank page stared back at her hauntingly. Then, without really thinking she began to draw the house she’d grown up in, flipping pages to include her memories of The Settlement. Faces from her past began to cover the next sheets, those sweet, peaceful people who had always loved her. Emily was unaware of the tears running down her cheeks until they splashed onto the page blurring some of the lines. She quickly brushed them off of the paper and reached in her bag for a tissue, glad that her nearby fellow passengers were engulfed in their own worlds. 

The plane landed and she transferred over to the rental car she had arranged. Paperwork completed, she started driving towards The Settlement. It had been started by her mother, well, by the woman who had raised her. When Emily was eighteen, the woman had called her and her two older brothers into the living room and explained how she had adopted them. Her brothers had taken the news well, they had probably suspected it, but Emily was crushed. Soon after she had left The Settlement and everything she’d called home. 
    Driving back these many years later, she finally allowed herself to remember. She remembered all the people that had come to The Settlement, disillusioned with the world and wanting to live at peace with nature and each other. Many came from very broken backgrounds and Emily remembered hearing her mother talking with them late into the night downstairs in the kitchen. She counseled them some and listened a lot. Her goal was never for the people to stay forever, though some did and she wouldn’t kick them out, but rather for them to heal and then return to the “real world” to be bringers of peace in their own corners of the brokenness. 
    When Emily had left she had pursued her career with a passion seldom matched by her peers. She would now be termed successful, holding a position at one of the top testing companies in the country. It was a posh post and she went through all of the necessary motions to maintain it, working hard all day, then often staying up late still trying to track down her birth family. Then one day she realized that one of the projects was more serious than she thought. The company had been contracted by the government to do some secret testing bomb runs out west. That she had seen the map of the location was a complete fluke, but when she did, her heart froze. “I thought you said it would be tested in a uninhabited section,” she had said to Mr. Andrews.

“It is,” he replied, giving her an annoyed glance. “The government arranged it. Apparently some woman bought this huge piece of land about thirty years ago, but twenty five years ago stopped paying taxes on it and isn’t registered anywhere for anything, kind of dropped off the map, so to speak. Probably couldn’t afford it or died or something, who knows.”

“But people live there. There are houses there!”

“The government has no building permits on record and no one’s name is tied to the property except that women and there’s been no contact with her for twenty five years! The government considers the property to have returned to their hands and they choose to have us execute the testing at that site.”

Her arguments fell on deaf ears because the inhabitants of The Settlement were undocumented and Mr. Andrews didn’t want to lose his power. She turned onto the dirt road at the faded sign. She’d tried everything from that end, only to be told that if she didn’t drop it, she would be fired and blacklisted. Now she was about to reenter a world she’d sworn never to even think of again.
    There it was. The big house. It wasn’t all that big, but compared to the little cabins scattered around, it was a mansion. No one seemed to be outside. She parked the car and went up the creaky steps and crossed the wooden porch. The paint had seen better days. She knocked. “Hello?” When no one answered her call, she tried the door. Unlocked. Of course, why would she think any differently. That’s how it always had been. Everything was still. Silent. She walked through the house, calling out as she went. Dust and cobwebs danced through the air, as if the house waking from a long and dreadful sleep. The kitchen still had a plate with the remnant of a couple crumbs by a list and pen on the counter and two teacups nearby but all of the other pots and pans and dishes were in order, hanging from their own hooks, sitting on their own shelf. So organized. The living room was next. She just leaned on the doorway transfixed by the empty chairs. Had someone else warned them? Where had they all gone? Someone always stayed in the big house in case a new guest came. 
    What are you thinking, Emily? Of course it could change. You’ve been gone fifteen years. For a minute she forgot why she had come. She just wanted to run upstairs to her old room and then run out through the fields of wildflowers she had always played in. Then she heard it. The steady drone of the airplane.