Flash Fiction: A lesson (and class) in brevity

I took a flash fiction class this last semester, and aside from being really interesting and fun, I found a way to write fiction, somthing I've never succeeded at before. I think writing longer fiction taxes my imagination too much--as a nonfiction writer, I'm not used to having to make things up. Well, not used to making everything up. It was the same in theater, actually. So long as I had a script, I could improvise. If someone said, "Make up something," I was completely at a loss.

So it goes with writing. Someone tells me to make up a story with characters and plot and development and scene and setting, I'm stuck. But ask me to write just a scene with one interesting character who does something unexpected, I can tell a whole story, and enjoy it too. So I'm going to post over the next little while the pieces of flash fiction I wrote this semester, and I'd very much appreciate any feedback. Though I can do this kind of fiction, I'm still learning how to do it well.

Final Essay—Part 2

I smiled to myself as I thought about that first kiss, hesitant yet sincere. But other less perfect memories quickly followed. I remembered lingering just outside the psychology classroom door, waiting for Scott after our class. We had gotten back our midterm tests in AP Psychology and he had not done well. He was trying to talk our teacher into letting him retake it, but Mr. Downs was notorious for not giving second chances when it came to tests. I would have stayed in the classroom to offer Scott some moral support, but he had been a little distant that day and I didn't want to annoy him by hanging around. Looking over my own test, I was surprised and pleased to see I had only missed one question out of fifty, the highest score in the class. Mr. Downs had mentioned that only one person had received missed only one question, but he hadn't said my name. I started to smile, but then I thought of Scott and his score. My smile disappeared as I realized that my success would make him feel worse.

I stuffed the test into my backpack, leaning against the blue lockers along the wall while hundreds of students filled the halls going to lunch. It was the middle of our senior year at Orem High School. Scott and I had been "boyfriend and girlfriend" since our first kiss four months ago, but there hadn't been too many kisses since then, mostly just holding hands when people weren't looking and always sitting by each other at lunch and during movies. Scott was a slow mover, but I didn't mind too much. What mattered was that Scott liked me, had picked me out of all the girls in our group of friends. I could be patient and go at his pace if that's what he needed. Just knowing that I had been chosen was enough. And it was enough that I got to see him every day, since we had almost exactly the same class schedule. We usually went over to his house after school to work on our homework, provided we didn't have rehearsal for one of the school plays. We always ended up at his house because Scott didn't have a car, so I would offer to drive him home after school. It was that much more time to spend with him.

I was just thinking about peeking into the classroom to see how things were going when Scott appeared, scowling. "I'm so frustrated!" he exclaimed, walking down the hallway toward his locker. "I don't know why I can't get a good score in that class. I do fine in all my other classes. But this just, I don't know!"

"I know," I said sympathetically, matching my pace with his. "That's so annoying. They're just hard tests. We just need to study more, that's all. You'll do better next time, I'm sure."

"Probably not," Scott said bitterly. "I think I'm getting worse on every one. I'm just stupid or something."

"No you're not! Don't say that," I protested.

"I got a 68% on that test!" he exclaimed. "That's practically failing." We were at his locker and he was throwing books around and trying to sort through the mess of papers in his backpack. Suddenly he looked up at me. "What did you get?" he asked, almost suspiciously.

I shrugged, trying to keep my face nonchalant. "I did okay."

He snorted. "Yeah, right. Little Miss Perfect. I bet you were the one to only miss one, right?" I shrugged again, a little stung by his sarcasm. He snorted again and slammed his locker shut, heading for the cafeteria where the rest of our friends would be eating lunch.

I tried to think of something to make him laugh, anything to distract him from his bad mood. "Well, it's probably because I don't fall asleep during class every day," I gently teased, poking his side playfully. To my surprise, he batted my hand away and pulled back. "Sorry," I said, taken aback. "Scott, I'm just teasing."

"I'm just tired, okay? I can't help it." He seemed genuinely upset by my comment. He wouldn't look at me and seemed to be trying to put some distance between us. Something was up.

"Scott, what's going on? Why are you so upset? I was just teasing, I'm sorry it wasn't funny, I was just trying to make you laugh…" I was at a loss for how to fix the situation.

He sighed and stopped just outside the cafeteria doors. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm just…I'm upset about the test and I…well, I need to talk to you about something."

My stomach dropped. Those were never good words. "Okay," I said slowly. "Let's talk."

We moved off the side, out of the way of students going to lunch. "Okay, well, I…I don't know how to say this," Scott began, fidgeting with his backpack straps and looking anywhere but at me. I didn't say anything, just waited patiently for him to continue. "I guess it's just…Well, but it's not about you…" Scott took a deep breath. "Okay, here it is. I…I think I like Natalie."

I felt like I had just missed the bottom stair, falling forward unexpectedly. I tried not to let anything show on my face, I just nodded once, slowly, but inside I was curling up into a ball of hurt. Natalie was my best friend. She was cute and skinny and fun; of course he liked her. He always flirted with her a little, but they were both flirty people so I had tried to not let it bother me. I hadn't wanted to be a crazy controlling girlfriend. But still, I hadn't seen this coming.

Scott seemed to be waiting for a reaction, so I just said, "Okay…?"

"I'm sorry," he sighed. "I know this isn't fair, but I just…I've been thinking about it and I think I like her, and…" He trailed off. I nodded again. I knew how uncomfortable the situation was for him, so I searched for something to say to help him out.

"Well, uh," I was trying desperately to keep my voice under control. "I don't know what you want me to do….I guess…do you want to break up?"

"No!" he exclaimed. "That's the thing, I still really like you too. I don't want to break up. I just…like you both."

The hurt was a little lessened, but it was still there. I nodded again. I still didn't know what to say. He seemed to be waiting for me to come up with an answer, a solution to this unsolvable dilemma. "Well, I…don't know. Okay," I finally said. "I need to think about this. Why don't we just…go to lunch and we'll talk about it later?" Scott nodded quickly, relieved. "I'm just going to go to the bathroom," I motioned down the hall. "I'll meet you in there."

We parted, both glad to get away. I walked slowly down the hall, still in shock. I had no idea what to do or how to fix this. I went around in circles in my head, wondering what to say, how to feel, where I should sit when I went back to the cafeteria. I felt so deflated, so let down, so…not enough. It hurt to know I wasn't enough to keep his attention, to make him happy. I didn't want to break up with him; I still liked him, I still wanted him to like me and trust me and need me. I needed to be needed.

I didn't know then that it would only take Scott a couple of days to decide he didn't actually like Natalie, or that in spite of that he would continue to flirt with her, or that he would do the same thing to me again the next year with a different friend. I didn't know that I would forgive him every time he did something hurtful, or that he would hurt me many times over. Even if I had known those things, I don't think it would have changed anything. I wasn't one to try to find a way out. I tended to stay with people and jobs and problems until the end, too unsure of myself to be without something to hang on to. There was security in never switching lanes. I still needed him and I needed the validation of being in a relationship, imperfect though it was.

 

    As I remembered those heartbreaking moments, I asked myself why I stayed with him for so long. Was it really out of a need for validation and a lack of self-confidence? Was it just out of habit? I knew part of it was that I didn't want to hurt him. He was so insecure; I just couldn't bring myself to call him out on his actions. And every time he came back to me after flirting with one of my friends, I couldn't bring myself to reject him the way he had rejected me.

I thought about the last time I had seen Scott before his mission. It was late when Scott and I pulled up in front of my apartment building. He was leaving on his mission the next day, so we had gone on a last date—dinner and a play—to spend some time final time together. We were silent as Scott turned the car and headlights off and took my hand. I had wanted to avoid saying goodbye for as long as possible, but I knew it couldn't be put off much longer.

    "Kate, I…I want to ask you something," Scott began, looking down at our hands.

    "Okay," I said slowly, wary of where this was headed. "What is it?" I prompted when he didn't answer right away.

    "I'm not sure how to say this…" He let out a deep breath. "I've just been thinking a lot, and I just….You are so important to me. I am so grateful that someone as amazing as you could love someone like me." I began to protest at his self-directed insult, but he cut me off. "No, let me finish. It's just that, I want you to always be a part of my life. I can't even imagine my life without you."

    My heart started thumping heavily in my chest and I felt panic take hold. I wasn't prepared for this, couldn't tell where it was headed. What was he going to ask me? What was I going to say?

    "I know two years is a long time, but I don't want to lose you," he went on as he finally looked up and made direct eye contact with me. Oh no, I thought wildly, is he going to propose? "So I have to ask you, will you wait for me?"

I stared at him, almost not comprehending. Not a proposal, but close. By asking me to "wait" for him, Scott was asking me to not get married while he was gone, to still feel the same about him when he got back so we could pick up where we were leaving off. It wasn't an unusual thing for a soon-to-be-missionary to do, but I was not ready for it. I knew a lot would happen in two years, and with our limited communication, it would be hard to keep our relationship strong. I didn't know if I would feel the same in two years, nor did I want to promise something I wasn't sure I could do. I knew all of that, but when Scott looked at me, apprehension and vulnerability written all over his face, waiting for my answer, how could I say no? How could I say goodbye like that? I couldn't.

    "Yes," I finally said, "as best as I can, I'll wait."

 

***

But I didn't wait.

I sat and looked at my phone and thought about those words—I love you—and all I could think was, why am I saving this? I thought about my "perfect" romance, remembering how much I had put into my relationship with Scott and how little I had gotten out of it, and I saw that there was nothing perfect about it. We were imperfect people in an imperfect relationship but I had excused it, time and again. Why? Because I thought that being in a relationship was more important than being happy? I had subconsciously been trying to fulfill all the expectations I had for my life, built on what I felt my religion and my community expected for me, but I had lost myself along the way.

I didn't want to sacrifice the rest of my life to a marriage that wouldn't make me happy just because everyone expected us to get marred. Marriage was still important, still the goal, but what about the other life experiences? What about school? What about traveling? What about being happy, feeling loved, not worrying if he would get bored with me? What about valuing my own experiences for what they were instead of only noticing what they were not?

I knew I didn't want to marry him, didn't want to wait for him or be in a relationship with him again. I realized I had known it for a while, even if I was only now admitting it to myself. But I had still been keeping it as an option, almost like a kind of back-up plan. That's not fair, I realized, to him or to me. It wasn't fair to put my life on hold just in case things worked out with Scott. And it wasn't fair to him for me to be dishonest about how I felt.

So why couldn't I let it go? Why did I still have this text saved, a reminder of all that our relationship was and wasn't? What was I so afraid of?

I was afraid that he was my only chance for getting married. He had chosen me, not consistently, but always in the end, he had chosen me. I was afraid of being alone, afraid that I wouldn't be able to make it on my own strength even though I had been the one supporting both of us for so long. I was afraid of hurting him like he had hurt me, knowing that this decision would break his heart. I had so many fears, but was it worth it?

Yes, I decided, it was worth waiting for a better relationship. I knew people weren't perfect and so relationships couldn't be. It made relationships terrifying, especially something as important and committed as an eternal marriage. It requires entrusting yourself so completely to someone else, making yourself vulnerable, in essence giving someone else a hundred ways to hurt or disappoint or betray you. Marriage means entrusting your whole, imperfect self over to another imperfect person and believing that person will value you, will protect you, will try not to hurt you. I couldn't believe that about Scott, but I believed it was possible. I believed I could find that imperfect relationship, just on my own terms.

In that moment, with all those thoughts and memories swirling around in my head, I was sure of one thing: I was not going to wait for Scott anymore. And suddenly it was clear that it wasn't just about Scott. It was about me moving on with my life, living my life, enjoying my life, and not giving in to expectation. I was choosing to be alone, yes, but I was the one choosing it. And I was choosing to value myself and my happiness. I was choosing to open my eyes to more than just that future, choosing to go outside the lines.

I read that text one last time—I love you—and then I deleted it, swiftly punching buttons so that I wouldn't have time to stop myself.

Final Essay—Part 1

Outside the Lines

 

I was six years old and driving somewhere with my dad. I don't remember why it was just the two of us, but I do remember that I got to sit in the front seat for a change. As we pulled onto the freeway, I was shocked and alarmed when I saw the other cars moving from lane to lane, and even more alarmed when my dad started to move over too.

"Daddy!" I cried. "You can't go outside the lines! That's cheating!" He laughingly explained that it was okay—that the lanes were for different speeds and anyone could move back and forth. But it didn't seem right to my little mind—I always tried to color inside the lines in my coloring books. We couldn't break the rules. How could we move off course and still end up in the right place?

As I got older, it became even more important to me to "stay inside the lines" and do things the right way. In high school, my friends would tell me I was "perfect" and I though I would deny it out loud, I was secretly pleased. But I also started to feel restricted by the label. I remember how I cringed every time I aced a test or a paper and someone said, "Of course you did. You're perfect." How I tried to hide my straight-A grades from people, how I tried not to talk about myself much at all. Even though I knew I wasn't perfect, I felt a lot of pressure to make it look like I was. Part of me was annoyed, frustrated, trapped by that word. But there was a part of me that knew that I could make it seem true. I could get the perfect grades, have the perfect color hair, be the perfect friend. But at the same time, I lived in fear that I would mess it up, that I would make a mistake, that someone would see through the "perfection."

***

I stared down at my cell phone, reading the words of the text for the hundredth time: I love you. It was October of my junior year of college at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The date on the text was from more than eighteen months earlier, and it was from Scott. I had saved it for all those months but without really knowing why. Scott and I had dated during high school and my first year of college, and though things had never been perfect, it was the only relationship I had ever had. Now I was still in Utah and Scott was in England serving a mission for our church. In the Mormon Church, missions are two years long and the rules are pretty strict about not having contact with people back home—no phone calls and limited emailing. Even so, we had managed to keep in touch and stay connected through weekly emails.

I love you. I had held on to those words, pulled them out occasionally, though less and less frequently in the last few months. Being apart had allowed me to gain some perspective on our relationship, and with the time and distance, I had painfully come to realize that what my family had been telling me for years was true: it wasn't a good relationship. I had never believed them when Scott and I were together, always defending his actions and my decisions. I thought we had the perfect Mormon romance: he was my first date, my first kiss, my first and only boyfriend. We had been friends for a long time, through many ups and downs, and we were certain we could survive Scott's leaving to serve a mission for the Church. We had even talked about getting married some day while we were still in high school. If everything went according to plan, we would get married the summer after he got home from his mission. At the time, it was a good plan: a straight course to follow to reach the end destination.

But I wasn't so sure about that course now. I was absolutely certain about the end destination—I very much wanted to get married—but I wasn't certain I wanted to get married to Scott. In our religion, there is so much pressure to get married. Marriage is one of the most important aspects of Mormon life. I suppose it's important for most people, but for Mormons, it is everything. We believe in families and a lot of what we do is geared toward strengthening family relationships. We also believe that marriages and families don't end at death, but that they can be eternal, infinite. There is no "until death do you part," and that is something we do not take lightly.

In addition to the rules about serving a mission, there are many other standards of the Mormon church that make us seem a little peculiar: we don't drink, we don't smoke, we don't date until we are 16, and we don't have sex before we're married. All of the standards and beliefs of our church combine to create a culture that can sometime overshadow the beliefs themselves, especially in Utah, which is over 75% Mormon. When everyone believes the same things, everyone knows what you should be doing and how you should be acting. The standards of our religion seep into every aspect of life until what we consider morally right also becomes what is socially acceptable. And that means that the pressure to do what is right for your own conscience is compounded and complicated by the desire to look good in front of your friends and neighbors. Somehow God's judgment gets mixed in with public opinion and the result can be a whole lot of excess guilt if you don't do what is expected.

Because of our focus and belief in marriage as something divine and important, we tend to marry quickly and marry young. There are a couple of reasons for this, one being that we don't have any premarital sex, so our hormones tend to speed the process up. But more than that, it's instilled in us from day one that marriage is our goal, and while there are a lot of other good and important things in life, such as education and a career, marriage is top priority. But when it becomes the only goal, so many opportunities get ignored, discarded, and undervalued. In a culture so focused on marriage and families, being single almost becomes a mark of shame. Somehow it fosters the belief that you aren't a person until you are married.

As I sat on my bed, phone still in hand, I still believed that marriage should be the goal, but I was starting to wonder, at what cost? I looked at the text again: I love you. Was Scott's love really what I wanted? Why was I still hanging on to it? Could I bring myself to let it go, let myself go outside the lines?

 

I tried to remember the good times, the reasons I stayed in the relationship. Things like our first kiss, which had seemed magical at the time. Scott and I were on a walk, holding hands as we enjoyed the warmth of the evening and watched the stars come out. We were on vacation with my family at Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah, and though the sunlight was quickly fading, the deep red and cream cliffs were still visible on every horizon. We were seventeen and it was the start of our senior year of high school. Though we had been awkwardly introduced by a mutual friend two years before, this was the first time that we were heading toward being "together." I was so happy to have some alone time with him, happy just to be holding his hand, happy to be pretty sure that he liked me. We rounded the last corner to go back to the house, when I saw a shooting star out of the corner of my eye.

    "Quick! Make a wish!" I squeezed my eyes shut tight. I wish…I wish for Scott for kiss me. I wish for it to be tonight. I wish, I wish....

    I opened my eyes and saw that Scott was looking at me with a strange expression on his face, something between anticipation indecision. "What did you wish for?" he asked.

    "I can't tell you that," I teased. "It won't come true."

    Scott looked at me, contemplating something. "I want to kiss you but I'm not sure how," he suddenly blurted out. He looked away, embarrassed. I tried hard not to smile too widely, mentally thanking the stars.

    "I don't know that I'll be much help to you," I said slowly, "but I think you should."

    He looked at me again, this time hopeful. I looked up at him, smiling and nervous and excited. But Scott, in his nervousness, started walking again. After a brief moment of confusion, I hurried to catch up and take his hand again. I wasn't going to let this moment go, but I wanted to let this be his moment. I would let him take the lead. After a minute, he slowed down and turned…and then kept walking. He did it again, then again. The next time he stopped, I fixed him with an encouraging smile and tightened my grip around his fingers, tilting my head up slightly. This was going to be it. I willed him some courage as he leaned toward me, his eyes on mine. I took a deep breath, willing him to complete the thought, fulfill the wish, kiss my lips—

    He swooped toward me, sudden and hasty. His lips were cold against mine, the period of an exclamation point, almost overlooked, swift and then gone. I didn't have time to take in the sensation before he started walking again, the relief immediately evident. I started walking with him again, but I wasn't sure what to think about the walking or the cold lips or the kiss…the kiss.

    I smiled as I realized what had happened. In spite of the stopping and hesitation, I finally got my first kiss, and it was from the boy I liked more than anyone else. And in my mind, that's all that mattered.

What religion were you brought up with?

I know this has already come up, but I keep returning to the basic question, What does it mean to be a Mormon? What does it mean to me? The prompt in our book says, "Dive right into the essence of your experience. No explanation." And I just keep asking myself, do I explain something so all-encompassing? It's not possible to completely separate my religion from the rest of my life. It's like when tried to paint with watercolors when I was in Elementary school and I used too much water. Soon all the paints ran together, mixing and shifting until it was all one undefinable color.

My first memories of my religion are of going to church every week when I was really little. I remember when I turned three and I got to go to Primary for the first time and sit on the little plastic chairs, squirmy and bouncy and not sure yet what was going on, only knowing that I was now with the big kids. I remember dresses with ruffles and lace and shiny black shoes and socks with a little frill at the top, clothing that was special because I only wore it once a week. I remember learning names of people from the scriptures, Moses and Abraham and David from the Bible and Nephi, Abinadi, and Helaman from The Book of Mormon. I remember learning the songs from the Primary Children's Songbook, songs about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and prayer and faith and stars and lilac bushes. I remember my parents singing those songs to me at night before I went to bed along with "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Inchworm" and "Mr. Sandman." Once when I was asked in Primary to pick a song for everyone to sing, I couldn't think of anything except "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." The music leader just kinda laughed and told me to pick a church song. I didn't realize there was a difference because, for me, everyday life and church were one and the same, part of the same pattern and routine. I think every little kid thinks that everyone's life is like theirs, but I think that idea was reinforced by the fact that pretty much everyone I knew was a Mormon too.

Mormons have a reputation for being odd, and we know it. We call ourselves a "peculiar people" and it's something we're proud of. We don't drink alcohol, coffee, or tea; we don't smoke or chew tobacco; we don't date until we're sixteen and we don't have sex until after we're married. We don't watich R-rated movies and try to keep our language and jokes clean. We send out missionaries all over the world, and we don't pay our local leaders for all the time the put into their callings. We're really not that different from a lot of people, but we're so far over on the conservative and strict adherence scale, we forget it sometimes. It's a global church, with over 13 million members, but it's also very much focused on the individual and having a personal relationship with God, our Heavenly Father. Our wards become like extended families, everyone calling each other "Brother Herrick" and "Sister Maryon." We know about each others' lives and we are there for every part of it--births, deaths, illness, weddings, graduation, moving on and staying put.

It's a religion of sacrifice and obedience. The early members of the Church started in upstate New York, but because of persecution, they had to move to Ohio, then to Missouri, where they were killed, robbed, and ordered out of the state. The governor at the time actually made it legal to kill the Mormons. So again, they picked up and moved to Illinois, and eventually forced to trek across the country, finally stopping in Utah. This early history of sacrifice and persecution has been handed down to members now, become part of who we are as a Church and as a people.

There is so much hope and happiness in my religion, so many answers to difficult questions. There is support and comfort and joy, both from the organization of it and the gospel and doctrine of it. But it also asks a lot of us, and can become this tremendous source of guilt. It can feel like we have this extra responsibility to teach and preach and be better every day. It requires pretty constant effort and attention. And we can always be better, but the goal is perfection. We know we can't be perfect in this life, but we can in the next life and that's what we're working toward. It makes it hard to remember that it's okay to be imperfect here when the goal is always there.

This weekend is General Conference weekend, where we gather together as a whole church and hear talks and counsel from the head of the Church, a prophet of God, and his counselors and other leaders. In Utah, General Conference is basically a holiday weekend. Teachers lighten homework loads, families plan get-togethers, grocery stores sell out of ice cream, and most other businesses are really slow. We have two 2-hour sessions on Saturday, plus a meeting just for the men Saturday night, then two more sessions on Sunday. In Utah it's shown on TV so my family always made a big breakfast Sunday morning and watched the first session in our pajamas. I would work on puzzles while my dad caught up on his ironing, Rachel and Ethan sleepily watching from the couch and my mom listening from the kitchen. We turn on all the TVs in the house and usually at least one radio so that no matter where you go, you can hear the talks and music. Here in Pittsburgh I might be able to find it somewhere On Demand, but I'll probably end up going to our church building to watch it broadcast live from Salt Lake. My roommates and friends and I will probably go out to eat Saturday night, and we'll enjoy sleeping in on Sunday morning without any meetings to go to. It's a good weekend.

Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir

I don't want to say too much so as to save some questions for the discussion on Wednesday, but this book really challenged me. Even though we are told, from the very beginning, that this book is a metaphor, that we can't take it literally, I found myself believing everything Lauren Slater wrote. I took her experiences for what she said they were, got invested in her illness and her family and her identity. I think in the back of my mind I was trying to remember not to take it all at face value, but I had a hard time. Slater writes in such a lyric, convincing way. Until those moments when she would step out of the narrative and remind me that she might not be telling the truth, I was completely fooled.

Fooled is probably the wrong word, because she wasn't trying to "fool" anyone. But I did start to feel foolish for getting so involved and so invested. About halfway through the book I gave up trying to figure out what was "fact" and what was "fiction" and just got frustrated. What's the point of a memoir that doesn't tell you anything about the author? It's like the picture on the front cover. The woman is exposing herself but not revealing anything--or maybe showing us that there's nothing to reveal.

However, by the end of the book, my opinion had changed. I still wonder about writing a memoir in this way, but I think that this book did tell me a lot about the author, and especially about how she perceives herself. Identity is a slippery thing, and I was interested by her statement right towards the beginning that "what you wish is every bit as real as what you are." (pg. 5) I think it's true--we are made of our wishes and perceptions and masks and desires and experiences. What we wish were true is a very big part of who (or what) we are. And the way we see truth, the way truth is seen by us, is individual and revealing and defining as well.

Meet the family, part 2

My sister Rachel is two and a half years younger than me, and I think that might be the source of all tensions in our relationship. When she was born, as my parents have told me, I wouldn't go see my mom and new sister at the hospital. I was that angry that my mom had had another child that was taking the attention away from me. Maybe if I had been a little younger or a little older, I wouldn't have minded so much. As it was, I was used to being the only child, the star, the center of the whole world. A younger sister meant competition for love and time and attention. And so, I hated her.

That might be too strong of a word. I don't ever remember hating her or resenting her presence in our family, but I can't speak for my almost three-year-old self. My mom says that once she could hear Rachel crying and some kind of thumping sound, and when she went into the bedroom to find out what was going on, she found me rocking the wooden cradle against the wall as hard as I could, "trying to rock the baby." Whether or not I "hated" her and regardless of how long it did or didn't last, I think it's certain that Rachel and I had a rocky (no pun intended) start.

I've sometimes wondered what that must have been like for her. It couldn't have been easy to have me as an older sister. It couldn't have been pleasant to have a sister who was a bossy know-it-all, perpetually two-and-a-half years older and therefore more adept at everything. Constantly making her feel inferior. Taking the attention and talking the loudest. It couldn't have been encouraging to have a sister who was constantly achieving and succeeding, taking charge of games and playtime, asserting her authority. I must have made life a little bit harder for her without really meaning to.

Even once I wanted to be friends and get along with Rachel, the damage had been done. We could play together and make up games and stories peaceably, but it didn't take much for us to disagree and scream and hit, the game ending in tears for at least one of us. I don't get angry easily, especially as I've gotten older, but Rachel is the one person who can push my buttons enough for me to actually yell and need to hit something (I learned to hit my pillow instead of her). In my memory, she was hard to get along with when we were growing up, but now I can't blame her for trying to challenge the authority I assumed I had and trying to get some attention too. I don't think it was all my fault, but I'm sure that to a younger sister, I was simply insufferable.

In trying to put myself into her shoes, I am realizing that it must have been so hard to have an older sister that she probably looked up to not want to spend time with her. That is still the sorest point in our relationship. Try as I might, I know that I don't spend as much time with her as she would like, and I think she resents when I go to parties and movies and dinner with my friends. We are still learning to understand each other and forgive. Why is it the hardest to forgive the people closest to us?

As we got older, we learned to control ourselves and get along, but it was never easy. Our personalities differ in very basic ways. Think Elinor and Marianne from Sense and Sensibility. Elinor is the older, practical, logical, controlled sister; Marianne is the younger, more emotional, dramatic, passionate sister. But in actuality, they also have traits of the other, just as Rachel and I do. I can be wildly emotional and dramatic, and Rachel has a strong logical, organizational side too. The trick is getting us to match up sense with sense and sensibility with sensibility at the same time.

In trying to explain the problems, I am forgetting to include all the good stuff. Rachel and I found common ground in similar interests that we would become obsessed with and share. We went through a Les Miserables phase, Phantom of the Opera, the movie musical Newsies, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, The Beatles, Josh Groban, The Lord of the Rings. There were many times when one or both of us would be confused or hurting and we turned to each other for comfort and help. In spite of our differences, we were still sisters and we loved each other. I don't think either of us wanted to fight as much as we did. And once I moved out of the house and we had more space, we were able to be better friends, to the point where she was able to come visit me here in Pittsburgh and we both had a wonderful time together.

Rachel is such a beautiful girl, it's a little threatening to me. She has always had a good sense of fashion and style, something that I learned late in my teenage years. She has a way of making a roomful of people laugh that I admire, and a passion for, well, everything that I envy. She is brilliant, currently working on becoming a neurologist. She has one of the most generous and caring hearts I've ever known, always wanting to help others and reach out to those in need. She also has an incredible musical talent that never ceases to amaze me. She succeeds as just about everything she does, and I am so proud of her. I don't know if I tell her that enough.

Sometimes she still rubs me the wrong way, just as I am sure I do the same to her. But we are friends, we are sisters, and I regret all the years we were not.

Tell me everything you know about ice cream.

Ice cream is delicious. Cold, smooth, texture, slip through my teeth and chill the roof of my mouth. Freezing my nose until it hurts. Flavor that slides down my throat and provides a delight that cools and warms and satisfies. Mint and chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, peanut butter, caramel, and chocolate syrup, chocolate sauce, chocolate shell, mixing and swirling and melting and cooling. Ice cream "hits the spot," an undefined place somewhere between my stomach and my heart, warm and savory and homey. Hand to mouth, bowl to spoon to tongue, scoop it up and around and down, and then again. Feel it, taste it, smell the cold radiating from the gooey mess. Carve through the rounded cream, the icy flakes. Find in their crystals solace, comfort, reassurance that it will be okay, that it is okay, that the ice cream will see you through, chill the pain, dull the ache, a cold compress to the wound that life, that friends, that a boy has disappointed you.

My friend Kellianne worked at Coldstone during high school. On afternoons when we knew she would be there, Natalie and I (and sometimes Manda and Shelly) would drive down to the store and get two "Gotta Have It"- sized bowls of Coldstone Creamery Ice Cream. I don't know why Coldstone tastes so good. The texture is creamy and smooth, and the consistency is thicker than regular grocery store ice cream. We always ordered minor variations on the same two kinds of ice cream. The first, Sweet Cream or Irish Cream with a brownie and caramel sauce. If we were feeling extra decadent, we would add chocolate fudge for another $.49. The second was a sorbet, usually Raspberry or Lemon, with real fruit in it, strawberries or raspberries. The lighter fruit balanced out the richness of the brownie/caramel/cream goodness. Kellianne was always happy to see us and we were more than happy to see her, especially because she usually gave us extra toppings "on accident."

I had a roommate named JaNae my freshman year of college who got a job at Coldstone, but she didn't give us extra toppings. That was okay, though. Going to see her was an excellent reason for going frequently. Natalie and I were roommates, and we still got those same two kinds of ice cream. Sometimes we'd try a new flavor of ice cream or a new combination of ice cream and toppings, but most often, we chose our standard favorites. When I broke up with Scott that first semester, I went to see her at Coldstone the next day to get my own "Gotta Have It" bowl. It was a consolation prize, a "I did something hard and now I get to reward myself" bowl of ice cream. I wasn't really wallowing at that point. I got the Raspberry Sorbet with raspberries added in. I ate some of it then, but it wasn't until later that night, after I had gone to a dance and realized that I was alone, realized that I was hurt and sad and angry, that I finished the whole bowl. By myself. I curled up on our ugly student housing couch in my pajamas, bowl in one hand and spoon in the other and cried as I watched Hillary Duff's "A Cinderella Story." It was a pathetic moment, but the ice cream was my only witness. It was there for me, soothing my tears and fears and not judging me.

Tell me about a clock you've looked a lot.

When I was six, my parents gave me an alarm clock for Christmas so I could wake myself up every morning to watch Power Rangers. It was a digital clock that had an alarm that could be set to the radio, a buzzer,or several different "melodies." Every night, I set the alarm for 6:55 am (giving me five minutes to wake up and get to the television) and set it on Melody 1. And every morning, it woke me up by playing a very electronic beeping version of "It's a Small World After All." I can still hear those first few notes, feel the rush of being startled awake, and the intense dislike of that sound. It became very annoying very quickly.

The other melodies were much shorter, thereby giving me less time to get up and turn the alarm off (somehow it was always across the room, never next to my bed), so I never used them. One was "Yankee Doodle" I think, and the other...I can hear it, but I can't think if it's a real song or not.....nope, no title comes to mind. Sometimes I'd accidentally hit the "Melody" button instead of "Snooze" and I'd have to run through all the songs before I could shut it off. The way it worked, the alarm for the next morning would start wherever I had left off on the day before. So if I turned it off in the middle of the song, it would start playing from there the next morning. For whatever strange electrical reason, occasionally the song played really really fast, and on others it played extremely slow. The slow mornings were agonizing, because in my silly almost-OCD way, I had to let the whole song play out so it would start at the beginning the next morning.

That clock lasted me a very long time. In fact, I do believe I took it to college with me, at least for the first year or two. I eventually switched from the melody over to the radio when I was in high school and decided I had was old enough to not wake up to "It's a Small World After All." I remember looking at the bright red numbers as I tried to fall asleep, watching them change when I blinked. I would sometimes play a game and mentally rearrange the individual segments of the numbers into different times. The blurry red glow was always there when I slept, always there when I awoke.

Meet the family, part 1

My brother Ethan just turned 18 last month. He's the only boy in my family, and sometimes he is a mystery to me. I am never completely sure if he's being lazy, efficient, or just smart. He can't seem to do much for himself. He always asks for other people to fix him meals, help him with homework, do his dishes. But the thing is, at least half the time, someone always does. Maybe that is more a reflection of our perception of him as the baby of the family. Regardless, he sometimes seems pretty much helpless, but only because he chooses to be.

Ethan also obsesses about the strangest things. Lately it's been Sea Island Cotton (a step up in price and quality from Egyptian cotton, which was his previous obsession) and Bugatti cars (which are fast and cool, or something). Sometimes it's a comedian, a cause, an extreme sports athlete, a TV show, a spider monkey, or any combination of those things. Whatever it is, I always get to hear all about it.

Ethan is an absolute sweetheart. He hates conflict of almost any kind (lacrosse excepted), and will be the first one in our family to say, "Alright now, let's just get along children." He gives hugs (even though he often will try to crush your ribs to show off his muscles in the process), he lets me know that he misses me, and he takes great pleasure in getting really thoughtful gifts for people. I remember once when he was about 8, I had had some teeth pulled and I was miserably sipping juice on the couch. He came over to the couch and said, very solemnly, "I'm sorry you're sick, I hope you feel better soon" and gave me a hug. I was amazed that an annoying little brother could suddenly be so sweet.

Ethan is also exceptionally cool. He plays lacrosse year round, and he is actually really good. He plays on the defense, so he has a eight-foot lacrosse stick that he skillfully uses to knock other players down. He likes to grow his hair out, and for a while he even had a little Jedi braid behind his right ear. He hair was as blonde as mine is for a long time, but now it's a darker blonde that looks really good with his tan skin. He wants to work as a wildfire firefighter this summer. He also plays the cello, so he's got some culture and class. Granted, he likes to play Apocalyptica as well as Bach, but still.

Amazingly, Ethan is also one of the most mature 18 year olds that I know. He had a girlfriend for about a year, but they decided to just be friends and date other people because they both realized they shouldn't limit themselves and they might not go to the same college and it would be a lot harder to break up later. But--get this--they really are just friends now! I think they probably still like each other, but they are making it work. I don't know of anyone else who has ever made that situation work happily.

Despite all this, Ethan occasionally still mystifies me. A typical phone conversation (and I'm not exaggerating) goes like this:
Me: Hey buddy, how are you?
Ethan: Good.
Me: Good, good. How's school going?
Ethan: It's good.
Me: ...Good. Anything new happening these days?
Ethan: Not really.
Me: ......Okay, well, is Mom there?
And that's about it. Sometimes I really pump him and get a little more info out of him, but he doesn't say much. Unless, of course, it's about a spider monkey.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

I thought I'd get a head start on Persepolis and I found myself so engrossed that I finished the whole book. The story was engaging, and although there is tragedy and sadness, there was also a measure of humor and love and the pure perspective of childhood. I think it's really important to the narrative and the structure of the book as a graphic novel that it is told from a child's perspective. That voice came through clearly and allowed us to watch events unfold with her without too much political commentary. It felt honest, and let us see what it was really like to grow up during that time. I loved her obsession with Michael Jackson and jean jackets and Nike. Her concerns were both simple and complex, but we learned about the war and the history and reasons for it along with the narrator.

That being said, I was still confused about what was going on and who was who. I appreciated the introduction by Satrapi but I still occasionally had to review in my head who the Shah was and whether being a revolutionary was a good thing or not. I'm not sure there would have been any way to avoid that, though, since the conflict and problems were so complex.

The choice to make this a graphic novel instead of a text-only memoir was an interesting one, but I think it was the right choice. The accompanying illustrations gave us a visual representation that softened the horrors of the story but still deepened our understanding of what it all looked like. I especially appreciated the different depictions of the veil the women had to wear. I would have had a very different picture in my mind if I had read it without being able to see it. I have read one other graphic novel and it also dealt with horrific events (MAUS by Art Spiegelman about his Jewish father's experience in Auschwitz during WWII), and to me it feels like the black and white drawings highlight the starkness of the story and both emphasize and undercut the feeling that life is black-and-white, easy to figure out. However, I think that it does leave the story somewhat on the surface. There wasn't a lot of room or opportunity for in depth reflection from the narrator. I don't think this was necessarily a weakness of the book, but I did wish for a deeper understanding of the narrator and her experiences.

I think the real power of this book is that it is the story of just one girl in Iran during the revolution, but her experience reflects the national experience of that time. We get to see the conflict between religion and politics, family strife, inequality of the social classes, the phycial danger of the war, loss of friends and loved ones (for various reasons), and the finality of saying goodbye. It covers a wide range of topics, but they are all worked into this one girl's experience in a way that gives them more meaning. This is reflected in the title, "Persepolis." I realized I had no idea what that was or meant, so I looked it up. It's the name given to the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, and its ruins are considered some of the wonders of the world. It connects this memoir to both the majesty and final crumbling of the Persian Empire, which is encapsulated in the story.

I am glad there is a second volume, because I felt like this book ends very abruptly. Granted, it is subtitled "The Story of a Childhood" and I think that it's clear the girl has left childhood by the end. But it's good to know that there is more, that this isn't the end of the story.

How to speak "Mormon"

One of the difficulties I keep running into when writing about my religion is the language barrier. Mormons have a unique way of talking about our beliefs, a syntax and diction that would be unfamiliar to just about anyone else. Or else it is familiar but has a slightly different connotation from the way it is usually used. Language is so key to understanding, so central to the way people think and express and explain. It's hard to know how to talk about something when the words come short of communicating what you're trying to say.

For example, as in other religions, we have prophets, apostles, bishops, deacons, teachers, priests, missionaries, saints, churches, temples, and scriptures. But each of these things means something very specific to us, with its own set of associations and implied meanings. For example, a bishop is at the head of each ward, and he's just an ordinary member called to serve as a leader. It's an unpaid position, all on his own time. The bishop doesn't speak or preach in church every Sunday (though he could), but he directs the church meetings and has stewardship over all the members of the ward and looks out for their spiritual and temporal needs.

We also have a lot of phrases that probably just sound weird, though they are all regular English words. Things like new member, recent convert, sustained to a calling, set apart, giving a blessing, paying tithing, and partaking of the sacrament.

In addition to these familiar words, we have a whole set of things that just don't make sense: wards, stakes, Relief Society, Primary, Beehive/Mia Maid/Laurel classes, General Conference, home teaching/visiting teaching, the Book of Mormon. We don't think twice about using any of these terms, because they are so ingrained in the way we talk about our religion.

We love acronyms, too. Some are easily understandable, such as SLC for Salt Lake City or BYU for Brigham Young University. Some even make sense when you know that BoM stands for the Book of Mormon and MTC stands for Missionary Training Center. But the list keeps going: FHE, YSA, BYC, PEC, PPI, YW/YM.

The thing is, we know how bizarre some of this sounds to people unfamiliar with it. And we think it's funny, because we know what it all means, we get the double meanings. One of my favorite jokes to tell other Mormons (though I originally heard it as a true story, but I seriously doubt it's true, so I just tell it as a joke) goes something like this: A psychiatrist moves to Salt Lake and sets up a practice. A woman comes in to see him. She seems very distressed, and he quickly sits her down to talk to her. "What seems to be the problem?" he asks. "I just don't know what to do," the woman says, wringing her hands. "It's the Sunbeams. They just won't stop talking."

That's all I have to say for Mormons to start laughing, or to at least smile in recognition of where thie joke is headed. Sunbeams are what we call the group of kids in the youngest class in Primary, which is like Sunday School for children under the age of twelve. The Sunbeam class takes the kids who are 3 or 4 years old. The joke continues, with the psychiatrist thinking the woman is totally cracked and talking to sunbeams, and the woman trying not to stress about how she's going to get the Sunbeams to stop talking to her. We especially find it funny because if you've ever tried to teach the Sunbeam class, you know how short their attention spans are and how quickly they can drive you crazy. It's a very language/culture specific joke, and a silly example of the kind of translation I don't know how to do.

That's what I feel like sometimes: a translator. I'm trying to take words and concepts that flow so easily in one situation and shape them to make sense in another. But like any translation, so much of the meaning and poetry of the original feels lost to me. Maybe it's just a matter of practicing more, or a matter of just writing anyway and letting you all tell me what isn't translating coherently. I don't know. But I'm going to try.

Three minutes on each of these topics:

1. A lunch you loved

When I was in first grade, I had a red plastic lunchbox that had a picture of Snoopy and his doghouse on the front. It also said "Peanuts," and I didn't know that word but I recognized that there was an "s" on the end, so I told the other kids that it said "Snoopy" backwards. I took it to school everyday with the lunches my mom made for me. A sandwich, maybe some chips or a granola bar. On a really good day there would be some pudding too. Sometimes she put a note in my lunch as well, just a "Have a good day! I love you!" Once she was feeling silly and wrote "Eye love ewe" and drew little pictures of an eye and a sheep. I didn't know what a ewe was, so I had to ask her later. She made my lunches most days for all of elementary school.

2. A memory of a Popsicle

I loved those Popsicles that came in big bags, one with the orange, blue, and purples, the other with red, brown, and yellows. My favorites were the brown because they were root beer flavored. It seemed like we usually got the other bag of Popsicles, though. I remember one summer afternoon, we had all our neighborhood friends over (Tonya and Tony Holman, Leza and Tony Farmer, my sister Rachel, my brother Ethan) and we had to line up to get our Popsicles from my mom. There weren't too many left, so we were worried we wouldn't get the color we wanted. But I chose to go last in line instead of first. I was conscious of this being a noble thing to do, but I did it because I knew it would look that way. I wanted to seem noble and self-sacrificing and be admired for it.

3. A memory of sunscreen

Sunscreen has always been a part of my life. You can't be so blonde and not be extremely susceptible to burning up in the sun. I mostly remember the times when I was dumb and didn't put on sunscreen. Like the day we were at my grandparents' house in Wyoming and after a day in the pool, I was so fried I got heatstroke and spent the next two days sick in bed. Or the time my family was in California when I was 13 and my sister and I thought it would be fun to not put on sunscreen and then fall asleep at the beach. The backs of our legs were a deep, painful, swollen red the next day and for the rest of the trip. And then I did it again, three days later, at a different beach. I didn't mean to that time, but still. It was really dumb.

4. A memory of a doctor's appointment

The last time I went to the doctor was about a year ago and was because I had skipped a period and my schedule was way off and my mom was worried. I had never had a physical before and never been to a gynecologist, so I was trying to be mature but was really quite nervous. I didn't really have a doctor, so I made the appointment with the family practice part of the local hospital. I made sure to schedule with a woman doctor. Surprisingly, I knew the assistant who showed me to the little room and took my information. Her name was Heidi, and she lived in my neighborhood for a little while when I was growing up. She was a couple of years younger than me, but she already had a kid and was getting married in a few months. We chatted about life for a few minutes, then I just asked her flat out to tell me what was going to happen in this appointment. It felt strange to ask someone who was always younger than me for that kind of information. But I was grateful that she laid it all out: stirrups, pap smear, breast exam. It made me feel so much better to know what to expect. And really, I guess it wasn't all that bad.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

This book was not what I was expecting. I don't know what I was expecting, especially with such a title, but this wasn't it. I think that threw me off at first, as I tried to plow through the first section and understand who the author was and who his father was. But as I continued to plow and read and understand and pull the pieces together, I got sucked into Nick Flynn's story and the simultaneous tragedy and wonder of it all.

I really appreciated the starkness of the voice, the unapologetic tone that Flynn uses. There is a lot to potentially hide from and be ashamed of, but he sets is all forward. He doesn't excuse his father or himself, and that somehow makes their actions okay. I didn't feel the need to pass judgment because they were just facts, just the building blocks of a story. It also made me feel secure, made me feel like things would be okay. I trusted the narrator's voice to tell me the whole story and give it to me straight.

I can appreciate the structure of the memoir as a whole, though parts of it didn't work for me. I really appreciated the dates at the beginning of most chapters. Especially when the narrative was switching from the past to the recent past, those dates helped ground me and put the story into context. I also appreciated the chapters that were in a different format, though sometimes I felt like their meaning was getting lost in the form, like the Santa screenplay. Overall, I felt like I knew where it was headed from the beginning and that made it interesting to put the pieces together. I felt like the ending was a little bit abrupt, and I wanted something a little more satisfying or definitive.

What I most appreciated was this examination of the relationship between father and son, between brothers, between mother and son. But mostly the father-son relationship. It becomes complex, real relationships between people and abstract inheritances of names and dispositions. I loved what Flynn wrote in the chapter called "Ulysses" on pages 23: "Many fathers are gone. Some leave, some are left. Some return, unknown and hungry. Even if around, most disappear all day, to jobs their children only slightly understand..." There is this aspect of absence that is fairly universal in all fathers, and this makes Flynn's experience to one very small degree universal.

My Home Tree

I wanted to be alone that day. Traveling across England with a group of 26 meant very little personal time or space, and most of the time that was okay. But that morning at Stourhead Gardens, I wanted my own thoughts and time and breath and pace.

We had started the morning at Stonehenge. Because we were a school group and we were going before it opened to the public, we got to go into the stone circle, touch the stones, walk among them, sit in the wet grass at their feet, listen to their silence. The silence felt heavy, full of questions and old, old answers. It was awe-inspiring, but it was imposing. I walked around the circle of stones, pressing my warm palm into each rough surface, greeting the monoliths, memorizing the feel of mystery.

Stourhead was such a relief, such a release after Stonehenge. It was light and beautiful and required absolutely no reflection. (It was where part of the most recent movie adaptation of ride and Prejudice was filmed.) I needed the mental space. I had found out the day before that my dad's surgery from six weeks ago hadn't caught all the cancer. It had spread, and now there was talk of radiation and drugs and more tests. It was not good news. It was like finding out there was cancer all over again, only this time I was on the other side of the world and didn't have a phone.

As I walked around the lake and admired the views, I took dozens of pictures. Everything was a postcard. I was fascinated by the tree with the flowers that hadn't opened to the sun yet, still in the shade. The rounded red petals looked like fuzzy ribbed cherries. The back part of the lake was so perfectly still it reflected the green hill and blue sky and blooming trees perfectly. There were huge rhododendren bushes with vibrant purples, pinks, reds, and oranges.

Then I saw the perfect photo op: high green bushes with purple flowers next to a tall tree, all striped with early morning light. I could sit at the foot of the tree and be perfectly framed by the bushes. I set the timer on my camera, perched it on some rocks across the path from the tree, and ran to sit on the protruding roots.

And something magical happened. As I leaned back into the tree, I found the curve of the trunk that fit my back, with the perfect bend in the roots making the ground comfortable and moss on the tree to cushion my head. The camera clicked, but I didn't move. I felt like I belonged there. The tree was made to fit me, or maybe I was made to fit it. It was almost like the universe had slid into place, had stopped spinning for a minute. I had found my equilibrium on this swiftly tilting planet, the place where I was always on solid ground. The place where I knew who I was, where I could always find myself again when the world threw me off balance. It was my Home Tree.

Maybe it's silly to make so much of a tree, but it was a distinct and special moment. I didn't have to have any answers, or even any questions. I didn't have to worry about not letting my distress show or calling my dad or coming up with an essay or writing about Stonehenge in my journal. It was my tree. And I was home. When I finally got up to leave, I touched the tree, pressed my palm into the mossy bark like I had at Stonehenge, into the rough surface. It felt the same.

Do you know someone who committed suicide?

I didn't want to write about this subject this semester, seeing as how I subjected you all to it twice last semester. But Emily's prompt to respond to this prompt got me thinking about it again.

Evan is not the first person I've known to commit suicide. The summer after 8th grade, my classmate Kevin killed himself. He was thirteen. I don't know if we were really "friends," but we'd had several classes together for two years. He was funny, kind of a goof off. I never, ever would have guessed that he was suffering. I found out that he shot himself in the mouth in the orchard behind his house, and his older sister was the first to find him. She sang at his funeral, barely making it through the song. It was so awful, the whole situation.

It was during that summer that I found out Evan was depressed. That's when the worry began, though I tried to ignore it most of the time. But he always needed some worrying over. Like the time he told me and some of our friends that his father hit him, once with a sprinkler head. We were appalled, though none of us would say the word "abuse." He told us not to tell anyone, but one of the other girls, Jessica, did. She probably told her mom, who made her tell our teacher or the principal. I remember Evan being called into the principal's office and Jessica revealing what she had done. Evan wouldn't talk to any of us for the rest of the day. Maybe that's when the worry began.

It still seems very surreal that Evan is gone. I forget, most of the time. I didn't think about him much in the last few years when he was alive, so it isn't weird that I don't think about him now. I still haven't deleted his phone number from my cell phone, though. At first I couldn't do it because it was too fresh, it hurt too much. Now I can't because...I can't. It seems wrong to just delete him from my life. The phone number wasn't even current. It's from at least two years ago, if not more. But I always kept it, in case I needed to get a hold of him. It was the only link I had.

Pittsburgh before it was home

As per Amy's request to "ugly it up" a little...

I hated the humidity here. It was especially bad during August and September in my little top floor room in a house with no air conditioning. I couldn't escape the smothering wet air that seemed to suck out my will to live. I sweat a lot anyway, so the extra water made me gross all the time. And then I'd freeze after ten minutes in an air conditioned building. Sometimes I was too hot to sleep and I would leave the fan on all night. I got so excited when it rained, because I thought the rain would clear out the pressure, cool things off. Then I realized that it just added to humidity without taking away the heat. I hated that it felt like being a jungle sauna, my hair that will not hold curl starting to frizz in weird ways. I could feel the humidity in my lungs, pushing them down underwater and holding them there. I would walk home from class late at night and be able to see, actually visibly see the water in the air around the street lights.

I hated not knowing where anything was. I could find a couple of things, but my geographic knowledge was limited to a five block radius at most. But I hated driving somewhere with my roommates and not recognizing anything, not having any kind of reference point for where I was. I couldn't tell north or south or up or down. I had no idea where a gas station was or a shopping mall. I was useless when people asked me directions. I could only plead "not from here" and hope they found someone more useful. It gave me a sense of powerlessness, of lost control.

I hated not having any friends. I have two wonderful roommates, but they aren't in school and our schedules are completely different. I didn't really know anyone in my classes beyond their names and genres. I hung out with people from church, but they weren't my friends. They weren't people I could call up at any time and say let's go out, let's do something. Or let's stay in, let's just hang out. I spent at least half of my time on the phone or on the internet trying to keep in touch with the people I missed so much. I missed being in charge, being the leader, being the instigator. I missed knowing the inside jokes. I missed being needed as a friend, being understood. I started to hate having to explain who I was again and again and again.

What have you waited a long time for?

I remember sitting in a restaurant the day I graduated from college, waiting for my family to arrive. I thought about that, about how much time we spend waiting for people to show up, literally and figuratively. About how so much of our lives are spent waiting. Waiting for the food to come, waiting to graduate, waiting for your big break, waiting for the test results, waiting for the day to come, waiting to board an airplane, waiting for the sun to shine, waiting for the rain to fall, waiting, waiting, waiting.

Mostly, I remember a time when I did not wait. My high school boyfriend, Scott, served a mission to England for the LDS church when he was 19, as all of our guys friends did. It's a two year mission and the rules are pretty strict about having contact with people back home--no phone calls and limited emailing. Sometimes when a guy has a girlfriend, he'll ask her to "wait" for him while he's serving his mission. In other words, he's asking her to not get married and to still feel the same about him when he gets back so they can pick up where they left off. It's a tricky business, waiting for a missionary. A lot can happen in two years, and with the limited communication, it's hard to keep the relationship strong. I know of a lot of couples who make it, and I know of more who don't.

I didn't wait.

I didn't get married while he was gone, nor did I even meet anyone that I could have married. But somewhere in between the time he went to England and the time he only had six months left, I realized that I didn't feel the same about him. I didn't want to pick up where we left off. I didn't want to wait. I had been all set to do all of that at the beginning. I wrote him letters and emails every week, sometimes more than once a week. I supported him, I sent him packages, I encouraged him to focus on his mission and the work he was doing. But the distance gave me perspective to see what was not good about our relationship, and then it still took me eighteen months to decide that I was moving on.

I don't consider myself an impatient person, but that decision to stop waiting was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Even though I lost Scott as a friend for a while, even though it hurt him deeply, even though it was hard for me to let that part of my life go, it allowed me to wait for the right person to come along. Someone who, ironically enough, is now waiting for me to have the experiences I need and want here in Pittsburgh.

Miss New York Has Everything

Lori Jakiela's memoir Miss New York Has Everything was an entertaining book about growing up just outside of Pittsburgh and the lessons learned from flying all around the world as a flight attendant. I wondered for probably the first half of the book what the (for lack of a better word) thesis of the book was. I came to the conclusion that it's a memoir about dreams, and how they don't all come true, or at least not in the way you expect. I think this is a universal lesson that everyone learns at one point or another, and the trick is to avoid becoming disillusioned and to still find meaning and purpose in life. I think Jakiela did both of those things in her book.

I thoroughly enjoyed her stories about growing up. Throughout her accounts about the talent show, Shaun Cassidy crush, pet poodles, family vacations, and boyfriend angst, she painted an accurate and humorous picture of what it was like to grow up in her family in her city at that time. It felt real and true, like I was chatting with a new friend and swapping stories. Her engaging style and humor made me care about her and what happened in her life. I also enjoyed reading about the details of her life as a flight attendant. I'll probably never be able to fly on an airplane without thinking about the poor flight attendants and how long they've been flying and how little they are getting paid to smile and ask if I'd like peanuts or cookies. I think those details and stories were my favorite parts, and I wanted to know more. That kind of behind-the-scenes information is especially fascinating when it's something that we all see the outside of.

On the one hand, I could see her writing a memoir just about being a flight attendant, full of funny stories and sad stories and stories about different places and about coming home. More of a travel writing memoir, I guess. But I like that she looked beyond just that one experience find a deeper, more over-arching meaning and theme for her book. I like that it wasn't just about being a flight attendant, although that was definitely very central.

I am very interested in talking to Lori Jakiela about her process of writing and publishing this book. She said that she left New York in 2000, so it hasn't been very many years since she was actually living this book. I want to know how she chose to write about these experiences when they were still relatively fresh, how she was able to gain any perspective on them. I would also like to know why she stopped when she did. I would have liked to know more about how she did end up becoming a writer, because it seemed like a lost dream for quite a bit of the book. I guess I want to know why we didn't get more details about the happy ending and the dreams that did come true in the end.

Overall, a fun, light book that made me think more about the dreams I have and the ones I've already discarded and what it all amounts to.

Tell me about someone who was a true teacher for you.

Syd was my high school theater teacher, and she played favorites. Oh boy, did she play favorites. It was a good introduction into the theater world---it's all about who you know---and it was a lesson I learned quickly. I also learned that if I went to class, kept auditioning, and tried to apply what she was teaching us, sooner or later it would pay off and she would cast me in a play. It didn't work for everyone, though. Syd still had her favorites.

Syd taught me everything I know about auditioning and performing and theater: Don't audition with a song from the show, but sing something in the same style; don't come dressed in costume; always have a resume; always be prepared to sing a second song if requested (and I was, once); always, always, ALWAYS come on time to rehearsals; as soon as something is blocked, it should be memorized; rehearsal lasts until you're done; the second night of a show is always the hardest; never touch the props unless they are yours; your call time is five minutes before your call time; it's okay to have fun while working really hard; and the director is always right, but can be open to suggestion.

Syd also taught me about stories. She told us, "There are no small parts, only small actors. Every character has a story to tell." We were there to tell a story, every one of us. It didn't matter if you were Onlooker #3 or Jean Valjean, you were still important because you were part of the story. Every show I did with her meant something more than just the choreography or costumes or music. She taught us that the power of stories is in how they can change your life.

Syd died a year after I graduated from high school. It was a blood clot after some surgery, and just like that she was gone. She was brilliant; she knew theater; she loved her students; she was tyrannical; she was lazy; she played favorites; she played jokes on us; she was our mother, our director, our boss, our friend, our teacher.

A (Potential) Character Flaw

I have been thinking tonight about a (potential) character flaw, and this seemed like the proper forum to do some thinking out loud. I guess I need to think about it because when you discover a character flaw in yourself (whether it's a self discovery or kindly pointed out to you), you can either change or learn to accept it. There are some things about myself that I accept, but there are some things I've tried to change.

This train of thought actually started yesterday during class. I tend to get embarrassed easily, and though I have certainly gotten better at not getting embarrassed, this still becomes an issue for me on occasion. For example, when I forgot we were waiting for Emily to read and started in on the discussion. My initial reaction was to curl up and die in a ball of shame and never speak again, but I was able to see the humor in the situation and laugh it off (though I did have to give myself a little pep talk before saying anything again). This represents progress for me.

I had a similar situation in my travel writing class tonight. I broke away from the main topic of discussion to ask if the essay in question was really travel writing. I thought it was a valid question, but after a minute I realized that it wasn't really pertinent, that we'd already discussed what the genre is, and that I had totally derailed the conversation. I felt foolish. It wasn't that the teacher or any of the other students said anything to make me feel that way, I just read too much into the situation. But I felt enough chagrin to keep me mostly silent for the rest of the class.

I am one of those sad people who do things or rather, don't do things, out of a fear of looking foolish. I think a lot of people fall into this category, but I don't like it about myself. I have accepted it to a degree: I recognize that I am motivated by this silly desire to avoid looking silly in front of other people or even just myself. But I don't like living in fear of anything. It's not a quality I admire, and it's definitely not something I admire in myself. In the movie Strictly Ballroom, the theme of the movie becomes, "A life lived in fear is a life half-lived." This has become a motto for my life. I have worked hard over the last few years to not stop living my life because of fear. I went skydiving, I went skinnydipping, I traveled to England, I fell in love with someone who didn't love me back, I said no to someone who did love me and wanted to marry me. I took some risks. But have I really changed? I can't even speak out of turn in a class where no one really cares if I make a little mistake without wanting to retreat into myself.

My friends were telling me about a discussion they had about whether or not, as forward-minded women, they would have survived the Salem witch trials. It became a kind of game/classification system, with one opinionated friend immediately classified as "the first to go" and another who is decidedly more passive as "the last one left." I laughed at their game, but I didn't ask how they would classify me, and I realize now that I didn't want to know. Because I know what the answer would have been: I would have survived because I would never have let on that I had any opinions or thoughts or was different in any way. I would have been too afraid. And realizing that has made me realize that I have never really been brave enough to be different. I don't stick my neck out there. I have accepted this part of myself, but as I thought about it in this context, I was not pleased. I can't think of a single time I have stood up for something I believe in a way that made a difference. If I have a different opinion, I usually keep it to myself. I value keeping the peace over being honest about how I feel. And I don't think I like that about myself.

This brings me back to the beginning of the post and this potential character flaw: what do I do with it? Learn to accept it as part of who I am? Or can I change? I know I've made progress in the past, but I don't know if I can really be a different person.

Unhealthy Obsession #1

I don't know who invented bubblewrap, but I would like to publicly thank that person, whoever he or she is, for the hours of entertainment I have gotten out of his (or her) fine invention.

I don't know why bubblewrap is such an immense pleasure to me, but I truly consider a sheet of new, unpopped bubblewrap to be the cherry on the frosting on my cake of life. I get a terrific sense of satisfaction out of those explosive POP!s and out of discovering every new little bubble of air that I can gleefully destroy. I can sit for hours, literally hours, making sure that I don't miss a single delicious circle. The popping noise doesn't bother me at all (provided I am the one making the noise) and I find it almost soothing to sit with a book in one hand and bubblewrap in another. Strangely, other people do not find my simple pleasure quite as soothing, so I have found it necessary to not only hide myself when the bubblewrap-popping mood overtakes me but also to hide my stash of bubblewrap.

I suppose bubblewrap also has a practical purpose in cushioning and protecting fragile items from becoming damaged when being packaged. And I'm sure it does its job admirably. I can't complain of any derelict bubblewrap failing to keep something in one piece. Perhaps my unhealthy love of bubblewrap developed with my love of getting mail now that I live so far from home. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Perhaps I enjoy getting mail because I never know what the packages will contain. One sheet of bubblewrap? Two? The anticipated hours of joy fill me with unbounded excitement. If I had known moving away would have resulted in a steady supply of plastic filled with compressed air bubbles, I would have left a lot sooner.

"Where is home for you?" Part 2

My home is with my fiancé Tim. If home is where the heart is, a part of my heart is definitely in Pittsburgh, a part in England, a part in California, and a large part in Utah where my family and friends are. But no matter where I am, if I'm with Tim, I'm home.

It's so strange and so wonderful how incredibly comfortable we are, and have always been, when we're with each other. Most of our relationship has been long-distance, so we've had a lot of time to really talk and get to know each other. And somehow that has translated into being comfortable with each other when we get to be in the same place. I visited Tim in California last Thanksgiving, and I was a little nervous about seeing him. I had been in Pittsburgh (and away from him) for fourteen weeks, and in that time we'd decided we wanted to get married and talked very seriously about making that happen. Our relationship had gone through some fairly drastic changes in the time apart, and I didn't know how it would affect our time together.

But we never missed a step. From the moment he found me at the airport and kissed me good right in front of the LAX crowds, it was completely natural, completely normal, completely right to be there with him. Whether we were making Thanksgiving pies or taking a walk or getting lost in Long Beach or going to see a movie or cuddling as we watched a movie on the couch, there was a strong and at times almost submerging sense of belonging. I sometimes didn't even notice it was there because it was so constantly present. When I am with Tim, I feel the most like myself, and that should be the way we feel when we're home. Home should be the place where we feel the most safe, the most loved, the most sure of ourselves, the most free to think and act and be who we are without fear. A place where our true selves---good, bad, ugly, beautiful---are allowed to shine forth. And Tim makes me feel all of that, more than I've ever felt it.

My other half, my best friend, my one true love, my soul mate....I know it sounds naïve and I know that in many ways I am, but I also know that Tim is my home.

Swamp Songs

One of the things that so interests me about stories is how they all connect. All the stories we tell connect to ourselves, to who we are, to where we are, to how we define ourselves, and often, all our stories connect to each other. So often as we tell one story, maybe about a family member or an experience at school, we are also telling a story about ourselves. I find this fascinating!

Swamp Songs really exemplified that kind of connection. The river and lake and swamp waters that connect so many places in Louisiana become a metaphor for the way these places and people connect Sheryl to herself and to her family and home. Like the swamps, like gumbo, there isn't a way to separate out all the pieces that combine to make the whole. Sheryl is shaped out of these places and experiences. These essays really are "the making of an unruly woman." I loved the connection between everything, the way the essays overlapped. I think in some ways, this kind of overlapping stories is the only way to tell about who you are.

Another thing that I really enjoyed was all the information that was brand new to me. I feel like I know so much more about swamps and cypress trees and fishing and rivers and flooding and eating crawfish and Mardi Gras and gumbo and hurricanes and spicy food. I was never bored, just fascinated by all the new information. It really is like another world, and I really admire Sheryl's skill in opening up that world to her readers. I sometimes wondered if she had to do any research or if she knew it all already.

I also admired her honesty. There was a lot of hard stuff in there, stories that I don't think I could share so openly with the world. But it was incredibly refreshing and many times very moving too. I felt so included and trusted to be given this information. I don't know how you learn to write about the hard stuff, but it's a skill I really admire. And it's another way that as readers, we come to know an author. The stories that we tell about our lives and our selves have to be this honest in order for anyone to really come to know who we are.

"Where is home for you?" Part 1

My favorite part of my hometown is not actually part of the city itself, but is rather part of the geography, the part that shapes the weather, the seasons, the horizon. My favorite part of my hometown of Orem, Utah are the mountains. As part of the Rockies, the Cascade mountains border us on the east, effectively creating an easy reference point for directions. As long as I can see the mountains, I know where I am and how to get home. Rocky and uneven, they are pretty sparse when it comes to vegetation. The green haze that eventually appears is our sure sign of spring, and the disappearance of the last bits of snow means that summer is fully underway. When the mountains turn red and orange, we know it's officially autumn, and when the clouds roll in and leave a light dusting of snow on the peaks, winter is on its way. Our compass, seasonal indicator, and constant presence is my favorite part of my hometown.

It's a little bit strange to me that I still think of Orem as my hometown. My family moved thirty minutes north to the city of Draper almost four years ago, but as much as I love our new mountaintop home that overlooks both the Salt Lake and Utah valley, I still tell people I am from Orem. I sometimes say Provo because it is the bigger city (with the bigger university) that more people have heard of, but as anyone who grew up in Orem will tell you, they are two very separate places.

Orem is fairly unremarkable, I suppose. The populations is somewhere around 100,000 and we have a university (recently upgraded from being a state college), three high schools, four junior highs, and about a dozen elementary schools. There are two hospitals, two live theaters,two movie theaters, one public library, and one shopping mall. Not a metropolitan center by any means, but respectable. We mock the Spanish Fork (pronounced "fark") accent just south of us and go forty-five minutes north to Salt Lake for a nice night out. Everyone lives and dies by the BYU football season and almost everything is closed on Sundays. The streets get exponentially more crowded when the high schools let out around 2:30 in the afternoons and our biggest celebration every year is the Summerfest parade and festivities in June. There is a bus system, sort of, but most everyone drives or maybe bikes. Orem was ranked the second best place to raise a family in the United States a few years back, and it's true.

I guess the thing that really sets Orem apart is that at least 80% of its inhabitants belong to the Mormon church, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This means that all of my friends were members of the Church, that we got release time to attend Church seminary as part of our junior high and high school education, that none of us smoked or drank, and that we didn't even start dating until we were 16. We had Church youth activities during week and church on Sundays, and when they turned 19 every one of my guy friends left to serve two-year missions for the Church. And this was the way life was, well, is. When I was growing up, it never would have occurred to me to describe my life in these terms because they were such a part of life in Orem, Utah. I only think to mention them now because I am living far away from that environment and culture, and only now can I see it as being unusual.

I think I reached the point where I'm not sure where else to go with this idea. The question is, "Where is home for you?" and I thought of my hometown. But Orem isn't really "home" for me anymore. It was home---for about fifteen years it was the only home for me. But now it is nostalgic, reminiscent, dear to my heart, and only the place where I grew up.

An explanation as introduction

As one of a group of theater nerds in high school, my friends and I loved the musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, which is all about the characters and situations from Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strip. When my friends and I found out it was playing in Cedar City (a three hour drive away) over Labor Day, we decided it was a good time for a road trip. During one of the scenes, Lucy intrudes on Linus as he is watching TV and announces to him that she's decided that when she grows up, she's going to be a queen:

LUCY:
Linus, do you know what I intend. I intend to be a queen. When I grow up I'm going to be the biggest queen there ever was. And I'll live in a big palace with a big front lawn and have lots of beautiful dresses to wear. And, when I go out in my coach all the people...

LINUS:
Lucy!

LUCY:
All the people will wave, and I will shout at them. And...

LINUS:
Lucy, I believe queen is an inherited title. Yes, I am quite sure a person can only be queen by being born into a royal family of the correct lineage so that she can assume the throne after the death of the reining monarch. I can't think of any possible way that you could ever become a queen. I'm sorry Lucy, but it's true.

LUCY:
And in the summer time, I will go to my summer palace and I will wear my crown in swimming and everything. And all the people will cheer and I will shout at them...WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T BE QUEEN?!?!

And for reasons unknown, my kind friends decided that was a perfect summary of me and it stuck. Really, I don't think I'm quite so overdramatic or power-hungry or aggressive as Lucy, but I have to admit, "queen" does have a nice ring to it....