His Dream Girl was Anne of Green Gables (College Writing 2005)

He said his dream girl was Anne of Green Gables. My three friends and I were camping at this Christian rock festival for the week. We had just finished our freshman year in college. We came back to the festival. Maybe it was some attempt on my part to pretend that there was an easy bridge to be built between the person that graduated from high school and the person I had become a year in college. But seeing things as they actually are is a bridge that is difficult to find.

So our tent was on this little hill leading down to the huge lake. We spent half the week trying to figure out how to sit in our lawn chairs without tumbling down into the water. It was on the main path leading to the main stage where all the big bands played; the backache from sleeping was only a small sacrifice. Stephen came over one of the first days as I was trying to figure out exactly how the grill worked. He was kind of short for a guy with this dark hair and watery blue eyes. The whole week he wore these surfer board blue and white shorts without a shirt. He comes over and sits right down and begins talking about passion and believing in God. I sit down and before I know it we are talking about soul mates and other silly ideals. And that is what these kinds of things are all about anyway, camping and doing nothing but talking to strangers from North Carolina. He is a youth leader, and his plan was to go abroad and do missionary work. I on the other hand was already head first into my college life or the journey to losing my faith. But he made me want to believe. I could tell you everything I know about him. but I wont. But I’ll say this: He left an impression. We sat all week at his campsite with his youth group and listened to him play guitar, the night sky, the big fire by in front of us. The week left us and I made sure I took a picture of him. I have it tucked in my bible: Him in this adidas green t-shirt with a red bandanna on, and a half smile like things are right in the world, or they could be. We exchanged emails, and for weeks we would email each other questions and replies. There never was anything but answers and another question. Some nights we talked on AIM and as drunken girls ran up and down my college hallway he told me about this God that he loved. I would think about how much I didn’t want to loose my faith in college, and it made me sad then talking to him.

This one night I started admitting that this bridge I kept looking for was nowhere to be found most days. I was unguarded, exposed. It felt good. He listened, challenging me carefully and then he says -Emily, I have a good feeling about you. You’re going to be just fine. I say -what do you mean by that?

-It’s something you just have to see for yourself. I’ll tell you though, but next time we talk.
He then tells me he was going to London, to do missionary work with youth. I knew that I would hardly hear from him, the world was so big and he didn’t even know it. I told him to email me, let me know that he was good. -That you’re happy, I said, it’s important I know you are. I will he promised. Two months went by and I heard nothing from Stephen. One late afternoon I came home and looked at my buddy list, there was his name. I couldn’t believe he was online, I IM-ed him and said -Are you alive?
The IM replied, -Hey, this is Stephens father.
I wrote, -oh im sorry, I just haven’t heard from Stephen how is he? , I’ve am sure he is doing great things.
His dad did not respond right away. Then he wrote, -don’t you know.
-Know what?
-Stephen died he then said. - He died on his way to the airport.
I sat completely still, my eyes blinking at the computer screen, cheeks soaking.
-There were over a thousand people at his funeral, he was twenty four.
-He was wonderful
-He was wasn’t he, his dad wrote then.
-Yeah.
I don’t elaborate but I can tell he knows what I mean. He then suddenly asks me,
Do you think it’s bad I can’t delete his name from our AOL account?
It was a silly question really, his concern over it, the junk mail piling up for a guy who will never check his mail again. Once a month he gets online to delete the full mailbox.
I tell him- keep his name. I say, it’s good to keep it.
-I will, he says, thank you.

Stephen didn’t die right away. That is the worst part. Some days I’ll think about him sitting on our lawn chair awkwardly propped up on the little hill-him sitting there \ laughing and talking about life like it can be everything we deeply imagine it to be. He had these piercing blue eyes too. I’ll think of that, and then this image of him lying on the ground as sirens, blue, red, white fill the air. And I wonder what is happening in his mind. I wonder if he knows he is dying and most importantly if he’s scared. I hope then, when I think like this, that he closes his eyes and doesn’t think about the blood covering his white pale body. I wish for him to just think about goodness.

I never did find out what he was going to wait to tell me, and it’s kind of beautiful in my mind, his soul holding a secret about me. When I smell bonfires in the fall, I think of this, and I hope, not even for anything in particular, I just hope.

All the Things we Fear (writing from 2007)

April 2, 2007

When I was a little kid I used to be afraid of being kidnapped. I had this crazy phobia from second grade up through fifth. My thoughts were tangled up in this idea that a bad man was out there, and he would probably get me one day. I think this ridiculous idea came about for many reasons. I distinctly remember this hot summer day when I was nine. The heat was thick and I was poking my toes into the melting tar that was accumulating at the end of our driveway. It was too hot to do anything. My friend’s mom, who lived across the street, came bounding out her screen door towards my house.

“Hi Mrs. Stofen,” I said as the tar burned the tips of my toes. Her face was red and full of fresh freckles. “Where’s your mom?” I pointed to the kitchen sliding door. She was pulling Molly behind her and I followed them through the brown dead grass. “Hi Dee,” Mrs. Stophen said in an exasperated tone, “Did you HEAR?” That’s the thing about living in the suburbs. The moms start talking in this exasperated can-you-believe-IT kind of way where they put an outlandish emphasis on certain words. As if it’ll give what they are saying some sort of better validity. “No,” my mom said puzzled. She often heard the neighborhood gossip last. “Well, there is a man in a green car, one of those old 1960 Plymouths, and he has been roaming around our neighbored the past week. He tried to get the little Jefferson girl in his car. He almost got her too; the police have been driving around keeping a watch out all afternoon.” She sighed then really big.

“Just keep a watch for him, and EMILY,” she looked at me sternly, “Don’t be hanging out by the street or talking to anyone you don’t KNOW.” I nodded quickly. I wasn’t quite sure about all this, but the way she gave me this stare, I knew it must be important. My mom didn’t think much about it. She had bills to pay, a dirty kitchen floor to wash, and five obnoxious kids to take care of. She never took these kinds of happenings seriously. I stayed inside the rest of the day.

A few days later I was out playing with the sprinkler when I saw him. It was just as Molly’s mom described. Puke green Plymouth with rust slithering up the side doors. I don’t really remember the face of the guy, but he drove up and down our streets with a strange and quiet presence. He’d look out the window but not directly at us. I immediately went over to my friend Elif’s house. She was two years older than me, and I knew she would know what to do.

“Well if you think you actually saw him, you need to stay outside, don’t go inside if your mom isn’t home, that is when he’ll get you. Kidnappers always break in when they see your mom going somewhere and leaving you all alone.” She told me this with confidence, and she said my best bet would be to stay out in public. Looking back, she was a ridiculous ten year old who watched too many America’s Most Wanted. But I listened to her.

The next time my mom left me alone, I ran outside to the field across the street from where we lived. I sat in the middle of the field with my legs folded. I peeled apart blades of dry grass for hours.

Then suddenly there he was driving down my street. The puke green car never stayed in the neighborhood long. I sat still. My eyes remained peeled until they began to water down my cheeks. Biting my lip I was invincible there in an enormous field, and I believed that somehow sitting like that-I was safe from anything out there. A little while later my brothers found me in the field. “What the hell are you doing?” they asked. They were older and found me as their entertaining nuscience.

“Come on, its time for dinner.” Little did they know I had been sitting like that for two hours.

As time went on I became obsessed with this idea that I would not age. I walked home from school with my friend Jenny. Her house was two blocks closer to school than mine. I would sprint the last two blocks-my backpack bouncing behind me. One night I was on my parent’s bed walking on my dad’s back. He worked in the city and hated his job, and sometimes I walked up and down his back to get the knots out. I sat down and looked at him. He was listening to channel 11 like he did every day at 6:20p.m. “Dad,” I said then. He looked over at me and gave me this half listening nod.

“Dad, I don’t think I’m going to make it to my high school graduation, I just wanted you to know.”

My parents were used to me-the dramatic youngest child. They also knew that my imagination was wild. I mean I was that kid who tried to dig for China-but instead of an afternoon excursion-I would spend weeks digging away-when all the other kids had gone back to their big wheels and sidewalk chalk.

So my dad looked over at me then and said, “Emily you are ten. Of course you are going to graduate high school. Don’t you even THINK about not taking school seriously.” I shook my head stubbornly, “No you don’t understand Dad. I don’t think I’ll make it to graduation. I don’t think I’ll be around by then. I mean maybe someone will take me away before I get that old.” He blinked and scooped a spoonful of sherbert icecream in his mouth. “Why do you let your imagination run away with you,” he said, and before I could answer he handed me his empty bowl; “Will you run this downstairs for me Em?” Sighing,, I nodded and shut the door.

One night I told my best friend, Jenny, about this phobia. I was on the phone and my mom overheard me. I don’t think she realized until then how serious it was. She came inside my room later when I was half asleep and began humming some catholic song from church. Growing up in a big family I sometimes felt like my mother was a few states away. Some days I even wanted to send her postcard-because I felt that far apart. But other times-I was there with her-and I wanted to hold onto those moments- like they were the last. I remember my mother as a kid late nights. I’d be crying and she would get a big glass of water. My mom propped me up and made me drink the entire glass in one gulp. By the last drop I suddenly was ok-about it all.

During those years I had this phobia, I wrote about how I didn’t think I would see my 18th birthday. It was an unexplainable fear. I wasn’t sure whether to run inside and lock the doors, or throw myself in the middle of an abandoned field. I felt paralyzed. My mom immediately called the school psychologist. The psychologist came to my classroom a few days later. She pulled me out into the hallway. “Are you OK,” she said. “Should we TALK.” Looking at this stranger, I suddenly snapped out of this coma. “No,” I said, “I’m fine.” It almost threw me off that anyone had noticed. I wasn’t sure where to go from there. The lady looked at me and nodded. I knew she would keep an eye on me. I don’t know exactly what snapped me out of all that madness. This stranger pulling me out of my class like that to check to see if I was to see Ok made me see that in fact, I was more than ok.

I think we have fears that stem from all the uncertainties we have in life. They have to get out somehow. So sometimes we channel them in certain ways or manifest them into something else because we don’t know how else to deal with life’s confusions.

I’m older now. When I imagine myself sprinting those last two blocks home I laugh at myself. Its funny how I snapped out of the idea I was ageless. We get consumed by ideas. Some days I’ll think back to the three years I felt I would never age. One time when I was in college, I stood on the edge of a 50 foot cliff. I was about to jump and conquer my fear of heights. I stood there, and thought about myself lying on my parent’s bed. I remember what I told my dad. Here I was 22, jumping off a cliff into a deep well of water, and it made me wonder about all the things we fear. You can’t always explain why you feel the way you do. We fear the unknown. We fear the known. Those years as a kid taught me about how ideas can control you. You can’t let a concept consume your whole life. Because suddenly there you are-sitting cross legged in an open field. We let what we fear overcome who we are.

I was only nine at the time, but I was suffocated by this idea, that, I would never make it to something better. I am almost 25 now. I still feel that. We all do. This idea- that-we won’t become the best we can be. We will always fall slightly short. But you have to believe that you are almost there-because you are.

The 42 DC Bus-(2006)

I ride the bus to school every morning. Usually I am digging in my pockets looking for quarters like a pigeon searching for scraps in Central Park. I have a metro pass, but it’s broken. Most of life’s daily inconveniences are due to those little things you never get around to fixing.

I finally scrounge up the $1.25 and board the bus. Its 7:30 in the morning and my bag is spilling with student’s papers, lesson plans, and empty water bottles. I tend to really look around. I’m vulnerable at this time and so I think too much. That’s how it is in early in the morning. Everything is too fresh.

Every day I see the same people. Mostly they are moms hopping the S2 with their kids. -Climb onto the seat before YOU go through the windshield they say. I’m telling you these bus drivers aren’t kidding around. They plow down 16th street. If you have to stand, well, I hope you have some good shoes on. I kind of appreciate them for that. It’s like they know I hate mornings and I barely made it to the corner on time. If they don’t step on it I am going to be late. When you are teacher you can’t be late. So I smile as we cruise up the hill, because they are watching out for me you see. Like a little guardian angel to start off my day right.

I sit back and watch the regulars board the bus. They watch me. A few are moms bringing their kids to the private school four blocks away from where I teach. All of my kid are on free lunch and I’m happy if they wash their uniforms. Details, I remind myself as they spill in each morning. The moms are looking at me wondering. -Who hired her for gods sake with that hair looking like that. They know I am a teacher because I have my bag full of library books that says Ms. O’Neal on the front. A kid gave it to me and lets be honest it’s a great bag. But I’m trying to stay away from the teach apple cardigans with yellow school buses knitted across my chest. I’m trying. They are eyeing me and wondering. I kind of think we should all join a group, us regulars, and form a bond because we are surviving the daily grind together on this bus. It’s beautiful because it seems there is little time these days to share a moment with strangers.

When we reach 16th and Shepard the same little girl and mother get on. The girl has dark chocolate skin and braids. She is probably 10 or 11. Old enough to start looking out dirty bus windows and getting sad about things. Her mom is tall with long feet and deep eyes-like wells that you cannot see to the bottom of. Endless. She gets on behind her daughter and grips the top of her backpack pushing her forward –Sit down over there. EXCUSE me, go on, sit there, NO not there THERE. The girl eagerly goes for the seat. Her mom sits down with her and she looks around wildly. –---Do you have enough room ma’m? she asks the old women next to her. The women nods –oh yes yes I’m fine. But she motions her daughter closer to her. –Move this way come on now.

Her daughter listens quickly. I can tell she would be a student I would want in my class. Her mom is different from the other moms. I know they aren’t going to the private school, but I wonder where they are heading.

Sometimes the mom comes on with glazed eyes and headphones. She still plays drill sergeant to her daughter-keeping her in check. Almost as if she took her eyes off for a moment maybe the little girl would fall into a pothole on the sidewalk and never get out. She watches her like that. The other mothers, on the other hand, are reading the paper not paying one lick to their kids sitting next to them. I don’t blame them either. I mean they are fine, but this watching the contrast between mothers I’m not sure who to blame. Everything seems too jumbled as if there is no one to blame.

So the mom gets on this one morning with glazed eyes and begins singing out loud. She is sitting next to her daughter, her hand is still gripping the top of her backpack as she belts out Whitney Housten from an old cassesste player. She gazes over to her and sings louder pressing her finger up to her nose. It’s funny to see this contrast. Mommmm, the girl says with a pleading voice. It reminds me of when my mom used to take out her stress of raising five kids on the bagger at the supermarket. –How do you NOT have paper bags left? She’d say. HOW, let me talk to your manager.

The girl is looking at her mom and she is shedding innocence right before my eyes at 7:46 AM. I am sad for her to see her mother high. It baffles me that this is the mother who won’t let her hand off her daughter’s backpack. Maybe this is all an act, I think, this good mom go sit there, no no, don’t squish anyone honey… ACT. Have I been fooled by her every day I wonder?
What kind of mother is she anyway?

The other day the girl gets on alone. She puts in her token and moves directly to the front seat. Her mother is outside pointing at her where to sit. I watch out the stained dirt window. I’m sure the girl is a little confused about things. Her black mixing with Her white. GRAY. She looks like a sweet girl. A kid that does her home-work, and someone that helps the teacher at recess. The bus begins to pull away. The mom is letting her go, and as I look back I see her standing on the corner waving goodbye. The girl sees her and this sudden smile stumbles upon her face. I watch her looking at her mom, and it’s this sudden reaction from within her spilling out. Then slowly she turns around and our eyes hit each other. I look at her. She looks at me. It is a quiet brief exchange.

Her mom starts to walk away, but then stops and looks back to watch the bus go. The girl assumes her mom is gone by now, but I catch her lingering, waiting there on the corner. There she is- just standing-blinking. Maybe hoping she won’t fall into potholes while she is gone. Maybe the mom will spend the day buying cement to pour into her own.

I kind of wish I was a painter then. So I could take out a canvas when I got home that night and paint her face watching her daughter like that. I want to ask her to be in the regular club then, because it isn’t every day strangers give away some of their secrets. We are all trying to step over the cracks spreading up the sidewalk. Things seem so clear and unclear suddenly.

As I get off I smile at the girl. I won’t tell anyone about this, I say with my smile. About what I know about you now. It’s safe with me. There are a million kinds of smiles out there, and this is the kind I give her. She smiles back. Me and the other private school moms with their kids get off. I blink and our paths diverge.

Chicago in the Summer

In Chicago the winters are brutal. It is cold for 6-8 months straight. You have to dig your way out of your parking spot many snowy mornings. Your car is not going to look the same by May-that's a fact. You want to kick yourself in the as* for choosing to live in such a freezing city! We all suffer together and just hope we'll make it until summer. Then summer comes suddenly. I almost forget it even exsisted, but there it is, waiting before me. And its like the love we have for the cubs when they win: surprising and utterly grateful.

Chicago in the summer is fantastic! Not a single person seems to take it for granted-how could we!? We know as it begins, how ever-so fleeting the season is for all of us. So we milk it to its very last drop. If you are a true Chicagoan you know exactly what I am talking about. The best things to do in Chicago in the summer:

1. Street Festivals. Every weekend a neighborhood blocks off streets and parties it up. Metromix has all the festivals listed. You could spend every weekend doing just that!

2. Movies in Grant Park: My friends and I grab some wine, snacks and a big blanket and head on down to grab a spot on the lawn. TONS of people go to this free event. Movies are featured on Tuesdays.

http://www.spudart.org/blogs/randomthoughts

3. Navy Pier! You can grab ice cream or a beer and walk around. If you buy a drink you are allowed to walk around with it as long as you stay on the pier. Fireworks are every Saturday night too! The ferris wheel and shops are the icing on the cake.

4. Venetian Night. This is the longest running event in Chicago. Basically a bunch of boats are brought to life with lights and props which sail along Lake Michigan. The crowd is packed. Bring drinks, a picnic, chairs and watch the show. It ends with FANTASTIC fireworks!

http://www.explorechicago.org/city/en/things_see_do/event_landing/special_events/mose/venetian_night.html

5. Kayaking: There are multiple spots you can go out and rent a kayak and have some fun in the sun.

6. Have a Boat Party: Last summer we got a group of 50 of us together and rented out a boat on Lake Michigan. This included food/open bar. If you want to head out on a boat just for a few hours and catch the breeze check out the wendella boat tours.
www.wendellaboats.com

7. North Avenue Beach: The beach is packed and so much fun on the weekends. Reserve some nets and play a game of volleyball or go hear live music at Castaways. The North Avenue bus takes you straight there. So easy!

8.Millenium Park: There is sooooooooo much going on all the time here.

9. BBQ: outdoor space is a must here! We BBQ-ed it up this summer on my back deck!

10. Houndstooth on Thursday nights: They open up the windows and blast country music. $5 pitchers too. It spices up the bar scene from the normalcy.

11. Cleo's bar for $5 pizza on Thursday nights. Take a break from the heat and grab some fantastic pizza! (pesto chicken is my fav)

Other events around Chicago area:

12. Muddybuddy. This is a run/bike/crawl through mud race. We camped the night before which made it so much more fun. www.muddybuddy.com

13. The Michigan Dunes. Avoid the hot days! You can camp out or go for the day. A good change of pace.

14. Starved Rock: Great hiking, also camping if you want.

These are my suggestions! If you live in Chi or plan on visiting, pencil some of these events into your weekend/trip. The list is endless. By summer's end, I don't even dread the upcoming winter-quite.so.much. :)