There were two people I met during my high school career that changed my life significantly more than anyone else. They weren’t the boys I dated or the best friends that I made. They weren’t even the teachers I had or adult figures I looked up to. No, Megan and Michael were just six and nine when I spent the summer before my junior year with them and they were the two most inspirational people I grew to know in my four years of high school.
“You need to be prepared when you see her,” my mom said to me. “She looks shocking.” I shrugged it off, I imagined it couldn’t be worse than anything I’d seen on TV. My mom’s best friend, Vicky, was taking care of a woman dying from liver cancer. She was in denial, somehow she hadn’t accepted her fast approaching death despite the tumor that had swelled her failing liver to thirteen times it’s normal size. When I finally did meet her, I realized that my mom was right. I had to consciously control my facial expression when I saw her stomach. Her liver was filling it and it hung down over her thighs. But besides her bloated middle, the poor woman’s body was emaciated. She wouldn’t live much longer.
Megan and Michael seemed strangely detached from their mothers deteriorating condition. She was a single mom and was still living at home with both of them. Vicky was going in and out daily, helping take care of her, as was my mom and other friends and volunteers. However, I began to get the feeling that Megan and Michael contributed most of the care.
I was sixteen and jumped at the chance to help two kids whose mother was dying. “Just hang out with them,” Vicky told me. “Give them a chance to be kids.” While their mom went to chemo, we went hiking. I packed lunches, salami sandwiches and animal crackers. While their mom slipped away day by day, we went to the lake and floated down the river on inner-tubes. I took them to the counselor once a week, each time they would come out with grins on their faces. They always said how much they loved their psychiatrist.
One morning Megan found her mom unconscious on the floor of the bathroom. We went out for ice-cream that day and Megan and Michael were nothing but smiles. I began to realize that these two kids were the strongest people I had ever met. They had become accustomed to the painful appearance of their own mom. There was a little furrow that had appeared across Megan’s forehead, a wrinkle most likely caused by stress. She was only six and she had developed a stress line on her face, but I never once saw her cry. They experience was undoubtedly hard on both children, impossibly hard, but they bounced. They appeared happy when we were together, they laughed and played just like kids. Maybe they compartmentalized, maybe they suppressed their fears and tears. But I believe that they found the ability to truly feel happy while their mother died in front of their eyes. And to me, it was inspiration in a time of grief.
A few weeks later, their mother passed away. I didn’t see them after that, they moved away with family, to a new school and a new life. All alone without their mother. It’s been five years now and I know that two of the strongest kids have grown into two caring, happy and brave teenagers. I still think about them, and I still wonder how I would hold up if I had to go through what they did.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Rodney
On a Saturday night a creature crept amongst the ripe tomatoes, speckled bananas and waxy jalapeños in a basket on our kitchen counter. It was dark and chilly in our house when I muted Law and Order and padded silently into the kitchen with bare feet to scrounge hopelessly for a snack of sorts. Little did I know but the creature was there. In our kitchen. Tail hanging over the edge of the fruit basket, about to be caught red-handed stealing mouthfuls of hot pepper. Light cast down upon the creature as I carelessly flipped the switch, my pupils dilated then focused. The little bastard stared me straight in the eye, sniffed twice (rather haughtily) and then made his break for the back of the stove. Well of course I screamed. I’m rather ashamed to admit that I also leapt upon a chair in fright and was looking about frantically when my roommate dashed to my rescue. Following my sputtered explanation, quite the ruckus ensued in our house, this was a big deal to say the least. We were experiencing our very first mouse in our very first house.
“You know . . . Mice don’t have bladders,” my sister would later tell me over the phone. “They track footprints of urine everywhere they go.” So there we stood, in our urine covered kitchen, a broom clutched threateningly in my hand and the dust pan (to sweep the carcass into after I bashed it?) raised protectively in my roommate, Autumn’s hand. Where was the little intruder? Our ears strained to hear minute mouse movements. Where had he been? Had we been eating food tracked with tiny footprints of mouse urine? Amid our crisis we decided there was but one thing to do. I picked up my phone and I speed-dialed Rodney.
Now Rodney is an interesting character to say the least. We were first introduced to him in September when we moved into the house we are currently renting. I remember him knocking on the door one afternoon. It was a little jingle he tapped with his knuckles and I found it odd as I opened the door and took in the sight of him. He wore an old and faded Hawaiian shirt with the sleeves cutoff. His bright green running shorts blew gently in the wind and flaunted more than a bit of tanned thigh. He was old. A Vietnam vet I would come to learn. His hair was white and always combed down with water when he came to visit us. His nose was very large and lumpy looking. He held his hand out to me, stuck it in through the edge of the door and announced, “Hi, I’m Rodney. I live upstairs, I’m your neighbor.” It was the beginning of a short but lovely friendship between Rodney, Autumn and I.
Rodney had been a big help to us in the first few months that we lived in the house below his apartment. We would see him wander by our windows in the late afternoon, picking up pieces of trash from our front yard and he would always hoot out a hello and raise his old hand high for a little wave. He once asked me to help him become acquainted with his new cell phone. “I hate these damn things,” Rodney said. “I ain’t never had one but you know, I guess it’s time I get one.” After that, I frequently saw him wandering outside the house in the late evenings in his green shorts, yackin’ on his phone to someone or another. He would see me and give me a wave and a hoot, I think he came to appreciate his new phone.
It was late in the evening when I called him on his phone to come downstairs fast and help us with our mouse. He didn’t answer and I listened to his voicemail that I had helped him program as I clutched the broom in apprehension. We were still standing in the kitchen when he called me back. I answered breathlessly.
“Hello?” I said.
“What!” he barked menacingly.
“Rodney! I just saw a mouse! We have a mouse in our house!”
“What?! I can’t hear ya!”
Rodney was drunk.
“Rodney, there is a mouse in our house. We don’t know what to do.”
“You got a mouse?”
“Yes Rodney.”
“Well I got a gun.”
“No Rodney, no gun. I don’t think that’s the answer for just a little mouse.”
“I’m comin’ down!”
Much to our relief Rodney came down twenty-five minutes later holding a flashlight instead of a gun. He reeked of booze but his hair had been wetted and combed down carefully. Rodney spent a five minutes poking around in our cupboards. No mouse. Autumn and I stood by tensely, she with the dust pan clutched to her chest, me with the broom handle clutched to mine.
“Well girls, I just don’t see nothing’,” Rodney said. “It’s just a little mouse, it won’t do you no harm.”
The three of us sat down in the living room and Rodney began to explain to us that the solution to removing the mouse was to get a cat. We patiently explained back that we couldn’t adopt a cat due to allergies and perhaps a nice mouse trap would suffice? “No mousetraps!” He bellowed. “No, no mousetraps! You get yourselves a cat you hear? Don’t go using no mousetraps.”
Eventually we ushered him out of our house and sent him back upstairs to bed. Soon after we leapt into our Autumns car and drove to Wal-mart to buy a four-pack of mousetraps. The following day, Rodney came meandering past our window, shaded his eyes with his hand to see inside and gave us a little wave. We met him at the door and welcomed him in, explained that there had been no sign of the mouse since last night. Meanwhile, little did he know but there was two mousetraps set and waiting in a dark corner of our cupboard, one with peanut butter and one with feta (incase it had a more refined palate). “Man, I tell you what, if only I was younger when I met you two girls,” Rodney said. “I tell you what, you two girls are something else. Real nice girls.” We loved Rodney. Suddenly, I sat up abruptly. Fully alert. Had she heard it? She had, Autumn was staring back at me with wide eyes. The sound of the mousetrap snapping was unmistakable. Rodney rambled on about his old Vietnam days while we stared at each other and exchanged silent communication. Could we tell him what had just happened? No, we couldn’t tell him, he had been so adamant about not buying mousetraps.
“You have to go Rodney,” I said. He looked slightly bewildered as we rushed him out of our house.
Peeking into the cupboard, there he was. The little mouse who had eaten our jalapeños. It was almost sad, seeing his crippled little body. After all, he had been our mouse, almost a guest in our home. These thoughts were still lingering in our minds when we walked back to the living room and were just sitting down when a second mousetrap snapped. Could we possibly have more than one mouse?
This story goes on to encompass many, many more mice, a full on infestation you could say. Our cupboard became a battle zone, mouse droppings, bits of fur, it was a regular bloodbath. We caught mouse after mouse, set trap after trap. One horrific night a mouse scampered across my roommates body in bed. We became professionals at bating and killing the rodents that mysteriously intruded our home. Rodney never found out about our slaying technique but he did occasionally call me late at night, offering to role me a blunt to “help me relax and not worry about that darn mouse.” One day, when the mice stopped coming, Rodney no longer lived upstairs. He had left. Just like that. It was awhile before we noticed that we hadn’t seen him chatting away on his cell phone, or giving us a wave through the front window. We learned that Rodney had cancer. When it was discovered, Rodney’s brother bought him a condo and without a word, Rodney moved away. The mice don’t come around anymore, not after we snuffed out their little souls in our kitchen cabinet. We had gotten used to checking and setting the traps morning and night, the mice had become part of our daily routine, as had Rodney. He made us feel at home living in the new house, checked up on us, visited and laughed with us in his Hawaiin cutoff. When he was gone new people moved in to replace him. We don’t know who they are, we have never talked to them. Someone told us they were dealing drugs from the upstairs apartment. As for Autumn and I, well sometimes we just wish the mice would come back. And Rodney too.
“You know . . . Mice don’t have bladders,” my sister would later tell me over the phone. “They track footprints of urine everywhere they go.” So there we stood, in our urine covered kitchen, a broom clutched threateningly in my hand and the dust pan (to sweep the carcass into after I bashed it?) raised protectively in my roommate, Autumn’s hand. Where was the little intruder? Our ears strained to hear minute mouse movements. Where had he been? Had we been eating food tracked with tiny footprints of mouse urine? Amid our crisis we decided there was but one thing to do. I picked up my phone and I speed-dialed Rodney.
Now Rodney is an interesting character to say the least. We were first introduced to him in September when we moved into the house we are currently renting. I remember him knocking on the door one afternoon. It was a little jingle he tapped with his knuckles and I found it odd as I opened the door and took in the sight of him. He wore an old and faded Hawaiian shirt with the sleeves cutoff. His bright green running shorts blew gently in the wind and flaunted more than a bit of tanned thigh. He was old. A Vietnam vet I would come to learn. His hair was white and always combed down with water when he came to visit us. His nose was very large and lumpy looking. He held his hand out to me, stuck it in through the edge of the door and announced, “Hi, I’m Rodney. I live upstairs, I’m your neighbor.” It was the beginning of a short but lovely friendship between Rodney, Autumn and I.
Rodney had been a big help to us in the first few months that we lived in the house below his apartment. We would see him wander by our windows in the late afternoon, picking up pieces of trash from our front yard and he would always hoot out a hello and raise his old hand high for a little wave. He once asked me to help him become acquainted with his new cell phone. “I hate these damn things,” Rodney said. “I ain’t never had one but you know, I guess it’s time I get one.” After that, I frequently saw him wandering outside the house in the late evenings in his green shorts, yackin’ on his phone to someone or another. He would see me and give me a wave and a hoot, I think he came to appreciate his new phone.
It was late in the evening when I called him on his phone to come downstairs fast and help us with our mouse. He didn’t answer and I listened to his voicemail that I had helped him program as I clutched the broom in apprehension. We were still standing in the kitchen when he called me back. I answered breathlessly.
“Hello?” I said.
“What!” he barked menacingly.
“Rodney! I just saw a mouse! We have a mouse in our house!”
“What?! I can’t hear ya!”
Rodney was drunk.
“Rodney, there is a mouse in our house. We don’t know what to do.”
“You got a mouse?”
“Yes Rodney.”
“Well I got a gun.”
“No Rodney, no gun. I don’t think that’s the answer for just a little mouse.”
“I’m comin’ down!”
Much to our relief Rodney came down twenty-five minutes later holding a flashlight instead of a gun. He reeked of booze but his hair had been wetted and combed down carefully. Rodney spent a five minutes poking around in our cupboards. No mouse. Autumn and I stood by tensely, she with the dust pan clutched to her chest, me with the broom handle clutched to mine.
“Well girls, I just don’t see nothing’,” Rodney said. “It’s just a little mouse, it won’t do you no harm.”
The three of us sat down in the living room and Rodney began to explain to us that the solution to removing the mouse was to get a cat. We patiently explained back that we couldn’t adopt a cat due to allergies and perhaps a nice mouse trap would suffice? “No mousetraps!” He bellowed. “No, no mousetraps! You get yourselves a cat you hear? Don’t go using no mousetraps.”
Eventually we ushered him out of our house and sent him back upstairs to bed. Soon after we leapt into our Autumns car and drove to Wal-mart to buy a four-pack of mousetraps. The following day, Rodney came meandering past our window, shaded his eyes with his hand to see inside and gave us a little wave. We met him at the door and welcomed him in, explained that there had been no sign of the mouse since last night. Meanwhile, little did he know but there was two mousetraps set and waiting in a dark corner of our cupboard, one with peanut butter and one with feta (incase it had a more refined palate). “Man, I tell you what, if only I was younger when I met you two girls,” Rodney said. “I tell you what, you two girls are something else. Real nice girls.” We loved Rodney. Suddenly, I sat up abruptly. Fully alert. Had she heard it? She had, Autumn was staring back at me with wide eyes. The sound of the mousetrap snapping was unmistakable. Rodney rambled on about his old Vietnam days while we stared at each other and exchanged silent communication. Could we tell him what had just happened? No, we couldn’t tell him, he had been so adamant about not buying mousetraps.
“You have to go Rodney,” I said. He looked slightly bewildered as we rushed him out of our house.
Peeking into the cupboard, there he was. The little mouse who had eaten our jalapeños. It was almost sad, seeing his crippled little body. After all, he had been our mouse, almost a guest in our home. These thoughts were still lingering in our minds when we walked back to the living room and were just sitting down when a second mousetrap snapped. Could we possibly have more than one mouse?
This story goes on to encompass many, many more mice, a full on infestation you could say. Our cupboard became a battle zone, mouse droppings, bits of fur, it was a regular bloodbath. We caught mouse after mouse, set trap after trap. One horrific night a mouse scampered across my roommates body in bed. We became professionals at bating and killing the rodents that mysteriously intruded our home. Rodney never found out about our slaying technique but he did occasionally call me late at night, offering to role me a blunt to “help me relax and not worry about that darn mouse.” One day, when the mice stopped coming, Rodney no longer lived upstairs. He had left. Just like that. It was awhile before we noticed that we hadn’t seen him chatting away on his cell phone, or giving us a wave through the front window. We learned that Rodney had cancer. When it was discovered, Rodney’s brother bought him a condo and without a word, Rodney moved away. The mice don’t come around anymore, not after we snuffed out their little souls in our kitchen cabinet. We had gotten used to checking and setting the traps morning and night, the mice had become part of our daily routine, as had Rodney. He made us feel at home living in the new house, checked up on us, visited and laughed with us in his Hawaiin cutoff. When he was gone new people moved in to replace him. We don’t know who they are, we have never talked to them. Someone told us they were dealing drugs from the upstairs apartment. As for Autumn and I, well sometimes we just wish the mice would come back. And Rodney too.
Friday, February 11, 2011
The Old Man
Victor Montana’s population was 854 ten years ago. It’s 856 today because Darcy LeRaye had herself some twins a few years back. Darcy is a single mother and waitresses at a little café called The Brand and it’s a place that I know good and well. Well I guess it’s a place I knew good and well because ever since I lit outta Victor I never thought twice about The Brand or anything else that made me into who I am today. It’s like I stopped growin’ up that day and became grown up as soon as my tires aimed south and spit dust. But it’s funny how you can make a plan and it all goes wrong and you can dream something and the world just wags it’s finger in your face. I ended up back in Victor because I reckon I got myself lost and confused and didn’t I have enough confidence to walk both my feet forward. I didn’t want to end up back at home and I didn’t want to end up eating at The Brand again but that’s what happened to me.
It’s the only place in Victor besides the grocery where you can get food on a Sunday and my friends were lugging me along to grab some grub after a late Saturday night. They thought it was cute how we sat at the same table that we used to all those years ago. It’s got a picture on the wall next to the table of a little boy riding high up on a horse, his little legs stickin’ out perpendicular over the horses back because they’re to short and the horse is to wide. I get real sentimental about stuff like that, stuff like reminiscing and déjà vu. I didn’t feel much of anything as I sat there, a little perhaps, like I wished deep down that I was still a kid and I hadn’t gotten as old as I was.
It was ‘99 and we rolled up to The Brand on a rusted green riding lawn mower. We must have put one thousand miles or more and that old rattle trap by the end of the summer. That mower coulda taken us to the moon and back if we’d known the way. Before that summer we always rode our bikes everywhere we went, but the summer of ‘99 is when we really started riding in style. It was about a mile and a half into “town,” consisting of a grocery, a hardware store, a casino, a dentist/doctors office, a hair salon, and The Brand. Every Sunday morning the three of us, Sunni, Amy and I had a tradition. We would wake up early, fire up the mower, and head on into town to eat early bird breakfast at The Brand. We headed a cloud of dust the size of Mt. St. Helens, scaring every cow in the fields we passed with Sunni and I perched up on the back and Amy going strong at the wheel. Roaring at a steady seven miles an hour , it took us a solid twenty fifteen minutes to get to The Brand. We’d park our mower in the same slot every week, next to rusty bailing trucks with panting cattle dogs in the back.
I remember the last Sunday we ate at The Brand because it’s pretty near the most crazy thing that ever did happen to me. It happened halfway through our Buckaroo Burritos. Contentedly absorbed in stuffing our faces, we didn’t notice a plastic packet of grape jelly come sailing over the high-backed booth until it landed in Amy’s eggs and splattered Tabasco sauce onto her shirt. Forks poised halfway to our mouths, we froze and starred at the object as if it were a bomb. At a loss of what to do, Amy suspiciously removed the packet of jelly from her plate and we resumed eating. Well it wasn’t five minutes later that a second grape jelly flew gracefully over the booth and landed squarely in Sunni’s glass of milk. Three baffled faces crowded around the rim of the glass and pondered the object bobbing gently within it. Since I am the shortest and the youngest out of the three of us, I was nominated to find the answer as to what was sending jellies over the booth at us. After a few minutes of argument, I heaved a sigh, shimmied over to Amy’s side of the table, and standing on the seat, I peeked over the edge of the booth. Facing me was a young couple and a baby in a highchair, across from them with their back to our booth was an elderly couple, most likely the parents of one of the younger persons. The young couple and the elderly woman chatted pleasantly and crooned at the baby as it waved a spoon in the air. None of them seemed to notice the old man, however, who was hunched over and concentrating on the utensils in front of him. As I watched, straining to see over his bony shoulder, he placed an object on the curved part of his fork, hit the opposite end with his fist and sent a jelly nearly ricocheting off of my forehead. I gave a little scream and hustled back down to the table to report back to Amy and Sunni’s anxious faces. Never one to miss out on an adventurous opportunity, we promptly agreed to launch defensive fire. Sunni licked her spoon clean, grabbed a jelly, and placing it in the hollow of the spoon pounded the opposite end with her fist. The spoon flipped wildly through the air and bounced off the wall, while the jelly shot upward, hit the ceiling and came crashing back down onto our table. A dry reedy laugh cackled from the opposing booth and the same dry voice announced “you have to use a fork!” This declaration was followed with a bombardment of three more jellies, a packet of half-and-half, and more reedy laughter. Engrossed now, we grabbed up forks and started shooting jellies in every direction. The harder we tried, the more disastrous our attempts became. Meanwhile, the young couple and the old woman carried on in casual conversation as if nothing were happening. Fifteen minutes later, our waitress marched over to our table and informed us that we needed to excuse ourselves from the restaurant. In one last attempt Amy placed a jelly on the end of her fork. As if in slow motion the jelly sailed neatly over the back of our booth and landed with a satisfying smack on the opposite side. Immediately afterward, the wails of a baby erupted, the waitress spun to face us, and the dry reedy voice announced, “Ya hit tha baybay!” We made our break to the lawnmower and sped back to the farm as fast as we could go, given the nature of our transportation.
After that we were to scared to go to The Brand anymore, we had never been thrown out of anyplace before. Gradually our parking spot was filled and a while later, we forgot all about the café where our names were carved on the corner booth.
Looking back it’s hard to imagine I couldn’t care about a place like that. It meant so much back then. I’ll bet it meant more to me then, than anything that makes me feel today. I only wish I coulda held on, grabbed that place and wrapped myself up in it till nothing could hurt me and the world could only see that wars should be fought with jelly. Maybe it hasn’t been long enough, maybe one day I’ll go back to The Brand and those greasy Buckaroo Burritos will taste as good as they did during the summer of ‘99.
It’s the only place in Victor besides the grocery where you can get food on a Sunday and my friends were lugging me along to grab some grub after a late Saturday night. They thought it was cute how we sat at the same table that we used to all those years ago. It’s got a picture on the wall next to the table of a little boy riding high up on a horse, his little legs stickin’ out perpendicular over the horses back because they’re to short and the horse is to wide. I get real sentimental about stuff like that, stuff like reminiscing and déjà vu. I didn’t feel much of anything as I sat there, a little perhaps, like I wished deep down that I was still a kid and I hadn’t gotten as old as I was.
It was ‘99 and we rolled up to The Brand on a rusted green riding lawn mower. We must have put one thousand miles or more and that old rattle trap by the end of the summer. That mower coulda taken us to the moon and back if we’d known the way. Before that summer we always rode our bikes everywhere we went, but the summer of ‘99 is when we really started riding in style. It was about a mile and a half into “town,” consisting of a grocery, a hardware store, a casino, a dentist/doctors office, a hair salon, and The Brand. Every Sunday morning the three of us, Sunni, Amy and I had a tradition. We would wake up early, fire up the mower, and head on into town to eat early bird breakfast at The Brand. We headed a cloud of dust the size of Mt. St. Helens, scaring every cow in the fields we passed with Sunni and I perched up on the back and Amy going strong at the wheel. Roaring at a steady seven miles an hour , it took us a solid twenty fifteen minutes to get to The Brand. We’d park our mower in the same slot every week, next to rusty bailing trucks with panting cattle dogs in the back.
I remember the last Sunday we ate at The Brand because it’s pretty near the most crazy thing that ever did happen to me. It happened halfway through our Buckaroo Burritos. Contentedly absorbed in stuffing our faces, we didn’t notice a plastic packet of grape jelly come sailing over the high-backed booth until it landed in Amy’s eggs and splattered Tabasco sauce onto her shirt. Forks poised halfway to our mouths, we froze and starred at the object as if it were a bomb. At a loss of what to do, Amy suspiciously removed the packet of jelly from her plate and we resumed eating. Well it wasn’t five minutes later that a second grape jelly flew gracefully over the booth and landed squarely in Sunni’s glass of milk. Three baffled faces crowded around the rim of the glass and pondered the object bobbing gently within it. Since I am the shortest and the youngest out of the three of us, I was nominated to find the answer as to what was sending jellies over the booth at us. After a few minutes of argument, I heaved a sigh, shimmied over to Amy’s side of the table, and standing on the seat, I peeked over the edge of the booth. Facing me was a young couple and a baby in a highchair, across from them with their back to our booth was an elderly couple, most likely the parents of one of the younger persons. The young couple and the elderly woman chatted pleasantly and crooned at the baby as it waved a spoon in the air. None of them seemed to notice the old man, however, who was hunched over and concentrating on the utensils in front of him. As I watched, straining to see over his bony shoulder, he placed an object on the curved part of his fork, hit the opposite end with his fist and sent a jelly nearly ricocheting off of my forehead. I gave a little scream and hustled back down to the table to report back to Amy and Sunni’s anxious faces. Never one to miss out on an adventurous opportunity, we promptly agreed to launch defensive fire. Sunni licked her spoon clean, grabbed a jelly, and placing it in the hollow of the spoon pounded the opposite end with her fist. The spoon flipped wildly through the air and bounced off the wall, while the jelly shot upward, hit the ceiling and came crashing back down onto our table. A dry reedy laugh cackled from the opposing booth and the same dry voice announced “you have to use a fork!” This declaration was followed with a bombardment of three more jellies, a packet of half-and-half, and more reedy laughter. Engrossed now, we grabbed up forks and started shooting jellies in every direction. The harder we tried, the more disastrous our attempts became. Meanwhile, the young couple and the old woman carried on in casual conversation as if nothing were happening. Fifteen minutes later, our waitress marched over to our table and informed us that we needed to excuse ourselves from the restaurant. In one last attempt Amy placed a jelly on the end of her fork. As if in slow motion the jelly sailed neatly over the back of our booth and landed with a satisfying smack on the opposite side. Immediately afterward, the wails of a baby erupted, the waitress spun to face us, and the dry reedy voice announced, “Ya hit tha baybay!” We made our break to the lawnmower and sped back to the farm as fast as we could go, given the nature of our transportation.
After that we were to scared to go to The Brand anymore, we had never been thrown out of anyplace before. Gradually our parking spot was filled and a while later, we forgot all about the café where our names were carved on the corner booth.
Looking back it’s hard to imagine I couldn’t care about a place like that. It meant so much back then. I’ll bet it meant more to me then, than anything that makes me feel today. I only wish I coulda held on, grabbed that place and wrapped myself up in it till nothing could hurt me and the world could only see that wars should be fought with jelly. Maybe it hasn’t been long enough, maybe one day I’ll go back to The Brand and those greasy Buckaroo Burritos will taste as good as they did during the summer of ‘99.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Finnish Women
I’ve been traveling for eighteen hours when I meet a girl with a classic Nordic appearance who is beautiful without makeup or accessory. The Finnish are beautiful people. Their country is thickly forested with numerous large lakes and a lively population of healthy mosquitoes. Second to Japanese, the Finnish language consists of the highest percentage of vowel use. She tells me this in mild conversation and I listen to a continual flow of melodious vowels and gentle undertones broken by guttural ka’s.
It is a tiny wooden house on the lake’s edge that she takes me to. She gives me a robe and I don’t know where it came from and I don’t care. I shadow her motions as we step inside. My senses are heightened as I follow her lead and I am acutely conscious of the outcome of my unfolding actions. I have become aware that I will be in fact, truly bathing with this girl and am relieved that I do not feel nervous and was never one of reserve. She begins to take off her clothes shamelessly, I hang back, trying to stay one step behind her. She takes off her shirt, so do I, ties her hair up, so do I. Preoccupied with averting my eyes from her body, I am unaware of my own nakedness. The Finnish do not understand modesty. Embarrassment is embarrassing. In her accent and rolling syllables she asks “Why are people shy?” It’s meant as a statement and she touches the side of my waist, “You have a beautiful body. We all have the same. We all are the same no?” We turn to the heavy wooden door, I push, am supposed to pull. The wood under my hand is warm and the air behind it is as thick and moist as Asian rain. A variety of bodies and a wave of wet heat hover before me and without hesitation I step into the enveloping warmth of foreign tradition. Women’s voices filter through a haze of sodden air and dissolve into the wooden walls. Everything is wood. The sauna is similar to a small log cabin, thick pine logs stacked on top of each other into a low ceiling. If I was taller I would have to bow my head like some of the other women. Women of various ages, all who are beautiful in a state of conventional ambiance, all who are naked except one girl who is wearing a bikini. She is so clearly American and stands out like red in a room. They are embarrassed for her and avert their eyes as if she were the one who was naked and everyone else clothed, but no one says anything. They are polite as is the way with so many foreign cultures. “It is better than American spa yes? The air is so fresh” the Nordic girl says in my ear, beckoning with her hands, combing them through the syrupy air, speaking close to me as if the density of the billowing steam reverberates sound.
Light strains through a single window and rivulets of condensation allow me to glimpse the lake outside. There are many summer houses dotting the shore of this lake and the many other lakes in Finland. Saunas are everywhere, in almost every household, and usually within a few feet of the lakes edge. Steps lead directly from the door of the sauna into the water. There are more steps to, which I will climb to the second level inside the sauna. Near the door, they are wet, the wood slimy underfoot, but the air is a bit lighter here and women sit thigh to thigh facing each other on parallel benches. The intimacy of bathing together is apparent through the manner of conversation held on these benches. They discuss things that make them feel; events that occurred in their day, their children, places they go, places they want to go. Men. I listen to them laugh, my hair hanging in wet strips around my face. I am the only person in the sauna with dark hair and this is the only factor that reminds me that I haven’t grown up in this culture, that this is something I have never done before. Sweat is seeping out of me now, running down my back, creasing through my eyelids, dripping off my nose, tracing down my shoulder. More hands throw water onto the stove and it screams off the hot metal, exploding into the stifling air. The heat is to intense for me now and I stand up from the benches where the women will remain to discuss delicate food.
Soon chunks of soap appear and when they do the air is sweetened. A homemade bar is pressed to my hand, it smells like flowers and lathers like whipped cream. Thick pale suds glide to the boards underfoot and elderly women hold the elbows of the more stable as to not slip on the wet rock, but I do. I slide and my hands grasp the wet bodies of strangers, with sweat in my eyes I cannot see them but I hear their kind laughter and it makes me forget that I have dark hair. I pick up a bristled brush from a bench and scrub the soap into circles on my skin. A woman touches my shoulder and offers to wash my back, I guess that she is about the age of my mother and I hand her the brush gratefully, hold my hair and shake my head when she asks if she rubs to hard. With her fingertips on my bare skin, I share a moment with this stranger, more intimate than any I’d ever shared with the very woman who gave birth to me. I fail to comprehend the gravity of the realization I’ve just made for I am drunk on the air, my inhalation and sight obstructed. I can feel the molecules of heavy air come in, my lungs hang with its weight and finally reject its moisture reluctantly through the back of my teeth.
We are going to rinse now, metal pans pass from hand to hand, some with hot water, some with cold that I can’t understand the origin of. I almost find myself surprised that this step is necessary, as if I expect to become cleaner and cleaner, building upon the process of bathing with these people, not conclude it, rinse it away, dry it off. Some have massaged the soaps lather into their hair and have to hang their heads upside down to rinse it free. I feel as though the very inside of my mouth is sweating and swallow with my lips together.
The atmosphere within the thick air is forgiving of not only appearance but of thoughts, manners, and mind-set. Everyone is welcome and included, absorbed into the Fin’s unguarded traditions. Strangers wash the backs of one another, and I think that maybe it’s the result of nudity that compassion circulates from one to the next. Passing by way of women, who don’t know me, women I don’t know, will never know, yet who share with me, an unrepeatable experience . When in sauna, one temporarily surrenders all concerns, these women gather to bathe, relax and rejuvenate. The lack of privacy within the walls of the tiny log cabin defends us, soap and sweat unite us, binding us together, a family of females. Simultaneously, in a wet mass, we struggle ourselves out, into the clear twilight, slipping in one another’s puddles and footprints, some diving head first, others stepping gingerly into the lake, into water so cold breath seizes inside me. And it is this moment, the revolution of bitter water consuming my body, striking the clarity of my conscience, that I realize I have just experienced for the first and hopefully last time in my life, a moment of absolute equivalence, felt thoroughly absent of all identity in a circumstance lacking even the slightest of criticisms. I have lived in a moment of entirety, I’ve experienced Finnish perfection, täydellisyys.
It is a tiny wooden house on the lake’s edge that she takes me to. She gives me a robe and I don’t know where it came from and I don’t care. I shadow her motions as we step inside. My senses are heightened as I follow her lead and I am acutely conscious of the outcome of my unfolding actions. I have become aware that I will be in fact, truly bathing with this girl and am relieved that I do not feel nervous and was never one of reserve. She begins to take off her clothes shamelessly, I hang back, trying to stay one step behind her. She takes off her shirt, so do I, ties her hair up, so do I. Preoccupied with averting my eyes from her body, I am unaware of my own nakedness. The Finnish do not understand modesty. Embarrassment is embarrassing. In her accent and rolling syllables she asks “Why are people shy?” It’s meant as a statement and she touches the side of my waist, “You have a beautiful body. We all have the same. We all are the same no?” We turn to the heavy wooden door, I push, am supposed to pull. The wood under my hand is warm and the air behind it is as thick and moist as Asian rain. A variety of bodies and a wave of wet heat hover before me and without hesitation I step into the enveloping warmth of foreign tradition. Women’s voices filter through a haze of sodden air and dissolve into the wooden walls. Everything is wood. The sauna is similar to a small log cabin, thick pine logs stacked on top of each other into a low ceiling. If I was taller I would have to bow my head like some of the other women. Women of various ages, all who are beautiful in a state of conventional ambiance, all who are naked except one girl who is wearing a bikini. She is so clearly American and stands out like red in a room. They are embarrassed for her and avert their eyes as if she were the one who was naked and everyone else clothed, but no one says anything. They are polite as is the way with so many foreign cultures. “It is better than American spa yes? The air is so fresh” the Nordic girl says in my ear, beckoning with her hands, combing them through the syrupy air, speaking close to me as if the density of the billowing steam reverberates sound.
Light strains through a single window and rivulets of condensation allow me to glimpse the lake outside. There are many summer houses dotting the shore of this lake and the many other lakes in Finland. Saunas are everywhere, in almost every household, and usually within a few feet of the lakes edge. Steps lead directly from the door of the sauna into the water. There are more steps to, which I will climb to the second level inside the sauna. Near the door, they are wet, the wood slimy underfoot, but the air is a bit lighter here and women sit thigh to thigh facing each other on parallel benches. The intimacy of bathing together is apparent through the manner of conversation held on these benches. They discuss things that make them feel; events that occurred in their day, their children, places they go, places they want to go. Men. I listen to them laugh, my hair hanging in wet strips around my face. I am the only person in the sauna with dark hair and this is the only factor that reminds me that I haven’t grown up in this culture, that this is something I have never done before. Sweat is seeping out of me now, running down my back, creasing through my eyelids, dripping off my nose, tracing down my shoulder. More hands throw water onto the stove and it screams off the hot metal, exploding into the stifling air. The heat is to intense for me now and I stand up from the benches where the women will remain to discuss delicate food.
Soon chunks of soap appear and when they do the air is sweetened. A homemade bar is pressed to my hand, it smells like flowers and lathers like whipped cream. Thick pale suds glide to the boards underfoot and elderly women hold the elbows of the more stable as to not slip on the wet rock, but I do. I slide and my hands grasp the wet bodies of strangers, with sweat in my eyes I cannot see them but I hear their kind laughter and it makes me forget that I have dark hair. I pick up a bristled brush from a bench and scrub the soap into circles on my skin. A woman touches my shoulder and offers to wash my back, I guess that she is about the age of my mother and I hand her the brush gratefully, hold my hair and shake my head when she asks if she rubs to hard. With her fingertips on my bare skin, I share a moment with this stranger, more intimate than any I’d ever shared with the very woman who gave birth to me. I fail to comprehend the gravity of the realization I’ve just made for I am drunk on the air, my inhalation and sight obstructed. I can feel the molecules of heavy air come in, my lungs hang with its weight and finally reject its moisture reluctantly through the back of my teeth.
We are going to rinse now, metal pans pass from hand to hand, some with hot water, some with cold that I can’t understand the origin of. I almost find myself surprised that this step is necessary, as if I expect to become cleaner and cleaner, building upon the process of bathing with these people, not conclude it, rinse it away, dry it off. Some have massaged the soaps lather into their hair and have to hang their heads upside down to rinse it free. I feel as though the very inside of my mouth is sweating and swallow with my lips together.
The atmosphere within the thick air is forgiving of not only appearance but of thoughts, manners, and mind-set. Everyone is welcome and included, absorbed into the Fin’s unguarded traditions. Strangers wash the backs of one another, and I think that maybe it’s the result of nudity that compassion circulates from one to the next. Passing by way of women, who don’t know me, women I don’t know, will never know, yet who share with me, an unrepeatable experience . When in sauna, one temporarily surrenders all concerns, these women gather to bathe, relax and rejuvenate. The lack of privacy within the walls of the tiny log cabin defends us, soap and sweat unite us, binding us together, a family of females. Simultaneously, in a wet mass, we struggle ourselves out, into the clear twilight, slipping in one another’s puddles and footprints, some diving head first, others stepping gingerly into the lake, into water so cold breath seizes inside me. And it is this moment, the revolution of bitter water consuming my body, striking the clarity of my conscience, that I realize I have just experienced for the first and hopefully last time in my life, a moment of absolute equivalence, felt thoroughly absent of all identity in a circumstance lacking even the slightest of criticisms. I have lived in a moment of entirety, I’ve experienced Finnish perfection, täydellisyys.
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