It's Just Like Magic

My regular readers might remember this post I wrote about a month ago in which I waxed gibbous (is that not seriously the coolest phrase?) about my friend Shanon's paintings and my almost lifelong yearning for one.

You'll imagine, then, my pleasant surprise when I celebrated my birthday two weeks ago and unwrapped this treasure:

She now hangs above the piano, alone in the center the of the wall, my favorite part of the living room.

What have I learned from this? Blogs are magic. Mention something you want on this sacred space, and all your dreams come true.

Have I mentioned lately how much I need one of these?

Human teeth.

Okay, folks. Spill it. Why does the tooth in the below post creep everyone out so much? I hadn't anticipated that reaction. Though I suppose an unidentified human tooth in your child's mouth isn't so pleasant when you put it that way . . .maybe not such a good idea for a children's book? :)

In Which Young Ones Write

1. There is a wonderful new post up at The Little Clover that you should definitely check out.

2. Tuesday morning I get to give a presentation to 8 to 10 year-olds about being an author. This scares me so much more than similar presentations to high school and college aged groups has.

3. Last week, Clementine was playing in the sand table at Elias' school when we dropped Elias off. After a few minutes, it was obvious she had something in her mouth; assuming it was one of the many rocks and shells and plastic animal figures that pepper the sand table, I made her give it to me. Turned out to be a tooth. Wasn't her tooth, though. End result? Next week, I'll be helping Elias' kindergarten class create a group book about "The Mystery of the Lost Tooth."

Bernie Madoff and the Grim Reaper

I left my monthly appointment at the pain management clinic last Wednesday afternoon and climbed into our old dented mini-van feeling slightly defeated. The spinal procedures had not worked (a lot of pain for nothing) and I am left with few options except more medication at this point. I guess it's fair to say I might have been a bit grumpy, then, when I turned on the radio to listen to Talk of the Nation on my drive home.

The show that day was called "What It's Like to Lost Everything." The central focus was the whole Bernie Madoff debacle, and then they branched out to people who had "lost everything" in other ways: losing a job, natural disasters, fires. It was heartbreaking to hear people tell their stories about waking up one day to learn that everything they owned was no more.

But the first guest on the show, successful writer of books about dieting and food Geenen Roth, said something that had me worked up enough that here I am, more than a week later, blogging about it (it's in the first three minutes of the show if you want to take a listen). Like far too many others, Roth had to answer a phone call wherein she was informed that her entire savings of 30 years had disappeared and Bernie Madoff, the man in whom she had trusted her fortune, was in handcuffs. Roth had written a piece for salon.com entitled "Fleeced by Madoff" wherein she outlines her sense of loss and acceptance; the article landed her the guest spot on Talk of the Nation.

The host asked her to comment on the fact that there is a contingent of the population who is dismissive of the loss of wealth for those in the upper tax brackets. I'm glad he brought it up, because I think it's important to note that even though many of Madoff's victims were mulit-millionaires, the loss they face is still life-altering, and psychologically it can do a lot of damage. Just because I don't have enough to invest in hedge funds or, let's face it, any stocks whatsoever, doesn't mean that I don't feel sympathy for those who did have that ability and then lost their fortunes. While Ms. Roth seemed to agree with me on this point, her rationale was a doozy.

First, she made a point of saying that although she might have come to a point of great wealth and success, she wasn't always there. She claims to have been homeless for a time in her life. Homeless, you say? Yes. And by homeless she means--and she says this--she didn't have enough money for her own place, so she worked as a live-in nanny.

So live-in nannies are homeless? Try living under a bridge in January for a few nights, Ms. Roth, an then tell me if you were homeless as a nanny.

Here comes the kicker. She said, and I quote, "All of us are going through some kind of loss." She mentions that those without the amount of wealth she lost in Madoff's scheme who had money in other stocks have lost a third of their wealth because of the decline of the market. Good point. Next: "Those who didn't have enough money to put anything in anything are also experiencing losses everyday, the way we all do: the loss of someone you love, the sudden death of someone you love, an illness. . . "

Um, did she just compare the loss of her millions to the loss of a human being? Yes. Yes, she did. Apparently I should understand how it feels to lose millions, even though I have never had a penny to invest, because my father died from brain cancer when he was only 56. Pretty much the same thing.

A question, Ms. Roth: do you ever have those dreams? You know, the ones where your lost money suddenly appears at a bus terminal or in your doorway and your heart catches for an instant with hope that it was inexplicably risen from the dead? Do you wake from those dreams flooded with grief because all you want to do is hold your money's hand one more time and make sure it knew how much you loved it?

Do you ever look at a picture of you and your money together in better days, when it was still with you, and break into a spasm of tears the way I did last night when I saw this one:

I didn't think so.

Inaugural Poem 2009: Praise Song for the Day

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by "first do no harm," or "take no more than you need."

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

--Elizabeth Alexander

*note: A commemorative chapbook of this poem will be released in February 2009 by Graywolf Press.

Pioneer Cemetery--MLK Day of Service

We had a great time sprucing up the cemetery today, despite the freezing cold wind. The kids were great sports about it and Elias especially really got into scrubbing each and every dirty headstone he saw with a bucket of soapy water and a brush. (Sometimes it does pay off to have a child with OCD, after all!)
Chloe was a primo branch-gatherer. We've had some very stormy days, and there were free range branches covering a good portion of the graves.

Clementine did enjoy dragging some smaller branches into piles, but for the most part she wanted to re-arrange flowers and trinkets on graves while we urged her not to, and discover little kitty statues under some of the more ornate headstones:
We were luck enough to have Nana helping.

And here's a final shot of Daddy Gibbous hefting bags of debris:
So what did you all decide to do to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day? And can you believe that as of this posting, there are less than twelve hours left of the Bush era?

Can I hear a Woot-Woot?

That's what I'm talking about.

A Sunday Love Story (part 4): Breakups, Makeups, and Mug Shots

Are you up to speed in our little tale of love and intrigue? If not, you might want to stop here first:

Part 1: Red Ruffles and Rat Tails
Part 2: Band Plumes and Compact Discs
Part 3: Corsages and Ladybugs

So I was Molly Ringwald, though a slightly less gorgeous and non-red-headed version, with my perfect teenage happy ending. The boy of my dreams, though not quite Jon Cusak, was officially my boyfriend. We held hands in the halls, oblivious to the rest of the world. During breaks and at lunch, he would stand behind me, wrap his arms around my waist, and rest his chin on the top of my head. We had our first kiss after a church dance. My introduction into the world of high school was every bit as good as it had looked in the books and the movies.

Except when it wasn't.

It only took a few months for reality to set in. In the weeks leading up to my fifteenth birthday, I remember feeling a vague sense of restlessness as the newness wore off. It bothered me that he still pegged his jeans, and it bothered him that I wore a torn denim jacket with political buttons on it every day. We started to bicker about small things.

Chris and I were about to face the problem that would stare us in the eyes our entire courtship: we had met too young, but as much as we wanted to, there was no stopping the attraction that drew us together. We spent every waking minute together--or as much time as our parents allowed us. Because of our Mormon culture, we weren't officially allowed to date, so being together required chaperons. We spent time after school with friends who had to put up with us not being able to keep our hands off each other and being generally uninterested in what the larger group was doing. Our attraction to each other grew intense very quickly, and it didn't take long before it started to scare the hell out of me. There was another boy who was mildly pursuing me during this time, and I found myself attracted to him, too. This was high school, after all. I should date as many boys as I could, right?

I remember that I broke things off with Chris, but I had to ask him the details earlier tonight. He was folding laundry at the foot of our bed while he told me that I'd given him a note (a note!) as he was on his way to P.E. (Yes, the proverbial note in gym class--we were that cliched.)

"No way. I wouldn't have broken up with you in a note. That's cruel."

Chris set a pair of perfectly folded socks on the bed. "You did. It said, 'I think we should just be friends.'"

I stared at him, unbelieving. "What kind of person does that?"

"A fourteen year old child, I guess."

Yes. Right. That does explain things a bit, doesn't it?

But our young romance wasn't all cliched. When we agreed to remain friends, we meant it. We spent every bit as much time together, if not more, than we had before we broke up. I couldn't stand the thought of not being with him, but I wanted to be able to feel the thrill of this other boy's pursuit at the same time. This was a lesson that neither of us ever quite learned: it is impossible to truly develop a relationship with another person when you still spend 90% of your time with your ex. Within a month, we were officially back together. If you read this paragraph, say, six or seven times, you would have the first four years of our relationship down pat.

We'd been reunited for two weeks when we were invited to the 16th birthday party of one of our dearest friends. The boys were to stay until just before midnight curfew, but the girls were all spending the night at her house. One of the other girls, T., was going through some rough things with her family, and by ten o'clock she decided she couldn't handle being at the party any longer. She wanted to talk, and she wanted to be away from the happy atmosphere. Chris drove the three of us down to George Rogers Park, where we sat in the car overlooking the Willamette River and talked about how insanely unpredictable life was. We cried together. We were sad for T.'s troubles. We didn't think about how late it was because T. and I had the perfect alibi: we were at a slumber party.

It was close to 3:00 in the morning when we pulled up to T.'s house with her overnight bag, and there were police cars in the driveway. Being young and stupid, it hadn't occurred to us that our parents would worry, that our friend's mother would call our mothers to tell them we weren't at the slumber party, that Chris' parents would notice that he wasn't home by curfew. All of our parents had been sitting with the police officers for two hours, worrying themselves sick over where we were and whether we were okay.

We were in a whole heap of trouble.

I seem to recall being grounded for two weeks. Chris lost the freedom of his basement bedroom and had to move into the room across from his parents upstairs. I don't know what happened to T. But I remember the sense of outrage we all felt. We were doing nothing wrong! We were helping a friend! We were contemplating the shitty nature of life, philosophising in only the way the young can! If we were to be treated like felons, we should have at least been really up to no good, making out like crazy overlooking that river.

That night, after the police left and my parents escorted me home, my dad pulled Chris' dad aside. "Do you mind if I put the fear of God into your son?" As it turned out, my future father-in-law didn't mind at all.

The scene: Sunday morning, the hallway outside the chapel where Chris and I first laid eyes on each other a year before. After the service, my father (6'2", two hundred pounds) pulled Chris aside by the elbow. "I trusted you with my daughter," he said, "and you broke my trust." Chris was shaking and tried to apologize but my father stopped him. "Do you understand the danger you put her in? Why should I let her get in the car with you ever again?" The sense of guilt Chris felt was overwhelming, almost as overwhelming as the sense of anger I felt when he told me what my father had done. I thought it was sexist and belittling; was I not responsible for my own actions? Why should Chris hold the greater share of the blame just because he was the guy?

I didn't speak to my dad for two weeks, and it was a good two years before Chris felt completely comfortable around him again. Of course, by the time we were old enough to consider marriage, I was fairly certain that if I didn't marry Chris, my dad would probably disown me.

And we were never late for curfew again.

Happy birthday Michelle Obama

In honor of the woman in the post below (okay, and me!), and in the tradition of the hobbits of The Shire, I give you a birthday gift:

Great Moments in Presidential Speeches (credits to Dave Letterman)

Day of Service

If you haven't already seen it, this quick little video of Michelle Obama is worth a watch (fun cocktail party fact: Michelle and I will both be celebrating birthdays tomorrow!):



I love this idea, and I hope serving in one's community on MLK Day becomes as much a tradition in this country as a turkey on Thanksgiving or an egg hunt on Easter. The website she mentions, www.usaservice.org, is an amazing resource with a plethora of great idea for finding places and organizations in need of volunteers.

But I'm still stumped. Chris and I have been thinking about this for some time, and we haven't found the perfect thing to do with our kids yet (yes, I realize time's running out a bit on us). Part of what makes this such an important event is that it gets people out in their own communities to serve. I was surprised that not a single thing was listed in our town on usaservice.org. I want to make this as local as possible. I've though about taking rakes and cleaning supplies to the cemetery where my father was buried, or sitting down as a family and tying some quilts for foster children. Anyone have other great ideas for us? What are you doing to celebrate and serve?

A Sunday Love Story (part 3):Corsages and Ladybugs

(If you missed part one or part two, I recommend starting there first.)

So it was settled: we were going to the Homecoming dance together, and I had my first official, bona fide, absolutely 100% for real high school date. The other boyfriends I'd had to this point, of course, were of the wonderful junior high school variety--holding hands in the halls, talking about pointless things on the telephone until late at night, but never actually seeing each other outside of school walls. But now? This was the big league. I was going to the show.

As it turns out, there were a few small glitches.

Glitch #1: Chris already had a date to Homecoming when he asked me. He told me this a few days later, assuring me it was one of those casual "unless either of us finds someone better to go with" kinds of dates. I didn't tell him at the time that while to a fifteen year old boy it might be an "unless either of us finds someone better to go with" date, to a girl it's always a "thank goodness I have a cute date to Homecoming and don't have to worry about being asked anymore" kind of date. Why would I tell him that? He would have most certainly gone with the other girl out of a sense of duty and not wanting to hurt her feelings, and I just couldn't have that now, could I? I thought you'd agree. So he told date #1 the plan was off, and she was mostly gracious about it and eventually found another date.

Glitch #2: Neither of us were old enough to drive. Chris was two weeks away from his 16th birthday, and I was still a sweet and innocent 14. Chris arranged for us to double with one of his good friends who had just passed his driver's test and another girl from church. Transportation crises averted.

Glitch #3: I was scared out of my mind. As the day approached, when I thought of it something would catch in my stomach, like a hot stone had lodged there. I'd seen all the teen films of the 80's. I knew what a real date looked like. But I couldn't imagine myself on one of them--an actual restaurant, a corsage, my best behavior. Would I have to let him open doors for me? Pull out my chair? How was I supposed to know what to order? Did I just assume he was paying? Should I offer? How much money did I have that month in my allowance jar, anyway? I was plagued. My hands were shaking so much the night of the dance I had to style my hair three different times (and seriously, looking at the picture now: that hair? Really? On purpose?). This is the only picture I have of the big event. You'll notice my cheeks are flushed poppy red; I remember the heat in them the whole time parents were snapping pictures and sending us off. My friend M. and I are sporting some pretty amazing floral numbers--though I think I get extra points for the jumper and black flats. And Chris' sweater--wish we still had that thing. It would come in handy at one of those Christmas ugly sweater parties:



As it turns out, things with Chris were almost immediately comfortable. We went to dinner and laughed, albeit nervously. He pulled the chivalrous door-opening stunt a few times before I told him how entirely unnecessary it was (I probably saved my entire feminist rant for a few dates later). When we got to the school-cafeteria-turned-dance-club, with disco ball to boot, I can honestly say I was in one of those 80s teen romance movies. Slow song plays, music swells, camera zooms in on the happy couple while the rest of the crowd disappears. Who doesn't have a high school infatuation memory like that one? I broke away from him once to use the bathroom and I remember walking out the girls room, looking around the high school commons and thinking this is my life. The only only boy I want in the world and he's here, with me.

We walked out into the courtyard (the same that only the year before was the smoking area for students 18 and older--remember those days?) and sat on one of the benches away from the door. I could hear the music leaking out from the cafeteria, and I played with my wrist corsage while we sat in silence. Chris found a ladybug and let it walk over his fingers, turning his hand over and over again to let it walk in slow circles. He was as intent on the red bug as I was on my corsage when he looked up at me and asked if I'd be his girlfriend.

We held hands as we walked back into the building. I owned the world. Music rises, camera pans in on smiling teenage girl, credits roll.

Except, of course, the credits didn't roll. The drama was just beginning. Next week's installment: a first kiss, a break up, a make-up, and a run-in with the police at two in the morning. Oh, yeah. It's that good.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Now that we're home from the hospital, we're busy sleeping and paying attention to the other kids and sleeping and doing laundry and sleeping and snuggling Clementine and sleeping. So I hope you'll all forgive me if this week's edition of a Sunday Love Story is actually posted tomorrow.

In the meantime, the amazing man I married has a brand new website. Some of the links/audio are still in the works, but it's definitely worth a peek!

Chris Rust Music

Haunted Halls

Our sweet little Clementine was admitted to the hospital on Thursday, and we're still here. It's never easy to have a sick child, and this is no exception. She's had a very, very rough go (and so have her parents!), but I am filled with a sense of appreciation for the overall well being of my children. Compared to most of the other kids in this baby/toddler unit, Clemmie is quite healthy. This is just a little blip (we hope) in her otherwise very healthy life. Some of the parents here deal with some horrible things almost every single day.

One of the most difficult parts of our stay here is that she is at the same hospital downtown where my Dad spent almost two months immediately after his surgery, when things really went south for him. That was over three years ago now, but everywhere I go in this hospital I feel it so acutely: that pain and shock that came with the new horror we were facing. We spent so many hours each day in this building that it came to feel a bit like home. I can tell you what they serve in the cafeteria and where to find it. I can tell you how to navigate your way through the maze from the gift shop to the ICU.

When we first checked in, I refused to leave our room for anything. I didn't want to leave my baby's side, of course, but it didn't take me long to realize that there was more to it than that. Chris kept urging me to go downstairs and eat something (Clementine hasn't been able to eat, so we didn't want her to have to watch us eat in front of her), but I refused. I wanted to find a public restroom and Chris told me to leave the unit and look just outside the big double doors.

"I can't do that," I said.

"Why not?"

I thought for a minute. "I'll get locked out."

"You pick up the phone on the wall, say, 'Clementine,'" and they pop the doors right open for you.

Of course they do. How many millions of times did my mom, my brothers, and I lift a phone receiver from its cradle on the wall and say my Dad's name. Warden, we'd say, like magic sesame, and the door would click and we'd be free to pull the heavy handles and walk down to his room where he was either still comatose with blood draining out of tubes from his brain or discussing papal relations with a nurse because he was convinced he was the Pope. Like Clementine, he had a feeding tube cascading out his left nostril and taped to the side of his face.

I didn't understand yesterday why my mom hadn't shown any interest in coming to see Clementine. She was busy taking care of my other children and my dogs, sure, but she's the kind of grandmother who has to ripped away from a child in need. When I convinced her to drive Chloe and Elias up to see their sister last night, she said the minute she arrived: "I felt sick to my stomach the whole drive here." My mom, the pragmatist who never seems rattled by anything, who rarely has the same emotional reactions I do grief-wise, had stayed away for the same reason I haven't left this room. "When I walked past the gift shop," she told me, "I thought to myself: they've changed the color of the floor here."

You don't ever want to be in the position to notice a floor change color at a hospital unless you work in one.

My mom did venture out, down to the cafeteria to get me a sandwich. I felt guilty for sending her, until I looked up and saw through the open door a ghost walking down the sterile hallway. Dr. Chen, my dad's neurosurgeon, the man who had worked so hard to give my father extra time, who sat with him at three in the morning, who in his quiet way never made us feel stupid for our lists of questions. Every time he would walk into my dad's room, he'd say, "Hello, Mr. Minor. Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," my dad said once. "You're the guy who dug half the tomato plants too early from my garden."

Yes. Yes, he was. I debated whether or not to call to Dr. Chen, and I decided against it.

My baby is sick, and my dead father is everywhere.

At least I hope he is.

Third Grade Redux

After twenty-four years away, I'm in the third grade again. At least it feels that way. For those of you still not sold on the value of Facebook, this week I've been reunited with over ten members of my third grade class. It's amazing the memories that are pouring out from the year we were 8: the boy who liked to steal his mother's jewelry and give it to his crushes, the girl on the street next to mine who taught me to appreciate the taste of limes smothered in salt, the girl across the street with whom I would set things on fire in the middle of the street (nice supervision, Mom!). Let's not forget the boy who used to tell me my ears looked like cauliflowers, or the little girl who had the most impressive Hello Kitty collection, or the petite little thing who couldn't say her "r"s but liked to show off her gymnastics moves (okay, that last one was me). Today, these kids are mothers, fathers, park rangers, economists, writers, landscape architects. Time passes so quickly you don't even see it happening.

What strikes me as the most poignant thing about our little reunion is that while I have so many vivid, funny memories of my old friends, I have far less about our teachers, the adults with whom we sat in the same room, day after day. That's not to say they weren't great teachers; it's just proof that the people who have the strongest effect on our children are their peers. And a good teacher knows that and uses it to her advantage.

My own little third grader started a brand new school this week. She told her teacher about the blog she writes, and on her third day in this new classroom, the teacher had her come to the front of the class. She projected the computer screen onto the white board and pulled up The Little Clover and had Chloe tell the class all about it. Chloe read the book reviews she'd written and talked to the class about how she writes the reviews and chooses the books she includes. This is all great in and of itself, but her teacher took it a step further: she had the entire class choose one of their favorite books and try their hands at writing a review of their own.

This is an example of an expert teacher. Think of all the proverbial birds she killed with that one stone: she took a brand new student and made her feel special and valued. She helped the other students get to know something interesting about their new classmate. She was willing to change her curriculum for that hour when she saw an opportunity for her students to learn something about reviewing a book, and she let them get some tips from one of their peers. This is a teacher who knows the vital importance of peer relationships and the long lasting effects they can have.

Teachers. Pay those people more, please.

Fine Art and Wedding Bells

The first time I set foot in my friend Shanon's house, I was fourteen years old and I was babysitting her young children. It was a tiny house, but it was amazing--drying flowers hung in the doorways and original paintings of every shape and size graced the walls. It wasn't clutter-free, and there wasn't any furniture you felt you couldn't sit on. Perfect. I remember distinctly saying to her: "I want a house just like this someday," and she looked at me and said, "That means you will." I've never forgotten that statement because implicit in the wording was that one artist will always recognize another and that maybe I had a unique eye for something that others couldn't see. It made me feel special somehow. (Too bad my house doesn't look a thing like hers now that I've grown.)

I've always secretly wanted one of her paintings, but she's been reluctant to go public with her work. Until now. That little girl I babysat grew up to babysit my own children, and now she's getting married. What better way to pay for a wedding than to sell off some of mom's gorgeous oil paintings? She'll probably kill me for this, but if you have some extra money and want to buy me this bird painting, please feel free:


Hop on over and see what else she has in her online gallery--it is a virtual trip worth making.

Shanon Edwards

Analytics Says: Fluffy White Clouds

I use clicky.com for my analytics program, which is a really fun way to waste time and see how many hits you get on your blog, and from where and whence they come. Every single day, and I will repeat that for some serious emphasis, every single day, at least five people in the world come to my blog after a google search for something in the ballpark of "fluffy white clouds" or "blue sky white clouds" or "pretty clouds." Apparently I come up first in the google image search because of this post about my airplane phobia. And these visitors come from all over the globe. Take today, for instance. Searches for beautiful white cloud photos brought me visitors from Paris, Melbourne, Latvia, three separate cities in Romania, and the Philippines. The moral of this story: if you want to increase your blog traffic, post a lot of fluffy cloud pictures. Like this lovely one from photographer Jordan McClements:


Hi cloud searchers! Grab a cup of tea and stay awhile. And then go visit this site, because its his photo and he has lots of other beauties.

A Sunday Love Story (part 2): Band Plumes and Compact Discs

(If you missed Part One, you might want to go there first.)

While Chris is lucky enough to remember the very first time he saw me, I have absolutely no idea when I first saw him. There were three Rust boys, and each of them had no shortage of girls clamoring for their attention in the hallways at church between the first service and Sunday school. I remember Chris as the tall one, the one who liked to wear a black leather jacket and was always surrounded by a circle of the older girls. He was already at the high school, and I was just started the 8th grade, so while we exchanged a few cursory words the first year we knew one another, it never occurred to me that a relationship with him was even a possibility. He was so old. He was entirely out of my league.

And so I finished my junior high school career: within a week I'd realized how out of place my bangs and rat tail were and made a quick trip to a hair stylist, and within two months I got my braces off. And so it was that I went from this:

(How scary is this?! And more importantly--why do I hate myself enough to put it on the internet?)

to this:

(Ah . . .1989 . We loved ya.)

I went through a series of at least ten crushes and landed my first official boyfriend and, subsequently, my first major heartbreak. That was a very serious relationship. I think we even held hands twice. I recovered from the heart ache, graduated from 8th grade, and began my first summer in Oregon. In the meantime, Chris has lightly befriended my older brother, which meant certain death for any chances Chris and I had romantically. When my grandparents moved up from California and the teenage boys from the church came over to help unload the moving truck, Chris was there, carrying bed frames and boxes and kitchen appliances while I helped my grandmother unload. This is the first time I remember feeling a pull towards him that was more than just admiring how cute he was. Whenever he passed me, though I did my best to look occupied and not make eye contact, I felt the tug of a young crush. Worse, it was the tug of what I thought must be a completely unrequited young crush. He and my brother made a plan to go to the movies as soon as they were finished, and although I secretly hoped they would invite me, too, they left without saying goodbye.

Three hours later, I was sitting in the living room of our house when our Doberman Sophie barked to signal a visitor. It was the boys, back for J. to grab a swimsuit because they'd decided to go down to the neighborhood pool. I looked back to my book just as Chris looked my direction and said, "You should come with us." My brother shot him a look that could kill. Dude, you just invited my little sister, it said. Not. Cool. At. All. And then they both stared at me, Chris with a look that seemed almost hopeful that I'd come, and J. with a warning glare.

I went swimming. To this day, J. jokingly accuses Chris of using him that day just to get to his sister. Chris doesn't deny it. Chris pushed me in the pool. My mom would later say boys do stupid things when they like a girl and I would roll my eyes because he so, like, doesn't like me that way, Mom.

Although there were little signs the rest of the summer that Chris was interested in me, I was still so convinced it wasn't possible that I came up with alternative excuses for every single one of them. At our weekly church dances (after I got in with my girlfriends by kneeling on the carpet to assure our skirts touched the back of our calves), he always asked me to dance on the very last song and whenever they played Brian Adams "Everything I do" from Robin Hood. I spent many long nights in fourteen year old angst playing and rewinding that song on my cassette player, wondering why this boy didn't realize how horribly he was stringing along this poor younger girl. When I missed church the day he played the first of his many original compositions, he climbed on his bike and rode it downhill to my house to drop of a tape; he'd made sure his brother recorded it for him. I decided I was in love. The knee buckling, heart pounding kind.

And then school started, and I knew I could likely turn my attentions to a guy who might fully return the affection. But suddenly Chris was everywhere: we had band together and were forced to march together on the field during football games, plumes on our heads and all. Yeah, that's right. Band. Mock it all you want, people. It was exactly as terrible as it sounds. Witness the plume (damn, I wish I had a picture of the two of us together during this phase of life):

(How sexy is this plume?!)

We had Japanese class together. We had the same lunch hour. And two weeks before the Homecoming dance, Chris walked up to me and handed me a CD with a folded note taped to the top. A CD! As in NOT A CASSETTE TAPE! Luckily, I had convinced my mom to buy a CD player just a few months earlier. We were steadily into 1990. In the note was an invitation to the Homecoming dance and a quick post script: Whenever I hear this song, I think about you. Oh, but the boy was sly. I told him yes as coolly as possible and was absolutely dying inside. It would took some cajoling on the part of my parents--Mormons aren't supposed to date until 16, and while Chris was a month away from his 16th birthday, I was still 14. We made up a great story about a big group date that just "happened" to fizzle at the last minute into a double date with a good friend who had a car.

I still have that note, the first of hundreds we folded into intricate little shapes and passed to each other before school and in the halls between campus. I do fear that note-passing is a dying (if not dead) art, thanks to the ease of cell-phone texting. Hey, you teens of today? Twenty years from now, I promise you won't have faded copies of those text messages to bring the memories of young love flooding back.

And what was the song, you might ask, the one that made that fifteen year old boy think of this fourteen year old girl? Oh, are you in for a treat:



Next Sunday: E. becomes a hippie girl and C. a more clean-cut Mormon boy. They fall harder, break up, fall harder, break up again, and might even ride horses with Wilford Brimley, the Quaker Oats Man! Television producers feel free to contact my agent to option the movie rights to this riveting story of intrigue and teenage romance. :)

Dear Elissa,

Do you remember 2008? I know, it was awhile ago. But think hard. 2008 came right after 2007, so it was supposed to be a good year, at least a better year.

It would be the year in which your father did not die, the year in which life moved on and things normalized. Instead, 2008 was the year when the rest of the world wanted to forge ahead and forget that there was once a man, who loved dogs and politics and Dr. Pepper and Sushi, who had a family, who lost his mind and then died. 2008 was the year when you were supposed to let go of that grief (what ridiculous pressure to put on yourself! what unrealistic expectations!). The fact that on New Years Eve 2007 you cried for a full hour, sitting alone on your kitchen floor listening to John Denver, should have cued you in to reality that the hard part had just begun. Because the hard part is not grieving: the hard part is living the rest of your life and letting that grief have it's place whenever it needs to, giving it free range to little pockets of yourself and not fighting it any longer.

Ah, but 2008 was promising! 2007 was the year when you made a decision that had been years in the making and left the religion you had been raised in, the one you had tried so hard to follow every day of your life, the square peg in that proverbial round hole. Most people leave the LDS faith more gradually than you did. You left gradually psychologically, of course, but you played the dutiful outward part every second of your life until you no longer could, and you told your husband you were done. You would not be a liar. The next afternoon you had your first cup of coffee and the heavens did not strike you down. (It was a disgusting beverage--acquired taste? psychological block? You still have no idea.) All the other firsts followed--changes in underclothing, your first glass of wine, meetings with a small group of socially active Quakers on Sunday mornings. 2007 was the hard year, when you had to re-envision everything about your life, when your entire social community shifted in a day, when you wondered if your marriage would survive, when you had to see the disappointment and sadness in the faces of people you loved. You wanted to tell them: this is not easy. I'm not doing this because it's easy. I'm doing this because it's hard. 2008 was supposed to be the year when things settled, the calm after the storm. And then your husband surprised you with the news that he no longer believed, either, and you had to watch him go through the same hard emotions you'd been through yourself, the same firsts. You watched his family pull away from him and his tears because he loved them too much to lie to them.

What you learned in 2008 is that it is easier to have all the pieces thrown in the air above your head, willy-nilly, than it is to adjust once they land. They never land in exactly the right place. There are shifts, aftershocks. You can't lose a father and have your entire religious paradigm shift all at once without some kind of fallout.

So 2008 became the year when your depression and anxiety returned with a vengeance, when everything you looked at--every second, every day--was being interpreted through the lens of that illness. 2008 was the year your doctor changed your medication to something you had a severe psychiatric reaction to, the year you were inches from hospitalization on many different occasions. Because of that, though, 2008 was the year you finally got your shit together. Your husband and your mother loved you enough to make you appointments with doctors and psychologists. They drove you there. They took time off work and watched the kids when you couldn't turn your head or swing your legs over the side of your bed. And all these professionals taught you that you had sacrificed yourself to everything around you: taking care of a sick father, helping a son with severe health problems of his own, trying for years to be the perfect mom. 2008 was the year you put into practice what you already knew but were programmed for so long not to believe: that being the perfect mother, for some moms, does not mean staying home all day with your children and letting go of your career. You started writing again. You started teaching again. You became actively involved in a political campaign you believed in with your whole heart.

And so you head into 2009 with a sense of peace that you didn't have when you headed into 2008. You head into 2009 without the unrealistic expectations that failed you a year ago, knowing that the year will be anything but perfect, but that, as Stafford says, "That's the world, and we all live there." You know that you don't want to let go of your grief, that there's room for it in your life as long as it doesn't push out other things. You know that some of the people you love the most might never understand the decisions you and your husband are making for your family, but with the sure knowledge that they are the right decisions for you. Come what may, you have a partner who will always hold you up and you him; you have children who are amazing little people with their own minds and their own eyes through which they see the world in their own ways; you have given yourself permission to be a person and not just a mother.

2009: Bring it on, baby.