Dear First Major Ex-Boyfriend Of My High School Best Friend,
I saw the other day on Facebook that you have a big beard now, a wife, and a baby on the way. Or maybe you already had the kid, but I saw the pictures of your wife when she was still pregnant. In any case, I was happy to see that you seem happy.
Because I'm a pedant at heart, you'll notice I inserted the word "seem" into that last sentence. And that, First Major Ex-Boyfriend Of My High School Best Friend, is going to be the key word that drives this entire letter. You see, while I'd rather not imagine you in any way shape or form, I'm forced into it by this very composition-- and because of that, I imagine that though your wife is rosy-cheeked and you're looking more like a man than a boy these days, that your happiness is only temporary, reaching a meek "seem" instead of a resounding "sure."
I know this because I know who you are, and I only know who you are through how you make others feel. Isn't that the way we learn most about people to begin with?
Maybe you've made plenty of people feel valued. Loved, even. Maybe you'll be a better father than yours was, and maybe your wife can't help but be overwhelmed with an immense flood of satisfaction and pride when she looks into your beady, void eyes. And all of those things are fabulous.
But, despite these lovely sentiments, the fact is that underneath your excessive facial hair and the cold blood behind your absent jawline lies a slug, a spineless shadow of a man, an immature may-as-well-be-a-bastard.
Yeah, I wasn't the most attractive teenager, and yeah, I was in middle school. There is no denying it. I probably would have made fun of me too. My glasses grazed the top of my cheekbones and were cheaply made in China by nameless, scum-faced children paid in water crescents. I had buckteeth, which gave you the inspiration to create my Latin genus and species, Vampiris Rodentia. A second stomach covered my first, and for whatever reason I thought it was appropriate to wear butterfly clips in my hair. You told me I looked like a man, that I was probably tougher and stronger than some boys on the football team. And, because you knew I crushed hard on everything that walked, told one of your friends (who I later dated and was abused by) that I would probably have sex with him if he were to date me.
I've heard from many that I've got a fantastic smile. I have abs and a rather fantastic ass, or so I'm told. I wear contacts. My cheekbones rarely need blush. I still crush on most things that walk, but I don't have sex with all of them. And, to top it off, I'm a real person. I have made and make people feel real things. I allow myself the same gratification, and understand myself as a human being deeper than most people wish to in a lifetime.
You're thinking, "Wow! She's trying to prove that she's morphed her way up the scale of beauty. Bravo." But what you're not thinking about is how I'm not done yet. That shit hurt me, absolutely, and I think about it often. You said it to my face, in front of people, in my own home-- yet, there's something else that's been a knife in my side, a needle in my eye, a motherfucking shard of glass from your invisible personality that's stuck in my chest.
First Major Ex-Boyfriend Of My High School Best Friend, you hurt her.
You know who her is.
You know how you made her feel, and so do I. Not because I was always there to watch you call her fat or ugly or stupid, but because I see the results of your terror on her face when she eats too much, in her voice if she asks me whether or not she should buy "this dress," and smell it in the stink of her wavering self-doubt when she makes a reference to herself as anything other than intelligent.
The night you tore her in half with your thin, knobby-knuckled fingers, we were at my cousin's graduation party. We drank for the first time together out of pop bottles, filled up halfway with rum and 7-Up. We were around a fire with kids much older than us, feeling fucking cool and actually beautiful for the first time.
Later, she threw up in my aunt's toilet for two hours. Two hours. I had to hold her hair back while she nearly choked, screaming your name through waves of salt and snot and sadness. I didn't know how to comfort her, other than pat her back and tell her it was going to be okay. She was pretty, even then, even with vomit sprinkled around her nostrils and the corners of her mouth.
My cousin drove her home and dropped her off on her front porch, backing out quickly and pretending nothing happened. We didn't talk about it again, but we didn't need to.
Do you know why I thought of all this, you asshole? Do you know why I was even inspired to write this worthless letter to you that you will probably never care enough about to read? Because Jakob Dylan in all his glory, even living in the shadow of his father, created some of the most beautiful harmonies ever in "One Headlight." And that song was playing today as I did crunches, just as it was blaring out of the black truck parked in my cousin's lawn the night you didn't know you secretly killed somebody by breaking her heart.
And I sing those harmonies. They make me feel beautiful, like I felt under that fog of summer haze, like I know she did for just a little bit as those older boys looked our way. I still sing them because it takes me back to a place of naive knowledge and pain that somehow makes one feel alive. You creep in, though, every time. Your shadow is in the minor chords. Your inexplicable anger is beneath each guitar string.
I'm here to tell you that after today, after this is said and done, you won't be allowed back into that place. I'm taking back the harmonies. I'm going to sing them and think of the word Ford printed on the tailgate of a vehicle I have never driven, of how around a fire with my best friend at such a confusing, volatile, painful time in our lives, we were actually born and breathing for the first time as women.
You seem happy, FMEBOMHSBF. And if I were inclined, I could pop the illusion with one of your poor decisions. Instead, I'll let you suffer in your mediocrity and nonchalance, while her and I, I and she, we--
while we hum rhythms and reminisce over yearbooks and paint on mascara and seek full, real, indelible happiness on our quest to become more than shadows.
Goodbye,
Lindsay
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Dear Genie In The Lamp
Dear Genie In The Lamp,
I figured I'd write you a letter because my teacher said we had to pick someone who we wished was actually alive and write to him or her like we had been friends for a long time. And I choose you! She said because we are only in 4th grade we are allowed to make our letters sort of short but I will try not to make them too short to you because that would seem like we aren't actually friends. And now, since I'm writing you this letter, we kind of are.
So how are you, Genie? I bet you wonder why I'm writing to you. My Mom actually sort of chose you for me, because she made me watch Aladdin the other day for the first time. She said it was a "classic" and that they "don't make movies for kids like this anymore." At least I think that's what she said. Anyway, she said that you were her favorite Disney character ever and that when she was little, you made her laugh a lot and she broke her VHS tape of Aladdin (which is like a DVD for old people, I guess) because she watched it over and over again. She also said her favorite song ever when she was four was "Friend Like Me" which you sing in the movie. Mom said she'd dance and jump on her couch cushions in her living room until her Mom (who is my Grandma, Genie) would tell her to get down "before she cracked her head open." When I was little, my Mom would say that to me, so I know she is telling the truth about the movie and Grandma and you. I asked her why it took her so long to tell me about how special you were to her and how much she loved the movie, and she only said that she didn't know while she was looking into the tunnel of her hot chocolate.
Aladdin was pretty cool. I didn't want to watch it at first because I don't really like kid movies anymore, and my Mom knows that so it made me mad. Sometimes she thinks I am still a baby, and sometimes I think she acts like she is old. And she really isn't, but whatever. So anyway she said it meant a lot to her if we could watch it together, and I asked her why, and she said recently she lost an old friend who wasn't really her friend in life, but that she felt like he was. She said, "Harper, someday you'll know what I mean." I hate when she says that, like I'm stupid or something, but my Mom is really smart so maybe she is right. We watched the movie one night when Dad took Miles out to dinner. It was weird because when you came out of the lamp and sang that song about friends my Mom started to cry. I didn't know what to do because I couldn't figure out why she was sad, plus nothing sad really happened in the movie. She repeated herself about losing a friend that wasn't a real-life friend, and that you were like her friend growing up for a few years. I know she was lonely sometimes when she was little because she told me about it after the time I felt lonely at school when Alexis said I couldn't sit with her at lunch. I think that's why she liked you so much--you made her feel un-alone.
Genie, I think we should finally get down to business. I watched your movie, and I liked it even though I didn't want to, and now that song about friends is stuck in my head. I will probably watch it again since I know it makes my Mom happy even though it actually makes her sad. But the business is that you grant wishes and I have three of them for you to listen to, even if you can't make them true.
Wish one is that Dylan will ask me to sit next to him in lunch and maybe try to hold my hand at our after-school program. I think he likes me and Jenna said that he told her he thinks I'm pretty, but I won't know if that is true unless he tells me or wants me to be near him.
Wish two is that you please make Mrs. Greenwood not smell so bad in class. Sometimes when she helps me with our quick pick problems, her armpit is right in my face and it is hard to breathe. It sort of smells like old meat in the dumpster mixed with baby powder. My Dad always makes a funny face and says "Pee-You" when we walk past the one near the fire station, and I laugh.
Wish three is that you write me back. I know that isn't possible because you aren't real, but my teacher says that after she reads our letters every month, she will try to send them to someone who might be able to respond to us. I think a lot of kids are picking real people that just aren't in their real lives, like the boys from One Direction and Jennifer Lawrence from The Hunger Games, not ones who are characters in movies. So maybe, even though you're not real, someone can respond for you and write back to me. I kind of feel like you're real after watching Aladdin, and plus someone gave you a voice in that movie. Maybe he can write me back and tell me if playing you in the movie was fun, and how he feels knowing that it is my Mom's very favorite Disney movie that made her feel un-alone.
Okay Genie. Mrs. Greenwood just said we have one more minute to finish the sentence we are working on. So I'm saying goodbye now, but I will write you again next month when she tells me to. Maybe I will start watching Aladdin every month too, so I feel like you're even more real and that I'm not writing to someone who isn't actually alive. It might make me feel like I've got another friend, which is good even when Alexis says I can sit with her at lunch.
Love,
Harper
I figured I'd write you a letter because my teacher said we had to pick someone who we wished was actually alive and write to him or her like we had been friends for a long time. And I choose you! She said because we are only in 4th grade we are allowed to make our letters sort of short but I will try not to make them too short to you because that would seem like we aren't actually friends. And now, since I'm writing you this letter, we kind of are.
So how are you, Genie? I bet you wonder why I'm writing to you. My Mom actually sort of chose you for me, because she made me watch Aladdin the other day for the first time. She said it was a "classic" and that they "don't make movies for kids like this anymore." At least I think that's what she said. Anyway, she said that you were her favorite Disney character ever and that when she was little, you made her laugh a lot and she broke her VHS tape of Aladdin (which is like a DVD for old people, I guess) because she watched it over and over again. She also said her favorite song ever when she was four was "Friend Like Me" which you sing in the movie. Mom said she'd dance and jump on her couch cushions in her living room until her Mom (who is my Grandma, Genie) would tell her to get down "before she cracked her head open." When I was little, my Mom would say that to me, so I know she is telling the truth about the movie and Grandma and you. I asked her why it took her so long to tell me about how special you were to her and how much she loved the movie, and she only said that she didn't know while she was looking into the tunnel of her hot chocolate.
Aladdin was pretty cool. I didn't want to watch it at first because I don't really like kid movies anymore, and my Mom knows that so it made me mad. Sometimes she thinks I am still a baby, and sometimes I think she acts like she is old. And she really isn't, but whatever. So anyway she said it meant a lot to her if we could watch it together, and I asked her why, and she said recently she lost an old friend who wasn't really her friend in life, but that she felt like he was. She said, "Harper, someday you'll know what I mean." I hate when she says that, like I'm stupid or something, but my Mom is really smart so maybe she is right. We watched the movie one night when Dad took Miles out to dinner. It was weird because when you came out of the lamp and sang that song about friends my Mom started to cry. I didn't know what to do because I couldn't figure out why she was sad, plus nothing sad really happened in the movie. She repeated herself about losing a friend that wasn't a real-life friend, and that you were like her friend growing up for a few years. I know she was lonely sometimes when she was little because she told me about it after the time I felt lonely at school when Alexis said I couldn't sit with her at lunch. I think that's why she liked you so much--you made her feel un-alone.
Genie, I think we should finally get down to business. I watched your movie, and I liked it even though I didn't want to, and now that song about friends is stuck in my head. I will probably watch it again since I know it makes my Mom happy even though it actually makes her sad. But the business is that you grant wishes and I have three of them for you to listen to, even if you can't make them true.
Wish one is that Dylan will ask me to sit next to him in lunch and maybe try to hold my hand at our after-school program. I think he likes me and Jenna said that he told her he thinks I'm pretty, but I won't know if that is true unless he tells me or wants me to be near him.
Wish two is that you please make Mrs. Greenwood not smell so bad in class. Sometimes when she helps me with our quick pick problems, her armpit is right in my face and it is hard to breathe. It sort of smells like old meat in the dumpster mixed with baby powder. My Dad always makes a funny face and says "Pee-You" when we walk past the one near the fire station, and I laugh.
Wish three is that you write me back. I know that isn't possible because you aren't real, but my teacher says that after she reads our letters every month, she will try to send them to someone who might be able to respond to us. I think a lot of kids are picking real people that just aren't in their real lives, like the boys from One Direction and Jennifer Lawrence from The Hunger Games, not ones who are characters in movies. So maybe, even though you're not real, someone can respond for you and write back to me. I kind of feel like you're real after watching Aladdin, and plus someone gave you a voice in that movie. Maybe he can write me back and tell me if playing you in the movie was fun, and how he feels knowing that it is my Mom's very favorite Disney movie that made her feel un-alone.
Okay Genie. Mrs. Greenwood just said we have one more minute to finish the sentence we are working on. So I'm saying goodbye now, but I will write you again next month when she tells me to. Maybe I will start watching Aladdin every month too, so I feel like you're even more real and that I'm not writing to someone who isn't actually alive. It might make me feel like I've got another friend, which is good even when Alexis says I can sit with her at lunch.
Love,
Harper
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Dear Elle
Dear Elle,
If all goes to plan, you will be reading this the day you move into college (assuming you don't turn out too stupid), shortly before you move out of your parents' house (assuming you don't get knocked up and move out at 16). The year, presumably, is 2032: your hair an auburn brown with sunset streaks seen only at dawn, your smile like a full, bright white set of dentures, and your eyes wide, unassuming, seeing.
While you've probably turned out blonde and had braces for at least three years to fix those teeth of yours, I know I'm right about your eyes. You see things other people can't, don't you, Elle? I know what that's like (and perhaps, if I'm still friends with your parents, we can talk about it sometime)-- and I'm not going to pretend it's always easy to have that power. But see there's a reason that power exists, right? I mean, both your Mom and your Dad have that ability, the one where someone can be picking up trash on the Drive-Thru sidewalk behind McDonalds to take home for dinner and your Mom peeks past your Dad and says, "Hey! how are you?" because its okay to be nice to things you don't understand. And your Dad from the drivers seat says, "Hey pal, here's a buck!", even though the trash-eater smells like the trash he's about to eat and it burns your Dad's nostrils because sometimes the way a person smells is NOT a good focal point for judgment. If it was a woman they'd help too, I'm sure, but I bet your Mom would sound even nicer saying hi.
Now, this must all sound weird to you, especially because I don't even know if we have met, officially anyway. At this moment in time, the one where I'm writing from you at a poolside in Florida, I have not seen you yet. I'd guess that real soon I will get to run a finger off of your pretty cheek, which actually sounds really weird knowing you are reading this at 18. But, awkwardness aside, I don't know when the last time before you turned 18 I saw them was, because I can't predict the future. Don't get me wrong: I hope very much that your parents are still in my life, because they've affected it in more ways than one. I'm not even going to tell you how, because you wouldn't give a shit anyway. What you should give a shit about is listening to your parents, both Mom and Dad (I'm going to bet you're a Daddy's girl), when they tell you not to do stupid things. They think they know what they're talking about because they've both done pretty stupid things and don't realize that preventing you from making those same mistakes will actually prevent you from learning things for yourself. Then again, they're both so cool that I bet they've already figured that out.
Anyway. This future-past babble is confusing me, and I'm supposed to be writing a time-friendly letter to you. Supposed as in wanted to. I think I was inspired because I saw a picture on Facebook of your Mommy holding you with your Daddy looking down at you and it just is perfect and I use the words Mommy and Daddy for the feeling they give because that's what matters in pictures. I hope that's still the same, in your year, in my right now.
I am writing this to tell you about your Mom and Dad and their eyes, how they see, and here I have gone on and on about people that work at McDonald's picking up trash and how rebellious they were and the way they are in pictures. I will still tell you what I know, what you'd say I knew, in a way that might grab a sassy, off-the-cuff teenager like you's attention.
The thing about Mommy's eyes is that they are always open. Colors change with the years, and she sees every hue. When it is warm in the summer in the dewy grass in Vermont and she's looking toward the mountains, her eyes are green and she is so beautiful. If she sees lights on in the darkness she's actually just remembering fireflies, and the way the field by the creek looked like a flashing landing dock ready for an entire fleet of constellation ships. Sometimes she will know what you're going to do before you do it, and if you haven't already learned to accept that, then you need to.
Daddy's eyes are dark, but in a good way. It never really looks like he is actually paying attention to you, but he is listening to every word you say. His smile makes his eyes look like upside down thumbnails that glint black like opal, and even though it looks like he can't see through them, that's when he's most visionary.
They even close sometimes when he isn't smiling, but when he is doing things that maybe I shouldn't mention at this moment. And, in those times, your Daddy is one of the most fun guys to be around.
For all I know, you could have blue eyes, no eyebrows, and an oddly shaped head. I'm not even going to try to make a guess on the specifics about how your eyes look, let alone specifically what they see. Though, I do get a good vibe from you, Elle. Even though it's quite possible we have never spoken.
The things that I know you do see are the ones that people subconsciously ignore because we are programmed to avoid eye contact with anything painful or emotion-provoking. That kind of game is for weak people, and your parents aren't weak. You've probably tossed a few bucks at more than a handful of homeless people, and have given your nickels to those annoying Salvation Army folk who stand outside of supermarkets when Christmas comes around. I think this means you're not weak either, though I'm also sure it means you've probably been picked on for caring.
Even if your eyes are the most disgusting color of pig shit imaginable, they're going to be a splendid combination of the ones in your parents' heads. Maybe one eye will be bright blue, the other a majestic dark purple. Maybe you'll have lost an eye from falling on a marshmallow roaster when you go camping for your 5th birthday. In any event, I know they were, are, and will be the captors of myriad love stories, retaining the reactions of bums who receive a record amount of spare change, the two things in the world that notice the little calcium stain on the bottom of the cashier boy's front left tooth and how he has three freckles on one earlobe and four on the other. (Your attention to detail, I'm sure, will help you succeed in college and beyond.)
And they will always be wide. Unassuming. Seeing.
With future, past, and everything in between love,
Lindsay
P.S. Good luck in your first semester.
If all goes to plan, you will be reading this the day you move into college (assuming you don't turn out too stupid), shortly before you move out of your parents' house (assuming you don't get knocked up and move out at 16). The year, presumably, is 2032: your hair an auburn brown with sunset streaks seen only at dawn, your smile like a full, bright white set of dentures, and your eyes wide, unassuming, seeing.
While you've probably turned out blonde and had braces for at least three years to fix those teeth of yours, I know I'm right about your eyes. You see things other people can't, don't you, Elle? I know what that's like (and perhaps, if I'm still friends with your parents, we can talk about it sometime)-- and I'm not going to pretend it's always easy to have that power. But see there's a reason that power exists, right? I mean, both your Mom and your Dad have that ability, the one where someone can be picking up trash on the Drive-Thru sidewalk behind McDonalds to take home for dinner and your Mom peeks past your Dad and says, "Hey! how are you?" because its okay to be nice to things you don't understand. And your Dad from the drivers seat says, "Hey pal, here's a buck!", even though the trash-eater smells like the trash he's about to eat and it burns your Dad's nostrils because sometimes the way a person smells is NOT a good focal point for judgment. If it was a woman they'd help too, I'm sure, but I bet your Mom would sound even nicer saying hi.
Now, this must all sound weird to you, especially because I don't even know if we have met, officially anyway. At this moment in time, the one where I'm writing from you at a poolside in Florida, I have not seen you yet. I'd guess that real soon I will get to run a finger off of your pretty cheek, which actually sounds really weird knowing you are reading this at 18. But, awkwardness aside, I don't know when the last time before you turned 18 I saw them was, because I can't predict the future. Don't get me wrong: I hope very much that your parents are still in my life, because they've affected it in more ways than one. I'm not even going to tell you how, because you wouldn't give a shit anyway. What you should give a shit about is listening to your parents, both Mom and Dad (I'm going to bet you're a Daddy's girl), when they tell you not to do stupid things. They think they know what they're talking about because they've both done pretty stupid things and don't realize that preventing you from making those same mistakes will actually prevent you from learning things for yourself. Then again, they're both so cool that I bet they've already figured that out.
Anyway. This future-past babble is confusing me, and I'm supposed to be writing a time-friendly letter to you. Supposed as in wanted to. I think I was inspired because I saw a picture on Facebook of your Mommy holding you with your Daddy looking down at you and it just is perfect and I use the words Mommy and Daddy for the feeling they give because that's what matters in pictures. I hope that's still the same, in your year, in my right now.
I am writing this to tell you about your Mom and Dad and their eyes, how they see, and here I have gone on and on about people that work at McDonald's picking up trash and how rebellious they were and the way they are in pictures. I will still tell you what I know, what you'd say I knew, in a way that might grab a sassy, off-the-cuff teenager like you's attention.
The thing about Mommy's eyes is that they are always open. Colors change with the years, and she sees every hue. When it is warm in the summer in the dewy grass in Vermont and she's looking toward the mountains, her eyes are green and she is so beautiful. If she sees lights on in the darkness she's actually just remembering fireflies, and the way the field by the creek looked like a flashing landing dock ready for an entire fleet of constellation ships. Sometimes she will know what you're going to do before you do it, and if you haven't already learned to accept that, then you need to.
Daddy's eyes are dark, but in a good way. It never really looks like he is actually paying attention to you, but he is listening to every word you say. His smile makes his eyes look like upside down thumbnails that glint black like opal, and even though it looks like he can't see through them, that's when he's most visionary.
They even close sometimes when he isn't smiling, but when he is doing things that maybe I shouldn't mention at this moment. And, in those times, your Daddy is one of the most fun guys to be around.
For all I know, you could have blue eyes, no eyebrows, and an oddly shaped head. I'm not even going to try to make a guess on the specifics about how your eyes look, let alone specifically what they see. Though, I do get a good vibe from you, Elle. Even though it's quite possible we have never spoken.
The things that I know you do see are the ones that people subconsciously ignore because we are programmed to avoid eye contact with anything painful or emotion-provoking. That kind of game is for weak people, and your parents aren't weak. You've probably tossed a few bucks at more than a handful of homeless people, and have given your nickels to those annoying Salvation Army folk who stand outside of supermarkets when Christmas comes around. I think this means you're not weak either, though I'm also sure it means you've probably been picked on for caring.
Even if your eyes are the most disgusting color of pig shit imaginable, they're going to be a splendid combination of the ones in your parents' heads. Maybe one eye will be bright blue, the other a majestic dark purple. Maybe you'll have lost an eye from falling on a marshmallow roaster when you go camping for your 5th birthday. In any event, I know they were, are, and will be the captors of myriad love stories, retaining the reactions of bums who receive a record amount of spare change, the two things in the world that notice the little calcium stain on the bottom of the cashier boy's front left tooth and how he has three freckles on one earlobe and four on the other. (Your attention to detail, I'm sure, will help you succeed in college and beyond.)
And they will always be wide. Unassuming. Seeing.
With future, past, and everything in between love,
Lindsay
P.S. Good luck in your first semester.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Dear Girl Learning How To Ride A Bike
Dear Girl Learning How To Ride A Bike,
My first ex-boyfriend, while a decent man at heart, was mentally unstable. I don't regret saying that, as he'd tell you the same exact thing. Of course, it might not mean as much to you, seeing as how you've probably never had a boyfriend and are at least four years away from your first real, make-my-privates-tingle crush.
I speak so candidly to you because I feel like it would do you good. The best trait my parents gave me was the capacity to be vulnerable in a raw, wordy way-- and when I saw you, well, I can't explain it. Something about watching you made me want to give that trait away, to you, and let you know it is okay to speak your mind.
But let's forget my selfish reasons for writing you, at least for the moment. I would like to finish telling you about my ex-boyfriend, though, if that's okay.
Yes? Good. I'm assuming you nodded your head. I wanted to ask you: when did you lose that front tooth? Please tell me the dividends were greater than mine at your age? I remember I got a quarter-- twenty-five cents!--when I was six. My Mom was not happy with the hissy fit I threw and my anger toward the penny-pinching tooth fairy, but the next time I lost a tooth, I got two dollars.
Okay. So my ex-boyfriend. First, an ex-boyfriend is what you call a man who USED to be your boyfriend, someone you used to love, someone you used to hold hands with. Do your Mommy and Daddy still do that? Or do they live in different places? Either way, this guy I'm talking about was someone that I dated when I was about 15 years old--much older than you are now. And, believe it or not, we were together for almost two whole years! I know, that's a long time. But when you get older, you'll see that time moves differently. Kind of like somewhere in between the time it takes for syrup to slowly drip out of a bottle on to your pancakes, and the time that it takes you to eat them. Does that make sense?
Maybe that wasn't a good analogy. Hmm. Okay, I've got it: you know how on your first day back to school after the summer it feels like you simultaneously were JUST there and have also been gone for a very long time? Simultaneously is a word to describe when several things are happening at the same time. So maybe, when you go back to school--second grade?--in a few months, you will feel like summer was slow like molasses, and that it sped by like a motorcycle at the same time!
Frick. Oops. Fudge. Fudge. I told you earlier I have a way with words sometimes, but it seems like I'm not doing a very good job. And I bet you're getting impatient. Impatient is how someone feels when they really want something to happen, but it just hasn't yet. Maybe like the way you've felt lately in learning how to ride your bike? I bet your Daddy has seen you fall a bunch of times, and the only thing you want to do is stay up on those two wheels and shout, "HOORAY!" so everyone knows that you're a big girl. So you're impatiently waiting for the moment when you've finally learned how to balance your weight atop that pink-spoked, tassle-handled vehicle of yours.
So this boyfriend I used to have. I know, I know, this won't take long. But this boyfriend I used to have-- he wasn't very nice to me. Sometimes, when I did something he didn't like, his hands would turn angry and find my legs, or my shoulders. More than a few times they found my face, and those times stung. And when things or people get angry, even hands, they don't always know what they are doing because the only emotion they feel is sadness.
I bet you didn't know that either--that when people get really mad about something, it is usually because they are actually really sad deep down in their bellies. Maybe you've been teased at school before, and it has made you want to pull that stupid girl's ponytails off of her stupid head. But it is actually because you were really hurt, really sad, that someone would antagonize you for no reason. Antagonize is just a fancy word for tease, or pick on.
Most of the time we dated, I tried to turn those hands into happy ones. I did that because I knew how it felt to be sad, and I didn't want that for another person. But I did it more because I was scared of his hands when they turned angry. And the hands always found me, no matter how hard I tried to hide! And I was SO good at hide-and-seek growing up! I would play with my older cousins for hours and hours in the summertime, only coming in to pee and grab an Oreo. Anyway, it took me almost two years to realize that I was not magic, and that I didn't have special powers to turn sadness-anger into something that everyone can love and hug. Instead, I decided to not be afraid anymore, and do my best to use my happy hands to make others smile, or laugh, or say "you're pretty neat!"
The weird thing was that when we stopped holding hands, my hand actually felt like it had been empty for a long time, without another hand inside. At the same time, I found myself feeling free, like I had been in time-out, or in the corner of a classroom for a very long time. I felt like my life had gone by so fast and that I wasted so much time being afraid, but I also felt the way baby birds do after all that sticky stuff comes off and they learn how to fly. I felt two different things simultaneously! (Now you can use that word at school and sound super smart!)
I think I wanted to tell you this story because I was reminded of it when I saw you twisting, struggling, on that two-wheeled rite of passage. And I think I was reminded of it because I saw your Daddy there, too, standing at the edge of your apartment stoop while you tried your best to wriggle toward him on the sidewalk.
Your Daddy shouted, "The faster you go, the more balance you'll have!" at you while your nervous tires closed the seemingly large gap between you both. And that's when I thought of my story, and knew I had to write to you.
You see, parents aren't always right. Well, I guess they are lots of times, but sometimes they are afraid to tell you the truth about things because they are afraid you'll get hurt. That's such a gift! I bet your Daddy didn't want you to fall off of your bike and scrape your knee, so he was trying to get you to learn how to ride it the quickest way he knew how. He was trying to protect you, and that means you've got a good Daddy.
At the same time, I wish he would have been completely honest with you. In the make-my-privates-tingle way that I mentioned earlier. I wish he would have said, "Baby! It's okay to go slow, even if you fall!" Because you will fall, even if you're going fast. Balance doesn't come with speed, it comes with practice. And that means you've got a bunch of cuts and bruises in your future--knees, shins, elbows, ankles, cheekbones. Those scrapes will heal though, if you let them.
When you finally learn how to ride that bike of yours, you'll be so happy. And years from now, when you've gotten really good at it, you can wheel around your suburb at dusk, when you're old enough to go out alone. There will be lots of cars and pedestrians and fellow cyclists, but that's okay. Just pretend you're in an obstacle course.
As you pedal down the bike lane, I want you to smell the lilac flowers all around you (this will happen in the spring, of course). You'll be so close to a low-hanging branch that you'll want to reach out and touch it, caress it's tiny petals. And you will. You will realize that you can ride with one hand, and wonder if you could take the other off too. What if I can balance with no support?
If you find yourself thinking that, I want you to try and take your hand off. Pedal steady, pedal strong. Go slowly, raising those other fingers delicately toward the sky. You'll get it if you go slow, I promise. Extend all of yourself to the sky, the grey moon, and shout, "HOORAY!" at the top of your lungs.
You'll be scared. More scared than you've ever been.
What if I fall? What if a car hits me? What if I lose my balance?
Maybe you will. Maybe it will. But I know for certain that if you can release those hands, happy or sad or angry--whatever they are at the time-- you're going to feel free. You will feel open and fearless and petrified and alive and magical.
All of these things will come simultaneously, if you move slow.
My first ex-boyfriend, while a decent man at heart, was mentally unstable. I don't regret saying that, as he'd tell you the same exact thing. Of course, it might not mean as much to you, seeing as how you've probably never had a boyfriend and are at least four years away from your first real, make-my-privates-tingle crush.
I speak so candidly to you because I feel like it would do you good. The best trait my parents gave me was the capacity to be vulnerable in a raw, wordy way-- and when I saw you, well, I can't explain it. Something about watching you made me want to give that trait away, to you, and let you know it is okay to speak your mind.
But let's forget my selfish reasons for writing you, at least for the moment. I would like to finish telling you about my ex-boyfriend, though, if that's okay.
Yes? Good. I'm assuming you nodded your head. I wanted to ask you: when did you lose that front tooth? Please tell me the dividends were greater than mine at your age? I remember I got a quarter-- twenty-five cents!--when I was six. My Mom was not happy with the hissy fit I threw and my anger toward the penny-pinching tooth fairy, but the next time I lost a tooth, I got two dollars.
Okay. So my ex-boyfriend. First, an ex-boyfriend is what you call a man who USED to be your boyfriend, someone you used to love, someone you used to hold hands with. Do your Mommy and Daddy still do that? Or do they live in different places? Either way, this guy I'm talking about was someone that I dated when I was about 15 years old--much older than you are now. And, believe it or not, we were together for almost two whole years! I know, that's a long time. But when you get older, you'll see that time moves differently. Kind of like somewhere in between the time it takes for syrup to slowly drip out of a bottle on to your pancakes, and the time that it takes you to eat them. Does that make sense?
Maybe that wasn't a good analogy. Hmm. Okay, I've got it: you know how on your first day back to school after the summer it feels like you simultaneously were JUST there and have also been gone for a very long time? Simultaneously is a word to describe when several things are happening at the same time. So maybe, when you go back to school--second grade?--in a few months, you will feel like summer was slow like molasses, and that it sped by like a motorcycle at the same time!
Frick. Oops. Fudge. Fudge. I told you earlier I have a way with words sometimes, but it seems like I'm not doing a very good job. And I bet you're getting impatient. Impatient is how someone feels when they really want something to happen, but it just hasn't yet. Maybe like the way you've felt lately in learning how to ride your bike? I bet your Daddy has seen you fall a bunch of times, and the only thing you want to do is stay up on those two wheels and shout, "HOORAY!" so everyone knows that you're a big girl. So you're impatiently waiting for the moment when you've finally learned how to balance your weight atop that pink-spoked, tassle-handled vehicle of yours.
So this boyfriend I used to have. I know, I know, this won't take long. But this boyfriend I used to have-- he wasn't very nice to me. Sometimes, when I did something he didn't like, his hands would turn angry and find my legs, or my shoulders. More than a few times they found my face, and those times stung. And when things or people get angry, even hands, they don't always know what they are doing because the only emotion they feel is sadness.
I bet you didn't know that either--that when people get really mad about something, it is usually because they are actually really sad deep down in their bellies. Maybe you've been teased at school before, and it has made you want to pull that stupid girl's ponytails off of her stupid head. But it is actually because you were really hurt, really sad, that someone would antagonize you for no reason. Antagonize is just a fancy word for tease, or pick on.
Most of the time we dated, I tried to turn those hands into happy ones. I did that because I knew how it felt to be sad, and I didn't want that for another person. But I did it more because I was scared of his hands when they turned angry. And the hands always found me, no matter how hard I tried to hide! And I was SO good at hide-and-seek growing up! I would play with my older cousins for hours and hours in the summertime, only coming in to pee and grab an Oreo. Anyway, it took me almost two years to realize that I was not magic, and that I didn't have special powers to turn sadness-anger into something that everyone can love and hug. Instead, I decided to not be afraid anymore, and do my best to use my happy hands to make others smile, or laugh, or say "you're pretty neat!"
The weird thing was that when we stopped holding hands, my hand actually felt like it had been empty for a long time, without another hand inside. At the same time, I found myself feeling free, like I had been in time-out, or in the corner of a classroom for a very long time. I felt like my life had gone by so fast and that I wasted so much time being afraid, but I also felt the way baby birds do after all that sticky stuff comes off and they learn how to fly. I felt two different things simultaneously! (Now you can use that word at school and sound super smart!)
I think I wanted to tell you this story because I was reminded of it when I saw you twisting, struggling, on that two-wheeled rite of passage. And I think I was reminded of it because I saw your Daddy there, too, standing at the edge of your apartment stoop while you tried your best to wriggle toward him on the sidewalk.
Your Daddy shouted, "The faster you go, the more balance you'll have!" at you while your nervous tires closed the seemingly large gap between you both. And that's when I thought of my story, and knew I had to write to you.
You see, parents aren't always right. Well, I guess they are lots of times, but sometimes they are afraid to tell you the truth about things because they are afraid you'll get hurt. That's such a gift! I bet your Daddy didn't want you to fall off of your bike and scrape your knee, so he was trying to get you to learn how to ride it the quickest way he knew how. He was trying to protect you, and that means you've got a good Daddy.
At the same time, I wish he would have been completely honest with you. In the make-my-privates-tingle way that I mentioned earlier. I wish he would have said, "Baby! It's okay to go slow, even if you fall!" Because you will fall, even if you're going fast. Balance doesn't come with speed, it comes with practice. And that means you've got a bunch of cuts and bruises in your future--knees, shins, elbows, ankles, cheekbones. Those scrapes will heal though, if you let them.
When you finally learn how to ride that bike of yours, you'll be so happy. And years from now, when you've gotten really good at it, you can wheel around your suburb at dusk, when you're old enough to go out alone. There will be lots of cars and pedestrians and fellow cyclists, but that's okay. Just pretend you're in an obstacle course.
As you pedal down the bike lane, I want you to smell the lilac flowers all around you (this will happen in the spring, of course). You'll be so close to a low-hanging branch that you'll want to reach out and touch it, caress it's tiny petals. And you will. You will realize that you can ride with one hand, and wonder if you could take the other off too. What if I can balance with no support?
If you find yourself thinking that, I want you to try and take your hand off. Pedal steady, pedal strong. Go slowly, raising those other fingers delicately toward the sky. You'll get it if you go slow, I promise. Extend all of yourself to the sky, the grey moon, and shout, "HOORAY!" at the top of your lungs.
You'll be scared. More scared than you've ever been.
What if I fall? What if a car hits me? What if I lose my balance?
Maybe you will. Maybe it will. But I know for certain that if you can release those hands, happy or sad or angry--whatever they are at the time-- you're going to feel free. You will feel open and fearless and petrified and alive and magical.
All of these things will come simultaneously, if you move slow.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Dear Celine Dion
Dear Celine,
I remember seeing Leonardo DiCaprio grace the covers of Tiger Beat and Bop when I was a pre-teen, thinking that he was not attractive at all.
What?
Unfortunately, I'm being serious. Ashamedly, I would tell my friends he "just wasn't my type" and that I preferred the mugs of people like, say, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, or Jason Alexander. I guess this was the unfortunate part, but what excuse can I possibly give to make those crushes okay? Funny guys were my type. Fat, bald, short, toothy, goofy, Jewish. If you could make me laugh, I'd fall in love.
And Leo just wasn't funny. Of course, my tastes have changed: I'd now prefer Leonardo DiCaprio's corpse over any of those men, but who am I to judge?
Even though I was bumping around on the dirt path a mile behind the bandwagon, attached by a string around my throat, Leo did look pretty good in Titanic. My Mom took me to see it in theaters when I was in sixth grade as part of an attempt to support a healthy relationship as my parents were going through a separation, and while I was at the time not yet ready to understand why people split up, I was ready to understand why people painted naked portraits of each other and made antique Fords drip condensation.
Plus, that song! I swear to you I must have listened to it on repeat hundreds of times after seeing it on the trailers and previews, finding that it fit so perfectly with the fuzzed images sprawling across my aunt's uncharacteristically large tube television. Because we lived there during that somewhat transitional year, I even had ample access to the Internet-- and was able to download it for free before Napster became taboo.
Epic. Intense. Climactic. Everything a theme song should be, "My Heart Will Go On" was.
And then I saw the movie. How in God's name can the very song that drew people in and put asses in the seats not be featured in the movie? Until the end, that is. It was NOT featured in the famous "flying" scene, it was NOT featured while Kate Winslet showed off her incredible nude body and her more incredible lip mole, and it was NOT featured when Jack and Rose clung to shards of ship-wood, cold-blooded, afloat in the Atlantic Ocean. It WAS featured as the credits rolled, informing me that Billy Zane played Rose's asshole husband-to-be, and that Kathy Bates (though totally underappreciated in said role) shone as the steadfast and headstrong Molly Brown.
I already knew those things. What I had hoped to discover is where James Cameron would strategically place snippets of the song, especially the last intense, building chorus. I didn't go to the movies to spend four hours with my mother; I went to finally put concrete images to the song that had played in my head for months (and to hopefully change my mind about Leo). I left with a sour taste in my mouth and slept on the top bunk in my cousin's room that night, squished next to my little brother, wondering why I had wasted so much of my eleven-year-old precious time.
Last week, I ran a relay race from Madison, Wisconsin to Chicago with twelve other people. Non-stop, we slept in nap increments in random locations-- there was a gym, a YMCA, and the car we were riding in if we were lucky. Our seven-person Flex-o-Fun vehicle was blessed to run the deep overnight legs of the race, from about 1am to 5am. Exhausted, we scarfed trail mix and quinoa salad with feta and red onion slices to pre-game before our miles.
A fellow van member, the sister of my good friend, was the late-night DJ. Yeah, we needed to pump up, but some people were trying to rest. We settled on a mellow playlist, everything from Jack Johnson to Ray LaMontagne-- and then you came on.
Low rumblings, hints of a thunderstorm, sound-effecty noise fogged up the windows. An epic, intense, and climactic song that Laura, my new stranger-friend and I could car-karaoke to. Not the "theme" song of Titanic, but another heart-wrenching, explosive power ballad: "It's All Coming Back To Me Now."
This song, I knew, was NOT featured in a major motion picture starring two Hollywood diamonds. It was NOT a recommended track in the "Hot Music!" section of Tiger Beat. And it surely was not on any of my burned CD's amongst the other songs I illegally downloaded via my aunt's telephone connection.
It WAS echoing through our new "house"--trailer, rather--when I was twelve, playing through my Mom's black, 5-disc-changer Sony stereo on a Sunday night before my first day at my new school. And it WAS on right then, at 2:13 am on a Saturday morning, while young women napped and ate and laughed about things they didn't yet understand.
Oddly enough, Jack and Rose streamed through my head (those bastards), but they looked a little different--more like the ghosts of sandbox playmates and faux-Santa Clauses.
I saw a balding man, nearly fifty, with a crooked nose and smiling eyes with no reality to match. A dyed-blonde woman, not yet forty, with a daringly short haircut and a tender beauty mark on the tip of her nose. No wood splinters, just sheets. No Heart of the Ocean to grace an otherwise blank, milky canvas, but a trio of diamonds glinting in the light of an alarm clock radio. And their shivering was not from freezing water settling into their veins, but from the realization that something had sunk, and no submarine or amount of children could stop cursive imprints on stacks of paper.
There would be no pictures of these people, now strangers, on the covers of Cosmopolitan or Glamour--the magazines I'd read when I'd grow older; however, I would later have to decide how attractive I found them, especially when I was in my early twenties.
In that moment, as four tires held the inevitable fatigue and weight of the hearts inside, I saw the same shapes I did when your voice clung to the tack of freshly applied wallpaper: faceless heads with desperately hopeless limbs clutching to the shadows on the walls of a mobile home bedroom. This was before the credits rolled.
So, you see, Celine-- you've really got some powerful pipes. Canadian or not, I'd put you on my soundtrack.
I remember seeing Leonardo DiCaprio grace the covers of Tiger Beat and Bop when I was a pre-teen, thinking that he was not attractive at all.
What?
Unfortunately, I'm being serious. Ashamedly, I would tell my friends he "just wasn't my type" and that I preferred the mugs of people like, say, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, or Jason Alexander. I guess this was the unfortunate part, but what excuse can I possibly give to make those crushes okay? Funny guys were my type. Fat, bald, short, toothy, goofy, Jewish. If you could make me laugh, I'd fall in love.
And Leo just wasn't funny. Of course, my tastes have changed: I'd now prefer Leonardo DiCaprio's corpse over any of those men, but who am I to judge?
Even though I was bumping around on the dirt path a mile behind the bandwagon, attached by a string around my throat, Leo did look pretty good in Titanic. My Mom took me to see it in theaters when I was in sixth grade as part of an attempt to support a healthy relationship as my parents were going through a separation, and while I was at the time not yet ready to understand why people split up, I was ready to understand why people painted naked portraits of each other and made antique Fords drip condensation.
Plus, that song! I swear to you I must have listened to it on repeat hundreds of times after seeing it on the trailers and previews, finding that it fit so perfectly with the fuzzed images sprawling across my aunt's uncharacteristically large tube television. Because we lived there during that somewhat transitional year, I even had ample access to the Internet-- and was able to download it for free before Napster became taboo.
Epic. Intense. Climactic. Everything a theme song should be, "My Heart Will Go On" was.
And then I saw the movie. How in God's name can the very song that drew people in and put asses in the seats not be featured in the movie? Until the end, that is. It was NOT featured in the famous "flying" scene, it was NOT featured while Kate Winslet showed off her incredible nude body and her more incredible lip mole, and it was NOT featured when Jack and Rose clung to shards of ship-wood, cold-blooded, afloat in the Atlantic Ocean. It WAS featured as the credits rolled, informing me that Billy Zane played Rose's asshole husband-to-be, and that Kathy Bates (though totally underappreciated in said role) shone as the steadfast and headstrong Molly Brown.
I already knew those things. What I had hoped to discover is where James Cameron would strategically place snippets of the song, especially the last intense, building chorus. I didn't go to the movies to spend four hours with my mother; I went to finally put concrete images to the song that had played in my head for months (and to hopefully change my mind about Leo). I left with a sour taste in my mouth and slept on the top bunk in my cousin's room that night, squished next to my little brother, wondering why I had wasted so much of my eleven-year-old precious time.
Last week, I ran a relay race from Madison, Wisconsin to Chicago with twelve other people. Non-stop, we slept in nap increments in random locations-- there was a gym, a YMCA, and the car we were riding in if we were lucky. Our seven-person Flex-o-Fun vehicle was blessed to run the deep overnight legs of the race, from about 1am to 5am. Exhausted, we scarfed trail mix and quinoa salad with feta and red onion slices to pre-game before our miles.
A fellow van member, the sister of my good friend, was the late-night DJ. Yeah, we needed to pump up, but some people were trying to rest. We settled on a mellow playlist, everything from Jack Johnson to Ray LaMontagne-- and then you came on.
Low rumblings, hints of a thunderstorm, sound-effecty noise fogged up the windows. An epic, intense, and climactic song that Laura, my new stranger-friend and I could car-karaoke to. Not the "theme" song of Titanic, but another heart-wrenching, explosive power ballad: "It's All Coming Back To Me Now."
This song, I knew, was NOT featured in a major motion picture starring two Hollywood diamonds. It was NOT a recommended track in the "Hot Music!" section of Tiger Beat. And it surely was not on any of my burned CD's amongst the other songs I illegally downloaded via my aunt's telephone connection.
It WAS echoing through our new "house"--trailer, rather--when I was twelve, playing through my Mom's black, 5-disc-changer Sony stereo on a Sunday night before my first day at my new school. And it WAS on right then, at 2:13 am on a Saturday morning, while young women napped and ate and laughed about things they didn't yet understand.
Oddly enough, Jack and Rose streamed through my head (those bastards), but they looked a little different--more like the ghosts of sandbox playmates and faux-Santa Clauses.
I saw a balding man, nearly fifty, with a crooked nose and smiling eyes with no reality to match. A dyed-blonde woman, not yet forty, with a daringly short haircut and a tender beauty mark on the tip of her nose. No wood splinters, just sheets. No Heart of the Ocean to grace an otherwise blank, milky canvas, but a trio of diamonds glinting in the light of an alarm clock radio. And their shivering was not from freezing water settling into their veins, but from the realization that something had sunk, and no submarine or amount of children could stop cursive imprints on stacks of paper.
There would be no pictures of these people, now strangers, on the covers of Cosmopolitan or Glamour--the magazines I'd read when I'd grow older; however, I would later have to decide how attractive I found them, especially when I was in my early twenties.
In that moment, as four tires held the inevitable fatigue and weight of the hearts inside, I saw the same shapes I did when your voice clung to the tack of freshly applied wallpaper: faceless heads with desperately hopeless limbs clutching to the shadows on the walls of a mobile home bedroom. This was before the credits rolled.
So, you see, Celine-- you've really got some powerful pipes. Canadian or not, I'd put you on my soundtrack.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Dear Maya Angelou
Dear Maya,
My fingers write this letter filled to the brim with a mixture of opposing emotions, some of which I do not know and cannot name.
One thing I do know: you're gone.
I'm not going to lie to you and say that I broke down in tears. I didn't go get a collection of your poetry off of my bookshelf and read some of my favorites, because I don't own one. Honestly, I didn't even Google your name, write a sappy, half-thought-out Facebook post about my sorrow, or Tweet about your passing. But I'm here, now, writing to you, and maybe what I have to say will make up for those things. Or, maybe, you wouldn't have minded anyway.
I'm currently a teacher. I know there's no way you would have known that about me, but precisely why I decided to tell you. In addition to teaching my own classes, I also help a good friend of mine in her room every other day, period 7. A bunch of hoodlums, I tell you. Loveable ones, sure-- but little shits nonetheless.
Oh. Sorry about that. While your class and effervescent beauty would appear to most as a shield against swearing, I'm going to believe that you, Maya, had a mouth of your own sometimes.
In fact, my little slip-up is the perfect segue into a story I have for you. It's about a boy in that class I just mentioned. Don't worry, I'll keep it short, Maya-- I know you've probably got a lot of letters, prayers, and words coming your way--but please at least hear me out.
So that classroom full of shits (they really are a lot, I tell ya), well, a lot of their comprehension levels are quite low. I'd get into why, explain the day-to-day struggles of the students I work with and the school as a whole, but, like I said-- there is no time for that.
Junior, his name was. My teacher-friend asked me if I could pull the boy (I guess, at seventeen, a young man) out into the hallway, sit down in a pair of desks, and just read "Still I Rise" with him to check for understanding. If you're not aware, Maya-- that's one of yours.
I took him out into the hallway, and read with him stanza by stanza, questioning him throughout. I focused a lot on the repetition and simile use, because that was what the class inside was working on.
What do you think she means when she says, "I walk like I've got oil wells/Pumping through my living room?"
I don't know.
Well, what do you know about oil?
It's slippery?
Okay! Keep on that. How might someone look if he or she "walked" on oil?
Stupid. They'd probably fall.
After that, I admittedly just went through the motions. The boy-man was with it enough to get that "the lady keeps getting up when bad things happen", and when you said "the meeting of my thighs", you meant a place he'd seen on a night when he was in love with cheap Tequila and sort of liked the Dominican girl across the room because of the way she smiled at him.
We went back into the classroom: I helped monitor the class' completion of comprehension questions, and the bell rang eventually. Another day, over; another eight hours of me feeling beaten down, sucked dry-- over.
Today, I went on Facebook, as I do most mornings, and saw that a plethora of people had posted one of your poems, insightful quotes, or pictures on their profiles. In the world of social media, this means only one thing: death.
Again, I didn't cry. I didn't ravage my bookshelf for an anthology with your name inside. I didn't text anyone, I didn't call anyone, I didn't comment below the "R.I.P, Maya" statuses I saw.
What I did do was think of Junior. I thought of the kids walking past us in the hallway the day we read your famed poem. Most acknowledged him with a smirk or an audible chuckle. A popular boy, nearly every student slapped Junior's hand and casually walked on by, or, at the very least, shouted some obscene message of teenage-boy affection behind his shoulder--all of which Junior responded to with a subtle smile. There were moments of quiet, though, when the halls were empty, and I remembered how Junior's face looked every time I asked him a question about a word, a line, a simile.
I don't know, Miss. I hate this.
Why? You've got it! You're doing really well.
I hate this. Why do we have to do this?
You know, who cares if you're not perfect? The important thing is that you try.
Miss. I don't know. I hate it.
What was he talking about, Maya? What did he hate? I ask you because I didn't ask him myself. I assume he was talking about reading out loud, because he felt uncomfortable with not only me, but himself. He also could have meant he hated the fact that he was singled out, the stupid kid in the class, to read with the "other" teacher in the hallway. Maybe he hated being seen by classmates, fellow peers, hated knowing later he'd have to describe the experience as something other than it was. How else could he keep his status at his lunch table?
I'm trying to connect these two thoughts, and I'm struggling. What does your death have to do with the struggle of teens in an urban district?
Perhaps it is this: our words are our truths.
You wrote your truth into existence. You spoke your truth to billions of people for nearly a century. As for the lives you've affected through those words? Just look at Twitter for proof.
Junior will never write his truth, whatever it is, into existence. He certainly will never speak it. And I'm fairly certain no one will post to any online platforms about him. His words will never become anything more than bubbles on the precipice of his lips, waiting to escape, but bursting at the sound of "stupid" or "dumb."
Of your death, CNN.com says, "a literary voice...has fallen silent." You haven't done any such falling. If anything, your voice is louder and clearer now than ever before.
I hope it doesn't take Junior as long to find his words, but I write this letter, Maya, with the knowledge that it might. And I ask, of you, in all of your eternal beauty, insurmountable passion, and intelligence beyond the brain, that you watch over that boy-- and erase hate, one last time.
My fingers write this letter filled to the brim with a mixture of opposing emotions, some of which I do not know and cannot name.
One thing I do know: you're gone.
I'm not going to lie to you and say that I broke down in tears. I didn't go get a collection of your poetry off of my bookshelf and read some of my favorites, because I don't own one. Honestly, I didn't even Google your name, write a sappy, half-thought-out Facebook post about my sorrow, or Tweet about your passing. But I'm here, now, writing to you, and maybe what I have to say will make up for those things. Or, maybe, you wouldn't have minded anyway.
I'm currently a teacher. I know there's no way you would have known that about me, but precisely why I decided to tell you. In addition to teaching my own classes, I also help a good friend of mine in her room every other day, period 7. A bunch of hoodlums, I tell you. Loveable ones, sure-- but little shits nonetheless.
Oh. Sorry about that. While your class and effervescent beauty would appear to most as a shield against swearing, I'm going to believe that you, Maya, had a mouth of your own sometimes.
In fact, my little slip-up is the perfect segue into a story I have for you. It's about a boy in that class I just mentioned. Don't worry, I'll keep it short, Maya-- I know you've probably got a lot of letters, prayers, and words coming your way--but please at least hear me out.
So that classroom full of shits (they really are a lot, I tell ya), well, a lot of their comprehension levels are quite low. I'd get into why, explain the day-to-day struggles of the students I work with and the school as a whole, but, like I said-- there is no time for that.
Junior, his name was. My teacher-friend asked me if I could pull the boy (I guess, at seventeen, a young man) out into the hallway, sit down in a pair of desks, and just read "Still I Rise" with him to check for understanding. If you're not aware, Maya-- that's one of yours.
I took him out into the hallway, and read with him stanza by stanza, questioning him throughout. I focused a lot on the repetition and simile use, because that was what the class inside was working on.
What do you think she means when she says, "I walk like I've got oil wells/Pumping through my living room?"
I don't know.
Well, what do you know about oil?
It's slippery?
Okay! Keep on that. How might someone look if he or she "walked" on oil?
Stupid. They'd probably fall.
After that, I admittedly just went through the motions. The boy-man was with it enough to get that "the lady keeps getting up when bad things happen", and when you said "the meeting of my thighs", you meant a place he'd seen on a night when he was in love with cheap Tequila and sort of liked the Dominican girl across the room because of the way she smiled at him.
We went back into the classroom: I helped monitor the class' completion of comprehension questions, and the bell rang eventually. Another day, over; another eight hours of me feeling beaten down, sucked dry-- over.
Today, I went on Facebook, as I do most mornings, and saw that a plethora of people had posted one of your poems, insightful quotes, or pictures on their profiles. In the world of social media, this means only one thing: death.
Again, I didn't cry. I didn't ravage my bookshelf for an anthology with your name inside. I didn't text anyone, I didn't call anyone, I didn't comment below the "R.I.P, Maya" statuses I saw.
What I did do was think of Junior. I thought of the kids walking past us in the hallway the day we read your famed poem. Most acknowledged him with a smirk or an audible chuckle. A popular boy, nearly every student slapped Junior's hand and casually walked on by, or, at the very least, shouted some obscene message of teenage-boy affection behind his shoulder--all of which Junior responded to with a subtle smile. There were moments of quiet, though, when the halls were empty, and I remembered how Junior's face looked every time I asked him a question about a word, a line, a simile.
I don't know, Miss. I hate this.
Why? You've got it! You're doing really well.
I hate this. Why do we have to do this?
You know, who cares if you're not perfect? The important thing is that you try.
Miss. I don't know. I hate it.
What was he talking about, Maya? What did he hate? I ask you because I didn't ask him myself. I assume he was talking about reading out loud, because he felt uncomfortable with not only me, but himself. He also could have meant he hated the fact that he was singled out, the stupid kid in the class, to read with the "other" teacher in the hallway. Maybe he hated being seen by classmates, fellow peers, hated knowing later he'd have to describe the experience as something other than it was. How else could he keep his status at his lunch table?
I'm trying to connect these two thoughts, and I'm struggling. What does your death have to do with the struggle of teens in an urban district?
Perhaps it is this: our words are our truths.
You wrote your truth into existence. You spoke your truth to billions of people for nearly a century. As for the lives you've affected through those words? Just look at Twitter for proof.
Junior will never write his truth, whatever it is, into existence. He certainly will never speak it. And I'm fairly certain no one will post to any online platforms about him. His words will never become anything more than bubbles on the precipice of his lips, waiting to escape, but bursting at the sound of "stupid" or "dumb."
Of your death, CNN.com says, "a literary voice...has fallen silent." You haven't done any such falling. If anything, your voice is louder and clearer now than ever before.
I hope it doesn't take Junior as long to find his words, but I write this letter, Maya, with the knowledge that it might. And I ask, of you, in all of your eternal beauty, insurmountable passion, and intelligence beyond the brain, that you watch over that boy-- and erase hate, one last time.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Dear Marty McFly
Dear Marty,
I was in Target the other day, browsing clearance accessories, when I heard a woman scream at her child a few aisles over:
Mother: I'm NOT kidding! Shut your mouth!
Child: Momma! Momma! But it has dinosaurs on it!
Mother: If you open your f*&%@$! mouth again, I'm going to smack you in the head.
Great Scott! You must be horrified by this story, Marty, as I was. I wish I was kidding--what mother in her right mind speaks to her child like that, let alone in public?
I ignored the disturbing occurrence, and soon found myself in an aisle of bohemian purses and bags, along with some pocketbooks and wallets. The faceless mother let loose another outrageous claim to what had to have been her four-year-old little boy.
You're so stupid; I can't stand you when you whine. Seriously, you're pissing me the f*&% off.
Marty, it took every ounce of my being not to seek that bitch out and punch her right in the teeth. In fact, had it not been for my fiance gently holding the crook of my elbow, I'd probably be in a cell somewhere instead of writing this letter to you. Thankfully I'm able to, because you reminded me of something really important that day.
I know, I know, strange-- seeing as how you weren't even there. Physically, anyway.
You see, I haven't been able to get that "mother" out of my head. How disturbed I was about her actions, her words, her child's future. How growing up without a dinosaur watch, for him, was symbolic of so much more than an ignored request of innocent desire. Where will he be in fifteen years? What if he becomes another painfully accurate story of isolation and loneliness, set to to a well-matched headline on the April 14th, 2029 prime time news? Will the end of his life cost those of many others?
I don't know his name. I never saw his face. How will I know if he turned out all right? Or, at the very least, a little right?
I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to throw that Mommy up against the rack of Target sunglasses and grab her ear and hiss into it, pelting spit pebbles on the side of her face. I wanted to make her feel as tiny as the crumb of pizza crust her son dropped on to their living room carpet last month, the crumb she stepped on, the crumb she punished her son for by sending him to his room without dinner or a glass of juice.
And then, then-- that was when I thought of you.
You went back in time, once. I believe it was to 1955? An elaborate plan was in place, one that would render your father, George McFly, the hero of the hour. Then Biff showed up, nearly causing your entire future to crumble, disappear from pictures, slide through your fingers and off your electric guitar strings.
What if you had been the one to knock his nose into pieces, not your Dad? You, the hero of the hour. Maybe you would still be date-nighted into existence out of pity, but not out of love-- and definitely not out of chivalry. A loveless marriage and a long, neglectful childhood later, you'd find yourself in a basement apartment in a slum neighborhood trying to re-create the flux capacitor, hoping you could travel back in time and take that fist back. You'd give it to George, knowing that from his benefits, you might turn out all right.
Don't you see, Marty? Had I been able to go back, had I been able to relieve my empathetic pain by punching her, I would have inevitably screwed up the space-time continuum of my life. A blank, voiceless, faceless existence would be no existence at all. And maybe I'd have ended up a story on the evening news, May 14th, 2014.
I think of my father and mother, and the fires we built when we went camping as a family. My dad would plug in his decrepit box radio into the electrical outlet and play Oldies cassette tapes, bumping his head while filleting the steak we were soon to cook. I can remember my brother tripping and falling, his hands out in front of him to stave the fall, landing on the hot grate and searing the skin on his hands. My mother felt awful, and tended to him that trip several times a day with aloe and gauze. To my brother, it seemed to be just a boo-boo, but it was a fault, a lack, a mistake for my mother. I'm sure she'd have gladly burned her own flesh instead to take away his pain, but she wouldn't have understood that in his future, my brother would probably need that memory to remind him of how to care for a hurt child, dress his bandages after injury. Hopefully some day I will have a nephew or a niece, and can take a picture, black and white, of Mike snapping off the tip of an aloe plant.
My graduate school, set in the Green Mountains of Vermont, has barn dances every Saturday night in the summer. One particular dance asks its participants to dress up as something or someone that serves as a suppressed desire of sorts, something that each guy or girl wishes to be but never will. I bought a checkered button-down and an orange vest from a second hand store, and was lucky enough to find a skateboard and a child's musical guitar at the Kmart in the city nearby. I asked the DJ to play Johnny B. Goode, and took it upon myself to dance in the middle of a crowd-circle, pushing the buttons on my toy guitar, mouthing the words to the Berry classic.
The next day, my knees were bruised and bloody from skidding on the hardwood. I called my father and told him of my costume, trying my best to explain that I was the star of the show for just a few minutes. I called my mother and asked her what the best ointment was for raw, exposed skin.
There are so many Biffs in the world, and not enough George McFlys. Everyone knows that. It is rare for good to stand up to evil, and even more rare for good to triumph. Martys though-- they're the most important stock character. The people who can pick out the slugs on the tulips, but don't always cast them away with a flick of their fingers.
You see, Marty, those people, our type of people, we take everything in. Born to soak things into our souls, we pick and choose when to act, always taking in each individual experience and using it to create a futuristic photo. One that includes well-fed, often-hugged children, maybe a puppy, one that doesn't disappear by trying to go back in time and change things that hurt. Biffs will always hurt others, and it is our job not to destroy them, but to eventually make them the minority by learning from their mistakes.
Think, McFly. Think. That's what people like us do. And I'm beginning to realize that going back to the future is much more important than being able to erase things, make them blank-- after all, someone's gotta drive the DeLorean.
With 1.21 gigawatts of hope for the future,
Lindsay
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