Narration, Description, and Exemplification

It wasn't always like this, dog, ya know? What with all the black on black crime and violence. The malicious backstabbing, rampant drug abuse, alcoholism and self-inflicted genocide. Nah, our community wasn't always like this at all. The cultural decay. The shrill screams of police sirens blaring. Gunfire piercing the darkness with its oh-so-familiar, Crack! Crack! Crack! Gangbangers murdering their own kind over the color of a bandanna or a bloodstained street corner. Or the sad sight of a young woman prostituting her body on that same street corner to feed her child, who is only thirteen years her junior. Man, this whole wacked out scene's so pathetic, our forefathers would roll in their graves in disgust over our current condition.

"The hell you say!" would be the exclamation I'd expect from the peanut gallery. "African-Americans have made great strides toward the advancement of their race, and have excelled in every known profession and sport this great nation has to offer!" And I would have to agree with the kindly white gentleman in the third row, and thank him warmly for keeping it real, but I would quickly interject that even though black folk have swam rivers wide and climbed mountains high, the average Negro nowadays could give a damn about me, his brother, and would just as soon pass me by as to give me a cryin' dime!

There was a time when black people genuinely loved each other, for no other reason than that they were all black, each subject to the same perpetual ridicule, harassment, and brutal abuse as the next. When we were slaves, our oppressors made no distinction between us regardless of wealth, social status, or public prominence. We were, one and all, just "Niggers" in the eyes of our oppressors then, with no reason whatsoever to look down on the next black man or to act uppity about anything at all because we all had at least one thing in common. That one thing was the underlying reality that, at any given moment, some overzealous cop or some other concerned Caucasian citizen could easily take offense to the "cut of our jib" and commence to hanging every one of our "Darkey" asses by the neck from the nearest oak tree.

Our dark skin, nappy hair and colorful, slang-ridden manner of speech served as an ironclad bond between us brothas and sistas then. Our historic love of rhythmic music and of dance, our goodness, and our soulful state of being were once our strength as a people, but it's just not the same anymore. Can you feel me? Well, dig it.

In the 60's , when Martin marched, he never missed a step when the occasional brick or glass Pepsi bottle whizzed through the crowed indiscriminately, knocking the soup out of him, as long as the elderly sister or young brother on either side of him were unharmed. And he'd march and march and preach and speak at the top of his lungs, knowing full well that his actions would, more likely than not, end up costing him his life. And cost him they did. But Dr. King, and nearly every other black man, woman, and child of that particular time in our history knew in their hearts that if they did nothing at all, we'd be dogged till the end of time. Hell, I'd have taken to the streets myself! If, by chance, I were accursed to have been an adult in the days of the civil rights movement (being the even-tempered, cool headed cat that I am), I think I would have had to have been down with Martin, or some other peace-loving clique because the alternatives were nothing that could ever be confused with "passive resistance" or "peaceful protest." It was the summer of my birth, 1967, and Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale were in the middle of organizing a group called the "Black Panther Party For Self Defense.” Their view of how the black man in America would get the respect he deserved was two moons, a star, and a light year away from Martin's. See, above all, the Black Panthers believed that the only way for blacks to defend themselves against the police (who were particularly brutal in California then) or any other racist combatant was to arm themselves to the teeth and be prepared to shoot anyone who posed a threat. They took part in demonstrations, they packed guns, looked tough as hell, and knew the law backward and forward, sure, but beyond the political rhetoric and abrasive nature of the Panthers was a very real sense of community. Not many people know a thing at all about the "Neighborhood Breakfast Program" those young dudes put together so that the kids in the ghetto could be at their best when they went to school, or of the network of labor-based employers they established in order to help brothers procure employment after doing time in the joint. But people like J. Edger Hoover (top-dog at the F.B.I.) went to great lengths to make everyone in the country aware of the organization's negative aspects. There is even evidence of a federally funded, "top secret" plot designed to destroy the group, involving bombings of Panther offices, death threats, police brutality, and the harassment of known members and affiliates. That government sponsored operation was successful, and by 1971, the leadership of the party had been methodically neutralized, but dammit if those cats didn't get their point across!

The story of my peoples' relentless fight for equality is never ending, and from any angle is a source of great pride and inspiration for me, and thousands of others, and it’s far beyond little ‘ol me to set out to offend anyone. After all, mine is the generation that is ultimately reaping the benefits of the blood, sweat, and tears of our predecessors. And, by God, look at all the incredible things my people did before the dawn of my birth, as if by Divine Intervention. Slavery was abolished with Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Jim Crow laws were out the door by the early 70's. In all ways important, we have indeed overcome, if it's all about being allowed to drink at a fountain or ride in the front seat of a bus.

But my question to you, or anyone else with an honest answer, is this. After all the drama black people have been through, why is it that if I, Robert Mitchell, an African-American, were in the middle of the street, right in front of this school, getting myself a good old fashioned Vancouver P.D. beat-down, I could be 100% certain that every other black person present would either:

A. Move along quietly, drawing no unwanted attention to themselves.
B. Wait to see if anything good falls out of my pocket.
Or
C. Diligently aid the friendly officers in the apprehending and inevitable kicking of my little bitty black ass?

I've answered it for you. It's because the ultimate plan for the complete and thorough assimilation of the African has finally succeeded in America, and frankly, the blacks of today are much more apt to just work for a living, pay Uncle Sam, and, above all, mind their own damn business.

It was 1967, Dad lived in Honolulu, and he drove a white Mustang convertible. The hot sun glistened off the shiny blue interior and the smell of the warm leather confirmed my father’s manliness. Dad looked like Clark Kent. He drove us around O’ahu in that Mustang convertible and we baked in the oven of the thick mid-Pacific atmosphere, a casual and intensely colorful world scented with plumeria blossoms, coconut oil, and fresh pineapple. My brother and sister and I were visiting him for a few weeks that summer in the place where I had lived until I was 18 months old, where he and my mother had met and married, where their happiest memories were.

Six years earlier Mom had thrown him out. We lived in Vancouver, Washington, then. Now we lived in Seattle. Dad had retreated to the last place he’d had any luck, but he really moved into that bottle he’d dragged around all his life. He moved in until he couldn’t find the way out. When we met him that summer, though, he had found the way out. He was two years sober, a poster boy for Alcoholics Anonymous. The apartment complex he lived in, on the green slopes of Diamond Head by Kapiolani Park, was a warren of recovering alcoholics. They helped each other, supported each other, held each other when they needed a drink. We heard all about the dangers of alcohol and the simple glories of sobriety. One day at a time. Live and let live. My dad was strong, strong enough to help others find the way out of the bottle.

We also heard long and deeply felt conjectures on Dad’s sincere wish to get together again with Mom. He cared about us, wanted to be with us, bring us up. This was a thrilling prospect. I never understood what had happened, or even what divorce was. Who was this man that I hardly ever saw, yet for whom I felt such affection? We returned to Seattle with hope that everything was going to heal itself, somehow. Clark Kent would move in and save Mom, and us, from the suffering of confusion and poverty.

We couldn’t have known that Mom was in Hawai’i that summer, too. She was on a boat with their old friends, Jess and Jerry Pendry, who had met at a party at my parent’s house in 1956. Jess had asked my mother about that fellow with the blonde, a friend of my father’s. Mom told her he was ten miles of bad road. She followed him to Hawai’i, though, and they remained together until Jerry’s death in 1996. In that summer of 1967, they were returning the favor, introducing Mom to a new guy named Chuck Cole, a sad scientist from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

By December we lived in Pasadena. New school system. New sunlight. New smog. New foods. New Mexican language everywhere. New father. New life. On Christmas day, Chuck locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of vodka. I think Chuck deeply loved my mother. He always bought Yuban coffee because he thought the woman on the can looked like Mom, which was ridiculous, but sweet. In him, I think she saw “table money.” She was tired of working so hard to support three darling little kids. Until that Christmas, he hadn’t calculated the bargain, and when he realized how much he was paying for her attention, divided as it was between herself and her brood, it was too late.

Our dreams of a blissful, sunny life with Clark Kent and Lois Lane were shattered. Instead we lived in Hell (Pasadena) with a cold mathematician who bore a vague resemblance to Richard Nixon. Thus began a long and painful co-existence. We hated him and he resented us for our connection to the woman he wanted.

He was a pitiful man really, living in an enormous world of science and math, of stars and planets, where he alone could see the traces of their orbits and the trigonometry of their gravitational pulls etched into the black sky. He pondered the billiard game of the trajectories of space craft, calculating the bank shots the craft would make around Jupiter, hooking over Saturn, on into the corner pocket of deep space. But his was a small world in the lives of people and his new family. He was awkward and his jokes lacked timing. He collected certain things. He had National Geographics dating back to 1924, and sometime long ago he had decided to buy everything that Time-Life published. He had book shelves full of The Great Ages of Man, The Life Science Library, the Life History of The United States, and the Time-Life Library of Art. This shelf of art books is how I learned of the existence of artists. I understood perfectly and without doubt what I was here for.

The first book I fell on was about Rembrandt. I spent hours completely mesmerized by the play of lines and shadows that seemed like real things in space, the palpable light on strange people in dark places, and by the sense of movement in the suffering of Jesus in a crowded atmosphere. Who were all those people? I was most interested in the drawings and soon found the courage to absorb myself in copying them. I had made drawings since I could remember, but here was the example of a master that showed me two important things: that there was such a thing as mastery of drawing, and that there was such a thing as an artist, someone recognized and valued for their activity of making images.

Now, this was a quiet discovery. I was thirteen years old, very shy, and I wanted to disappear. I was living in the house of a bitter, distant man, who was not my father, who, poor fellow that he was, had no sense of how to connect to children, or to anything on the ground. This was a deep, personal joy to have discovered not only a master, but myself. My true self.

Chuck had already raised a family, and one of my new stepbrothers was Chuck Jr., twelve years my senior and just returned from two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was a decorated Marine sergeant with a broad chest and strong hands. He beamed warmth and friendship from his fine featured face and small, twinkling blue eyes. When he smiled, his cheek-bones were prominent and I felt the sincerity of his presence. I think he was very glad to be alive. He treated my siblings and me with respect and directness. I loved him, and he seemed to see in me what I had discovered in the book on Rembrandt. One day, out in the garage, I think, he said I was a loner. There was the sound of approval, even admiration, in his voice. I had no idea what a loner was, but by golly, I was going to be the best loner there ever was because Chuck had seen it, he had said it and admired me for it. I set aside Sundays to be alone. I’d go out into the hills above Eagle Rock and hunt for lizards in the baking sun, in the dusty earth smelling of dried grasses and smog from the valley. I wasn’t searching for lizards, though I brought back many. I was searching for the loner that Chuck had seen.

A year later, when I was fourteen, I spent time with relatives in Seattle. It was summer again. The family was traveling and I had been terrorizing my brother, disturbing the vacation, so they shipped me off to play with my cousins, which suited me fine. One afternoon, my favorite aunt, my dad’s sister, Helen, referred to me as an “original.” I had even less of an idea what an original was than what a loner was, but her voice, too, rang with what sounded like approval. Her deep brown eyes, which showed more than anyone’s on that side of the family our Indian blood, winked admiration. Or so I thought. There it was: I had been seen twice.

The high school years that followed were intensely difficult emotionally, scholastically, socially, and in every way. The school didn’t know what to do with me; the kids at school pretty much left me alone; my family had no patience with me. All I wanted to do was draw. I got on alright. I had a few very close friends, but I retreated into drawing, and into the lone original that no one could reach. My twenties were spent in a delicious tension between the ecstasies of artistic and spiritual insight and the emotional uncertainty of who I was, outside of the identity of a maker of images. I have learned that this is the struggle for many artists. The central passion is certain, but is not quite enough to satisfy the social, scholastic, and economic demands of life. That self-certainty in the passion of an art form is what the rest would trade their 401k for, if they but knew it, or could even taste it for an afternoon. I have traded that certainty for security in hard times. I’ve made my living a number of ways that deviated from the path, but it takes very little to remember the passion, to sniff out the track I may not ever have found if it weren’t for the man I despised in my early years. That poor, dry, lonely man who lived in his own bubble within our family, within society, and who finally died an alcoholic’s death. I am strangely grateful to him, for he inadvertently showed me the way to my true self.

She always kept her hair red, a bright and brassy mane that I imagine she thought exuded sexuality. And I have to smirk at a sixty-year-old woman being preoccupied with sexuality to the extent she was. Smoking was also something she loved, and she was one of those people that made you want to pick up the habit yourself. She’d take a long, slow drag, cocking her head to the side and smiling a little, as if she had a wonderful secret, before allowing the smoke to flow out, smooth as a drawl.

“I just love Drambouie,” she used to tell me as a small girl, “and therefore, I just love a good Brandy Alexander.” Making me smile, Grandma would bustle around the kitchen, mixing cocktails and throwing together her dinner parties.

“Din-nah pah-ties,” she’d say in her Eastern accent, “should always be the pinnacle of perfection, Nicole. No loose ends. No frayed edges.” She’d stand barefoot in a bright red, silk kimono, red bob, crimson lipstick, cigarette meandering to the butt, smoke weaving an intricate web around her, while she smiled at me in the afternoon sunlight.

“I know, Gramma. No loose ends, no frayed edges.”

“At least not in front of the guests. You don’t want to show your ass,” Grandma would finish, smiling.

In the summer of 1988, the house was alive and I was a part of it. Grandma wasthrowing the annual Summer Cocktail Party and I was helping with the appetizers. She cut the fat slices of fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, and polenta into triangles, and I lined them up on the platter because I was her “special girl.” The party was a grand success, and that night, as I lay in bed listening to Ella Fitzgerald scat and people laugh and chatter downstairs, I thought about the grandness of being a “grownup.” I would be just like Grandma, I decided, witty and sophisticated. A cloud outside caught my eye and it slid over the night sky. A silver fluffy bunny cloud over the dark sky, over the dark ocean, over the dark secret.

I had nightmares that summer evening. Bunnies with jagged teeth hissed and spit as they fell from the sky, landing in the ocean, which was seething and swirling. White foam on black waves swallowed any evidence of the creatures. I awoke screaming to my Grandmother’s arms around me, alcohol on her breath, her red bob a streaming mess.

“No frayed edges, now,” she said soothingly and rubbed my back while I drifted off.

“I hope those bunnies are okay, Gramma.”

“I’m sure they’re just fine, Love. I’m sure they’re just fine.”

In our home, there were the good days, and then there were the bad. On the good days, arriving home from school, I would hear swing music wafting out the open windows and perhaps smell a ragout bubbling on the stove, as I walked the long driveway that ran along the sea to our home. On the bad, just silence. Deafening, smothering silence. My heart would race, my stomach would hurt, and I would struggle to close the front door quickly, lest someone see, someone find out about our secret. It was always the same. Grandma lying still in her bed, almost lifeless from the doorway of her bedroom, where my little blond head would peek in. “Gramma?” I would ask in a tiny voice, knowing full well there would be no answer. The nightstand would be littered with pills, used Kleenex, a bottle of Scotch with the cap off, and Grandma staring out into space.

“No frayed edges,” I would tell myself, and I would be a good soldier. Nobody had to know. It wasn’t Grandma’s fault she was this way. Her daughter, my father’s twin, had died when she was just five years old. Grandma had seen it, watched her burn to death, and still blamed herself. She just needs some time to think and rest, I’d tell myself.

I would be a good soldier and do the dishes and go to school, as I had so many times before. I would try hard to make sure that I matched the buttons on my shirt to the right buttonhole, certain that the teachers would be able to tell that something was wrong otherwise. I would take good care of Grandma, like she took of me. I would make sure she didn’t get tired of living. I would make sure that when she felt better, everything would still be okay. Unsure of how to use the stove, I went to sleep that night without any dinner, feeling sullen and upset, my stomach rumbling in protest.

In the winter of 1991, I earned an “A” on my fifth grade Meteorology test. I came home to share it with Grandma and found her lying on the floor of her bathroom crying hysterically. That night, after she was resting, compliments of a few pills and a stiff drink, I opened a can of olives and carried them out to the backyard with my test. The ocean was turbulent, almost ominous. Black clouds, funneling over black sky. The ocean called a warning to me, and sprayed cool mist on my face, like butterfly wings. I stuck a hand into the can, held it up to admire my olive fingers, ate one, then another, then the whole can. When they were gone, I used the can to hollow out a deep groove in the sand and threw in the test, with its red A standing proud in the hole, and covered up the achievement. I wiped the briny mist from my face and headed back to the house. No loose ends. No frayed edges.

In the fall of 1996, my Grandmother jumped off a bridge in Santa Barbara in an effort to take her own life. Rescued and taken to the mental ward at the hospital, she was kept for a week so they could observe her state of mind. “It’s not her fault,” I told myself. “She’s been under a lot of pressure. She just needs a break.” Our entire coastal community buzzed about the event, shocked that my poised, confident Grandmother could snap. Coming home after grocery shopping a day or so after the event, I smirked, recalling the shock everyone exhibited. “Assholes,” I said out loud, half wanting to shock them further by sharing our dark secret. I bit my lip ‘til I tasted blood and put the milk in the fridge.

Three days into Grandma’s “vacation” to the funny farm, a family friend I barely knew arrived to “take care of me.” At first, I tolerated Babette and her inept attempt at consoling me.

“You know dear, I think everything will be just fine once your Grandmother gets back from the…er...”

“Loony bin?” I ventured.

“Yes! Well, no. That wasn’t what I meant.” She looked uncomfortable; her eyelashes, clumpy with cheap mascara, were blinking a thousand times per minute. “When she gets home from that place, I think things will be a lot better. It will give her a new perspective. Things will be great.”

“Yah, just peachy.”

“Well, okay then.” She smiled brightly at me, pressing her pink lips together. “Who wants some green bean bake?”

Dinner was a physically painful event, full of pathetic attempts at winning me over. I wondered, while Babette piled tall mounds of the garbage she called dinner on my plate, what Grandma was having for dinner. Probably a rainbow-colored array of pills, I mused. I looked down at the plate before me and wondered what Grandma would think about green bean bake, remembering her trademark reaction to friends’ and relatives’ bad cooking: “That looks to me like pure, grade-D shit to me,” she would say, “and I don’t eat shit for dinner.” I smiled, looked up at the moronic woman in front of me, enthusiastically filling me in on the subtle nuances of decoupage, and said, “I don’t eat shit for dinner.”

That night, imagining where she was, I conjured up an image of a hospital bed with scratchy blankets, and wondered if she missed me. I had dreams of her struggling against a straightjacket, eyes bulging, pleading with me to help. In this dream I crossed my arms over my chest, offered her a stern look, and shook my head, making clucking noises like an old school teacher.

The following week, I drove to pick Grandma up from the hospital. The smell hit me before I even stepped off the elevator onto the third floor psychiatric wing. Had a tidal wave of piss come rushing down the hallway toward me, I would not have been surprised in the least. An old man with a walker loaded his pants and grinned at me crazily. A thick, frizzy-haired women in a wheelchair pulling herself down the hall mumbled, “Wapas,” and again, louder this time, “Wapas! You’re beautiful,” she told me in a thick Italian accent as I passed by.

“Thank you,” I replied, startled, but she was already halfway down the hall, chatting contentedly with herself.

“Oh, Nicole, Love, you’re here. Thank God! I’ve been telling these people there’s been a mistake and that they just needed to call my Granddaughter. Get this whole thing straightened out,” she said, patting my hand and rolling her eyes, as though everyone else was crazy. “My stay,” she said, directing her gaze at the front desk attendant, “has been most unpleasant. C’mon, Love,” she said, signing her name on a form with a flourish. “I need a drink, and this place is as dry as a bone.”

In June of 1998, my Grandmother threw a birthday party for me. I was moving out the following week, heading north to find myself and conquer the world. Grandma had really outdone herself, mixing drinks and creating fancy canapés for the guests. It was a lovely beach party in all respects, and as the night wore on, I watched my Grandmother more and more intently. I liked the way she moved from person to person, gently touching their elbows, giving them her full attention. She had a way of making sure everyone felt like the most important person in the world when she cast her gaze on them. We danced and ate and laughed most of the night away. It was well after two o’clock in the morning when the last guests made their way out the door. Grandma and I sat in an exhausted heap on the sofa, legs tangled together, her stroking my head.

“Well, little bird. It looks like you’re ready to fly.”

I smiled at her. “I’m not leaving forever, you know. This is always home.”

Her eyes were welling over and I kissed her cheek. She patted mine and sat up abruptly, wiping tears from her face. “Well,” she said matter of factly, “it’s too late for this nonsense. Let’s get some rest.”

The next morning I loaded the last boxes into my car and prepared to leave home. I remember having this giddy feeling, of liking the idea of hitting the road, exploring the possibilities. Grandma walked me out, standing uncomfortably in the driveway. We embraced, kissed, and promised to write each other every day. As I turned to walk away, she called me back. “I want you to take this,” she said, handing me the family wedding ring. It was an antique, with smooth, scrolled filaree work and brilliant diamonds. I remembered admiring it as a child, and as I slid in onto my finger, I started to cry. “Now I have no loose ends,” she whispered, and kissed my check before turning and heading into the house.

Leaving town, I glanced at the ocean and thought of all I was and would become. I thought of the endless possibilities in my life. I thought of Grandma and all she had and had not given me. I thought of a lot of things on that fourteen-hour drive.

In July of 1998, a week after I moved to Portland, I received the news that my Grandmother had committed suicide. I turned right back around, making the trip home, stopping twice to throw up on the side of the highway. I surprised myself by the strength I exhibited once there. I didn’t know I had it in me. I reminded myself that I was now totally alone in this world, and acknowledged how comforting the idea of her had always been to me. I slept in her bed during those days before her funeral, dreaming of the crematorium where they were going to take her: flesh, bone, coy smile, eyes that winked, and turn her into dust. I dreamed of her body rising up during the burning process, of her ashes breaking free of their container and filling the air of the town, filling my throat. I still find myself reaching to attain the charismatic traits my Grandmother had, feeling as though if I master them, she’ll always be with me. I try to make each person at a party feel like the most important person in the world. I love a good Brandy Alexander. I now wear the family wedding ring as my own, symbolizing the fact that I found a loving person capable of putting up with me. And most importantly, I allow myself loose ends. I honor my frayed edges.

Buck Owens and the Buckaroos were wailing loudly in the background. Kathie, Bev, and I were splitting our sides watching our sister, Julie (who had never been known for her sense of rhythm) play an invisible guitar, wiggle her hips, and wail along with Buck: “I’ve got a tiger by the tail, it’s plain to see...” Next was, “Your Cheatin Heart,” and she went on. My mom was looking on from her spot on the couch. Her blistered lips moved and then she was smiling. The daughter who hated receiving attention of any kind was now evoking attention by performing antics that had in the past been of great embarrassment to her. When Kathie, Bev, or I displayed similar performances, Julie’s reaction was to hide her face behind her hands or crawl under a table and moan, “Oh God, that’s my sister! I do not know her.” Though the four of us were extremely close, Julie did not share our love of entertaining at most group gatherings, but here she was outdoing all of us and having a great time--doing it with Buck for Mom.

At that moment I could somehow sense my mom’s thoughts as if they were my own. I saw the thoughts that had consistently churned inside her for so many years. “I don’t measure up. I have good ideas, but no follow through. My mother knows I’ll never be as good as her. I’ve not been a good mother. All my girls’ strength, beauty, and intelligence came from their father or someone else because they certainly got nothing from me.”

Two hours earlier, the four of us sat in our cars under the smudged gray clouds that covered the sky. The rain splattered our windshields as we looked at the little house that sat in front of us. Two years ago, the house was a gloomy, boxy piece of junk, but it was now a warm home that would easily fit on the cover of Better Homes & Gardens magazine. We then all simultaneously opened our car doors and dashed to the small front porch while throwing hoods and coats over our heads to keep our hair safe from frizzing in the drizzling rain.

We paused before opening the front door. We had no plan and we had no idea how this evening would play out. We knew we had to shed each layer of pain from our faces and reach for all the strength within ourselves to make this evening a happy occasion. We had faced situations like this before; it was just a little bit harder this time because we were losing our only living parent. We would soon have no one but ourselves to keep our family together. We all took a deep breath. We slowly opened the front door and forged ahead.

The door opened onto the taupe painted walls outlined in creamy white trim. Expensive furniture was mixed with the freshly painted garage-sale buys that Mom had turned into pieces that looked like they were placed there only to invite all of those who entered to grab a pillow, a blanket, and an old classic video, and throw themselves on the floor for an evening of family fun. Those who entered my mom’s home immediately felt that they were part of the big crazy family she had created almost forty years earlier.

It was Christmas Eve of 1994. In just two weeks of chemotherapy, my mom went from a beautiful woman (constantly mistaken for one of my sisters) to a shrunken old woman with pasty white skin that hung from her skeletal frame. Her once gray-blue eyes were now just sunken holes. She knew, and we knew, that she was dying. We knew what it cost her to smile, and it was Julie who brought that smile to life.

Thirty-four years earlier, Buck Owens and the Buckaroos were wailing in the background while four little girls were sitting quietly on an old frayed couch, looking on as their mother, using a piece of a vacuum hose for a microphone, sang and danced along with the sounds coming from the old record player. Other tunes from old-time favorites, such as Eartha Kitt, Wilson Pickett, Bobby Darin, and Elvis Presley, followed. It was a typical day in 1960 in our two-bedroom apartment on the corner of Cornwell and Eighty-Second Street in Portland, Oregon. At twenty-three, my mom had four children, three still in diapers--I was five and the oldest. She had sold her piano to pay for me. Money was scarce, and there were no funds for entertainment, except what took place with Mom’s old record player.

Within a few years, all four of us in some way could mimic the artists on the old tunes coming from the record player. When people came over, we had our specialties to entertain our company: I pantomimed the sultry Eartha Kitt, Kathie perfected Elvis’s moves and facial expressions, and Bev livened up the last musical act with Bobby Darin’s hit, “Splish Splash, I Was Taking a Bath.” My sister Julie stayed in the background until intermission, when she quickly did three back-flips and a few other moves the rest of us could not perform.

During all of our performances, both my mom and dad smiled with pride; they thought they had the most outstanding children in the world. Their love for and pride in us girls never allowed them to completely separate. My mom never performed in front of anyone but us girls, and sometimes my dad, and though none of us had anywhere near the musical talent of our mom, she never knew or realized until waiting for death to relieve her pain that she had any talent at all. Because I strongly believe she never was completely herself with anyone but her daughters, sadly, friends and family were kept in the dark as to her many gifts. As far as Mom was concerned, her four daughters were her only gifts, and she let them shine while she stayed in the background.

But on December 24th, 1994, Mom knew that she had always been in the foreground of her daughters’ lives. She knew now that much of her daughters’ strengths had actually come from her; she had taught them how to turn a bad, sad, or boring environment into a happy, loud, and fun celebration. She realized that all the confidence she didn’t have, she had breathed into her children. It was she who always told them, “You’re the best. I wish I was like you. You are as beautiful inside as you are outside. You have what it takes to do anything you want. Make sure the people you choose to spend your time with know how special you are.” She now understood why all of her girls and all of her girls’ friends always wanted to be around her: she made them feel good about themselves; she made them feel special. She looked at Julie, Kathie, Bev, and then me, and I knew she was saying to herself, “They are like this because of me. They got this from me.”

My mom died on January 9th, 1995. The building where her funeral was held was so packed inside that the doors were left open to allow the people outside the building to also be part of the ceremony. There were three eulogies delivered: the first by my dad’s only living brother, Harvey, the second by my brother-in-law, Paul, and the third by my sister, Kathie, and each of them revealed many of the different ways Mom had made a difference in their lives. My mom died at fifty-nine, but three-quarters of the people at her funeral, both inside and outside, were twenty to thirty years younger than that. They were all people she had touched and had made feel greater than they had before they knew her. During the funeral, as I looked up and said, “See, Mom,” I could feel her say in disbelief, “These people are all here for me?”

It was late Fall 1977 at Bilquist Elementary in Milwaukie, Oregon. It was not so early in the school year that kids were timid. Everyone was trying to find their place in the third grade: finding old friends, finding new ones, attempting to "fit in." The bullies were particularly busy at this time of year. They were posturing, gathering their entourages, and carefully, shrewdly choosing the unsuspecting kids who would "help" them make a name for themselves. They were tiny social climbers on a miniscule scale in the third grade landscape. They were feared and respected by some, even revered by others. Some were legendary. Perhaps none so much as Denise Renzetti.

I had heard of her through second grade folklore, but had never had a personal encounter with her. She was intensely popular. It was being rumored that this year her gang had grown to nearly 15. She was beautiful, with shiny, straight, smooth blond hair, which was always arranged with two perfectly symmetrical ponytails. Her eyes were definitively blue, and she had white, straight, shining front teeth with a charmingly smallish gap. She had a mocking way of laughing and speaking too loudly to be sure everyone heard her. She always wore new and stylish clothes on her tall, stout, athletic form, which she moved with unquestionable charisma--she knew she ruled the school. And to top it all off, she was in Mrs. Storment's class.

Mrs. Storment was old. Like 45, at least. She had sharp, wiry, unipermed gray hair and brassy lips the color of a red-orange crayon. She had an oddly teetering way of walking in her always-blue polyester permanent press slacks. Kids said that this was because of a wooden leg, and that made her mean.

She preferred discipline over reason and used yelling as her only form of communication. There were even rumors that she had once dragged two insubordinate kids off the playground by their earlobes and had beaten them right in the school! She was powerful, frightening. And her class contained equally powerful kids.

In stark contrast, right next door, stood Mrs. Barham's room. I was placed, perhaps mercifully, into her class that year. Mrs. Barham was soft and rotund. She was as gentle as a cow. To say that Mrs. Barham was matronly would be an understatement. Her very round and unthreatening face resembled a Mrs. Beasley doll, with its small, circular spectacles. She had soft, wavy, short, salt and pepper hair, and wore the same thin, over-washed, faded, pastel green cotton dress and sensible black leather orthopedic shoes daily. Her stubby fingers and strong, round, freckled forearms made me wonder if she had ever been a farmer's wife. She was nurturing and soft-spoken.

Her class contained only a few fledgling climbers who'd tried and failed at the popularity game. My best friend, Ann Betts, longed for popularity, but she had plain, non-descript features and thick, but drably pale auburn hair. Her clothes were always faded as a result of too little wardrobe and too much washing. It was as though she were a character in a cartoon drawn in black and white. Her painfully shy manner kept her away from any real conversation with anyone, let alone the popular, vivacious crowd. She had consequently learned to be content with skirting those social circles. She felt that if she knew their gossip and doings, at least, she was somehow a part of their world. But there were only a few like Ann in Mrs. Barham's class.

The rest of us were quiet, we were too good at school, and we avoided the popular crowd. We were loyal to our few friends, and regarded those who changed friends often as shallow. I now wonder if we believed ourselves to be morally superior to those people, or maybe we just sought out the lowest common denominator when choosing friendships to avoid rejection. It didn't matter. We felt safe in our obscurity. Maybe me most of all.

I was not shy like Ann, I was really feisty at heart. But I knew my place. I had never felt like an attractive child with my tragically orange, loopy, frizzy hair that got bigger with each drop of the barometer. In those days before conditioner and styling mousse, my parents tamed my mop by keeping it unusually short, causing me to frequently be mistaken for a boy. They created a sort of hair tonic from baby oil and water to get the tangles out, but this did not bode well with their frugal once-a-week bath policy. My mom used to say that I should love my hair, that people pay good money for hair like mine. But the only other people who complimented it were the old ladies at my grandma's retirement home. At eight years old, I decided never to take stock in the future advice of people who died their hair “gray,” knowing full well it would really turn out “blue.”

My teeth were crooked and my grandmother used to make all my clothes. She called the fabric she liked “cotton blend,” but it was really "recycled-old-lady-dresses-made-of-pure-American-polyester.”

I had narrow feet when I was smaller, and my parents had to buy special "narrow" shoes at Buster Brown's shoe store in Oregon City. There were still buying them for me when I was 8, even though I no longer needed them. I was wearing a brand new pair, in fact, the day I clashed with Denise Renzetti.

It was November, and the clouds hung ominously low in the sky that day, drizzling relentlessly. There were pools of dirty water all over the schoolyard. On such days, the teachers still sent us outside to get "fresh" air, even though it smelled stale, like mildew. Ann and I usually just hovered around the door like dogs waiting to be let back inside. We were hanging around a newly formed puddle that particular day, with no umbrellas. I was willing my hair to stay down when I saw HER.

Denise Renzetti was watching me from across the playground. Coming towards me, she loomed larger and larger. The gathering crowd that followed her was like an impending storm. Once she reached me, she stopped short. As she stared me down, I noticed that she was wearing shiny new red boots, and held a matching new umbrella. The color made her glow red. Her stout figure towered over my own smaller, frizzy form.

"Hey there, Carrot Top Freckle Face!" She said it like I was a long lost friend.

Her entourage snickered collectively. They were taking notes. Tactic 1: Humiliation.

"Where'd ya get those shoes? Are they new?" Now she was sneering.

She looked back, nodding and grinning confidently, acknowledging the assent of the crowd. Then, without warning, she stomped a red boot in the puddle. My narrow Buster Browns were wet through. Tactic 2: Physical Contact.

I stood there with wet, cold toes, dreading what might come next. I knew the coupe de grace would have to be big, dramatic. Bracing myself, I waited for the inevitable. What would it be? A smear of mud in the face? A shove into the puddle? I imagined that she could eat me up like Red Riding Hood with her enormous, shining teeth, and there would be nothing I could do to stop her. I closed my eyes. Then I heard it: the bell! The recess bell began to ring! Her evil scheme was left undone! The crowd behind her began to unravel and drain away, murmuring their disappointment, but, for a moment, Denise Renzetti remained still, burning her gaze into my eyes. She slowly backed away from me. I was keenly aware that, even though the task was unfinished, I was still another notch in her new umbrella.

I never really had another such encounter with Denise Renzetti, but she made sure to use my new “Carrot Top Freckle Face” nickname at every opportunity in the hallways at school. I suppose she wanted to make sure I remembered my place. As time passed, it became less and less significant, and we eventually went on to different high schools.

By the late summer of 1990, I had turned 21. The schoolyard bullies of yesteryear were long since a forgotten memory. Having a husband, a daughter, and a home, I had become a confident adult with meaning and purpose in my life. I was in a new world, now, with mature people who did not taunt one another, or need to belittle others to feel important. I was working full time at Fred Meyer in Clackamas, Oregon, as a cashier, minding my own business, when another fateful day was to arrive. It was a hot, August day and the store was filled with customers. I had to stay behind the register all day to keep up with the steady flow of people coming in and out. I was feeling particularly sure of myself that day, as I was wearing a brand new, hot pink, designer suit. I had even worn hot pink lipstick to complete a glamorous effect. I felt beautiful, and I was greeting each customer with an unusual air of cheerfulness.

Two women came through my line that day, clearly a mother and daughter. Both were very short, heavyset women. They were shy and spoke only to each other in hushed tones. They were non-descript, except for their lovely blonde hair. I kept my conversation with them to a minimum, as I could tell they didn’t want any. I bagged their purchases, and took their check. My eyes grew wide as I read the names: Renzetti, Lois and DENISE! How could it be? I was a good six inches taller than her and one-third as wide! I had confidence, loads of friends, security, adulthood, and an endless supply of styling mousse. She apparently lived with her mother and had an endless supply of doughnuts!

I was breathless. Without weighing my options, I lost control. I was eight years old, I was angry, and her weakness was seducing me. Where was her entourage, now? With all the glib, drippy sweetness of a Mary Kay representative trying to win a new client, I spoke. “Denise Renzetti?”

She looked at me suspiciously, sensing my feigned friendly tone. Was she sweating?

“Remember me?” I grinned, speaking with unusually high volume and pitch, “You used to call me ‘Carrot Top Freckle Face’ all the time in school!” I was willing humiliation on her. I puffed myself up, standing as tall as I could, staring accusingly down my nose at her.

She knew all that my sarcastic tone implied. I could see the wheels turning in her eyes, but the legendary Denise Renzetti made no reply. Instead, I watched the top of her head as she turned with a flash of blond hair, and walked quickly away, embarrassed by all my loud attention. Her mother followed her, confused about what had just transpired.

I sprinted in my high heels immediately, victoriously, to the employee lunchroom. I was David, and I had slain Goliath. I burst in to the small, smoky room, exploding cathartically. I rattled off my story to no one in particular, with too much information for anyone to digest, and too little information to create any empathy for myself. The air hung silent and low. People stopped mid-smoke. They put their lunches down to stare at the wild-eyed pink vision in the doorway. The soda machine hummed.

Through the silence came a horrible realization. I mentally flashed to an episode of the “Brady Bunch” in which the popular Marsha Brady had transformed the school nerd into a beauty queen, and the girl had gone from sweet and grateful to mean and spiteful. Where was I headed? Had I become like that girl? Would I soon be kicking little kids and taunting the WIC customers at work? I had to do something, to make it right before it was too late. I wanted a good, old-fashioned, third grade “do over.”

With increasing speed, I made my way back out to the sales floor. But the Renzettis were gone. Reflecting for a moment in my despair, I wondered if she had even known who I truly was, and, if she had, could she have forgiven me? Would I have even asked for forgiveness? My words would hang forever in the air, just as hers once had. Perhaps the drama of it all was mostly my own imaginings. I could only hope as I retreated back to my life.

Maybe, someday, Fate will give me another chance to make amends. Maybe I’ll even get an opportunity to start over. If I ever do get the chance to meet with Denise Renzetti again, maybe I’ll just greet her politely and shake her hand.

It’s December 1983, and the weather has turned bitter cold; so cold that my truck stops running. My stepfather, Lyle, gladly rescues me and talks about a special fluid that goes into the gas. This is Portland! I should not have to worry about it being too cold to run a vehicle. I thought all those special precautions, like plugging in the car, were only for those poor souls living in the Midwest. It’s December and that means Christmas. It has already been an exciting year, enduring an ugly divorce while being separated from my beloved historic home. I am living in a cheap but reasonably comfortable two-bedroom apartment with my sister, Jeannine, enjoying wonderful meals and outings with friends, and spending quality time with my family. I now have much of the “Peace” I was looking for. This year, Christmas seems like a strange appointment that is required, but the need for it is unknown.

A tree, well I could just have a tree. I love big trees, not those wimpy tabletop varieties. So what if I am currently living in a two-bedroom apartment? I like big trees. The next thing I know, we are squeezing an eight-foot tree through the door of the apartment.

I give in to the extravagance of buying lights. Twinkle, they have to twinkle independently, not pulse like in a shop window. Now what will I do about ornaments? I have some beautiful ornaments and most of them are handmade. Alas, they are in the house with my “ex”. We decide to make ornaments--cookie ornaments. The apartment has a narrow, long kitchen, and Jeannine has some trendy kitchen utensils in just the right color, dark blue, but neither sets the stage for serious baking. However, my mother shows up with extra pans and decorating equipment, and we make use of the dining room table as needed. All of us gather to spend an entire Saturday with a collective and creative energy, cooking, icing, and painting the ornaments.

Soon the large tree looks classic, filled with cookies and draped with popcorn garland. We enjoy it for the rest of the season. The memory of the individual designs of the cookies has all but faded now, but I am left with the special warmth provided by the lovingly decorated tree and the time spent with my mother and sister. This is a rare moment in my family life: my mother not too busy or tired, my sister attentively participating instead of rushing off with her friends. The kitchen may have been small and sparsely tooled, but smiles, imagination, optimism, and love abounded.

Now it is time to make our annual trip to Peacock Lane. Many years have passed since my sister and I went there together. We bundle up, I leash my golden retriever, Annie, and we drive to the famous blocks of houses comprising Peacock Lane. I feel an excitement I have not felt in years. I can hardly wait to finish parking so we can walk and really see everything. Santa greets us as we walk onto the block.

The homes on Peacock Lane are nestled, one next to the other, like a village of gingerbread houses. They have steep, sweeping roofs and wooden or leaded multi-paned casement windows that open onto the street below. Neat fences line some of the properties while other yards show their well-ordered fronts with rhodies, azaleas, and roses, essential plants in Portland’s outdoor spaces. Lines of cars are creeping by, and I feel pleased to be on the sidewalk, taking it all in from a prime vantage point. Every house has lights, most of them edging the roofline to emphasize the classic architecture reminiscent of houses in a postcard scene. The air is crisp and seems to add to the sparkle of the decorations illuminating the entire neighborhood. After taking it all in, we go back to mom’s for hot cider and homemade Spritz cookies.

As the big day draws near, my sister and I take time to watch Holiday Inn, enjoying rare glimpses of an elegant era gone by, filled with music and a love of dancing. Now it is Christmas Eve, and soon we will move to my mother’s place to begin the festivities. We wrap those final gifts as Garrison Keillor injects thoughtful reflection on the essence of families and the holiday season, leaving me feeling the joy of finding a new level of understanding.

My mother’s house is small. The living room is no larger than one found in most apartments. Sometimes I think my mother picked this house to make sure none of us would get the idea of returning home and guests would be mindful of their stay. There are only two bedrooms, and the second one is set up as a TV room. My mother is really a private person, fussy about her things; she has a need for her own “space.” The house reflects how our family has operated for years – as a collection of separate units, minimizing cooperation and interaction. We rarely gather to simply do things together. Nevertheless, the moments of magic continue. We lay out our sleeping bags on the floor, just my sister and I, being sisters the night before Christmas. Sleeping under the tree has a special way of immersing me in the very essence of Christmas. I feel like I am experiencing The Night Before Christmas, The Nutcracker, and Rudolph all at once. My sister and I giggle and whisper a bit before we drift off dreaming of the next day.

The morning sun is streaming brightly through the sheer curtains. We peer out, and low and behold, snow! It has snowed--We have a white Christmas! Now I know that if I were to describe this scene to a transplant from the Midwest, they would look bewildered at my child-like excitement over barely one-inch of snow. However, I am a Portland native and snow on Christmas day is more unusual than rain in L. A. A white Christmas…each year I hope for a white Christmas. Snow just seems to add to the magic. It’s nature’s way of decorating for the holidays dressing everything up with a white, fluffy layer, brightening the drab walks, smoothing all the rough edges, including weathered fences, old cars, and maybe even some of the world’s troubles.

We always have a Danish Kringle from Wisconsin, which melts in my mouth, to add something special to our morning around the tree. Afterwards, a trip to Laurelhurst Park to watch the skaters adds to the Currier and Ives mood I discovered upon waking. We find a dusting of snow on the ancient evergreens, rhododendrons, and azaleas edging the frozen pond, painting a “winter wonderland” scene as the skaters take advantage of this rare treat. Then we go back to the house for a traditional family dinner, topping off a truly memorable holiday season.

In January of 1962, the initial apprehension of going into the military seemed to disappear after being in basic training for one week. You were so tired, and your life was so organized and made miserable by the drill instructors, that any fear of the unknown military life did not have time to appear in your mind. During the live fire exercise there was a lot of nervous laughter and too many smoked cigarettes while you waited your turn to crawl out of the ditch under machine gun fire that was only three feet above the ground. While your body is going through the crawling motions to keep you moving forward, your mind is wishing you could be other places. As the explosive charges begin going off, with the continuous sound of gunfire as background music, you start becoming very nervous and scared. You hope everybody knows what they are doing and that they won’t shoot you. After all, this is just basic training, right? Finally, that nightmare is over, and you have completed your several months of basic training and are ready to go on to advance schooling.

After a ten-day leave en route, I ended up at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in the middle of April of 1962, to go to classes to learn how to type. I could already type over 50 words per minute, so I took and passed the typing exam and was given a clerk’s job the first week I was there. At the beginning of the second week, I was ordered to report to an office for an interview. Arriving at the office, a gentleman wearing military clothes, but no rank or any other type of identification, asked me if I would be willing to accept an assignment outside of the country, and while it may be somewhat dangerous, several promotions in rank were assured for me. Being 18 years old, and having visions of grandeur, I accepted the assignment. Little did I realize that our government could move so fast; I was on an airplane, in civilian clothes, with a brand new passport, bound for wonderful and mysterious Far Eastern Asia.

I landed in Bangkok, Thailand, on the last day of April 1962. From there, I journeyed by military plane to Cambodia, where I was met at the airport by my new team leader, and immediately whisked away to a military compound. At that point, I met my fellow teammates, with whom I would be serving with, got over the jet lag, received briefings, and received the mission gear. We were issued live ammo, hand grenades, flares, field uniforms, and other accessories to make war. Then the light bulb in the back of my head came on. I started to get very nervous and kept asking myself how I could have been so stupid as to accept this mission. Listening to my fellow teammates talk it was plain they were thinking the same thing I was, except I was too nervous to say anything. I didn’t want anyone to think I was scared, and I figured if I said anything it would be taken the wrong way.

At the beginning of the second week of May, we split into two groups and installed ourselves in the helicopters that transported us to our new duty station. If you can call a mountaintop in the middle of the jungle home, which we did-- because that was to be our home for one year. Unknown to me, besides the two troop helicopters, four others brought in supplies for the people already there. After seeing what the supplies consisted of, my knees started shaking. We had more live ammunition, grenades, mortar rounds, flares, plastic explosives, than we did food or water. Being assigned to a bunker, constructed of sandbags, huge tree trunks, and more sandbags, I then attended a briefing on what was going on, and what was expected of us new guys. It was there that I learned I was not only typing up intercepted radio messages, I was also expected to defend our “home”. While we were enjoying the repugnant C-rations for lunch, the Cambodian rebels started to mortar our compound. The fear I had during the live fire exercise in basic training grew ten fold very quickly. This was for real. This was not training. I ran to my assigned position and was ready to repel the enemy; however, there was nobody to see, just the sound of incoming rounds and the roar of them going off. It was maddening and bewildering for me to see some of the other people calmly talking like this nightmare wasn’t happening. After ten minutes or so, peace came again to our home. I was told that this was a daily occurrence and that I would get used to it after a couple of days. I kept asking myself what kind of a madhouse I came to, and how did people hide their fear so completely. That evening, we were on fifty percent alert, which means half the men were awake and the other half tried to sleep. Being unlucky, I was assigned to the sleeping half. The thoughts going through my mind were unbelievable and sleep wasn’t possible for me.

With the noontime shelling occurring everyday, it became like the drone of a pesky fly, and I was soon used to it. While being somewhat concerned, I wasn’t scared of it anymore, which surprised me very much. Then, the night of my seventh day there, while having a very enjoyable dream of some sort, I was rudely awakened by explosions, small arms fire, people yelling and screaming. Joining my teammates on the defensive line, all I could see were twinkling lights and green tracers coming towards us, while our red tracers went out toward the twinkling lights. It didn’t take a genius to realize that those twinkling lights were gunfire, so I started to shoot at them. Every fifth round that left my rifle was a red tracer. I was actually enjoying it, when a sound that I can only describe as someone cutting meat with a meat cleaver came from next to me. I looked towards the sound and realized that a teammate had been shot. At that moment, complete terror overtook me. I was also mad that a teammate had been hit Fifteen or twenty minutes later, all firing stopped. It was a short skirmish, but it seemed to last for hours while it was happening. My mind finally accepted that fact I was still in one piece. After getting the wounded to the sickbay, bringing up more ammo and supplies to replace what we had expended, and cleaning up, I tried to go back to sleep. It seemed like I had just quit shaking and closed my eyes when the nightmare began all over again. Hustling back to the line, it seemed like twice the amount of lights and green tracers were coming in compared to before. Standing in the ditch, firing out at the attackers, my rifle suddenly seemed to have a mind of its own. It just flew out of my hands, hit me on my helmet and knocked me to my knees. After being knocked out momentarily, I finally came to my senses and found that the stock of my rifle was half missing, making it inoperable.. Looking around, I saw another weapon and started using that until the firefight was over. We were under fire and returning fire until just after sun up. Then the jets, fast movers, came in and blasted away at the tree lines with their ordinance.

After surviving that night and several others like it, it dawned on me that no matter how much fear I had in me, I could and did continue to do my job. In the little free time we had, while talking with some of my teammates, we realized we all had the same fear of dying or being badly injured. We also realized that we could function and help each other in our time of need. I believe it was General Patton who said: “Do not take counsel of your fears.” If you do, from my perspective, you will not be able to function in a time of crisis. I feel that I conquered my fear of armed combat and the very real fear of failing my teammate by being busy, and letting my training take over. After many firefights in the four months I was on that mountaintop, I later realized that I had stared death in its face more than once and came out of it intact. I still have a real fear of going into combat again, but I know that if the time came, I would be able to do so if necessary. I hope and pray it will never become necessary, not only for me, but for everybody.

She steps past the flight agent, into the enclosed corridor, refusing to let herself look back at her parents through the glass paned windows. She fights back the tears, biting her tongue until her head starts to throb from the tension in her jaw. She knows her parents are waiting for her to turn around and wave, but how can she? She knows that if she does turn around, she won’t leave, and all the other excited and surprisingly collected first year students will remember her as the runaway college student…the one who couldn’t make it to the plane. The tears start to come out the sides of her eyes and run down her flushed cheeks. Her hair is pulled back and she lets it down in hopes of hiding her anxiety. She clutches her gummy bears in one hand, and with the other, holds onto the railing in the fluorescent-lighted hallway, supporting the weight that her trembling knees refuse to.

She wonders why she made the decision she did and then quickly shakes away the thought when she feels the unconscious stream of “what if” questions start to make their way into her mind.

She reluctantly hands the ticket to the smiling flight attendant, holding onto the envelope longer that she should, until the attendant tugs the papers away from her. She attempts to bear a smile like the one the agent has plastered onto her brightly-painted face, but the attempt fails brutally and more tears start to make their way out of the corners of her eyes.

She waits in the corridor behind all her laughing and bubbly fellow college companions feeling her parents stare on her back. She once again refuses to look back, silently pleading with her parents to stop looking, waiting, anticipating…her anxiety gets the best of her and she drops the gummy bears on the ground as she clumsily tries to wipe her eyes of the tears that refuse to let her see. She bends down to pick the plastic bag up, cursing her friends for buying her so much candy, and drops her computer bag on someone’s foot. She manages to mumble a sorry as she collects her things and herself, but her clumsiness and inability to stay strong make her weaker and she starts to softly sob to herself. She tries to compose herself for the last time, mostly because she knows that her parents are still watching and the man behind her is flashing her pity looks. She hates pity looks. She looks up long enough to see a few of the girls on the same program as her silently whispering to each other as they look back at her. She paints a small smile on her reddened, puffy face as to show them she is a friendly person, she’s just not totally all there yet. They smile back and turn around, and she lets loose a sigh.

I can’t believe this day has come, she thinks. I never thought it would come. Why did I say yes? Why did I choose this school? Why did I choose to go away first semester? I should have said no. I can’t do this. I can’t leave. I can’t get on this plane and fly to a foreign country. I can’t. The thoughts unwind in her head as she walks the rest of the way down the corridor towards the plane. When she is sure her parents can’t see her, she starts to think again. I am going to miss them so much. I have never been away from home. I can’t do this.

She still doesn’t look back, but focuses on the door to the plane only a few steps away. Only a few more steps. Only a few more. She thinks. She remembers the five-hour car ride to the airport with her parents and her eyes begin to water again. She had looked back from the car window at the familiar surroundings as the rest of her family waved sadly to her and the car wound down the driveway. Her best friend had even come to say goodbye, and she saw him cry for the first time. Her brother had remained strong, cracking jokes and threatening to take over her room. Her grandfather gave her money and smiled. Her cousin hugged her hard and protectively. Her sister cried and her dogs peed on her bags. She hadn’t wanted to leave. She cried the hardest. For the first time in her life she was venturing out into the unknown; she had never left her house for longer than a week, let alone the country. She had just received her passport with empty pages. Soon they were going to be filled, but she would still be alone.

It scared her to leave her familiar town with its familiar faces. She was going to miss driving her car around town, doing the stupid and insignificant errands her mother always made her do. She was going to miss her job, her friends, her room, her horses, and her family. She was going to miss her life in the United States.

She feels the dam break in her head and the “what if” questions start to flow freely. What if I get to Spain and I forget all my Spanish? What if I hate it there? What if my host family hates me? What if I want to come home? What if no one understands me? The questions race through her mind and she loses control of herself. She isn’t even on the plane and she feels suffocated, overwhelmed, and sad. She abruptly decides that she can’t do this. She can’t spend her first semester of college abroad. She wants the experience of college, but she wants the memories made in her college, not in some other country. She wonders why all the other participants in the program who are eagerly boarding the plane decided to spend their first semester away. She wonders why she ever chose to spend her first college experience not in her college. Her mind is completely baffled and she shakes her head to clear it.

She is next in line to board the plane. Her palms sweaty and her mind racing, a sudden desire to run back to her parents darts through her million thoughts. The butterflies in her stomach, which have refused to leave, seem to escape and run through her entire body. I can’t get on this plane; I can’t leave. I am leaving everything. She hesitates as she puts one foot through the door, but before she knows it she is pushed and shoved to the back of the plane to her seat next to a smiling girl. They smile at each other and she puts all of her bags above her head, keeping her gummy bears next to her.

She half listens to the chatter of the students surrounding her. She smiles at them, but remains in her seat, refusing to let herself cry. She wants to so badly, but knows she can’t. She needs to remain calm and strong for the next three and a half months before she can return to the United States. She is still nervous and tries to ignore the anxiety pains running up and down her body, from the tips of her toes to the tips of her fingers.

The plane is finally full and she waits until the pilot rolls the aircraft down the runway towards a country where she has no family, no home, no friends, no experiences, and no memories. She wonders if she will be welcomed or if she will be an invasion. She wonders if she can do this.

The plane begins to shake and speed up. Her thoughts continue to sprint through her mind. Everything is moving so fast and she still refuses to look back to see her parents’ small faces in the window of the airport. She knows they are watching, and without looking, she can see her father holding her sobbing mother and she longs to be with them. The tears start and then the plane is up in the air, flying over the Atlantic, towards a country, a continent, a place that she knows little about. She stops crying and reflects. She thinks about her decision and realizes it was her decision. She made the choice and she wanted to take this path. She still does, and right then and there, she decides to make the most of it.

She is crying and sobbing, not wanting to leave. She waves goodbye to her family, friends, and home…Her stomach in knots and her palms sweaty she longs to be back in her room in her apartment on the third floor with her sisters. She wants to be in the classroom with her fellow students and her professors. She wants to lounge in the plaza on a sunny day and then walk casually through the windy streets to her favorite view and listen to the chatter of the surrounding people. After three and a half months, she doesn’t want to leave.

She can’t go back. She wants to stay. She can’t leave her friends, her family, her life. Her mother and father hug her and invite her back, assuring her that she always has a second home and family waiting for her in Spain. She hugs her sisters who are crying and begging her to write them every week. She promises to send them the pictures and they laugh about some memories. She looks at them one last time and turns to board the bus, clutching the bocadillo her mother prepared for her to snack on. She hesitantly enters the bus and doesn’t turn around, afraid that she might run back to their welcoming arms and never leave. She sits in her seat, away from the excited students who are ready to return to the United States and pick up their lives once again.

A sudden flash of déjà vu hits her and she thinks back to three and a half months ago when she did not want to make the trip across the Atlantic to this country, her new home. The moment she has been anticipating since the day she left has finally arrived and she wants it to wait just a little longer. She thinks about her decision and realizes what a good choice she made. She can’t believe she was ever doubtful. She suddenly laughs to herself, shaking her head, and allows herself to look at her family standing patiently and solemnly outside the bus. She looks at them and smiles, waving her hand and thanking them under her breath for the most amazing experience of her life so far. The irony of the moment catches her by surprise and she takes a deep breath. The butterflies in her stomach leave, allowing her to relax and realize that her decision, her step towards the unknown, has made all the difference.