Passage

Copyright © 2008 by db mcneill

Part 2

*****

Last year, Suzy and I walked home together every day after school.  On the last day we walked across the street to the high school and waited for the buses to pull out.  We watched the big kids throw their books and papers from the windows.  We ran behind the buses and had a parade.  Suzy sang, “Ta DA Ta DA!”  I marched and played invisible trombone.

We stopped at the ice cream parlor before we went home.  We lingered a long while over the glass counter, looking carefully into each tub.  We had enough money between us for one scoop apiece. I got vanilla and Suzy got Rocky Road.  The lady at the counter put our ice cream in sugar cones, even though she knew we couldn’t pay for them.  “You girls be good this summer,” she said and smiled.  Her eyes were sad when she said it.  The ice cream lady always had the saddest eyes, even though she had a better job than anybody.

We ate our ice cream and wandered down to the lake, stopping at Deadman’s Cove where the high school kids go swimming.  Some of them were already there, laughing and splashing one another.  There is a pier that floats in the cove, far out from the shore.  Sunlight danced on the water that afternoon but the pier remained dark and mysterious.  Nevertheless, teenagers swam out to it.  They were unimpressed by the riddle of the pier.  They stood, balancing, then jumped off.  Light flashed sharply on the splashing water.  Droplets flew, arching through the air, forming temporary diamonds.  After a while, a boy and two girls stretched out on the old smooth wood of the pier.  Propped up on their elbows, they watched their friends.   They looked on coolly as the pier bobbed in the water.

My stomach felt funny.  I was missing something.  “I’m going to swim out to that pier this summer,” I said.

Suzy’s eyes widened.  “It’s a hundred miles out to that pier,” she said.

“Not a hundred, I don’t think,” I answered, “Maybe fifty.”

“Wow,” she said, “When do you think you will?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.  “This summer.”

That had been three full months ago.  Now summer was almost over.  I hadn’t been anywhere near that cove.  Suzy hadn’t said another word about it, but I knew what she must be thinking.  I’d never told a lie before.  I didn’t want to start, especially not with my best and only friend.  I sat up and pulled my toes away from the nibbling fish.  I stood up and brushed myself off.  I took a deep breath and walked down the path in the woods to Suzy’s house.  Her door is enormous.  I knocked.

Suzy grinned as she opened the door.  “Let’s go,” I said solemnly.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” I said.  “I’m going to show you that summer isn’t over.  Not yet.”

We took the old dirt road.  We walked past my house.  Big Ellen was sitting in a chair in her front yard, drinking a soda.  She waved as we walked by.  Suzy waved back.  We walked past Ervine’s, where Big Ellen had most likely purchased her soda.  We didn’t stop. Suzy grew solemn.  Soon Deadman’s Cove and the pier were in sight.  Suzy stopped and held out her hand.  “Good luck, old friend,” she said.  We shook hands.  We’d seen that in a movie.  I wiped my mouth on my arm.  I said, “Well, here goes nothing.”  That had been in the movie too.

I walked to the edge of the cove and stepped in.  I waded out until the water was up to my chest.  I took a deep breath.  I started to swim.

THE END

*****

It doesn’t fit well with my short story collection (in the works).  I am publishing it here in two installments. As always, comments are welcome.

 ****

Passage

Copyright © 2008 by db mcneill

for Denise

****

It was still summer, no matter what Suzy Jacobs said.  Crickets were chirping down below my window last night.  Frogs were singing at the edge of the lake this morning.  I dangled my feet into the water.  Small silver fish nibbled on my toes.  It tickled.  Suzy sat beside me.  Her skin was pink from the summer sun.  The seat of her swimsuit had worn thin.  She pulled on the fabric and let it snap back, as much as it still could.  Leaning forward, she kicked her foot up.  Water splashed and, for a moment, the fishes stopped nibbling.  I still wore cut-offs and an old T-shirt for swimming.  Ma said I wasn’t old enough to need a swimsuit, but I knew next summer she’d have to let me get one.  My breasts were beginning to grow.

Suzy said the last day before we had to go back to school just didn’t count as summer.  The suspense was too great.   No one could stand that bursting feeling, she said.  It was too much.   She wondered which teacher we would get.  We could get Mr. Spence, who was nice, but he never made bullies go to the principal.  If you were in his class, recess could be scary.  We could get Miss Felder, and that would be good.  Or we could get mean old Mrs. Drury.  That was the worst.  She hated everybody.   We didn’t know if our friends would be in class with us.  We didn’t even know if we would be in the same class.  Suzy talked about Mrs. Drury for a while.  There were rumors Mrs. Drury ate the students she hated the most, usually poor kids with good grades.  Kids like us.  Suzy stopped talking, eyes wide, frightened by her own wild speculations.

I looked up at the sky and sighed.  “I don’t believe that,” I said.  “We’re too old to believe teachers eat students.”

“Well, it might be true!” Suzy replied, chewing her bottom lip.

“I don’t care…I just don’t care,” I said.  Suzy didn’t believe me.

“Now, don’t you be lying to ME, little Miss Scaredy Cat,” she said.

“I am NOT a Scaredy Cat!” I yelled.  Jumping up, I chased her down the rocky edge of the lake. “It’s not summer anymore! It’s not summer anymore!” she shouted.

Before she disappeared into the trees, she turned and stuck her tongue out at me.

“Bleh!” I called after her.  I crossed my arms, made an angry face, then stomped back to my toe nibbling spot.  “I don’t care,” I grumbled.  “It is TOO still summer.  It’s not over yet.”

We spent a good part of the summer together, playing house under the trees in the woods.  Some days, we were too mature to play house.  On those days, we walked down to John Ervine’s Boat House.  We pet our way through his pack of friendly, mangy dogs.  Suzy liked to hold the screen door open as I walked through. Then she’d drop it.  Slam!

The door bounced shut behind us.  We lifted the glass door of the battered bench cooler and picked out the sodas in the frostiest bottles.  We felt very grown up as we gave old John Ervine our dollar and waited for change.  The animal heads mounted along his walls watched us with indifferent glass eyes.  John popped the caps off the sodas for us, and handed the bottles back with a flourish.

“For two of my loveliest customers.”  He said the same thing every time.

We walked along the dirt road back to Suzy’s house, sipping our sodas and talking about the weather.

“Lovely afternoon,” she’d say.

“Hot enough for you?” I’d reply.

When we got to her house, we went inside, turned on the fan, and watched television.  The fan blew our hair back.  We created shampoo commercials.  We usually tried to find a movie on the television.  We especially liked the monster movies, but we watched romances and war stories too.

The fish nibbled more fiercely now on the tips of my toes, worried perhaps that they wouldn’t get their fill before I ran off again, taking my toes with me.  I shut my eyes and thought about the movies.

Suzy and I knew exactly what life would be like when we were grown.  It would be a lot like a movie.  The women mostly stood around and screamed while the men sprang into action.  We made a pact to be like the men.  We would save people, discover lost civilizations, and have other grand adventures.  So far, I was a failure as a great adventurer.  I had to be redeemed.

I knew Suzy had taken the short cut to her house.  I’d have to go get her later, but it was still early in the afternoon.  I leaned back and looked up into the sky.  The clouds looked like horses and windmills.  I squinted, hoping to see angels or God, but I guess they’d all gone home too.

Big Ellen, who lives next door to my Ma and me, told me once that God can always hear you.  He knows what you’re doing and what you’re thinking.  Big Ellen goes to church three times a week, so she ought to know.  The thought of God spying on me, peeking in on my private thoughts kept me pretty scared.  Today, though, it might be a good thing.  I shut my eyes and tried to think real loud, just in case God wasn’t close by right then.  “God,” I thought, “summer’s not over yet.  I’m not a liar yet.”

***

TO BE CONTINUED

If you want to read it but don’t have a Nook or  Kindle, you can download the Kindle cloud reader software to your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, or Android Phone for free here or past this into your browser: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_ipad_mkt_lnd?docId=1000493771

Happy (?) travels and don’t forget your crickets.

I am still unsure of the best way to get from drawing to a good JPEG image (and am open to suggestions).  This image is a scan to PDF converted to JPEG.  I don’t think that’s the best way to go. Nevertheless, I am pleased that this image is more in line with what a book cover ought to be. What do you think?

The Girl with UFO Eyes

They are putting the heart together by the way, not tearing it apart. ; )

It’s busy busy here; resolutions coming soon.  Happy New Year, ya’ll….

Marriage

Parenting…well, it is what you do when you have children – or it should be – so patting myself on the back for that seemed inappropriate. And work – I have a good job with a great company, but what I do at work doesn’t exactly feed my soul, so writing down those accomplishments didn’t feel good, even when they were pretty darn impressive. Seriously – I started a regional chapter of a women’s professional networking group in 2007 and ran it for years, holding events and awarding three $1000 scholarships. I was promoted. I stayed current with more regulations and requirements than you could shake a stick at, and did a decent job of being a key person in moving some very necessary things forward. But in the end, it wasn’t enough for me to feel like I accomplished anything towards my life goals. And anyone who has led a technical support group of almost any kind can tell you, recognition for what you do (unless it ticks people off) is rare. And I won’t lie…I like getting outside acknowledgment that I did something; it helps.

So, I was a bit surprised when I looked back at my (very modest but challenging) goals from the beginning of 2011 and realized I’d made meaningful progress. I had written “If what’s waiting is not an emergency, I have time to floss my teeth each morning”. This may seem silly, but I had reached a point where I felt I was being selfish to take time to floss my teeth. And yes, I was receiving feedback to that effect. I won’t go into that here, but suffice it to say, I now floss my teeth daily and I know that such feedback is absurd. Anyone who ever struggled with a similar situation can tell you this is not an easy journey, no matter how silly it looks from the outside.

I also wrote that I’d take the time to “put myself together” each morning. Though it seems more than a year ago, I clearly remember the morning I put in earrings for the first time in years. I now wear my earrings, a little makeup, some other special jewelry daily. And most days, I don’t feel like I arrive at work looking like a homeless person. I may still occasionally have to remove the jewelry because of little tugging hands, or I may go to work with signs of a food-covered toddler hug. But that’s fine. In fact, that’s wonderful. Especially now that I don’t think it’s pointless to take the time to (try to) look nice, and I don’t listen to anyone who tells me so.

In short, I began expanding the “setting boundary” skills I learned in my mid-30s and began learning to be assertive. I lost my temper a few times. And I made a few people angry. Some of that was valid anger, since I didn’t always handle things well. Some of it was not – people learn to expect YES. And I am quite convinced that I shouldn’t have to be assertive not to be steam-rollered over. It’s not my fault if people are jerks. But it’s also not my job (literally or figuratively) to tell them what they want to hear either.

I worked on my YA science fiction novella, The Pied Piper of St. May. With a lot of editing assistance from my friend Tracy, it became something I was quite pleased with. I decided to take a break from sending out stories for publication and put it up on Amazon for 99 cents. It’s doing pretty well. I even found time to paint a cover for it, though in retrospect, much as I like the painting, the story needs a book-covery cover. I have a goal to take care of that this year.

There is more about what I did not accomplish in 2011 and how I hope to achieve those goals in 2012, but I will save them for my next post. And post them I will, because I think that sharing that here will be a good thing.

What about you? Do you make resolutions? Set goals? How does 2011 look in retrospect? What is on your horizon and in your hopes for 2012?

Spacing is not preserved and I can’t seem to fix it, so if you prefer, the original post is here.

This post is called….

Conflict or cooperation?

Here’s a parasauralophus:

from Judy's Ami Shop

In my family “Grandmama” is an honored title.  And acquiring that title is on par with becoming Princess Kate.

My “Grandmama” was my mother’s mother and she was an extraordinary woman.  Her beauty was the stuff of songs – she had ivory-white skin, dark auburn hair, and deep blue eyes.  But it was her strength that made her amazing.  She raised 5 children in less than ideal circumstances, and while her children were not untouched by their father’s abuse, she somehow minimized the damage…and they all grew to be self-sufficient adults.

She had her own beauty parlor -in the days before salons - and in the days before women were likely to own any kind of business.  When her husband left her (which was probably for the best), she went on as a single mother.  Diagnosed in her 40s with Parkinson’s disease, she kept the disease at bay with nightly walks.  She was in her 60s before it took her down.

I recall that she made her own products for the beauty parlor.  This may not be true, but I like the idea, so I am keeping it.  What is true is that she smelled amazing.  It is also true that, in the summer, she took me with her on  her nightly walks.  We watched the tiny bats we called “chimney sweeps” rise into the sky.  We smelled the hot, wet summer air, and she told me who lived in each house.  I loved the litany of neighbors, unchanging night after night, like a spoken lullaby.  I loved the smell of my grandmama too.  And though I caught whiffs of similar scents over the years, it was decades before I found that scent again.

My friend Heather reminds me of my grandmother in many ways.  Though she is in a happy, healthy marriage, life has also thrown her some unwelcome curves.  She carries on with grace and poise.  She is beautiful and smart and charming.  It’s unbelievably easy to sit on the floor with her – to be enveloped in her scent – and forget anyone else is around.  This is so easy, in fact, that I found myself doing just that when she visited me at work.

yummy soap

Heather has been making her own soap for many years.  After her daughter was born, she became an office-part timer and began selling her soap.  Soon, she was working no time in an office and full time at her home-based business Lilypad Herbals.  I am not surprised that her business is thriving.

She is a careful craftsperson.  Her “tadpole” soap is what she uses to bathe her own baby.   And after I purchased some to bathe K, I really shouldn’t have been surprised when I lay down to nurse him after his bath….and he smelled exactly like my grandmama.  All that time and the scent I had been searching for was pure, lye-free, dye-free soap.

The enveloping scent Heather’s grandchildren will one day recall with love is tangerine-patchouli.  It smells like a smart, beautiful woman.  Who could ask for more?  And if you want to check that (or the tadpole soap) out, head on over to Lilypad Herbals to see what Heather’s been up to.

Oh, and tell her Momsomniac says “hi.”

I did not write this; someone I know did. I’d love to see it become a novel. Wouldn’t you?