Drowning isn't such a bad way to go.

            I was ten, back when I spent enough time in the sun to turn a deep, golden brown.  That summer I had a Minnie Mouse swimsuit.  It was red with white polka dots that the sun’s rays could penetrate, so I had a silver dollar-sized polka dot tan under my suit.

            My parents borrowed my uncle’s boat and took my brother and me to visit our neighbors, who were also borrowing a boat and a house from a relative.  My mother pulled my hair back in a ponytail to keep my scalp from getting sunburned, snapped my American Lifeguard Association certified foam rubber life vest into place, and tugged tight the adjustable straps around my rib cage.  I despised the thing, but if I wanted to swim without adult supervision, I had to wear it.

            My neighbor’s daughter, an only child, is three years younger than I am.  As children, I took it upon myself to act as a big sister to her.  So it was that, while I was teaching her how to do tricks off the boat dock, I nearly drowned.

            I did a pencil – into the water pointed feet first, arms overhead, and hands overlapped as if to dive.  I went deep, and the water forced the vest up so that my arms were pinned against the sides of my head.  When the vest did its job of bringing me to the surface, my eyes weren’t even above water.  I think I managed to rock enough to scream once before I swallowed as much lake water as my stomach could hold.  I kicked and wiggled until I made it to the dock ladder only to realize that my legs were too deep to get a foot on a rung, and my hands were useless, as they were still sticking straight up.  Then, I ran out of air.

            I felt hands grab my wrists and pull me out of the water so that I floated through the air and land nimbly on my feet.  The vest was off, and my neighbor’s father pounded me on the back as I heaved and vomited lake water all over the dock.  I shook violently and then burst into tears as my terrified mother came sprinting down the gangway for me.

            “Don’t ever make me wear that again!” I screamed at her.

            For eight months after that, I suffered through expelling all the parasites I swallowed and their cysts.  The funny thing is, the lake in Gonzoland is one of the ten cleanest lakes in the whole country.           

                                                                          ****

            Two years later, we were back on the lake, in a pontoon boat this time, and my brother was kneeboarding.  Like any competitive sibling, I wanted to as well, but my puny little girly arms weren’t strong enough for me to haul my disproportionately long legs out of the water, adjust the strap, and Velcro it while holding the rope.  I was also terrified of losing the rope and being unable to get my knees unstrapped. 

            In an attempt to be sweet and dig himself out of whatever hole he’d dug to get grounded, my brother devised a way to affix me to the board.  Wearing the life vest of doom, I hunkered down, leapfrog style, and he strapped my knees to the board.  “Stay like this.  Hold on to the rope.  See this?”  I looked down to see where he slipped the end of the strap under my left foot.  “When you get tired, just move your foot.  The strap will come free and loose on your knees.  Then, you can let go of the rope and ride the board on your belly till we pick you up.”  Sounded like the perfect idea, and it worked, except that first time.

            I took off fine, but when my father slowed the boat to haul my brother out of the water, the board flattened out and the nose dipped.  Flippity-dippity, y’all.  I went face-first into the water, and the buoyancy of the board popped it up so that I did a seal.  (A gymnastics stretch where you lie on your stomach, push up with your hands, bend your legs at the knee, and touch your toes to the top of your head…and yes, I was a gymnast until I got too tall.)  My knees did not come free of the board, and it smacked me in the back of the head.  I arched my back and dog-paddled, taking gulps of air when I could. 

            Someone yelled my name, and my brother came back in for me.  I threw up water as he swam me to the boat where I crumpled into a ball on the Astroturf-clad decking and wept that my brother tried to kill me.  I had a sore back for a week. 

            A summer later, I got back on the kneeboard.  My brother decided that, if I rode too far back on the board, the nose would stay in the air when my father slowed to get him.  Every few years or so, in a birthday card, he’ll write, “I love you, Sis, and I’m really sorry that I almost killed you at the lake.”  I wish he’d apologize for convincing me to stick a radio adapter to my tongue while it was plugged into the wall. 

                                                                      ****

            At age fourteen, I accompanied my church youth group on a mission trip to Myrtle Beach.  It was the first year my mother let me wear a two-piece swimsuit, and I had this adorable number in black and white seersucker. 

            For most of the teens on the trip, it was the first time they had visited a hard sand beach.  They were used to the sugar-white beaches of the GulfCoast.  I’d visited before, so I wasn’t wowed by the fact that people rode bicycles or pushed wheeled carts full of frozen lemonade or Dippin’ Dots on the beach.  (Why the hell are those things so good?)  What does wow me about the Atlantic are the remarkable contrasts in low versus high tide, wave crest versus wave trough.

            I spent the better part of one afternoon, while in my awesome swimsuit, wave hopping with a group of about ten girls.  When I tired, I decided to head ashore for a frozen lemonade.  I timed my exit, so that I could hop with the waves, but I miscalculated.  One caught me in the side of the face, ramming water into my ear and shoving me to the sea floor. 

            Hard sand, hard sand, nothing to dig into so I could pull myself.  Every time I tried to stand, another wave knocked me back down, pinned me, sucked at my thighs, and dragged me away from the shore.  Try, try, try, I heard it in my head.  [That cute boy you like] hugged you yesterday.  That’s worth fighting for, right?  My cursing gene hadn’t blossomed yet, or I would've been thinking, Don’t you fucking die!

            Then I thought, God, I’m going to drown out here.  I’ve nearly drowned twice, and it’s going to happen again.  The black fingers of unconsciousness crept into my vision, and then, I washed ashore.  I had a wedgie from Hell and sand burns on my knees, toes, and palms, but as I coughed and retched and crawled away from the water, I thought I must be part cat.

            No one saw me, and I didn’t tell anyone.  I just wrapped myself in my towel and prayed and thanked God that the blood from my wicked abrasions hadn’t drawn Jaws.

                                                                         ****

            Sweet sixteen and back at the lake at a friend’s parents’ lakehouse for some debauchery.  I wore my blue and white polka dot two-piece. (I have a thing for polka-dots.)  My hair was long, down to the bottom of my shoulder blades, and A.C., the boyfriend of a friend who christened me with the nickname Shelley, kept tugging on it and then looking away innocently when I would turn to confront him. 

            Several of us floated on life vests, and I threatened to burn A.C. with my lighter if he didn’t stop pulling my hair.  Then, he shoved me off the life vest, sinking my drink.    

            “Damnit, A.C.,” I shouted and swept my arm toward him so that I sent a wave of a splash into his open, laughing mouth.

            Before I could re-situate myself on the vest, he grabbed me by the shoulders.  I began to yell at him, but he shoved me underwater – no air in my lungs and mouth open.  He put his feet on my shoulders and used all the power he could generated with his six feet, six inches to jettison me down…deep, deep where the water is still fffrrreeezing even in August.

            Crawl up, I thought, remembering some lifeguard training about paddling up to the surface.  I could see it, dim in the green water.  I thought about all the corpses at the bottom of the lake, and how they never ever found anyone who drowned in it, and how it was the perfect place to dump bodies for that very reason.  So I crawled, but I since I had no air, I didn’t make it far.  

            “Fuck, Shelley!” A.C. screamed as someone hauled me bodily out of the water.  More coughing, more warfing (if I may borrow from Ren and Stimpy).  “Nice tits.”

            When Abe had jerked me up by the arm, the water rolled my top down around my waist.  Hooray!  Add embarrassment to the list.  “Somebody, give me a beer,” I croaked and slipped myself back into my top.              

                                                                         ****

            No lights.  Maybe I didn’t get close enough to the barrier between life and death to see them, if they exist.  I remember the water, the panic, the futility of fighting, and an absence of pain, until after the fact.

            As a sophomore in college, I read Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates, and I wrote a journal entry on those experiences.  I collected them together for the first time, and for the first time, I connected with a dead girl.  That made more of an impression on me than any of the four near-drownings.  

A Stone Skipping Over Water

Our relationship was like that - here and there only a moment of interaction but with enough impact to make a mark (not a bad one, mind you).

Our mothers played tennis together, and this was how we first met. My mother often dragged me to the courts and left me in the clubhouse with a lunchbox of toys. Even though I would've preferred being left at the swimming pool, this wasn't often possible, but I had an active imagination and could make do with my toys and an almost-house.

One day, I sat upon one of the bamboo sofas with neon palm tree printed cushions (hey, it was the 80's) and applied makeup to a Barbie head. He came in, looked at me, and said, "That's terrible, and look at her hair!" It didn't matter that he was six years older, he sat with me and showed me how to brush the tangled from her hair without ripping it out of her scalp. Why would he play with me? This, I asked my mother.  "He has a little sister. He knows your brother." Judging by how rarely my brother allowed me to play with him, I couldn't understand how this was an answer.

<long skip>

He sat with me on the porch of the clubhouse and helped me tear out dresses for my paper dolls. "Don't be impatient or you'll rip the folding tabs." No, I couldn't abide that. This obsessive trait, we mutually understood.

<long skip>

"Here," my tennis coach said, "Practice returning Jason's serve." It glanced off the top of my racket and hit me in the chin. He crossed the net to have a look at it. "Sorry," he said and smiled.

<long skip>

I stood beside an outdoor fireplace, Solo cup of keg beer in hand, chatting with another girl. I saw him and he me. "Oh my God, [Summa]! Is that you?" Yes, it was. "How old are you?" I was eighteen. "Really?" We talked for three hours.

<short skip>

I hugged him at his engagement party. By now, he was a dentist, and I was working on my bachelor's.

<short skip>

I chatted with him at someone else's engagement party, told him I was married and that I was a teacher. "You're too smart to do that." Well, kids need smart teachers. "It was good to see you." You, too, and it was the last time.

<the stone sinks>

Birdsong

Spring is coming. With the warming weather comes a rapid increase in birdsong. There is one call in particular that stands out -- a mocking bird. With each song, he says, "Hey ladies. This is my tree. Come on over and check out my nest."  One long tweet followed by a lower-pitched short tweet and then a slightly higher, off-key short tweet and I am thinking of the swings and the first time I ever heard the mockingbird's song.

When I little, about once a week in late spring and all summer, my mother would pack up our giant, wooden picnic basket with the smiling sun on top, load us into the car, and take us to Memorial Park on the backside of the public swimming pool. My brother and I hung from jungle gyms, dirtied our bottoms on metal slides, got stung by yellow jackets, and (my favorite) swung on the swings. These were old-school: black plastic U-shaped sling seats that burned your legs on summer days, long just-rusting chains, and towering A-shaped pole supports.

Tweeeeet, tweet, tweet, just like the squeak of the chains as she swings. Listen! He thinks he's found a mate, but it's her on the swing. Poor, poor bird.

Back, forth, the pendulum child stretches out her legs, leans back on the chains. Higher feet, higher. She reaches, reaches and scoops the clouds with her soles.

Down she goes, knees tucked tightly. Lean forward now, but don't fall out!

Soaring, reaching, stretching, yearning, until she gets so high that the chains go slack. Weightless for a moment, her bottom leaves the sling, then she returns, the chains catch with a loud clang. Watch your fingers, honey, the chains pinch. They leave blood blisters and blood and a worried mother. Fingers safe, she wobbles wildly for a bit on the back arc.

When it's the dry, hot misery of late August, she watches as the poured concrete around the pole wiggles in the grassless dirt. She sees the earth crack, sees the pole puff out dust as it settles at her lowest point. She wishes for her brother, because if they synchronize, they can get a bit of the pole to come out of the ground. They can see how the concrete looks like a crumbly, gray mushroom. It won't come out too far though. These things are buried deep (lawsuits and all).

Tweeeet, tweet, tweet. She swings up, up. At the highest point, she leans back and lets go. Little girl, let your feet fall over your head. You will stick the landing with a smile.

Memorial

          On the way to my parents’ place, there is a rather large pine tree growing close to the edge of the road.  In my largely rural hometown, houses and roads are built as to intrude upon nature as little as possible.  Lined with pines and hardwoods, the road to my parents’ neighborhood is hilly, and so it has narrow shoulders with steep drop-offs in many places.

          What makes this one tree so special?  Someone died by it.

          I met Amber at one of the infamous “Tupperware” parties where she proudly showed us the Silver Bullet (think metal, vibrating tampon) she purchased, with car adapter.  She was twenty then and had a fun personality to make up for the fact that she didn’t inherit the same good looks her older sister had.  She loved male strippers and could be heard above the rest of the ladies, hooting and shouting for the over-tanned man in a star-spangled banana hammock to, “Yeah, take it off, baby!  Come earn my money.”

          Amber was an alcoholic who also happened to be addicted to Oxycontin, two things she had in common with Kevin, her boyfriend of four years.  She spent the next few years of her life in a co-dependent relationship, bouncing between jobs with her parents threatening to throw her out of their house, and her two closest friends begging her to get clean.  Eventually, she broke up with Kevin and kicked the booze and narcotics. 

          It turned out the drugs were easier to give up than the boy.  A few times a month, they would hook up, and then she got pregnant.  When she was sure, she called him. 

          He picked her up around eleven on a Friday night, drunk, but where I’m from, driving drunk is a sport almost as popular as football.  They drove to a cul-de-sac in her neighborhood and talked for a few hours.  When she told him she intended to keep the baby, he promised to get clean and marry her.  They loved each other.  Kevin wanted her to go home with him, and she agreed.            

          The old pine is at the top of a steep hill, across the road and a bit left from where her neighborhood exits onto the main road.  Kevin, traveling at escape velocity, hilltopped and smashed the passenger side of his Mustang into the pine.  He woke up two weeks later, but Amber died on the scene.

          It’s been several years now.  The area where the car struck the tree can’t grow bark anymore.  The exposed tinder attracted beetles and has grayed and flaked with time.  I wonder if that’s how Amber’s parents feel. 

          Every Christmas and on her birthday, friends staple her picture to the tree, lay flowers at its base, and leave candles, and I wonder if any of them give her grave the same loving treatment.  I feel as though the scarred tree alone is a hard enough reminder to her parents.  They see it whenever they leave the neighborhood to go to work or church. 

          Drive down any highway in my neck of the woods, and you’ll see similar roadside memorials.  “Somebody died here.  Remember that.”  I’m not sure what purpose that serves.       (2011)         

Urban Renewal

          The A-frame across the street from the Salvation Army Store has been many things.  In my memory, it was first a cleaners.  I seem to recall seeing lots of things in plastic - herrings hanging to dry.  I don't recall the name.
          Next, it was a nail salon.  It now had a sign.  Nails! it proclaimed with a bottle of polish to the side.  Strange, I never saw a car parked there.  The owner most likely lived within walking distance, but with no car in the lot, the place looked vacant.  In a town like this, there is something off-putting about a business with no cars in the lot.
          Two summers ago, the building hosted Hot, Hot, Hot Wings and the sign had a flaming chicken with bugging eyes in full squawk.  That is a chicken going ape because it was engulfed in fire.  Again, no cars in the lot and no visible people in the building.  It had such potential, but it seems no one wants to eat in an empty restaurant.
          Now, the place is Abracadabra Jail Bonds complete with unlocked handcuffs on the sign.  It's only three blocks from the county jail, but with a competitor on the same block as the jail, Abracadabra is surely doomed. I wonder what it will be next.    (2010)

Pickers

          While watching American Pickers, my mother asked me, "Do you think it's possible to ever really understand someone else's perspective?  If someone grew up being told the sky was brown, do you think you'd ever convince them that the sky is blue?"
          I said, "I think most people accept what they're taught without question.  When they encounter something outside their experience or contrary to what they believe, they either ignore it or violently oppose it."  I watched as teary-eyed old man made a deal to sell one of his many antique bicycles.  "Maybe not.  Maybe people are more willing to explore, but the ones who aren't just yell louder."  I looked back at her and half-grinned.  "Trying to help a lost soul, are you?"
          "Always.  And you?"
          "Always." Even if it's only my own.
(12/25/2010)

Over the train tracks and through the hood

          On my way to my parents' house, I passed a house where my childhood best friend's husband lived.  It's a square cinder block house, the kind where one side of the block is coated with ceramic asbestos paint.  It's a terrible puke-mint-green color with a white door, no shutters, and no shrubbery.  It  looks naked without those things.
          He hated the house, called it The Cracker Box both because it was the approximate size of a cracker box and because many people in the small, conservative community considered him and his *gasp* divorced mother to be white trash.  His mother is a first rate Hell-bitch.  She once broke her ring and pinkie fingers by slapping him with her rings turned so that the stones were inside her palm.  He came to homeroom bleeding from three cuts on his chin and laughed when I told him.  She was mean and tough but had to be. She had a strong-willed boy to raise with no help from family.  She refused all government aid.
          She waited until after he graduated from high school to marry her long-time "boyfriend."  When she did, she moved out to his lake house and sold The Cracker Box.  It's now Don's Pawn Shop.  A large fluorescent sign with a giant pistol on top pokes out of the lawn to let potential customers know that cash for Christmas is only a sale away.  It's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen.  Someone I cared about lived there, grew up there, lost his virginity there, and now there's is a giant pistol on top of a sign in the front yard. 
          I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
(12/25/2010)

A Mother's Laughter

          It was spring, and the Bird Carver and I were standing on the sidewalk where it dead-ended into the parking lot.  He was ready to go home for the day, having already set his box of tools, along with the soldering iron, in the back of his van.  The second and third rows of seats had been removed in preparation for his trip out of town.
          The barn owl he'd completed rested in bubble wrap amongst other boxes.  He said he could get $2500 for it, and I whistled, to which he nodded.  I had to admit, when he'd glued the eyes in place and set the bird upright, the owl came to life.  I'd flinched slightly, and my skin chilled a bit.  The eyes were the type that seemed to follow you.  The black pupils reflected the overhead light but nothing else, truly fitting for a predator.
          "Your wife's going to?" I asked as we stood together enjoying the afternoon sunshine.
          "Oh, she can't resist the feel of cash in her hands," he said, rocking back on his heels and then forward again.  "These craft shows give her a chance to talk nonstop."
At that moment, a cocoa-colored Buick surged up the steep drive into the faculty lot and aimed for the free spot where we stood.  He grabbed my arm and pulled me back protectively.
          "Watch out for this crazy old hag in the Buick," he warned in a distasteful tone.  He caught my grin only moments before the driver waved at me.  "Oh, please, please tell me that's not your mother."
          "Um," I said, snuffling in an attempt to deflate the laughter bubbling inside me.
          Embarrassed, he turned from me and walked briskly to his van.  Still grinning, I went to the Buick.  My smile deepened my mother's, even as her brows flicked down in question.
          "He just called you an old hag for driving a Buick.  He thinks he insulted me."
          She looked at the back of his van as she put her own car in reverse and then stomped on the brake so she could laugh - a loud, unrestrained, open-mouthed "Ha!"  Still smiling, she pressed her hand over her lips and settled into a smile that showed teeth.  With one more quick pop, she backed up the car and then headed down the drive.
          I hadn't heard her laugh like that in a long time.     
(12/16/2010)

The Bird Carver

          I sat across his desk from him as he used his soldering gun to burn texture onto wood.  It had changed drastically from the previous day.  It had been a rough-cut hunk of white oak, a piece he'd scavenged after lightning killed the eighty-year old tree.  After ten hours of carving, gouging and sanding, the hunk took on the form of a small bird.  Today, he added the feathers.
          He wore two sets of glasses - his usual pair and his bifocals.  He peered through both sets, studying his work.  Next to the soldering gun, he had a small gouge, and in a piece of soft pine, he had stuck the legs.  They were made of copper wire that he meticulously cut, twisted, and etched until every crease of "flesh" and the curves of the tiny claws were just so.  He made everything but the eyes.  Those, he ordered from a ceramic eye company.
          He spared the book on his desk a look, making sure that the layering was coming along as it should.
          "I'm glad you decide to stay another year," I said.
          "My wife wants me to retire so we can take cruises," he said.  "I suppose I can carve just as well on a boat deck as in this office."
          "At least she won't make you give that up."
          "Oh no.  She knows a cash cow when she sees one."  He shook his head, his brow drawn down.  "I used to make all sorts of things and just give them away, and one day she put her foot down and said I should make money off them.  It's in her blood; she can't help it."  His wife was Vietnamese.  He made so much off his carvings that he had to get a business license and report his income to the IRS.  "I think it was when I made a violin for one of the doctor's children that she insisted I charge for it."
          I blinked deliberately.  "You made a violin?"
          "Yes.  I'm going to make a guitar for him," he gestured to the office next door, "out of the same tree this came from," he waved the bird.  "It's his tree, so I'll give him a discount."
          I shook my head.  "So, what are you feathering today?"
          "A youth grosbeak."
          He leaned forward and let me take the bird while he turned the book around for me to see.  One side of the feathering was complete, and I could see exactly how the bird would look once he painted it.  He would spend a day layering, dabbing, and washing color over the body until it was perfect.  Then, he would paint the legs, pop them in, and add the eyes.  When he finished, it would look as though a real grosbeak was perched on his pine block -  a perfect replica.  It would go for $200, easily.
          "May I look?" I asked, pointing at the book.
          "Sure," he said, taking the bird from me and sliding the book over the desk.  The motion sent a spill of curlicues over the edge of the desk.  "I suppose I'll be chided for that," he murmured as he looked down at the mess.
          "Well, you have to do something to pass the time until the whistle blows."
That made him smile.  He liked to compare the job to something blue collar.  He'd been in it for over twenty years but only recently felt pressure to stay in his office a required number of hours every day.  It was just another reason to call it quits.
          "We punch our time cards like the sheepdog and coyote," he said.
          When we weren't working, he carved and I read, or we sat together and talked.  One day we sat outside and watched as a hawk tried to pluck a squirrel from the side of a pine tree.  I was rapt as I watched the tree rat wait until the last possible moment to scoot around the tree, just out of the hawk's grasp.  The raptor would squawk, fly back, adjust, and fly in again.  We stood watching for so long that we grew bored and went back in the building.
          Now, it was too cold to stand outside comfortably.
          "I saw a crow dead on the side of the road on my way in this morning," he said.  "Strange business.  Crows are too intelligent to get killed in the road."
I looked up from his book on North American bird species.  "I saw something on Discovery about how crows in some city or another would drop nuts into crosswalks and let cars run over them.  They watched for when the people would cross and knew they would be safe to retrieve the nuts."
          "It's nice to have someone that enjoys learning around this place."  He grinned at me, and I chuckled.  We were, after all, in a building on a college campus.  "What are you looking for?"
          "A particular type of black bird," I said, turning the book around to him.
          "Did it have a breast of burnt orange and a light yellow beak?"
          "No, its breast was cream."
          "Oh, then it was a regular blackbird and not an oriole.  Did you kill it?"
          "No," I said, stunned.
          "Pity," he said, picking up the soldering gun.  A curl of smoke and the scent of charring wood filled the office.  "Terrible birds, blackbirds.  They rob bluebird nests.  Did you know?"  I shook my head when he looked up at me.  He nodded.  "They aren't native.  Some moron thought it was a brilliant idea to bring to America every bird Shakespeare mentioned in a play or poem.  They call them starlings, trying to give a trashy bird a better name.  Kill every one that you can."    
(12/12/2010)