Cinnamon Rolls and Aluminum Cans

nc-aluminum-can-recycling-cansThe garbage bags, smelling of beer and slimy with drops of liquid, are what I remember most.

Before recycling was a thing, Dad, in his worn clothes and scruffy beard, bought aluminum cans for 10 cents a pound at the Farmer’s Market.  I was his 5 year old helper.

The locals brought them in various containers–bags and beaten-up trash cans, old cardboard boxes and feed sacks. The cans would shift and jingle as they were weighed on a kitchen scale, rigged with a little platform.  What my dad remembers most was getting smart—learning to watch for rocks in bags and cans loaded with dirt. Once he found a half-eaten turkey adding extra weight to a bag.

When there weren’t customers, our old blue Ford got loaded with the purchased metal. As the Market was winding down, we would make home visits, picking up loads from around town.

My dad engineered 6-foot extensions to the sidewalls of the truck, a cage of sorts made of scrap lumber and chicken wire.  On the drive home, with the back of the truck full of aluminum, we wouldn’t speak.  My dad isn’t much of a talker.  And, over the rumble of cans shifting and vibrating, we couldn’t hear one another anyway.

At home, the cans would be released from their temporary captivity and spill onto the ground.  The tool wielded by my father crushed the cans flat. If he used the truck to crush them, we knew his back was acting up.

In addition to mighty tools, the little feet of my brother and I would stomp on the cans, trying to hit them just so. A can might curve perfectly around our little feet and our work would turn to play as we danced around in our shoes made of cans.

Newly compacted, the smashed cans were shoveled into reused bags and tied off. Once there was a full load, they would be sold in the city for 32 cents a pound. That small profit kept my family afloat while my dad recovered from a serious back injury.

It was a lean time—an in-between time where making ends meet was the adult focus. My grandma put $5 in her weekly letter; my mom used it to buy hamburger meat.

Because the ingredients were cheap and it was a recipe she had mastered, my mom made cinnamon rolls to sell in the park. With darkness still blanketing the house, the oven baked batch after batch of the sweet treat, my mom sacrificing sleep. Always attentive to the clock, she could time the last batch perfectly to arrive at the Farmer’s Market just as people started to show up.

The hot rolls, darkened with cinnamon and whitened with sugar frosting, would 6a00e54efbe3a1883300e551c6372c8834-800wimoisten the plastic wrap. In the trip down the dirt road, the wrap would begin to creep up leaving the edges of the rolls exposed to flying critters. My job was to stretch the wrap back over the edges and keep an eye out for pesky flies.

$1.75 for 8 rolls, fresh from the oven. Some had raisins.

Once that first plateful sold, I’d be given money to go and buy a bean burro from a lady from church. She brought pre-made burritos wrapped in tin foil. I loved holding that warm burrito in my hands on those early mornings and running between the can station and the cinnamon roll table.


My mom hasn’t made cinnamon rolls in years. I bet she still could if she needed to.

But, since I can remember, my family has collected cans, eventually taking them into the new Recycling Center that opened in town.

The Recycling Center closed several weeks ago—the resale price of scrap metal wasn’t high enough to keep him in business.

The tides have changed for my parents. They can now afford organic grass-fed beef. But, they can’t bring themselves to throw the cans away.

And the bags of cans are piling up on the front porch.

That’s Where I Lived

“It’s that one, right there,” I tell my husband Ian as the car slows down and we peer out the window. “That’s where I lived.” I moved back to my old town nearly ten years ago, so I’ve seen my childhood house as an adult. But every time it’s still jarring. It feels like when I run into someone I used to babysit and they’re now in high school and my brain sort of cramps up like it can’t begin to process that they’re no longer five-years-old and just learning to read. It’s the same with my old neighborhood; it’s aged, too.

Several of the small two-story houses on the block, originally built by the railway, have been painted and none of the neighbors standing in their yards are the same. Some have moved but the elderly woman who lived to the right of my childhood house passed away about 15 years ago. Looking at her house flashes me back to her funeral service. But I quickly yank my train of thought in the direction of happier recollections: her short white hair and friendly smile, and how her house always smelled like old person soap — the kind that sits in a fancy dish in the bathroom and is shaped like shells and starfish. I find myself wishing we hadn’t run through her garden so much. And I wonder if whoever lives there now loves her forest of rhododendrons as much as she did.

That's Where I LivedMy old house is a small, white two-story home shaped like a square with its front door smack-dab in the middle and a pane window on each side that gives the impression of eyes, and a triangle roof perched on top. This is what all the houses on the block look like, although they come in a variety of colors. This is how children often draw houses, and I felt proud because it was how my house actually looked. It was as if this meant my house had achieved some high level of aesthetic perfection.

My mom’s green bird feeder is no longer hanging from the tree and the yard feels incomplete without it. I remember how the bird feeder would routinely spill seed all over the yard, which I’d incorporate into games with my toys. Usually it was food for stuffed animals, but one time I tried to eat a piece, myself; I discovered it wasn’t nearly as tasty as a bag of sunflower seeds. A pig my neighbors were babysitting, however, felt differently about the uncooked seeds. They brought the potbellied pig down so that we could take turns walking it on its leash. And the pig, to our delight and amusement, sucked up those pieces of bird seed just like a vacuum.

The front is no longer a lively brick red and is instead sporting a new coat of boring old grownup-grey paint. For anyone else driving by it’d be just a small porch, just like any other small front porch on the street. But I know that in a past life it was a clubhouse, a detective agency, a shelter during extreme — and extremely unrealistic — natural disasters, and a queen’s throne when my bossy best friend got to pick the game and wanted to spend the afternoon sitting smugly on the steps of my house as she ordered us around. It was also where I’d stand as I screamed at my best friend when we fought: “We’re not friends anymore! I’m never going to play with you again! Never ever!” After melodramatically slamming the front door behind me, I’d be greeted by my mother with that you-just-disturbed-the-entire-neighborhood-and-I’m-not-happy-about-it look that I was a little too familiar with.

The patch of grass in the front yard looks so tiny now, but I had the biggest front yard out of all my neighborhood friends. This meant all the good games took place in my front yard. During the summer we’d sometimes flip our bicycles upside down and place them in a circle and pretend it was a fort. During the winter, when it finally snowed, we’d attempt making the snow equivalency of our bicycle fort. But because we were in the Seattle area our winters weren’t very snowy, so by the time we’d built a snow-wall we would’ve used up all the snow in my front yard. We’d have half a fort, a wall we were proud of, but the snow would be gone, the grass would be showing. And there was nothing left to have a snowball fight with. There was never enough snow, I think.

“Well, this is where I grew up,” I tell Ian with a shrug as the car stops for just a moment so we can look. I can’t explain how much it’s changed, and I don’t try. It feels smaller now, duller. It’s as if that wild, vibrant childhood magic faded and left an ordinary, run-of-the-mill neighborhood standing in its place. “It’s changed a lot since when I was a kid,” I say. It’s no longer the same neighborhood or the same house. But perhaps the biggest change is that I’m not the same little girl running barefoot in my front yard. That little girl, like the neighborhood she once loved, now only exists in memories.

*****

Kelsey Munger“That’s Where I Lived” was written by Kelsey L. Munger. Kelsey is a sixth generation Pacific Northwest native. Aside from three and a half months spent living in a very tiny town in Hungary among the sunflower fields, she has always lived in or just outside beautiful, rainy (sometimes a little moldy) Seattle, WA. Kelsey blogs at KelseyMunger.com and can be found on Twitter at @KelseyLMunger.

A Park Called Manito

There is a park in Spokane, Washington, called Manito. It’s the crown jewel of the city, the place my family always takes out of town guests when they come to visit. It’s 90 acres of formal and informal gardens, fountains, a conservatory. When my family first moved to Spokane, when I was 7, we would sometimes make the 25 minute drive to the park to spend the day. In the cool of the evening we would walk around the Rose Garden and I would take note of all of the rose names like “Queen Elizabeth” and “Pretty in Pink.”

Occasionally, we would go to picnics at the Upper Manito playground and the other kids and I would move the picnic tables, covered with dark green, peeling paint, behind the swings. We mounted them, the swings around our legs, and jumped off for maximum lift.

pool at duncan gardensOnce, with friends, I stripped down to my underwear and went swimming in the fountain in the middle of a traditional English garden. It was cold, and my friend’s father made us put back all of the change we had collected.

We always walk through the Lilac Garden in April, breathing in the heady fragrance. Spokane is known as the Lilac City. Families and couples cluster close together for pictures during the high point of the season. Choose any weekend in spring or summer and you’ll catch a glimpse of prom-goers, or a wedding party.

Our next house was blocks away from Manito Park.

Often, in the evenings, I would walk a little ways to Upper Manito and swing by myself, sometimes bringing a friend, or my MP3 player (long before I had a cell phone, let alone one that would store music). I would swing and think, sorting out the problems of the day, sometimes praying. I went there whenever I had an unrequited crush, or when I was waiting for a phone call. I went there the day before I left for South Korea when I was 19, my first trip overseas without my family. I went when I was stressed out at work.

They have re-done the swings and the playground equipment since our days of jumping off the picnic tables, and added a splash pad, but the baseball diamond is still there, and those picnic tables are still peeling.

ManitoOver the years, I walked with many friends through that park. Now, when I return, I hear snatches of conversations, I see snapshots of people I don’t know anymore. In a grassy area beside the English garden with the fountain, I can almost see my beloved dog when she was a puppy, chasing after a  tennis ball, and I have to remind myself that she’s not with us anymore.

I sat on a bench in the Perennial Gardens after my first breakup and told a childhood friend that I was fine.

“You don’t have to be fine,” she said.

When I moved out of my parents house, my new place was near enough to walk to Manito still. I often made my way to the calming Japanese Garden and took a lap or two. Sometimes I would bring my phone and catch up with people as I walked through the Rose Garden or down to the duck pond.

lilac gardenAs I wind past the Japanese Gardens, I remember that the park was the site of a zoo which closed in the 1930s, a casualty of the Great Depression. The ruins of the animal enclosures still dot the landscape in certain areas. If I didn’t know what I was looking for, I’d think that they were just stones haphazardly stacked.

We hadn’t even started dating yet when my out of town boyfriend first came to visit me. Almost as soon as he got off the plane, I told him that I wanted to take him to Manito Park. He still teases me about this, about my dogged determination to bring a country boy to a manicured park in the middle of the city. But I’ve lived my life in Manito. It has been there for heartbreak and heart-to-hearts. I spent time there with my first crush as an 8-year-old (naturally he was completely unaware of my existence). I have pushed my friends’ kids on the swings, picnicked in the grass, and played kickball. It was only fitting that it be the backdrop for this new, fragile chapter too. Now, as I walk through the field next to Upper Manito and take a seat on the swing, I hear whispers of that visit joining the rest of the cacophony.

December 20th, 2013

Our destination was Toronto, straight north, about four hours, all highway driving. We were traveling to celebrate the union of two beautiful friends who would be wedded on the winter equinox. After the wedding, we would spend the night in Niagara so that I could see the falls for the first time.

But we never made it. We didn’t even get close. Barely out of Allegheny County, a tractor trailer truck merged into our Subaru Impreza. The police report would estimate that upon impact our car traveled 90 yards, almost the full length of a football field.

When we landed, I looked myself over. Somehow I was fine–not a single scratch I turned to the driver’s side where my wife sat.  She was not fine. The roof had compacted in upon impact, cutting her head. Blood, mixed with glass bits from the windshield, covered her face. She was conscious.

She was worrying about me.

Straddling the road’s shoulder and a grassy embankment, our car faced outward and I watched, terrified, as headlights from passing vehicles whizzed by. The ignition key remained in place but we were going nowhere. The front of our car had crumpled up liked a used soda pop can. The back and side windows were completely blown out. Far away from city lights it was dark and damp. The flashers hummed in the background: Tick, tick, Tick, tick.

I fumbled for my cellphone in the breast pocket of my coat, but before I could reach it, a Good Samaritan arrived, “Are you okay?”png;base645aaca8097519cafb

“Please,” I begged. “Please, call 911. Now.”

Taking off my downy brown winter coat, I used its sleeve to apply pressure to my wife’s head and draped the rest over her body. She was shivering from the shock and the chill of the night air. I didn’t notice the cold or the rain seeping through my thin gray cotton shirt.

I tried to remain calm, but my tears falling silently onto her face gave me away. Fighting the growing panic, I forced myself to focus. I reassured my wife, “It’s going to be okay honey. The paramedics will be here soon. Stay with me. Don’t leave me.”

Where was that ambulance? Why weren’t they here yet? What if they can’t find us? Taking a deep breath in and silently beseeching God to make an ambulance appear, I continued to hold pressure.

Finally, flashing red and blue lights approached us. My breath froze as I let out a deep sigh of relief, and  the paramedics  hurried to our car. Shouldering me aside they worked to remove my wife. I stepped aside.

On the side of Route 79-N in the wet grass and mud, my black and white converse sneakers squelched as I walked over to the stoic Butler County police officer.  I thought it odd that he didn’t offer me a blanket, jacket, or to sit in his car, while he rained down questions:

“Were you wearing seatbelts? How many people were in the car? Names? Ages? Is that your sister? What happened? Did the driver stop? What color was the truck? Did you see the license plate? Where did the truck hit you? How many times did you roll? How fast were you going? Did the driver see you?

Laying on a stretcher my wife was loaded into the back of the ambulance. I sat in the front. Fearful of being hit again, I turned my eyes away from the dark slick road and watched while the paramedics worked on my wife: cutting away her shirt, listening to her heart and lungs as she laid shivering and immobilized. An IV was inserted into a petite arm vein, a bag of fluids hanging overhead. No longer able to keep my fear at bay, my tears erupted and I sobbed for the rest of the drive. We returned to our city.

When we arrived, the paramedic went to wheel my wife in, “What about you? Do you need to be checked out?” he asked. “No,” I replied, but my wife cut me off, “Yes! She needs to be seen. She’s six weeks pregnant.”

Pregnant. Earlier that day, we were at a different hospital completing my six-week ultrasound. The printout of our baby was in my wife’s workbag. We were waiting to share the news with our families until Christmas, only five days away. We were elated. I had bought coffee mugs that read, “World’s Greatest Grandparents,” as a creative way to break our wonderful news.

Twelve hours after we arrived at the hospital, I told my mom the news in the hospital cafeteria among the sterile white walls, plastic trays, tasteless cardboard eggs, and a pint-sized carton of chocolate milk while we waited for my wife to get out of surgery. Despite my dirty blood-stained shirt, my mother engulfed me in a warm hug and we both smiled for the first time since her arrival.

My mother-in-law found out several days later. Combing through our things that had been salvaged from the accident, “What’s this?” she innocently asked holding up the ultrasound picture.

That ultrasound picture was our savior, a reminder of better things to come. A symbol of growth, love, and resiliency. During the weeks of recovery we would sit together and gaze at that black and white watermarked ultrasound picture, our hands resting lightly on my stomach.

In addition to the head laceration, my wife had broken her neck. The margin of difference between having full mobility and being paralyzed was less than a quarter of an inch. A quarter of an inch, in late December, just out of Allegheny County, that lay between a devastating loss and an abundant family of three. A quarter inch that changed the direction of my life and gave me new appreciation for every mile.

* * * * *

png;base64d2e992f25f3ecfe1“December 20, 2013” was written by Kristen Stepanczuk. Kristen lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she is a licensed professional counselor and coach, and an aspiring writer, storyteller, and speaker. She loves to help and connect with others, and has made it her life’s mission to help women live healthy, happy, and balanced lives. Kristen counsels and coaches both locally and nationally. Additional information can be found on her website www.PittsburghHealthCoach.com.

 

Big City Sidewalk

In my forty-seven years, I’ve been all over the world, but all it takes are a few cues to haul me back to my childhood.

A certain sharp and damp and lumber-ish smell brings me to my grandparents’ farmhouse in Michigan (a smell it retains years after their deaths and despite my cousin’s attempts to eradicate it). Outcrops of red, grey, and black veins of Great Canadian Shield rock bring me back to camping trips and weeks at the cottage.

But the capital-P Place where I feel the instant settling of my spirit that says “home” is the big city sidewalk.

Settling the spirit might be an odd response to a place that’s loud and busy and can be crowded and chaotic, but that’s where I grew up: in the middle of the great city of Toronto, Canada. Truly in the middle: one block from the main north-south thoroughfare of Yonge Street, and two-thirds of the way up our subway line.Natalie sidewalk Toronto (1)

I was taking the subway by myself to school, walking ten minutes to church and seven minutes to the library, and biking three minutes to my choice of neighborhood parks by the age of nine. Despite my directional impairment (not a real disability, just a foible), I could get everywhere, because most streets were arrayed in an easy-to-understand grid. City sidewalks meant freedom.

They also meant relative safety, because there were always other people walking around, going about their business. I say relative because I was ten the first time an adult man cornered me in public and asked whether I wanted to have sex, and I can’t even count the number of catcalls I received. But these were annoyances, not threats. As long as the sidewalks were busy, I felt safe from serious harm. And they were almost always busy in our neighborhood, night and day.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the small American Midwestern city where I attended college in the late 1980s, there were no busy sidewalks. The busses stopped running at 5 p.m. The city center was an undeveloped ghost town. With no driver’s license and no car, I walked and took the bus or my bike – but only during the day. No people around at night meant no witnesses to possible danger, so I never went out alone after dark.

Every time I went back to Toronto during college, the first night, I’d head to the sidewalks for a walk by myself. Heat from the sun no longer rose off the cement, so the air was usually crisper. People didn’t rush the way they did during the day; they laughed and lingered on the sidewalk, which made a simple stroll feel like a celebration. It was my favorite coming-home ritual, better even than my first bite of a Coffee Crisp candy bar.

When I left Grand Rapids  for New York City, I vowed never to return. “Never” lasted five years. Today I’m back in Western Michigan, and while many great, big-city things are happening here now (a better bus system, tons of businesses downtown, and multiple arts festivals that draw crowds during certain times of year), busy sidewalks in my neighborhood is not one of them. Which made it tough when my daughter reached the age I’d been when I started to roam freely.

I wanted to set her free, but my experience on those city sidewalks I love so much taught me that men in the street can’t always be trusted.

If safety is in numbers, and there is no quorum of the public generally around, no shop owners always at their stores with well-lit windows, no nosy older folks sitting on their stoops or leaning out their windows to keep an eye on things– how could I let her go?

But I had to let her go forth on our empty sidewalks. Alone. I so valued my independence as a child, that I couldn’t keep her from experiencing the same sense of competence.

My solution, since I first let her travel alone to her friend’s house across the park at the age of nine, has been to make her take her bike, since she could get away from uncomfortable situations faster than she could on foot. But still. Can I confess that I’m relieved that her best friend now lives four houses up, so I’m 95% comfortable letting her walk over? But only 95%.

Now that she’s fourteen, I set her free as often as I can, and encourage her to head out with her squad. What will cue her memories of freedom when she grows up? It won’t be the big city sidewalks that I still daydream about, but I’m determined that it will be something.

* * * * *

unnamed“Big City Sidewalk” is written by Natalie Hart. As the child of an entrepreneur, she only wanted a “normal” job when she grew up. Yet she’s wound up as a writer who is going all-in to indie publishing, simultaneously preparing a book of biblical fiction for publication this summer, and a Kickstarter campaign for a picture book for children adopted as older kids. Although she grew up in Toronto and Brisbane, and has lived in the mountains of Oregon and three of five boroughs in New York City, family and cheap real estate drove her to West Michigan. She blogs at nataliehart.com

 

The Writing on the Stall

I am on the toilet, my black dress pants scrunched down around my ankles. I am not using the bathroom, but I want to keep up appearances. Or maybe de-pantsing is a reflex in bathroom stalls. I got up in the middle of improv class to check a missed call and voicemail from an unknown number on my phone.

If it’s someone from the Playground Theatre, I will be ecstatic. If it’s an automated message from the teacher’s union or my bank, I will probably crumple up and die on the bathroom floor, or at least, that’s what I am thinking in this moment. I take a deep breath and read the sharpie on the wall:

“Your jokes are better the more you love yourself.”IMG_0933

Many times in this stall I had repeated those words to myself, penance for plodding onto stage with cement feet and pandering for the approval of my classmates. The stall served as my place to recover from wounds on and off the stage.

Someone had sharpied this phrase on the stall door, right at my eye level. The stalls in the girls bathroom were covered with pen and sharpie graffiti, but those words always grabbed my attention first, usually with prophetic timing.

The stall sat in the far corner of the Del Close Theatre in the old iO building, the place I fell in love with and learned longform improvisational comedy. I started taking classes in 2010, somewhere in the depressive stupor of a difficult breakup. The place felt like a speakeasy for quirky folks–dingy, dark, and cramped. It did not provide a home for shiny-polished things, but a fertile ground for magic.

IMG_0932The iO building was located at 3541 North Clark, kitty-corner from Wrigley Field. It was not the ideal place for a theater. To get there, I nudged my way through Chicago Cubs foot traffic and mobs of bros who reminded me of my ex-boyfriend. I’d snake between cooing street vendors offering tickets from their back pockets and water bottles from blue coolers.

When I arrived at the theatre, purified by the incense clouds of cigarette smoke, I got swallowed into the crowd gathered in the lobby. I always think of people piling into that building; the walls pushed in on us and narrowed the margins between our bodies, teaching us to come together in the way tall ceilinged cathedrals invite visitors to crane their necks to the heavens. The building nudged us to huddle in, to listen to stories, and to perform in a way that made the audience lean forward and nod in recognition.

Before my graduation shows, our instructor counseled my class to walk on stage during the blackout so the lights went on as we entered, catching the momentum of our team moving forward onto the stage and into the light.IMG_0935

It was fitting advice for living too, after all, comedians are notoriously familiar with darkness of all kinds. We all tried so desperately to walk together into the light spaces, but the building held the darkness too, brightly painted blue walls and dark corners with ghost stories of depression and overdoses. There were nights when the building shook with laughter and others when it groaned from the weight of the heavy things we carried in our pockets.

My graduating class only got to perform three or four times at the theatre on Clark before the whole operation moved to Kingsbury street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The new theatre building has potential, but it’s sterile and easier to get lost in with no cave paintings on the bathroom stalls.

I tried to alter my daydreams of playing on the stages of the old theatre, relocating them a couple miles south, but my mind’s eye is slow to catch on.

As they say, you can’t go back.

Right now, the old iO theatre sits as an empty relic on Clark street, waiting to be knocked down and made into a CVS, which isn’t even as good as a Walgreens.

Our theatre will be disposed of much like the shows we performed on its stages and in its classrooms, carefully constructed, lived in, worn out, and then demolished– a flash in the pan, utterly forgettable.  And yet, there were those nights–those glorious nights–that we carried the show out as a glowing gift only visible to those who gathered that night to listen to stories. Playing improv at the old iO theatre felt like performing near the earth’s core while the patron saints framed on the wall watched on.

When I think of a fitting end to that beloved blue building, I think of us pushing it out to sea, towards some heaven-like land, something Lord of the Rings-like, Gandalf being set loose towards an elvin heaven. I wish to baptize every nook and cranny as sacred ground, to annotate hallways and stairwells with my memories. But maybe the best I can do is to take all that the building taught me, and bring its lessons into new spaces, whose walls don’t yet whisper.

* * * * *

IMG_1781“The Writing on the Stall” was written by Meredith Bazzoli (center with tank top, hands in pockets). Meredith has spent her whole life orbiting around Chicago and its suburbs. She currently resides just west of the city with her husband Drew, who grew up a hoosier. She never thought she could marry one of those. Meredith writes, performs improv comedy, and teaches in West Garfield Park (all stories for another day). She seeks to start conversations about the life we stuff under the bed and keep off our Instagram feeds.

 

If You Pass the Elephant, You’ve Gone Too Far

My grandparents are gone, the property’s sold, but the elephant abides.

In the 70s, my grandparents owned Taylors Furniture and Gifts, a small shop in a two-story building my grandfather built. Huge windows faced the highway. In good weather, Nana lined up rockers and swings out front.

I recently found a business card touting their Gifts, Wicker & Rattan Furniture, Rockers, Ladderback Chairs, Barrels, West Virginia Glass, and unspecified “Mexican Items.”

Mostly I remember the store through Nana’s left-behind collection of photographs and newspaper clippings.

And the artifacts (think wicker monkeys and Fostoria glass) that still circulate in the family.

And the elephant.

nicole mom pink elephantPapa Taylor bought a pink elephant statue in Michigan, an animal nearly ten feet high to the top of his regal fiberglass head. Papa brought it back to West Virginia and parked it in the small square of lawn in front of the store. He faced that elephant toward U.S. Route 60, a busy two-lane then that’s swelled to four plus a turning lane now. The animal’s uplifted trunk curls behind him, as if to spray his dusty back, his riders, or the store with imaginary water.

Papa gambled that such an unexpected creature would make people stop for a photo, and then stick around to buy a fetching coffee table or a trash can shaped like a frog.The pink elephant is the spirit animal of that stretch of highway lined with grocery stores, car lots, pawn shops, strip malls, and fast food restaurants. On a nicer road, the elephant would be an eyesore. But there, he blends right in, an eccentric neighbor who causes a double take before he wins you over. He’s a non-native species that’s an emblem of our small town.

Papa and Nana printed the pink elephant on their business checks and collected pink elephant knickknacks in the house. For years after my grandfather died, my mom would find a token pink elephant for Nana at Christmas: a pendant, a statue, a tea towel. In the last days of her life, as she lay in bed in hospice, Nana slept with a plush pink elephant tucked under one arm.

My grandparents lived near the store, in the last house that Papa ever built, a split-level perched above the highway. We lived on a road down the hill from them, a road that Nana called a “holler,” as in “how are things up the holler?”

Our holler was close, claustrophobic, leafy in the summer, a handy place to store your shadows. In a holler, you’re tucked into the hills and most of the mailboxes bear the same last name.  You learn not to look at the Christmas lights unless you’re in the passenger seat. You learn the curves and gamble sometimes on what’s around the bend. Could be fog, could be wind, could be nothing.

The pink elephant was a handy landmark so friends and pizza delivery people could find us. We weren’t far from Rt. 60, but you had to know where turn. The holler didn’t draw attention to itself which was part of its charm.


Now I live in the Pacific Northwest, far from my native holler and its attending elephant.  With no tattoos, I feel a bit naked in this part of the world. I’ve thought about getting one of a stylized pink elephant, an elephant as it might look if it sauntered out of illuminated manuscript or a cathedral window. The ink would mark where I’m from.

“What does it mean?” People always ask that about tattoos. I could say that it represents that tall, hollow elephant on Rt. 60. It reminds me of grown-ups climbing ladders and hoisting up grandchildren to sit on the elephant for photos because it’s our birthright.

I could remind them that the pink elephant means starry visions when you’re in an altered state.

Pink elephants, the internet assures me, do exist. Behold the albino elephant, available in white or pink. And, affirms the internet, the pink elephant stands for what a charmed childhood and a badass tattoo must always be: “something extraordinary.”

more walk w virginia

Nicole’s work has appeared in Image, Mid-American Review, Hotel Amerika, DIAGRAM, Sonora Review, The Ocean State Review, Western Humanities Review, Tampa Review, Quarterly West, North Dakota Quarterly, and in Permanent Vacation (Bona Fide Books, 2011) and Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical (Cascade Press, 2009) and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of English at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, and the web editor for Rock & Sling and How to Pack for Church Camp, an online anthology of creative nonfiction about summer camp.  She is on the Twitters at @heynicolesheets.

 

The Purple Valley

I flew across the country from Southern California, to escape the orange haze of smog that drowned my Inland Empire home, just east of Los Angeles. After landing in Albany, New York, my escort took me on the long drive east through winding roads and rolling hills, over a mountain rooted thick and green, until we finally arrived deep in the Berkshires, to an otherworldly place they called the Purple Valley, home to Williams College.

The College is sheltered in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, protected by the majestic Berkshire Mountains to the Southeast, the Taconic Mountains to the West, and the great Green Mountains to the North. Acquiescent peaks and the annual melody of changing seasons breathes life into the area. The colors of fall — of beech trees, sugar maples, and yellow birch — fill the landscape with oranges and yellows, which eventually yield to the white snow and gentle chill of winter, until spring beckons back the song of the ospreys, warblers, and sparrows.

It is an enchanting place. The harmony of gentle hills and thick foliage offers a tranquil escape. The soft sound of water trickling down creeks and gusts of wind strumming leaves is like a lullaby for old souls. Ghosts of Melville, Thoreau, and Hawthorne stroll through its hills and trails.

*  *  * * *

I was not the only one to receive the invitation for that spring weekend. There were approximately a dozen other high school seniors who’d travelled to Williams, eager to determine whether the Purple Valley was right for them.

The College, in its efforts to convince us, designed the weekend to spoil us. We toured the school, met with current students, slept in dorms, enjoyed the dining halls, and attended parties.

One of the activities included a reception with professors hosted at a dignified building they called the Faculty House. We all attended, dressed in our best formal clothes. Drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and conversation filled the room as the sun radiated through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

As I casually turned to soak in the warm, glimmering sunshine, there she stood—the girl from New Mexico. She’d arrived late, wearing a tank top, shorts, and backpack, a defiant look for the occasion. Her beautiful, sensual skin glowed the color of honey. Her sultry almond eyes betrayed her playful, short hair and…and her unforgettable smile. Her alluring, gorgeous smile radiated in the intimate company of her sweet, lovely dimples.

*  *  * * *

By the end of our third and last night together, the small group of high school seniors visiting that weekend clung together like grade school friends, drowning in a cacophony of secret crushes and knowing giggles. Later that evening, close to midnight, a group of us, including the girl from New Mexico, headed down to a common room in the basement of one of the freshmen dorms for a game of Truth or Dare.

I was surprised by many things as we played the game. I was surprised by how rapidly a group of strangers can grow familiar with each other. I was surprised by how many chose to be dared versus the safer alternative. I was surprised by how many followed through on the salacious challenges, which are best left censored to the privacy of that windowless room.

But most of all, I was surprised by her.

It was after she finished her turn when she looked to me. I lounged eagerly in a chair about ten paces away, diametrically positioned across from where she lay on the floor.

“Truth or Dare,” she said, resting comfortably on her back. She delivered her challenge with a sly smile tugging at her dimples accompanied by the steady gaze of her sultry almond eyes.

“Dare,” I replied without hesitation. It was the only response worth offering.

And, to my surprise, she gave the tamest command of the evening, “Go to the girl you like the most and kiss her.”

I lingered on the instruction, confused by its simplicity, but only for a brief second. With a magnificent grin on my face, I stood up from where I sat and sauntered along to where she lay.

She remained still, her head nestled on her backpack and her focus fixed on my position. She gave me a mischievous look, fully aware of the game she was playing.

Brimming with confidence, I approached her facetiously and got on my knees, nestling her hips between my legs. I hovered over her for a brief moment as she looked up at me with an embarrassed smile and a soft chuckle.

As I bent forward and lowered my face close to hers, everything around us dissolved out of focus. I slowly closed my eyes as my lips melted into hers, the supple silk of her mouth embracing me with intimate familiarity, the soft touch of heaven slowly caressing my soul.

It was in that moment, in the warmth of her lips touching mine, that I fell in love, that for the first time in my life, I felt loved. In that moment, in the grace of the Purple Valley, I knew she was the one.

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* * * * *

Biniam“The Purple Valley” was written by Biniam Gebre. Biniam did decide to attend Williams (how could he not?), as did the girl from New Mexico. Nearly twenty years later, they are married and currently live in Washington DC with their two beautiful daughters. Biniam blogs at Choices and Values and can be found on Twitter @biniamgebre.

 

Backbone

I stared at the prosthetic arms, legs, and other fake body parts displayed in the shop’s front window beneath the steady glow of a neon sign advertising: ARTIFICIAL LIMBS.

Mama and I walked through the front door of the shop. A short man dressed in a white jacket approached us. He was a hairy man; hair was sprouting above the top button of his shirt, and his arms were hairy all over. His name was Leroy Cook.

I was in this house of horrors because I had been diagnosed with scoliosis—curvature of the spine. An orthopedist had prescribed the treatment, a Milwaukee brace, a monstrosity of metal bars, screws, belts, pads, and hard plastic. This thing would be my closest companion 23 hours a day, corseted tightly around my hips and pelvic area with anterior and posterior bars attached to a circle of metal outfitted with a chin-rest in the front. My head would be thrust upward and backward, changing my field of vision.

Mr. Leroy led us back to a space resembling a large garage. Artificial flesh-colored body parts were resting on workbenches. Pails the size of paint buckets sat in the corner.

Mama and I followed him into an examining room. Mr. Leroy asked me to hop up on the table covered with white, crinkly paper.

“I don’t want to embarrass you, but you have to undress and put this on, so I can make an impression of your body.” He handed me a long length of stretchy material the color of an ACE bandage. “Pull it up under your arms and pull it down below your bottom,” he said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Mama turned her head away while I undressed. The mini tube dress accentuated my flat chest and protruding shoulder blades.

Mr. Leroy re-entered the room and instructed me to lie down on my back. He held a fancy ruler and a Sharpie-like pen. He gently explained what he had to do. Inked marks were drawn at the lowest part of my abdomen, lower than the waistband of my bikini underwear.

The next step in the process would be the plastering. It would be spread over my body like smooth icing. I would hold my arms over my head while keeping a firm grip on a metal bar to ensure a full extension of my torso. The plaster would dry while I stayed in the stretched position. A small round saw—it would not cut me—would cut the cast. It would come off like a rigid dress, and Mr. Leroy would make my brace using the sculpture of my body as his guide.

I looked at my mother at the end of the table. I will not cry. I will not cry.

*****

It took Mr. Leroy two weeks to complete my Milwaukee masterpiece. I spent a second morning in my underwear in his exam room learning to slip on the brace like it was a casual piece of clothing. Arm to the left. Arm to the right. And the wide, rigid bar in the middle separating the two “armholes.”

I learned to secure the Velcro straps, linking the back bars to stabilize my corset. I was stuck.

*****

The Captain D’s restaurant was bustling with the lunch crowd. It had been a difficult morning, and Mama wanted me to enjoy my favorite meal: fish and chips. Perhaps, she thought it would be a good place for me to experience my first public appearance wearing a brace. School was in session; there was little chance I would be seen by one of my classmates.

The hot and flaky fish refused to stay on my fork, sliding down my chin onto the cold metal bar jutting out from beneath the top of my blouse. When I lifted my drink to my lips, I couldn’t maneuver the straw to get it into my mouth. I was thirsty. The straw could not bend, and neither could I.

Pushing back hard from the table, I rocked front to back, plastic on plastic, attempting to propel myself from the unforgiving chair. I pitched forward, hit the edge of the table, and wobbled backward into the chair.

I shoved my food tray to the floor. Fish and french fries flew from their paper basket. Coca-Cola spattered on my pants. Mama grabbed napkins and knelt to soak up the Coke. She looked up at me.

“I want to go home,” I pleaded.

*****

I flopped down on my bed, relishing the feel of my green, chenille bedspread beneath my back like a cat rolling around on a warm, asphalt driveway. The late afternoon sunshine filtered through the sheer window curtain splashed with orange, green, and pale pink flowers, creating a kaleidoscope of shapes on my wall.

I caught the glint of light off metal. My hour was up.

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photo by Lisa Phillips

The Road to Grandma’s House

Run for 45 seconds, walk for 30. Repeat. For six miles. Go.

It was Saturday morning along the misty Allegheny river, and we were running, then walking, and running again. Blessedly, I was not in charge of the stopwatch. I was checking out a run-walk club, and our leader timed all the transitions.

“Walk for 30!” she hollered. I slowed my pace and made eye contact with the woman beside me. “I’m glad that she tells us what to do,” I said. She grinned, “Is this the first time you’ve done this?” I nodded. “Are you new to the area?”she asked. “No, I’ve been in Pittsburgh for fifteen years. And I grew up visiting my grandparents, just outside of town in Verona.” Her smile widened, “Oh, that’s where I live! Where did…”

“Run for 45!” We paused until the next break.

“Walk for 30!” We walked, and my new friend re-started the conversation. “I didn’t expect to be living in Verona,” she confessed, “But a friend of the family, an older lady who had been taking care of her brother and sister wanted to sell her house, and it’s just a few doors down from my parents. It all happened suddenly, but seemed like the right thing to do.”

At this point I almost stopped walking, nearly tripping the run-walker behind me.

“Wait, this older lady with the brother and sister, what was her name?”

And she said my grandma’s name. My grandma, who had taken care of my great-aunt and great-uncle in her house in Verona. Then the daughter of her long-time neighbors bought her house because it seemed like the right thing to do. I had heard this story before.

“That’s my grandmother’s house!” I exclaimed, and now she almost stopped (we were really annoying the people behind us). “You’re the granddaughter who lives in Pittsburgh?” she asked, astonished, as if I had just run-walked off the pages of a novel she was reading. “Yeah, that’s me,” I replied.

“Run for 45!” the command came again, and the timing was perfect.

We both needed 45 seconds to process these revelations.

* * * * *

It was an hour in the car from my hometown to grandma’s driveway, and as a child the ride seemed endless. So I counted landmarks: the Harmerville Exit off 28. The Eat n’ Park by the movie theater. The purple bridge. The Dairy Queen. The street with all the flags, and then the turn up the hill, past the Italian restaurant. A turn off the main road and then the winding suburbs of yellow and red brick houses, nearly identical except for a striped awning here, a rhododendron bush there.

“We’re almost there,” I would inform my brothers. “Doh!” one of them would inevitably respond. “Stop hitting your brother!” came the call from the front seat. But none of this mattered. We had finally arrived.

The driveway crunched under the car tires as we pulled around back. We always, always entered grandma’s house through the back door. The front door was for guests. The back door was for family.

As we piled out of the car, there were longing looks at the neighbor’s pool, and then we plunged into the cool, musty dimness of the garage and basement. Sasha and Peeko greeted us with a swish of cat tails against our legs. We paused by the piano that lived in the basement and banged on the keys, one of my parents scolding us to stop-that-horrible-racket.

We stopped. The stairs drew us forward, then up, as we announced our arrival with voices and loud clomping. The door at the top of the basement steps was closed, but soon it would swing open.

And Grandma and Grandma’s house were right behind that door.

* * * * *

After much friendly reminiscing, my run-walker friend and I exchanged e-mails. “Come and visit,” she said, “you’re always welcome.” I promised to be in touch and went to my car, calling my mom while I was still in the parking lot. “You’ll never guess who I met!” And my mom was, of course, thrilled. “Are you going to go and visit?” she asked, and I started to respond that of course I was, and did she want to join me, but then… I paused for a long time.

“Jen?” she asked. “I’m not sure,” I stammered, surprising both of us, “I’ll have to think about it.”

Suddenly, it was a lot to process. Suddenly, I felt protective of my childhood memories. Grandma’s house was grandma’s house after all, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted a dose of grown-up reality, of inevitable change, to cloud the pictures in my mind.

So much has already changed.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I told my mom on the phone, and several months later, I’m still thinking about it. Not because I’m afraid of what I’ll find there–I’m certain that the house has been well-maintained and cherished in its new life with a new family.

It’s just that I know what will be missing.

Like the old fridge with the curved corners, with chilled dishes of red jello on the bottom shelf. Or the egg-crate mattresses folded in the closet, waiting for me and my cousins and brothers to line them up for a sleepover. The familiar afghans on the orange-yellow sofa. Grandma’s neat piles of papers. Sasha and Peeko. The golf-tee triangular peg game thingee!

How can grandma’s house exist without a golf-tee triangular peg game thingee?

But mostly I know that grandma won’t be there, behind the door. She lives in Michigan now, in a lovely senior high-rise with multiple pianos, none (I assume) in the basement. I can visit her there, and we can jump golf tees together. But her house?

I’m still not sure I want to visit. My run-walker friend would probably welcome me–graciously–through the front door.

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These pictures are thanks to my cousin, Mike (next to me on the couch) and I include them with much love to my all my cousins, including Mike, Melissa (shortest blonde in line-up), and Chrissy (blonde in white dress). The blonde on the far left is a neighbor named Jennifer, we think, which is likely since she was female in the 1980s. I am, as always, the tall brunette. Much love also to my un-pictured brothers whom I appreciate so much more now that we never, ever, ride in the back of a car together.