Excerpt: One-thousand words is never enough
Who are these men? I want to understand their history. I need to
understand their sun flared spotless shoes, and their perfectly polished
brass. I want to understand how they ended up in this moment. Look at the way they are stiff as a board. Look even closer now, corners of their mouths turned up at the side. Are they happy? I want to understand their thoughts. How can one bring themselves to smile when there is so much chaos?
Look at the tree branches on the right side of the photo; they are raw, naked to the elements, maybe its winter. Their shadows are long becoming one shadow in the distance where this photo does not exist. What made this moment a need for a photograph? Their dress blues are perfectly pressed and polished and behind them, the American Craftsman style house is indicative of the year. Look at the detail attached to the house beam behind them. A house that most assuredly has its own history longing to be retold.
I want to be in this moment, a moment where presumably, there is a great deal of history;
their World War II dress blues perfectly pressed and polished. But I don’t want this moment
because it is filled with fear, fear of losing things that are so dear. Fear of the unknown. Maybe
that’s why they don’t look at the camera. But what was before this? And What came after? A full
life, maybe a life lost at war, not physically but mentally. Another tragedy to words we now
understand as PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, known then as shell shock. But mostly I
want to understand the photograph, so that I understand me...
Restore
"Nobody's growing old together, we've made it easy just to quit
Love has become a negative percentage, why do we bother to commit
We've got a long list of excuses, ways we try to justify
Well, I propose to you the truth is, marriage does not have to die
I know you're feeling like it’s falling apart and it can't go on anymore
But God is a God who knows how to heal so just give it up to the Lord
And He will restore"
Chris August
Miniature
Sitting in my tiny sky blue medal chair a mere six inches off the ground I hear snot being sucked
back into noses. I see saliva being sprayed out of mouths onto hands, then on to everything else in site. My germ tolerance is very low and all I can think about is hand sanitizer and hoping someone can teach these kids to sneeze in their elbow. My OCD seems to get worse the longer I sit here. The scent of fresh paint permeates my nostrils making the room seem new, even though the exterior of the building says otherwise. The miniature chairs are for miniature
people. They run around the classroom anxious to be filled with knowledge, soaking up everything you speak to them like a sponge. The walls make me feeling like a happy child again, teal from floor to ceiling. One wall for math with a number line up to the number six, a rectangle, square, and circle, one wall for weather, one wall for art, one with a bulletin board of scarecrow blackbirds. The windows behind the math and science wall are coated in stars that make me feel like I am star gazing. The chatter in the room is excited. The students first time in a classroom in their lives. It is refreshing like the opportunities are limitless. I can’t remember my first day of preschool but I can only hope that it was like this. The teachers seem to be even
more excited than the students. It makes me wish that I am a teacher with them. It is time to start class now so all of the students circle up on the floor and sing their welcome song. The teachers call role with great difficulty as the students simply cannot sit still.
Being kid
It is wet outside. The grass that hugs the side of the road is wobbling with dew. Like any
other springtime I am caterpillar hunting at my cabin. Hunting may not be quite the right word
since I would never hurt one, but hunting nonetheless. The chitter chatter of my family warms
me as we walk down to the bridge, only about a mile there and back to the stone fireplace that warms my toes inside the four walls of the cabin. My brown leather-hiking boots with army green laces are cinched up tight, so tight that my feet ache and long to be naked again. In my right hand I carry my lime green sand castle bucket while I walk with my brother and aunts
Bobette, Ewee, and Deannie. I have no sense of time while I am here. There is something magical about it’s beauty still. It’s unharmed. The only thing that matters in this moment is being with my family and finding as many black and orange fuzzy caterpillars as possible.
The caterpillars aren’t hard to find. But what I love most is picking them up and rubbing their soft little bodies. I don’t understand why but I love any small furry animals. The river echoes between the body guard mountains that surround us. I am a speck of sand in the grand scheme of things. We arrive at the brown steel bridge that is only wide enough for one car and we walk to the middle of it and stare of the side as the wild river rushes past us. My heart races.
It has always been an anxiety producing place in the middle of this bridge. Maybe my heart knew
then that three years later this would be home to my grandpa’s ashes because just like that he’ll
be gone. We stay only for a moment and head back towards the cabin. As we pass the house that
terrifies me on the right side of the road I get antsy to be back in front of the confines of the cabin, in front of the raging fire in the fireplace. We pass by Les and Thelma’s and my brother
begins to run.
“That looks fun”
“Your shoe is untied!”, my aunt yells.
With my caterpillars in one hand, I push off like a marathon runner and a few strides later make
acquaintances with the gravel face to face. It smells like dirt down here and reminds me of the
flavor of gravel. Yes, the flavor. I muster up the courage to stand up. I can feel the fiery anguish
building up inside. I am pissed. I want to scream, and run, and punch something all in one
moment. I have not yet developed a coping mechanism for these feelings and I don’t realize that
they are the result of chaos inside me. My caterpillars were everywhere except my bucket. As my family walks over to check on me and see if I am okay I quickly gather up my bucket and march
into the cabin past the garden that will later be home to Ewee’s memorial rock.
My dad is curled up on the couch napping and my mom is working on cleaning up the
dishes from brunch. I walk over to the orange couch from the seventies where my dad is laying
with the mismatched quilt with the red corduroy back. For some reason the sight of my dad unleashes the salty ocean that lies somewhere beneath my eyeballs and in front of my brain. My dad comes to and asks, “What happened?” I try to explain but I am too upset. All I can think is that “I lost my caterpillars. A whole afternoon wasted by one face to face appointment with the gravel.” Of course I can articulate any of this so I manage to say, “I fell” between sobs. While I am sitting still I notice heat that is radiating from my forehead and making a quick leap towards my nose. I’m bleeding. My dad get’s up from the couch and tosses the quilt aside like an old Raggidy Ann Doll. He tells me, “We need to go clean that with hydrogen peroxide. It won’t hurt.” I may be young but I have been hurt enough times to know that when dad says “It won’t hurt” that sure enough, it is going to hurt. Momma didn’t raise no dummy. Off we marched to the bathroom to clean things up. I scooted up onto the countertop so that my dad could assess the damage like an insurance broker. “You got some gravel in it”, he says. I don’t remember my reaction but I know I probably was thinking things were going to get worse, life had already taught me that fine little lesson. Finally we are done. My head is throbbing pretty good. When I say good, I don’t really mean good, I mean it really actually sucks. He got some ice out of the freezer and put it in one of my favorite red, checkered dish towels which smelt an awful lot like
the cabin drawers, like old damp wood that isn’t aired out often. I plopped down on the old
orange couch and took a load off. It’s tough being a kid.