Hallway Smells

My family moved into my grandfather's house when he passed away a few years back. Grandpa's house used to mean someplace quiet, a museum of sorts, where memories and hard candy were plentiful. The furniture was never re-arranged in rooms that had not been disturbed since my aunts went to college. It was almost a sanctuary, a place of peace and neatness and quiet and Poppy's smile.
And then we moved in, and now it is my house, a place of loudness and companionship and brawls during baseball season and new memories. It is a different house now. But something of the past remains, and occasionally I am reminded of the way it was.

I wrote this last summer, when I was up (as usual) way past everyone else, walking down the hall to what is now my room.

I caught a whiff of him tonight
In nightly circuit down the hall;
Mingled with that which I am used
Was that which I can scarce recall.

Time was, back when I first arrived,
He's wait for me in every room
With imprint indestructible
Impervious to mop or broom.

But what these cannot, Time will do
Effacing old impressions til
New customs, ways of being form
And old familiars are still.

And so it is with ghosts, I find
Diminishing as Time goes on
Til naught but hallway smells remain
To bring back stories, and old songs.

It was just a whiff, an instant. Something indefinably, undeniably Grandpa. I think I disturbed the house in its sleep; it must have been dreaming of the old days.

Air-Castles

When I was small I was ambitious. I was going to do...anything, everything. I would write! paint! sing! act! do! and give no thought to the possibility of prevention or failure.

Then I started to try to lay the brick-and-mortar versions of the castles in my head, and found that I am not much of a carpenter.

I used to think I wanted to be a poet, like Tennyson, or Keats, or Dickinson, or Yeats, but I can't. Some things, you either got it or you don't.

And I used to think I would be a famous singer, and have concerts, and make CD's, and win awards, and now I feel sure I won't. Some things, you don't want them as much as you thought you did.

Once I was going to be an artist, and live far away (from where, I never knew or tried to know), and paint things as I saw them, and then I saw that I couldn't paint. Some things were never yours to begin with.

This morning I was going to get up early and be productive, but I slept instead. Some things, you never really wanted anyway.

Perhaps I am just as ambitious now as I ever was--no, I know I am--but the ambition is different. It is ambitious to get up every morning and try to draw breath. It is ambitious to put one foot in front of the other, and assume that your feet will propel you. It is ambitious to open your eyes and expect to see. In that sense I am frightfully ambitious. But ambition for what you cannot do, and are not built to do, and were never meant to do, translates as stupidity in the form of stubborness.

This is not to say I have no dreams or faith in my abilities. I do not mean to say that there is probably nothing for me in the future, or that I cannot do anything worthwhile. Far from it. I have plans, too, not the grandiose ones of childhood, but to me as alluring as ever a dream of fame was. I do not belittle my former air-castles, but I have moved out of them. Large as they were, they cramped me.

What- ifs, and why they do not matter, and why I am happy about that.

Every Thanksgiving when I boggle my brain for a bulletpointed list of things for which to be thankful, I find that I end up with the same basic structure:

• God's Love, Grace, Mercy, Justice, Compassion
• My family (this normally leads to many more bulletpoints because of the size of my family, but I will not give each one of you a point here. Know that I do in my heart, though.)
• My friends (see above parenthetical element)
• Music
• Books (this one varies year to year; this season I am particularly grateful for one P.G. Wodehouse.)
• Trees
• History
• The Sky
• Christmas lights
• the New York Yanks (also the Indianapolis Colts)

And so on and so forth. There are always more things, but these have permanent residence.

As a history major, I know why Thanksgiving is in November; but as an English major I wonder sometimes why it is not in June. It is so easy to be thankful in June, when the world is green and the weather is mild. When every day is a blessing we do not have to be reminded to enjoy it. And so as an English major I think it is good that Thanksgiving is when it is. Somehow I appreciate Thanksgiving more when it comes in November, that month when the year realizes it is aging, and grumbles about it. We need to be reminded to be thankful in November, when the wind cuts through you and the rain has forgotten how to be gentle.

We need Thanksgivings more often than national holidays provide, though, and I am having a Thanksgiving of my own tonight.

I almost died tonight, and as a result the Thanksgiving list above has a richer meaning right now than it ever has before. I never liked melodrama in writing-- in storytelling it can be used for humour, so I allow it there, but I generally try to avoid it in my scribblings. So I am sorry if my statement sounds hyperbolic to you, but it is the literal truth. I almost died tonight. Three of my dearest friends in the world nearly went with me.

Without rehashing the whole story (which I already got to do in the police report-- DEE-lightful), I had to drag my friends out of the path of an out-of-control vehicle that came within two feet of mowing us down, potentially ending a life or four. I had to look through the partially open window to see if there was any blood on the slumped body in the driver's seat, and I had to stay calm and coherent to answer the (seemingly endless) questions of the police dispatcher. I had to do things I have only ever seen before on TV, things which I never actually thought I would have to do.

The oddest part was the deafness. I don't remember hearing anything after the crash of the car as it rammed a parked van before careening towards us. I heard the crash, and then-- I don't remember hearing anything until the car slammed into a railing and the scritch-scratch of the windshield wipers echoed in my ears. The second thing I remember hearing was the voices of my friends, all calling on God's name.

There was no time to throw up a prayer, no time for anything but instictive, animal reaction. Victoria dragged Ashlea and I dragged Vic and Kara just ran. I wasn't thinking, I was just responding. The paramedics, et al., arrived promptly, and after filling out the above-mentioned report, we spent a few hours at Vic's house with comforting grown-ups and chocolate-covered blueberries.

Ok, so I practically did rehash the whole thing...I could've made it much longer, though, so I consider that I acted with restraint.

I just found one of those blueberries in my coat pocket. I ate it.

Anyway, the revised Thanksgiving list, per my experience with the Hurtling Car of Doom:

• Everything listed before
• Reflexes
• Friendly police officers
• The intact lives of Kara, Ashlea, and Victoria
• Chocolate-covered blueberries

I suppose what has been haunting me ever since is how differently everything could have turned out. What if we had started walking a minute earlier? We would have been right by the van and would have had no time to react. What if we hadn't been linking arms as walked? We would not have had the added strength of each other to make it the final foot away from the vehicle.

But we did. We did.

And so the what-ifs do not matter. They do not matter because they did not happen. I am thankful that they no longer matter. During those eternal ten seconds they mattered very much. But time passes (this is a seldom-observed habit of Time's) and now those what-ifs are dead--that is, they have only the power to haunt. And that only as long as I let them. I am thankful for all of the unseen, little, unobtrusive what-ifs that do not occur every day. I am thankful for the hand of God.

And I say it again, I am thankful for each and every one of you who read this. I don't actually know who reads this so I can't make it more personal. But if you comment and tell me I will at least THINK of all the reasons I am thankful for you, in particular. Promise.

Gobble gobble gobble

It is cold and windy, and I am excited. The wailing wind outside my window is bringing winter, and the trees are waving a welcome. There is a bite and a kick to the air that was absent yesterday-- if we are lucky, the temperatures will continue to spiral and the Christmas trees all over campus will be less incongruous.

In keeping with my hopes for the weather, today I listened to a recording of a Christmas party of my family's from eleven years ago. No one knew the words to about three of the songs, so there are a few tracks of humming and laughter. And there was one of my parents singing "O Holy Night." They still got it.
There is something about hearing about fifty-odd Irish-Swedes of varying ages and musical ablilties singing Christmas carols (and Irish [drinking?] songs) together. The quality of the recording is sub-par, considering it was eleven years ago on a videocamera, but the spirit is there. Maybe it is only because I know and love all of those people, but the comfort and joy are almost palpable. Some of the singers are gone now, singing elsewhere, but their voices recorded remain. When we didn't know the words, we laughed until we found a line everyone remembered, and the voice of my (then) five year old brother brought back eerily clear, long-forgotten memories.

I am looking forward to when, in the future, I will come across something that will stop me in my tracks, remembering now. And I hope that I will still be able to call you and say, "Hey, guess what I saw today; remember when...?"


Thanksgiving gets overlooked sometimes in excitement for Christmas, so this one goes out the Pilgrims:
A turkey sat on a backyard fence and he sang this sad, sad tune:
"Thanksgiving Day is coming! Gobble gobble gobble gobble,
I will have to leave here soon!
Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble
I will have to run away
Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble
I don't like Thanksgiving Day!"
This was my favorite (only) Thanksgiving song. I learned it in first grade and have sung it every year since. If you ask me and I am within singing distance, I will sing it for you.
In case I don't post again before Dia de la Accion de Gracias, I thank God for each and every one of you.

Unhappy People

I worked in the church nursery today. For the first time in several months, I got to be around little kids. Human nature as represented by four year olds has not changed any in those months.
But I do not write this about the four year olds-- they were merely a clever diversion to draw you in to this entry and make you read further. If you are feeling a bit faint at this exposition of my mental dexterity, I understand. Sip some water and read on.
There was in the midst of the room of twenty-odd screaming four-year-olds a boy whom I will call Bertie. If his name really were Bertie then I could make allowances for his behaviour. But that is not his name at all; I made it up to protect his privacy, because I know all about those privacy laws. (A second example of my sagacity! Truly, I spoil you.)
Bertie sat with his back to the teachers the entire lesson; Bertie pushed the smaller children; Bertie's response to any direct address was immediate, decisive, and unswervingly negative. Bertie was vocal; Bertie was stubborn; Bertie was going on six years old and his mother refused to move him out of the four-year-old room.
The Mother of Bertie descended upon the nursery as the sanctuary emptied and fastened a piercing, harried, convicting gaze upon me as I stood with the check-out list in all my collegiate novice glory.
"Bertie says that the lady in the black shirt said he can't come back to this room anymore," she snapped out.
(Note: I was clad in an innocent dark-gray sweater; but the only other lady in the room was arrayed in wine-red.)
"Bertie said-- black shirt--" I smiled a smile of confusion and tried to remember what I had said to one out of twenty-one children over the course of two very loud hours. M.o.B. pursed her lips and glared. I remembered Tim, the Experienced One who has worked the church nursery for six years.
Accordingly, Tim was summoned and M.o.B was summarily dealt with. There had been a mix-up with one of the children's ministry leaders (the Black-Shirted). But to Bertie's maternal parent the church was against her, but she wasn't surprised, and the children's ministry was biased, and she was persecuted, and so was her son. To finish, M.o.B spat a few choice words in Tim's direction and I ducked behind the Lego box.
As I cleared the floor of Lincoln Logs and pink feather boas I thought about Bertie's mum. I tried to picture her smiling or laughing or stepping out of doors on a beautiful day and appreciating it, and I couldn't. I have been accused of possessing an overactive imagination, but I could not see her happy.
I do realize that my interaction with this woman took up less than five minutes of my nineteen years of existence and her-- more than that-- years on earth. And yet her mien suggested something I have seen before.
Have you ever met Unhappy People? I do not mean people who are sad, or depressed, I mean people who do not take pleasure in anything but misery. I have known several such individuals, and whenever I come across them I pay attention, because they puzzle me. I say, "What a nice day," and in reply the U.P. manages to convey that "nice" is not an adjective to be applied to anything, much less that day. I comment on how busy my classes have been keeping me, and the incorrigible soul lets me know in no uncertain terms that I do not know what busy is.
Symptoms shared by Unhappy People include but are not limited to:

• inability to retain a roommate (this phenomenon applies specifically to college students and young professionals). Either the poor roommate moves out or the U.P moves from room to room, ostensibly seeking solace and finding none. Theory: actually seeking more material to wield against humanity?
• victim mentality. It is never their fault. Ever, ever. And all stories are related in such a way as to magnify their distresses.
• universal suspicion. You are lying until you tell them what they aready supposed.
  
• joy-killing mentality. They are most happy when others are not.

M.o.B. got me thinking about this type of person, and it saddened me. Wht are they so very miserable? I have known a few, and I have yet to find out.
Bad moods I can understand. I am afflicted with them, often. My life is imperfect and there are many things about myself and my world that are frankly distressing. But that is life; that same thing, to varying degrees, could be said for every son of Adam that walks the earth. What selfishness to believe, and to promote the belief, that your particular set of troubles so far outweighs the problems of all others. The Mother of Bertie struck me as the kind of person incapable of stopping to smell the roses (or fallen leaves, depending on the season) and just appreciate life, with all its troubles and flaws and injustices.
Perhaps I have completely misrepresented this woman; for as noted before, our intersection was brief. I could be very very wrong about her personality. Regardless, though, she gave me some material for mental deglutition.

Oh, the joy of seldom-used words...