On Summer Tears.

You turn off the movie, because the story of Margaret Thatcher's dementia is to close to home right now. You have never turned off a Meryl Streep movie, but “The Iron Lady” will have to wait. But you will return the RedBox rentals the next day and have no plans to choose this particular film again.

You glance toward the clock as you climb into bed. It is around 11:00. You have no intention of sleeping tonight. You start to rethink your decision to shut down your computer, knowing that hours of mindless television episodes are available. As you stare at the clock and wonder what you could find on Nick @ Nite, you try not to see the photos on the bedside table. You put them there last week and now you wish they were hidden away.

It's a good thing your roommates are all gone this week, because the next few hours are not an experience you would want to share with them. They would try to comfort you with clichés that would only make you angry, and they don't deserve your anger. And you don't trust them with your grief or pain, so you are thankful that you are alone in your cold apartment to face this night.

You pick up the pictures. The first is of you, sitting with your grandpa, looking at a giant scrapbook of his life. The picture was taken over fifteen years ago, around the time he retired from forty years of ministry with Christian Service Brigade. Your aunts made the book for him, filling it with boarding passes, photos, stories, and luggage tags from his many trips across the country. You don't remember looking at it with him.

The other picture was taken after you climbed onto his lap to give him a hug goodnight. He held you close with both arms, the good one and the one that was shot decades ago in Korea. Your aunts laugh now as they remember watching the two of you. You were so special to each other back then, and you hardly remember it.

He had the first stroke shortly after he retired. Your dad will later remark at how gracious God was in His timing, that “while he needed the words to come easily, they did, traveling across the country. Now, in his retirement, he was slowed down to sit in a coffee shop in Webster and become part of the lives of some guys who wouldn’t have talked to the conference speaker but loved this

slow-speaking, listening man who knew Jesus.” You hear these words and think, “Sure, Dad, that was great for them, but I don't remember my Grandpa for who he really was and now I have to deal with grieving this loss without really understanding why it should hurt so much because I didn't really lose that much but it hurts more than anything I've ever experienced.” But you know that he's right.

And now as you look at these pictures of moments you don't remember, the tears start to fall. You know right away that you are in for a long night of searching for memories that simply do not exist. You mourn their nonexistence. You mourn your lost childhood. You mourn. You sob loudly, hoping that your landlady doesn't hear from upstairs and wonder what is going on. You hold your stuffed animals tightly to your chest, and wish that there was someone to hold you in the same way. You wish that you could be comforted. You cry for over an hour. And then you open your Bible. You are reminded that God is in control and that He is faithful. You are reminded that your grandfather belongs to Him, and that you had no right to be selfish when you sat in that church with a bitter heart.

You remember that day, just over a year ago, when your dad got a call from his sister that they were taking their dad to the hospital. You were at the church working on a project for the youth basement and he was there because he works there and he found you and told you he was leaving for Illinois and you didn't know what to do because the last time you saw your grandpa you didn't even say good-bye. And now you remember kicking yourself after realizing that your grandparents had left and you hadn't said good-bye and you hoped that it hadn't been your last chance.

But it was and you will hold on to that memory as a failure. You had a dream a few months ago. Your grandfather was there, in a wheelchair, hooked up to all kinds of medical equipment. You're not sure how your brain created this image, because you never visited him in the hospital. But there he was and you said good-bye to him and woke up and had to remember that he is gone.

This is why you don't want to sleep tonight. If you go to sleep on June 19, you will wake up on June 20 and realize that it has been one year since you got the text from your mom that said “please pray for grandma and grandpa. things are very serious with him right now. we 're still an hour away from the hosp. gma doesn't know.” And you would have to remember the call from your dad telling you that your grandpa would not survive the day. You would remember crying with your brother for the first time in your lives. You would remember burning cookies when you got the call that he was gone. You don't want to face those memories, and you seem to believe that staying awake will keep the morning from coming.

But it doesn't. Eventually, you have cried all the tears you can cry. You realize that it is past 3:00. You finally succumb to your exhaustion. When you wake up, too soon, you brew coffee in his honor. You think about the promise you made to him to find a husband before you graduate from college and wonder what your senior year will bring. You meet with your mission trip team and hold it together because they, too, don't deserve your anger or grief. You remember all of the things you wanted to avoid.

You dread the day when you will have to write about this night, not because you don't want anyone to know about it but because you will have to remember it again and you will have to remember all of the things you hate to remember. But when you sit down to write and start to remember, you will also remember that this catharsis is good for you. You will remember why you enjoy writing like this. And as you finish, Ben Folds will be singing “The Luckiest” and you will think about your dad's tweets as he drove to Illinois that day. ”What if ‘honor your parents’ means for me ‘help them finish the story of their lives as well as they can.’?” “and his story is ‘i kept my word to take care of her’ and hers is ‘i kept my word to make people feel at home’” You couldn't have planned it better.

On Childhood Friendships

          She doesn't want to get out of the van. Getting out of the van means she has to go inside. Going inside means she has to say goodbye. Saying goodbye means that she has to leave, get in the van, and drive away. Driving away means that he is moving tomorrow morning and she might not ever see him again.

And that hurts her more deeply than anything has hurt before.

         Matthew has been her best friend for as long as she can remember. They have spent endless days of summer together, playing in her sandbox, swinging on his swing set, creating imaginary worlds, and never thinking that they would ever be apart.

But his parents want to move to Michigan. Five hours away.

         She can't understand why they would be so cruel. Don't they realize that she needs him. She doesn't know what life is like without her best friend. For whatever reason, they don't consider her feelings. They prepare to move.

She finds out that she, too, will be moving. Her dad got a job at a college in Fort Wayne.

         Matthew and his family will leave first, before school starts. She will start kindergarten without any friends, and then will move after six weeks.

         Her parents make her get out of the van. They make her go inside. She says goodbye to Matthew and Lauren and Elena and Doug and Margie. She doesn't understand how sad she is. She has never had to say goodbye like this, but she feels as though it will rip her apart.

        When she gets back in the van she cries like she has never cried before. She shakes with sobs, gasps for air, tries to get out and go back to her friend.

“Sweetie, the Smiths have to leave. Doug has a new job in Michigan and Matthew has to go with him.”

She knows this is true, but it's the last thing she wants to hear.

“We're moving soon anyway, so you'd have to say goodbye then.”

         This only makes it worse, because she can't begin to imagine what it will be like to leave her neighborhood, her house, her church, the line of trees she would play in, the sandbox, the garden with raspberries, the neighbor's goose that is dressed for each holiday, the basement where she watched everything from “Sesame Street” to “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee,” and where she would slide in her socks on the freshly waxed floor, and where her mother would sprout seedlings to sell or to transplant to the garden. She doesn't know what she will do when she moves into the new house. She has chosen her bedroom, the one with plush pink carpet. But will she have a new best friend? Will she like her new teacher? Will her big brother every like her as much as she likes him?

        She cries for hours, and never really gets over it. It's the first time she has been left by someone she loved.

         In October, her family moves and her dad starts his new job. He works with nuns. His boss, who becomes one of the family's good friends, is a nun. When her mom starts to work at the college, most of her co-workers are nuns. Even after knowing them for many years, she doesn't quite get all their names right.

She starts school and is the “new kid” all year. She already knows how to read and count. She learns her address in a week and impresses the teacher. But that's not quite enough, because her teacher doesn't seem to like children very much. One day, when the class is preparing for the annual Thanksgiving Celebration with the other Kindergarten class. Her class will be the Pilgrims, and the teacher uses her head as the template for the hats. The teacher uses a compass to draw a circle, and puts the sharp point in the center of her head to make sure it's the right size. It hurts, of course, but she doesn't complain. She doesn't complain at school. She doesn't tell her parents about school. Even at age 6, she is living two different lives. In public she is shy, unless she can gain friends by acting out. At home she talks. She sings and plays the piano and listens to music. She fights with her brother and slowly makes a few friends in the neighborhood. She reads and reads and reads. She meets the Pevensie family and the Ingalls family and the Boxcar children and the Baby-Sitters' Club. She doesn't understand what she is doing by escaping into these worlds, but she will later find that she has been trying to avoid reality and responsibility, and has been successful. She is focusing her fear and frustration into something that is socially acceptable: being a bookworm.

         She never again has a best friend. No one stays around long enough to earn that title, and those that might be long term friends aren't good enough. It takes years to earn her trust, but she wants to have friends so she creates an identity that they will like. She becomes friends with the most popular girl in her class, Brittnay. It is a manipulative relationship. Brittnay makes her work hard to earn the friendship, but is unaware of the lengths to which she will go. As long as they both get what they want, it lasts.

        She plays this game several times, gaining the approval of the “in crowd” for a few years. It is all she wants, and when she is done with them, they are done with her. She knows she is smarter. She knows that she loves Jesus, and thinks of this as a point of pride. Whether or not anyone else thinks she is better, she does. But at the same time she is desperate for acceptance. She changes herself in several ways in order to fit in. She starts to swear. She tries to dress like they do. She tries to listen to their music. But she still hides this from her parents. They have no idea that their precious daughter is letting a boy play the “Nervous Game” with her, and certainly don't know that she is winning.

        She is a perfect angel, until she can't be anymore. She is suddenly gripped with guilt at what she is doing at school. She confesses it all to her parents, fearing the worst. But they love her. They forgive her.

And she spends her life wishing she could do the same.

Fake Fiction?

I'm in a class called "Literature and Confession."
The course title is actually "Seminar in Literature," and it's offered every semester.
The topic changes. Last time I took the course it was "Literary Friendships."

I fell in love with the genre of Creative Non-fiction.
The book About a Mountain was the perfect example of the genre.
And then a professor came in and read a sort of autobiography, but it was in 3rd person, present tense.
The effect was astounding. I ended up writing my final paper in that style. It's incredible how vulnerable you can be when it sounds like you're writing about someone else.

Maybe someday I'll post an edited version of that story here.


For this class, we read J.M. Coetzee's Boyhood, which is a memoir written in 3rd person, present tense.
And we just finished Mark Richard's memoir House of Prayer No. 2, written in second person, present tense.

I'm crazy about both books.

And I have now responded to essay prompts for each of them.

"Choose an episode in J. M. Coetzee’s Boyhood that prompted a connection to your own childhood.  Then, write a narrative in the third person, present tense (like in Boyhood) telling that story.  Remember, you are the “he” or “she” in your autobiography; and remember to stick to the present tense.  The connection to Boyhood can be loose, and you need not make it overly obvious in your narrative; simply include a short paragraph before your narrative explaining the episode that inspired your story.  Focus on telling a good, autobiographical story in the third person, present tense (1000-2000 words)."

The one for Richard was pretty much the same.

My essays will be the next two posts.