in my life

"There are places I remember all my life."

I stood there and the view took my breath away. So cliche, I know. But so true. I had been many places and seen many things, but never anything like this.

I was pretty much standing in a postcard. One of those idyllic, sunny, sandy beach photos that I always dismissed with a grain of salt. Like I said, I've seen places and none of them had ever looked like this. I had been in big cities and dark alleys and long, winding rural roads. I had even seen beautiful things. But all of it paled in comparison. This water was bluer than any river or lake or stream I had ever seen. This sand was soft warm beneath my feet. This sky was perfect, a few bright white, fluffy clouds and a beaming sun.

All my reservations about taking this trip rushed to my head and I nearly laughed aloud. The work I was leaving in my co-worker's hands. The mail and newspapers piling up over the next few days. The general sense that my little world back home would fall apart while I was gone.  Even as I was boarding the plane, all I could think of was the cost of the ticket and of the whole vacation, and how it could have gone towards some project for my house or my car note or just anything more practical. But now that I was here I finally understood why all my friends had been insisting I take this vacation, that I come to a place like this.

It was beautiful and breathtaking and something a life shouldn't be lived without.

be like that

"And all she wants is just a little piece of this dream. Is that too much to ask?"

The other kids in the hallway were a blur. I'm sure they were looking at me. There I was the, the self-appointed queen of the hallway, ungracefully lurching down the hallway and tripping over my own feet in my rush to get to the girls' bathroom. It was just a few steps away but seemed so far down the hallway. I reached the door just before my last bit of self-preservation failed. I pushed into one of the stalls, ignoring the stares of the freshmen standing in front of the mirrors trying to make themselves look like seniors.

And I let it all out. I wasn't sure which was louder, the rancid retching or the soul-crushing sobs. I was vaguely aware of snickers from the freshmen girls and that I must have been loud enough to hear in the hallway. But the only thing I could really focus on was my own voice echoing in my head. It was like a filmstrip of the past year playing itself out. It was deafening.

There was the first time I saw Katherine. She was sitting by herself in the cafeteria and for a split second I remember thinking that she was almost pretty. I'm not sure if that's what instigated it all, if somehow I felt upset or disgusted by the fact that this girl could have been so pretty if she weren't so damn fat. The second time I saw her was when we christened her Fat Kat. But even know I remember how shocking it was to see the amount of food she consumed during the lunch period.

But the torture didn't really start until the winter semester when she had ended up in two classes with me and some of my friends. We were merciless. We would trip her in the hallways, leave mean notes on her desk, play an elaborate game of keep away with her backpack. And that was the early days, when we were still behaving on a middle school playing field of bullying. The day she finally tried to stand up to us was the day things changed. We were appalled. How dare Fat Kat fight back? We moved from idle bullying to active harassment. Vandalizing her locker. Posting candid pictures of her trying to keep up in P.E. on the internet. Throwing stones at her own the way to and from school.

It must have been hell and we laughed the whole time. In fact this morning, I had a whole new vicious attack lined up for her today. We knew she had been trying to avoid us by walking through the back parking lot onto campus and we fully intended to soak her with power water hose the maintenance staff attached to the lawn sprinklers. Pure genius that was sidetracked the moment Ms. Brown walked into the room.

There were tears running down her face and the fact that a teacher was a crying was enough to silence the entire room. I looked at Fat Kat's empty desk and knew what was coming next. I was standing up in a daze, asking for a pass to the bathroom before Ms. Brown could even finish making the announcement that this morning Katherine's parents had found her with her wrists slit in her bathroom tub. I was trying to make it to the front of the room when I head an quick comment behind me. Some kid's own joke about how she had to cut her wrists because she was too fat to hang herself. Ms. Brown was handing me the wooden pass, and I turned around to lunge at the owner of that voice. I'm not sure what I intended to do but Ms. Brown caught me around the waist before I was able to make contact. I wormed my way out of her grip and practically threw the wooden bathroom pass back at her before seeking refuge in the bathroom.

There was nothing left in me. I continued to dry heave as I sat on the floor beside the toilet. I didn't care if the stupid freshmen girls were running up and down the hallway telling everyone that I was losing it in the bathroom. I didn't care if Ms. Brown sent me to the Principal's office for leaving class without permission and attacking a student. In the grand scheme of things, what did they matter? I had lived the past year as one of the most popular girls in school and had gotten there by slowly killing another person. Nothing mattered more than that.

hometown glory

"I ain't lost, just wondering."

I guess from the outside it would look like the typical quarter-life crisis. The unanswerable questions. Who am I? What is my place in this world? What is my life's purpose? Will I ever find love? But I was no fool, I knew these questions were rhetorical at best. I knew that only God could answer these questions and I was pretty sure the clouds wouldn't be parting anytime soon to deliver his answer. So I didn't ask these questions. In fact, I didn't ask any. I knew that life was ever-changing and even if I could come up with an answer, the smallest thing could change everything. One flap of a little butterfly's wings halfway across the world....

But that didn't mean there wasn't a lot on my mind. That didn't mean I still wasn't looking to come upon some divine inspiration to steer my life in some direction. And patience was never my strongest virtue. Truth be told, I didn't really expect something to just flop into my lap anyway. Few things had ever come that easy before, and the ones that did were usually no good.

My mother called it my quest. My father seemed to understand better and just kept quiet, although I could feel him shaking his head behind my back. There were unfinished lessons in archery, piano, ballet, karate, tennis, and gymnastics. There were random courses in pottery making, computer programming, and auto mechanics. There were half-fulfilled memberships in a book club and croquet club. There was the volunteer trip to South America.

The list went on and on. So like I said, I guess from the outside it just looked like I was trying to find myself. But I think I had somewhere along the way. No, I hadn't discovered my life's purpose or something, but I had something. I had found that my curiosity was an asset that would keep my life interesting. I had found that I was fearless in the face of new experiences. And I had found an unexpected level of comfort with striking out on my own undefined path. No, I hadn't discovered my life's purpose but I had realized all the things I could bring to this life and somehow that seemed like enough for now.

born this way

"I'm on the right track. Baby, I was born to be brave."

I should have been focused on the things I was ready to be done with. The constant back pain and swollen ankles. Carrying around an extra 35 pounds while suffering through the hottest summer on record. And I shouldn't have been scared since I had done this once before. But it was unsettling how the fear remained and even intensified this time around. The first baby had been a mystery. I was sure it was going to be hard but know I knew just how difficult it would all be.

I tried to focus on other things. The small gold cross the nurse wore around her neck. Identifying the slightly off-white color of the floor tiles. Should it be called ecru? Not quite, more like pearl. The doctors and nurses seemed so calm and I guess they should be. They did this every day and right here and now I had made the decision I was never doing this again.

Truth be told, I wasn't anxious about the birth. As I said, I had been here before and come away with a healthy baby girl. It was everything that came after. The sleepless nights. The colic. The neverending diaper changes only to be followed by the complicated task of potty training. The tantrums and the food throwing and the incidental head butts. The checking the crib five times every night for the terror of SIDS. The beat my heart misses every time there's a fall or a bruise or the slightest cry of pain. The constant fear of the worst-case scenario.

And here I was doing it all over again. Bringing another innocent, defenseless human being into this world. Giving myself the task of feeding and clothing two children. Of raising two kids to be intelligent and respectful and kind and trustworthy and responsible. Of teaching two children that life is filled with just as much luck as it is brutal unfairness, that some people are just as unabashedly giving as some are senselessly cruel, and that learning from the luck and the unfairness, that identifying the giving from the cruel can make all the difference.

Then there she was. A final push and suddenly a little girl was cradled in my arms. And one look at her told me everything there was to know. I was sure things would be hard because life always is. But I was even  more sure that she would come out on top.