15 March 1994 – Lazarus

Lazarus

I sat uncomfortably, amidst
wails, rosary drills, and PraisetheLord songs.
I am pulled to the father mannequin.
     (too much makeup)
I touch its hand.
     (cold, hard)
“Say your goodbyes,” I’m told.
“That’s not him” I say,
but guiltily I squeeze tears out anyway.

     ”You’re stubborn as a mule” he used to say.
     Then the talking stopped.
     He just laid there,
     Bald, drooling, filling his catheter.

     I hugged him goodnight once.
     ”I have to go to bed; I’ll see you tomorrow.”
     (I used my “to-children” voice.)
     He wouldn’t let go
     I pulled his arms apart and left.

On the way to the burying place
we passed a school.
     (I’m missing my classes.)
Kids swing, jump, run
slowly, as I pass.

(I believe, I have faith, I believe . . .
I believe you will bring him back like Lazarus.
I have the faith of a mustard seed.)

Dirt falls and I wait.

11 February 1994 – The Imposter

THE IMPOSTER

When the school bus stopped at the corner by the broken wooden fence, Billie carefully slung her backpack over her shoulder and walked off the bus.  She crossed the street, and stared with curiosity at the house she was approaching.  She noted the cluttered cement garage with the doors that wouldn’t go down, and the basketball hoop with just a few strings hanging from it.  She saw bikes strewn about the front yard, and obviously no one had raked in a while.  These people are slobs, she thought.

She opened the front door and paused, to let her eyes adjust to the dark interior.  She followed a small hallway to the living room; there she stared with disbelief.  She had been briefed, of course, but this . . . .  There was stuff everywhere.  The mismatched couches and chairs were buried under blankets, pillows, clothes, you name it.  The coffee table had piles of dirty dishes on it, as well as rubber bands, safety pins, and anything else that was small and insignificant.  The ill-fitting pieces of carpet on the floor showed a worn path that ran from the doorway and around the coffee table, to settle at the foot of the couch.  The television was surrounded with a moat of video tapes, and the bookcase was cluttered with the cheapest garage sale knick-knacks Billie had ever seen.  This was going to be a tough assignment, she thought.

Billie fortunately knew the way; she quickly headed for the stairs to her left.  Next to the stairs was a sort of dining area where a plain stocky woman in her 40s sat at a table, looking anxiously through her sweepstakes stamps for the one that said she was a Priority Customer.  She wore a sleeveless cotton blouse that accentuated the liver spots on her pasty white arms.  Great, she must be Billie’s mother, Billie thought, as she started up the stairs.

The woman at the table was feeling pretty good; she had spent a quiet afternoon writing two long letters to her sisters in Michigan.  Quiet afternoons had been rare since her husband died and she had to go to work.  She looked up and called out to Billie in a high-pitched childlike voice.

“Hi, Billie Jo!  How was school today?”

Billie tensed.  This was the tough part, trying to act like the real Billie.  How would a 13-year-old respond to her mother after a long day at school?

“Fine,” Billie said, and continued up the stairs.

At the top Billie opened a door on the left.  She had to push to get the door open wide enough to squeeze through, and even then she had to step up onto a pile of clothes to get in.  She closed the door behind her and leaned back against it, surveying her bedroom.  All the furniture was against the walls, leaving an open area in the middle which was filled with clothes and books, mostly clothes.  She sighed.  Billie was obviously no better than the rest, she thought.  She decided if she was going to be staying here for a few days, she might as well clean it now.

For the next hour or so, Billie sorted through the clothes on the floor, throwing all the things that smelled bad in the hamper and putting the rest in a pile on her bed.  Then she folded the clothes on the bed and put them away in her dresser.  By the time she was done she had forgotten she was an imposter, so she went downstairs - as the real Billie - for an after-school snack.

Her mother was no longer in the dining area, but she could hear her in Bobby’s room at the bottom of the stairs, yelling at the top of her lungs.

“Look at this slop!  What the hell is wrong with you, Bobby? You’re so damn lazy and irresponsible, it makes me want to puke!  You’re the man of the house, now, for Christ sake!  Why can’t you act like it?”

Billie thought he was lazy and irresponsible, too, but she still felt sorry for him.  After all, he was only ten, and her mother’s arms were strong from scrubbing old ladies’ houses all day.  Billie sneaked past Bobby’s door, picturing her mother’s red face with its twisted mouth and piercing beady eyes.  His door was slightly open and Billie could see the shadow of her mother’s shaking body on his wall, leaning forward for an attack, but for some reason holding back.  Billie knew her mother probably wouldn’t last long, so she went past the dining area, through the kitchen, and out the back door.

Billie felt a surge of energy fill her limbs.  She began to jog around the house and garage, but soon sped up until she was moving her legs as fast as they would go.  She felt like she was a car, or a motorcycle, with the wind flying past her and her feet barely touching the ground.  She wanted to keep going, down the road to the highway, to race those big trucks that always scare her when they rumble by.  Finally she slowed, then stopped, gasping for air.  Her legs were exhausted, but the energy was still there.

Billie spent the rest of the afternoon in the backyard.  She was with an exiled prince who said he loved her and wished she could come with him.  He was always on the move from spies and people who wanted to kidnap him for ransom.  They held hands as they walked through the yard and sat beneath the willow tree, talking about all the exciting things he’d seen and done.  As the sun began to fade, he said he had to go, but he promised he would be back.  He slowly leaned toward her.  Billie closed her eyes and leaned forward, her lips stretching out toward him . . .

“Billie and a gho-ost, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

Billie jumped up, her face red.  Bobby ran away, laughing and singing the Wedding March.  Fury replaced embarrassment, and Billie chased after him.  She felt her feet pounding on the hard earth, and her arms ached to pound like that, too.  She caught up with him near the garage and pushed him with all her momentum.  He fell hard and began to cry, burying his face in the dirt.  Billie stood over him, staring at his small body shaking; she wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know how.  She felt guilty, but she didn’t know what to do with guilt.  So she yelled at him.

“You asked for it!  Stop crying, you big baby, and get up.  We have to go in and eat now, anyway.”  Billie felt uncomfortable just standing there, so finally she turned and started walking toward the house.  She felt big and mean, and confused because she didn’t like feeling that way.  She wondered if maybe her mother didn’t like being big and mean, either; maybe . . .

“You’re in big trouble, now, Billie!  I’m going to tell Mom!”

Before Billie could respond Bobby ran past her, with his jaw clenched and his fists pumping their way through the heavy air.  Billie told herself she didn’t care; her mom would probably yell at him for bothering her.

When she walked in the house her mother was standing by the door waiting; Bobby stood back in the shadows looking worried.

“What do I have to do to get you to act your age, Billie?  Goddam 13-year-old, and still getting in fights!  You’re too big to be hitting a little boy half your size!  Get over here!  Stop standing there sniveling like a little baby!”

Billie felt the usual defiance swell in her chest.  Only this time a little worked its way up before the fear could squeeze it into a tiny ball.

“Why should I?  You’re just going to hit me anyway.”

She looked at her mother’s face and the fear took over.  Her mother lunged toward her, but Billie ran past and up the stairs.  With every step she thought Go back! Go back! You’re just making it worse!  She could hear her mother yelling right behind her, but she shut out the words.  She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.  She locked the door and leaned against it with her whole body.  Her mother was right outside.

Her mother couldn’t stop the energy that was consuming her.  She felt like she was losing control of her children and herself.  All she could think was she had to show them who’s in charge; she couldn’t let them see her weaknesses at any cost.

“You goddam lazy bastard!  Get the hell out here right now!  You open this door or I’ll beat it down!  How dare you run away from me!”

Billie thought desperately.  She thought of those TV shows where the kid would say I love you or something, and the parents would melt and cry, and everything would be okay.

“Mom, just listen!  I’m sorry!  I love you.  Please!”  Billie began to cry as she realized she meant it.

“I love you, Mom!”

But her mother just kept pounding on the door, unable to hear her daughter’s words over her own.

“I’ll beat the hell out of you when I get a hold of you!  God damn shittin’ lazy bastard!”

Suddenly Billie straightened.  The tears looked out-of-place on her cheeks.  “Billie” had retreated and her imposter took over.  Well, this is what I came for, she thought.  She squared her shoulders and slowly unlocked the door.

28 March 1993 – The Boy with the Dream

THE BOY WITH THE DREAM

“Once there was a little boy,” my grandfather began as us children gathered round, “who wanted more than anything to be able to fly. Oh, the dreams he had! He would fly up, up, above the treetops, and look down on all the little children playing in little yards by little houses…”

“He didn’t really, did he, Grampa?”

“No, Janie, he’s dreaming. Where was I? Oh, yes. The little boy tried everything he could think of to fly. He tried flapping his arms, jumping up into the air, even whistling like the birds do! But still he couldn’t fly.

“As the boy got older, he studied the birds as they flew by. He looked at the shape of their wings, and the way they moved when they were going up and when they were going down. He found a big cardboard box and cut out two great big wings. He even took all the feathers from his pillow and glued them on, just in case it was the feathers that made the birds fly. Then he put on his wings and flapped and flapped.

“But still he couldn’t fly. When his parents saw what he had done to his pillow, he had to clean it all up and put his wings away. He forgot all about them until he was much older, when he began to think about cars. He thought about how cars need engines to move. He thought about how he wanted to fly as fast as a car through the sky. And he thought about how an engine could help him fly.

“So the boy took the engine from a lawn mower and attached it to his wings. He pulled the cord and Vvruumm! he started moving! But all he did was spin round and round in circles, until it ran out of gas. Well, of course the boy was very disappointed. He vowed never to have anything more to do with flying, and he threw his wings away.

“Soon the boy became a young man and had many other things on his mind. He began to think about college, and about what he wanted to be. He spent a lot of time with his friends, and not very much time daydreaming. But he couldn’t forget his dream forever. Sometimes he would stop and look up at the birds gliding in the air, and just for a moment imagine how tiny he must look to them.

“Then it was time for the young man to go to college and learn about a career. His mother said he should be a doctor. His father said he should be an engineer. His friends said he should be an astronaut. But the young man looked at the sky and watched an airplane chasing the birds and he said ‘I’m going to become a pilot.’ And he did.”

My grandfather stopped and looked at us closely. “There’s a lot to be learned from this story about the boy and his dream. I want you to think about it. Now go out and play.”

So we all ran outside to play. The boys started buzzing around the yard with their arms outstretched like wings, while the girls sat by the house and watched the boys. And my grandfather sat on the porch, smiling and nodding his head.

November 1992

This is Charity
Charity has a mommy and a daddy
She also has 2 big sisters
Sarah and Delilah
Do you want to know something else about Charity?
She is 1 today!
Do you know what it means to be one?
It means soon she can count to 5
and know her ABC’s
and go to school
and drive a car!
WAIT!
Let’s just be one for now
Happy Bday Charity

16 August 1991

Dear Keiko,

Hi!  It was really great hearing from you.  I’m sorry your teaching exam didn’t go so well, but I know you will do better next time.

So far, my summer is a lot like yours.  I am working at the university, and in my spare time I like to read a lot and watch T.V., too.  My apartment is really nice, and I have decided to stay here for the school year as well.

I’m glad your English class worked out okay.  I really admire you for being able to teach high school students.  I don’t know about in Japan, but in the U.S. high school students don’t really appreciate their classes or their teachers.

I am going to be a teacher, too!  From September until Christmas I’m going to be teaching a Sunday School class for 2- and 3-yr-olds.  I will teach them for an hour after church every week about Jesus and what he teaches us in the Bible.  I’m really excited about it.

Our summer so far has been rather cool, mostly around 80^oF.  Usually around this time it’s up in the 100′s^oF.  But I’m glad my apartment has an air conditioner.

When Debbie returned from Mexico in June, she brought her Mexican roommate Maria with her.  Maria stayed for a month and just went home a couple of weeks ago.  She was very nice and fun to be with.  She spoke very good English. My mom wanted to try for a contest in a newspaper, so she wrote a story about Maria visiting the U.S.  My mom won the contest, and her story, along with Maria’s picture, was printed in the newspaper!  Maria may return to visit us again later in the year.

Again, thank you for writing to me and I hope your visit at your grandparents’ home is a lot of fun.  Say hello to your family from me, even though I never met them.  ‘Bye!

Love,

Jolie

Sunday, 19 May 1991

Dear Todd,

First off, I’m so SORRY I didn’t write to you sooner, like when you got back.  I was suffering from a severe case of freshman stress when I got your letter, and am just now recovering.  Unfortunately, I misplaced your card (by the way, thanks!) and just found it a minute ago.

So how was your return?  I’m sure the initial thrill has worn off by now, but I’d still love to hear about it.  Did you return with a whole group of buddies, and was there a lot of people there to meet you?  I don’t think you ever mentioned if you have any family, but I hope some were there to welcome you back.

Don’t worry about my freshman stress, it wasn’t anything life-threatening.  What happened was, after years of sailing through high school with little work required of me, I got to college and found out THEY EXPECTED ME TO STUDY!  Really, I’m not as lazy as that sounds (not quite, but almost), but at the same time I was trying to keep up my classes & work, I was taking care of all of my older sister’s business while she’s studying in Mexico for the semester.  That includes taxes, financial aid forms, and finding her a summer job.

So, what do you do all day?  I have no idea what’s required of a sargeant in the Air Force, but I get the idea it’s really tough work.  You do get time off every once in a while for fun in the sun, don’t you?  It doesn’t take much sun to coax me outside; fortunately for my grades, Springfield isn’t famous for its warm weather.

I just realized, I barely know anything about you!  Don’t worry, I’m not going to pry into your deepest darkest secrets, but my point is that you probably don’t know much about me, either (except that I know how to play UNO)!  So hear goes:

Hi, my name is Jolie.  I’m nineteen & a freshman at university.  I have 4 sisters & 4 (obnoxious) brothers.  Other family members include my mother, my brother-in-law Bob, my 2 adorable nieces (Sarah & Delilah – as in from the Bible), and Nurse, the oldest grayest cat alive.  Luckily, I don’t live at home with this crew or else I’d flunk out of college for sure!  I live in the dorms right now & will be staying in an apartment for the summer, but I make sure I visit home often (just so they don’t forget who the missing kid is).  Other than that, there isn’t much to say.  I like old poetry books, walks in the woods, chocolate, making flat birthday cakes for my friends, and – on occasion – being completely alone in silent deserted areas.  I dislike heavy metal, cigarette smoke, too-mature children, and when people ask you “How are you?” and then start talking about something else.

That covers me.  If you ever feel like writing your life story, you know where to write.  And next time, I’ll try to write back right away.  Until then, so long and God bless you!

Love,

Jolie

P.S.  The booklet I enclosed is one I really appreciated reading, and I thought you might like it, too.  Let me know what you think.

P.P.S.  Do you think I use too many commas?

19 April 1991

Friends Out Of Necessity

When I was eight years old my family and I moved to a small town where the kids didn’t take kindly to strangers. On my first day of third grade Kimmy, a short blond-haired girl with an infallible attitude, took votes during recess to see if she should let me on the merry-go-round.  She made sure everyone said no.

There was one kid in my class who was always in the background by herself, a pale red-headed girl named Bobbie Jo.  I knew who she was, but because the other kids ignored her I thought it might help if I ignored her too.  Besides, her skin was all freckled and clammy-looking, and everything she did was done jerkily, as though she was nervous or unsure of herself.  So she sat reading in her corner of the playground, and I sat drawing in the sand in mine.

After a while our teacher noticed we were always alone and called both our mothers in for a conference.  I remember waiting anxiously in the playground behind the school, sitting gloomily on the swings and kicking the dirt up into dust clouds.  When my mother finally came out I ran up beside her and we walked the few blocks home in silence.  When we got home she brought me into her bedroom where we could be alone and gravely turned to me.

“Jolie, I know things have been rough for you since we got here, but Bobbie Jo has been going through the same thing for a much longer time.  Now, her mom and I have discussed this with your teacher, and we all agree that it would be best if you and Bobbie Jo became friends.  Starting tomorrow, I want you to spend your recess time playing with Bobbie Jo instead of going off by yourself.”

It didn’t occur to me to do anything but grimly promise I would, so the next day when the kids poured out of the old brick school building at the shrill “brrringg” of the recess bell, I slowly walked to where Bobbie Jo sat at her desk.  I didn’t know what to say or do, but when I looked in her eyes and saw the same fear and embarrassment that I was feeling, I knew that her mom had talked to her too, and that everything was going to be okay.  She stood up giggling nervously, put her right arm behind her back to firmly grasp her left elbow, and said in a weak, squeaky voice, “Wanna go play on the teeter-totter?”

Thus began one of the most memorable friendships I have ever experienced.  The school year flew by as we spent all our recesses inventing new games, drawing houses in the sand, and parading around the playground with our arms linked. Bobbie Jo, with her feminine dresses and dramatic ways, and I with my dusty jeans and realistic attitude, made an unusual pair. We were two very different people, but when we got together we always had fun.

When summer finally arrived and school let out I was invited to spend the weekend at Bobbie Jo’s house, a small cottage buried deep in the woods.  Bobbie Jo’s family was a lot like the Swiss Family Robinson, only her family had chosen to live self-dependently.  While her two younger brothers collected eggs from the chicken coop, Bobbie Jo and I climbed up the wooded hill behind her house collecting the sap that had oozed down into metal buckets attached to the trees.  Before supper we washed our hands and faces in a china basin set out on a table near the door, and after supper ate homemade ice cream for dessert.  We played Yatzee at night by the light of oil lamps and in the morning had sap syrup on our pancakes.  I came to know Bobbie Jo better that weekend than in the entire previous year.

The start of the fourth grade brought with it a boost in my popularity.  I suddenly found myself the center of Kimmy’s attention and, as I had learned the year before, what Kimmy liked everybody liked.  At first I told them I wouldn’t play with them unless Bobbie Jo played too, but Bobbie Jo, with her quiet ways, just didn’t fit in with such a rowdy bunch.

Gradually, Bobbie Jo stopped hanging around with us and went back to reading by herself.  She knew she didn’t belong, and I guess deep down I had always had doubts about the way they had treated us before too, because one day during gym class I asked Kimmy about it.  She put her arm around my shoulders as though she were comforting me and declared in her most superior voice, “We always treat everyone like that their first year here!”

I knew then that I could never be as ruthless as the other kids were, and shortly after that I stopped playing with Kimmy’s crowd and went back to Bobbie Jo.  We never talked about it, but things just weren’t the same after that.  We still played together, but the intimacy was gone.  We were practically strangers.

That summer my parents decided to move to a bigger town. One afternoon, as I was packing my things to take to our new home, the phone rang.  I ran to the living room to answer it. Bobbie Jo’s voice came through the receiver quiet and wavery.

“Hello, Jolie?  This is Bobbie Jo.  I was just playing around with the piano and I made up a song about you going away.  Do you wanna hear it?”

I really wanted to get back to packing, but something in her voice reminded me of the closeness we once shared, so I said okay.

She didn’t know how to play the piano and she couldn’t hold a note, but as her song woefully floated across town through the telephone wires, I was reminded of the weekend I stayed at her house, the weekend I got to know the real Bobbie Jo for the first time.

When she finished her song we said goodbye for the last time.  I hung up the phone with a sigh and, turning back to my packing, wondered apprehensively about the town that would be my new home, the girl who would be my new best friend.

22 March 1991 – Ticks

My dog loves to run around in the woods. Sure, it’s a great way for her to get her exercise, but afterwards someone has to remove all the ticks she collected while she was out there. Fortunately for me, I have a younger brother who actually enjoys prying them loose with pliers, lining them up on the sidewalk, and squishing them one by one.

Ticks have always held a fascination for the kids in my neighborhood. Where I live, ticks are a part of growing up. After a busy day of running around in trees and tall grass, the children take turns checking each other’s backs and hair for these eight legged ixodidae, as your local bug expert would call them. And a game of Tag may be interrupted several times while someone stops to check if that itch on their leg is really just an itch.

Ticks basically just sit around on the tops of blades of grass waiting for a host to come along and brush up against them. Then they instantly let go of the blade and start climbing up, but it may be hours before they actually attach to their host (Jamnback, 1969).

Getting rid of a tick once you find one on you is a call for creativity. Since you can’t just pull it off (the head tends to dislodge itself from the tick’s body rather than from yours) you have to think of a different way to effectively remove the whole thing. Some people try to wiggle it back and forth as they pull to loosen its hold. Others invent ways to “coax” the tick to let go. I’ve seen people do anything from burning the tick with a cigarette to rubbing oils around the head. The only problem with using such things as fingernail polish and kerosene is that they might cause the tick to regurgitate, which in turn may infect you with a deadly disease in the regurgitated blood. (Jamnback, 1969).

Disposing of the removed tick is often an entertaining exercize of one’s imagination. Those not used to a tick infested environment usually just toss them out when they find one crawling on their pants or up their arm, but long time veterans of tick bites know that they’ll just keep coming back until they’re killed. And you can’t crush them (unless they have been feeding for days, in which case they would be engorged with blood) because their bodies are hard and thin, much like watermelon seeds.

A popular way to do the job is death by water. Flushing them down the toilet or washing them down the kitchen sink often comes to mind when you’re an adult. But give a tick to a kid and you’ll see them do things like putting the tick on a lightbulb until it turns black and pops like popcorn. About the only method you should really avoid is crushing them with your fingers, because you could still get infected that way with all the different diseases they carry, diseases like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Colorado Tick Fever (Jamnback, 1969).

But nowadays ticks are becoming more and more infamous for a completely different disease: Lyme Disease. There’s still a lot of questions that need to be answered about this relatively new disease that can kill, and so far there are no guarantees of a complete cure. A friend of mine was bit by an infected tick when she was in grade school and today, as a sophomore in college, she is still in danger of recurring symptoms like the swelling of her infected knee.

According to Hugo Jamnback in his publication entitled “Bloodsucking Flies and Other Outdoor Nuisance Arthropods of New York State” the dermacentor variabilis (otherwise known as the American dog tick, the most well known of ticks) has four stages in its life cycle. The eggs are laid in batches of about 5000, and hatch after about a month. The new larva then finds a small rodent and feeds for about 4 days. When it is engorged it falls off and moults to become a nymph. The nymph engorges on a new rodent, falls off, and moults again. Now the tick is a full fledged adult looking for big game: dogs, horses, and you and me (pgs 37 38). But that doesn’t mean much to someone who is walking in the woods doing their darndest just to keep the ticks off. All they are worried about is how to reach that tick they can feel climbing up their back.

Perhaps the best way to summarize the importance of ticks in most people’s lives is to close with a quote from J. Miller in his publication Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever on Long Island:

“It was the size of a bed bug and he lives in the grass and he crawls up into your clothes and you find him living next to you and tear him off and squeeze him between your thumb nails and he utters a Ha, Ha of derision and slips off to explore you in a new place and he is no thicker than a sheet of paper and he is as tough as the sole of your shoe and he gorges on your gore and he is going to be unpopular.” (Miller, 1950)

You said it, Jay.

10 March 1991

Last night I babysat for my boss.  I was lucky because last night both Kimmy and Ken fell asleep on the couch by 9:30.  First I carried Ken upstairs, changed his diaper & put him in bed with his nightlight and tape player on.  Then I carried Kimmy up.  I quickly took her clothes off and put her pajamas on before she woke up and had a tired tantrum.  I put her to bed, but had to wake her for a second to give her her medicine.  Neither one of them really “woke” up; they probably didn’t remember how they got to their rooms the next morning.

Later, as I was watching T.V., their big golden retriever, Blondie, came over to be petted.  I sat by her for a while, then got up to go to the bathroom.  When I got back, Blondie looked up guiltily from my purse and backed away.  I picked up my purse to find she had slobbered all over it.  She had even unsnapped it with her nose and slobbered on the inside!  I cleaned it out with Kleenex.

Tomorrow is Maggie’s 22(?) birthday and Amy is her birthday buddy, so since she had to work she asked Keiko & I to work on the decorations.  We made 3 signs and put one on the stairwell door, one in the bathroom, and one on Maggie’s door.  Mine is on the stairwell door.  It says:  “BART says:  Hey, man, wish Maggie a happy 22nd, dude.”  And I copied a picture of Bart Simpson in the corner of the sign from a picture on Poonam’s door.  Then Keiko & I decorated Maggie’s door with streamers.  We put a sign at eye level on the door and framed it with spiralled red crepe paper.  Then we took 3 different colored balloons that Keiko had blown up and put one above the door, one to the right of the sign, and one to the left of the sign; they were all on the door’s frame.  Then we took pink crepe paper and twisted it from the top balloon, swooping out & down to the side balloons, then spiralling straight down the sides of the door.  Then we took 4 short strips of the red crepe paper and folded them in half at an angle so they looked like “blue ribbons” given for the best apple pie at a fair, and put one in each corner of the framed sign.  For an extra touch we took 4 smaller strips of pink crepe paper and folded them in half the long way; we twisted them in a circle and taped one end together, then fluffed out the other end so it looked like a little pink carnation.  We put one in each corner on the red ribbons.

Later tonight Beth, Keiko, Andy, & I decided to bake a cake for a party tomorrow for Maggie.  LeeAnne had already measured the oil & added the eggs to it and gave it to Beth in a cup.  We each tried to be helpful, but no one was sure enough of their culinary skills to take charge.  Andy tried to clean a bowl for mixing in by using Ajax.  We all laughed & teased him about that.  We couldn’t find a cake pan, so we used a cupcake pan instead, only we didn’t have paper cupcake holders.  We just greased each cup, powdered them with flour, and poured in the mix.  Beth had to leave early because she was expecting a call from her dad, and the rest of us sat around joking and staring at the oven wondering if the cupcakes were done.  When we did take them out they were all crumbly, and we crumbled them into what resembled moist soil into a Tupperware container.  We had some mix left, so we added oil to it so it wouldn’t be so crumbly and spread it into a square on a cookie sheet.  When it was done we put it in a different container.  We laughed & joked about the ruined cupcakes & finally decided we’d make “dirt” by first laying the square in a bowl or pan or something, then smoothing chocolate pudding on top of that, and covering that with the moist crumblies.  For a final touch, we will probably put a flower in it so it looks authentic.

Update:  In the end, Andy just bought a chocolate German cake in a box; Maggie heard about but never saw her 1/2-inch tall birthday cake or her cupcake crumbles.

8 March 1991

“No one can ever be who they want to be.”

George W. B. Shannon said it lightly enough, but the more I got to know him, the more I realized how significant this statement must have been in his life.

George is an author of several nationally published children’s stories, ranging from “Oh, I Love!” for toddlers to “The Gang and Mrs. Higgins” for grade school children. He also wrote some informational books for adults such as a bibliography entitled “Folk Literature and Children.” He was a professional storyteller for many years and, at one time, it was his main source of income. His birthday is on Valentine’s Day.

Knowing all this, I headed toward the university library where I was supposed to meet him with a vague image in my mind of a nice and simple traditional sort of man. I was being very naive.

I spotted him right away as I pushed open the glass door that led to the library lobby. I had seen his picture from a few years back in the local paper, and when I had talked to him over the phone he had described himself as very tall with grey hair, “at least a few, anyway.” As he stood from where he had been lounging in a chair, I saw how true his description was. My first thought was “tall and grey.” He was built like a basketball player, thin and about six feet or so, and he wore dark grey pants with a light grey sweater. His hair was short and curly, dark brown and peppered with grey hairs. He wore a thin brown and grey beard that veiled the bottom half of his face. Even his eyes, shadowed and deeply inset, were a light grey.

I introduced myself and led the way to a small secluded room with only a table, a few chairs, and a floor to ceiling window overlooking a cluster of trees on a hill. We sat down at opposite ends of the table.

To break the ice I asked what the W. B. in his name stood for. To my surprise, he said they stood for William Bones. He explained it was tradition in his mother’s family to include her maiden name in her first son’s middle name. He went on to explain that he had been named after an uncle who had died young and who used to write poetry, so he had his uncle’s full name – George William Bones – with his father’s surname: Shannon.

We talked for an hour after that, about everything from his love of folklore to his reclusive social life. He spoke calmly and at ease, but there was always a sense of cautiousness in whatever he said. I think I learned more about him from what he didn’t say than from what he actually told me.

For example, I could tell he had had a very rough adolescence by what little he told me about it. None of his writings address this age group, and when I asked him about it he replied he simply doesn’t know what kind of books they read. When he was in seventh grade his parents started giving him their books, so he had never read the books the other teenagers read. Later he said he began writing for fun about this same time, and laughed as he told me they were “typical” depressing stories about how cruel the world is; only his eyes didn’t laugh with him. He mentioned the teachers would often comment about his daydreaming on his report cards, and thought what difference did it make as long as he got his work done?

Although his family apparently loved him, I don’t think they ever really understood him.