Wants

I want to live and never be tamed
I want to dance and never be shamed
I want to sing and never know silence
I want a storm without the violence
I want a love without pain
I want crazy but not insane
I want to dance to my own song
I want a river to run along
I want peace
I want grace
I want hope
I want second chances
I want serenity
I want forgiveness
acceptance
life
freedom
joy.

Letters from a Hillcrest Detention

Did you know that tallow is the solid fat taken from the natural fat of cattle to my soap? I do now! I spent the past hour copying definitions from a dictionary with print too small for an ant to read. Detention is another world, my friend.
Our supervisor (we will call her Ms. Gertrude) continuously told us to "shut up" because, dad gum it, she wasn't going to talk over anyone, "especially not detention kids." Yes, "detention kids" are not like normal kids. We are bad kids. Our mothers didn't raise us like normal kids' mothers raised them.
Heaven forbid one of us shifts in our seats or so much as breathes the wrong way. No noise, or you can join Ms. Gertrude next Thursday for another exciting episode of All My Wayward Children. One guy (we will call him Fredward) whispered something to his buddy, um, Marvin and, Oh! how Gertrude squawked. Once he pulled the bird's tail, there was hell to pay. Poor Fredward didn't have a chance.
"But I wasn't talking."
"You most certainly were talking. Want me to call Mrs. Thomas up here?"
"No, ma'am, but I --"
"Do not get loud with me. Do not get loud. Mrs. Thomas would love to take you --"
"Everyone in here will tell you that I didn't even--"
[picks up handy-dandy walkie talky that they give only the cool faculty] Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Thomas, please come to the library. Immediately." By her tone I would have thought a kid got impaled by a stray flaming arrow or internally combusted, but talking during detention would have been my third guess. At least there were no machetes. (Machetes? Yeah, a kid at out school shanked another kid after detention this semester. Go Patriots!)
I made a new friend in detention. When I walked in the library, (the artist formally known as...) Martha, said I could sit by her. I placed my bags at her table and could already tell she had been here before. She got her paper and pencil out and placed them on the table. I followed suit and retrieved my paper and pencil.
"Oh my gosh! I've always wanted to use one of those pencils!"
I looked at her, expecting her to grin smugly, insinuating a joke. Instead, she eagerly waited for me to offer my super cool mechanical pencil to her. Of course I let her use it.
Gertude's alternate ego let us out twenty minutes early. Oh, happy day!

Detention. Keeping us in line, one definition at a time.

The Marbles I So Carefully Placed

Written in a dark time. It's not random, I swear. It has meaning, but the meaning isn't going to jump out at you and slap you in the face. If it does, I apologize.

The marbles I so carefully placed in a row
have scattered.
They fall to the floor, then split to pieces.
A shard rips through my bare foot
Opening a wound from a time
When color drained from leaves.
I looked to the leaves full of hope,
Believing they would cling to the branch longer,
Until the last one fell.
I cursed the pallid sky
And resisted the frigid air,
But a wind swept me from my bed
And tossed me to a place I'd been before.
A place of fear
A place of rejection
A place I once called home.
Now the fields are green once again;
The forests teeming with life.
Still, a wind takes me to that place of desolation
Now and again,
And I wait until the tide pulls me in, drowns me,
And I'm spit back onto dry land.
My spirit is chaffed and worn from repetition.
How many times must I die to
Convince myself to accept life?

Clowns and Toast

Most people are afraid of clowns. Not so with my great-grandma. She had an entire floor-to-ceiling shelf dedicated to clown figurines. Strangely, the twisted little porcelain clowns didn't scare me as a kid.
She had many different characters around her house. On her dresser in her bedroom sat three glassy figures of women. The first was tall and slender with short brown hair, and her rosy dress lengthened to her feet. The second was slightly shorter then the latter, but equally as slender. I gave them the persona of the evil step-sisters. Then, the blond beauty with a full floral dress, a blue laced-up bodice, and a white apron was Cinderella. Every single time Cinderella attended the ball, made the sisters jealous, and fell in love with the prince (who, consequently, was a clown).
Grandma made the best toast. No, really. I still can't get my toast to imitate that golden brown, buttery goodness. She used Italian bread that she bought from Barney's Bakery, not Wonder bread. And, oh. Her eggs were amazing. We would run over from my Nonna's (pronounced "nunna") house and ask Grandma for a "dippy egg". Nonna, my mom's mom, and my grandma lived next to each other for over 30 years. Italians never seem to go far from home. Anyway, a dippy egg is an egg cooked so that the white is fully cooked, but the yolk is runny. Then you "dip" your toast in the yolk and eat it. Tastes better than it sounds.
After breakfast we all went out on Grandma's porch. Across from her porch was an elevated patio attached to a stone garage. My oldest cousin and I used the patio as a stage from as far back as I can remember. In the middle of the stone wall of the garage was a small statue of the Virgin Mary. Well, my cousin Matthew accidentally hit poor Mary with a baseball one day. Grandma ran outside hollering and scolding, and a few days later Mary was surrounded by a miniature white fence, and she looked as if she had a bad nose job. Still, Mary sat faithfully in Grandma's backyard for years after.

To be continued...

Where I Went Wrong Raising My Mother

[my mom has always told me that she wants me to write a book about her. I told her I'd have to wait until she was gone. She didn't like that too much, so here's a tidbit of what I've already written.]

Mom, for as long as I can remember, has periodically changed her hobbies/interests. There was the knitting phase, the home improvement phase, the improve the home improvement phase, the gardening phase, the Pilates-guru phase, the scrapbooking phase, the can't-put-it-down novel phase -- the list goes on. She would pour her time and effort into becoming an aficionado of her pastimes. She can tell you the stories behind each photo, the best paint (and paint remover) for just about any project, the most difficult yarn to work with, and how each Christian author taught her something new about spirituality. With each little obsession Mom worked at it a fire and passion that almost made me want to try my hand at the various activities. I suppose that's where I get my love for trying new things.


I will be adding to this in upcoming posts. :]

Poetry, by yours truly

Happiness is a loose term
For loose lips,
Spoken by the mind
And not by the heart.
For if the heart could describe its state,
One word would be spoken in vain.
Rather, a song of sorrow,
a song of praise,
thankfulness, faith, strife of its days.

Happiness is the dust on the ground,
carried away by the wind;
Here today, nowhere to be found tomorrow.
To strive for happiness is to chase after a dream long gone.
When its gone there's nothing to show.
No one would know
That there was a time when you felt alive.
There's a happiness as defined by the wise
that is a cup of the sweetest drink
that never runs dry.
Every sip contains, and retains, love.
It's the light-hearted emotion branded on your life;
Contentment because, for once,you won't be abandoned.
Not again.

May I never be happy,
but the glass is still half-full.
For happiness is false,
but His love is Life.

Oo, Heaven is a place on earth.

[written on November 30, 2008]

I woke up this morning with that initial panic. Did that really happen? I'm sure you know the feeling. Something incredible occured in your subconcious thought, but the vividness of the event mimics reality. But the unlikelihood of a woman who owns a mansion and lets people tour her house to see her gerbil exibit made me a little skeptical. Ok, so, it was a dream. But I learned more about God in that dream than I've been learning while awake these past few months.

That woman with graying blonde hair and an old, button down work shirt took me and some others into a room. It had random furniture in it, which made it hard to tell what exactly the room was used for (there were sofas, chairs, a coffee table, and even a tall, kingsized bed). She shut the blinds and told us to wait. I had no clue what was about to happen, but i was compliant. I decided to get comfortable while I waited, so I laid flat on the ground and relaxed. Suddenly I felt like I was levitating, and the floor looked like it was rising, but somehow i knew it wasn't. And then an overwhelming feeling consumed me and I thought to myself, "God is in this room." I began to weep. No. It was more of a sob. You know the deep crying that is so intense that you almost feel happy? That's the one. I don't think I will ever forget that feeling. And now, I long to be wrapped in it while awake. God is not a feel-good God that does everything in His power to keep us happy. He is a God that is so powerful, so awesome, so [i don't think any adjective I list will put a dent in the spectrum of His glory], that when we are face to face with him, we can't help but be filled with the joy of knowing that we serve a mighty and capable God! After the events in the room, I asked the woman what all this meant. I told her that if I was that close to God, I must be dead. I must have gone to be with him in heaven. She said calmly that Jesus had come back. This was the end of life as we knew it. But now we had to go out in the world and live our lives for Him, among the darkness, among the lost. We were to, in a sense, live in the presence of God. In a constant state of awe. When we did that, she explained, nothing else in this world would matter. And people would take notice. I wish it was as easy to do that as it was in my dream. But until I put to death the things I've held on to these past few months, there will be no room for living the way I was created to live. My prayer is that I could find peace in His arms, and that you all do as well. I just wanted to share what He laid on my heart, whether this blesses you, irritates you, makes you want to sing, makes you want to throw something, makes you want to go get a smoothie..(???)..whatever. I love ya'll and want to thank you for the encouragement I've recieved from you lately. You guys mean the world to me :]