#… and now i have to coax myself to eat most meals. have to schedule in lunch or i’ll skip it.

[magnus-and-the-dragon]

I’m 5 lbs away from being under 200 lbs for the first time in my adult life, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

[aching-tummies]

Norovirus is going around a lot, you know. Sure would be a shame if your tummy started churning for no obvious reason and trying to evacuate itself from both ends....even worse if you ate soooo much food right as it was coming on so there's a heavy load to be sloshed around. What would you do in that situation? If you realized the rumbles were starting to unsettle your belly more and more, and the pain beginning to squeeze up sour burps?

o///o

Anon…are you a mind-reader? The idea of the stomach virus having a full tank to wreak havoc with has been a low-key fantasy of mine for ages. It's something I've never really been able to write scenarios for because I have little-to-no personal experience with stomach flu and/or vomiting.

In the realm of this blog, I'm not super interested in what happens at either end. My main fixation is on the torso and what's going on within so the idea of the stomach churning and cramping for hours and hours in vain is more my speed.

RP-Scenario below. Note that it is a work of fiction, not one of my stories inspired by real experiences.

"Unnngh…" I groan, doubling over as I press my arms against my stomach with all the force I can muster. Instant-regret. I can't help but whimper at the sharp pain that results from displacing the contents of my belly. Note to self: humans are not built like toothpaste tubes…you can't just squeeze and expect the goop to come out of whichever end.

I feel the thick mass of stomach contents surge back into place, my digestive organs straining from both internal and external pressure. Talk about a rock and a hard place for the walls of my stomach.

It's February…so Valentine's Day has been on everyone's mind for a while now. Considering how January came and went with no opportunities to get together, my partner and I decided to go all-out for Valentine's Day. We maanged to line up our respective work-schedules to get a day off in the vicinity of February 14. We were debating between ramen and all-you-can-eat sushi. In the end, "both is good" became our answer.

I suggested ramen for lunch. My stomach had been doing flips since the night before. I assumed it was just nerves for the date. I didn't want a nervous tummy ache derailing our date, so I skipped breakfast. As much as I love sushi and ramen, I opted for ramen for my first meal of the day because I thought broth would be easier on a nervous tummy. Also, with ramen, there's a defined end-point of the meal. I didn't trust myself to tackle all-you-can-eat sushi on a nervous tummy.

The ramen sat pretty heavy in my tummy all day, despite the broth. I felt pretty full after the ramen. Luckily, I was with good company, company enough to distract me from being hyper-aware of the state of my tummy all day. After the ramen, we walked around for a bit. We stumbled upon an arcade and played far too many rounds of some variation of DDR. I was beginning to suspect something was wrong when I still felt my stomach sloshing with the ramen and broth after such vigorous exercise. You'd think all that jumping and jostling would have coaxed my stomach to digest…but most of lunch was still sloshing around in my tummy.

We stopped by a library after the arcade--home turf for me as I grew up going to that library and used it often as a broke post-secondary student. We browsed the shelves for a while, shared book recommendations, and checked local events and seminars and whatever for things of interest. This library also has a really nice cafe in it. I brought them there and they got sucked in by a book I insisted they had to give a shot as it was what I had thought about when they shared some elements of an RPG they were playing months back. They were hooked. While they fell into a fictional world, I took the opportunity to sneak off to the washroom in the library to assess the state of my belly and to try and coax it into a better state.

Thank Heaven the washroom was single-stall and in a relatively low-traffic area of the library. I knew the place like the back of my hand and knew that this little corner was a haven for washroom emergencies. Luckily, I wasn't interrupted. I basically manhandled my guts, prodding and squeezing my belly as I tried to shake off the upset that was brewing. Something must have worked. I managed to get most of the ramen and broth to siphon into my intestines. It wasn't comfortable, but it was head and shoulders above feeling the warm slosh and wet tickle at the base of my esophagus all day. Yeah, my stomach was sore from the rough massage, but I had a date to finish and I wasn't going to let an upset tummy derail the long-awaited date.

When I rejoined my partner, they had decided to look into the book series I recommended. They put a hand on their tummy and it let out the most adorable grumble right at that moment. They told me they were hungry and suggested going for the sushi we had opted not to get for lunch. My tummy definitely wasn't up for more food…but I couldn't think of a non-embarrassing excuse, so I went along with it.

It is currently just passed 9PM. I got back from the date about an hour ago. I'm still in the cute outfit I agonized over all morning…not by choice. I usually hate wearing 'outside' clothes while I am at home, especially if I am alone as I am. Unfortunately, the last hour has been filled with a SNAFU that has taken my mind off of lounging clothing.

It's not a nervous tummy. It probably never was 'just nerves'. I didn't check my emails at all today, not wanting to be disrespectful to my date and all that…so I missed it.

Leah, one of my besties, and I had a bit of a 'study date' a couple of days ago. She's currently enrolled in a couple of courses that are supposed to help her in her career, and I'm debating going back to school for another degree/certification and hoping it'll help me land better job prospects. The two of us opted to study our respective fields together because we both focus better in a library-setting/away from home…and having someone we trust to watch our stuff if we need to use the washroom is a load off of our minds when the alternative has always been to use the washroom first, set up our study area, and tank it for maybe 2-4 hours until nature calls again or we get hungry or whatever.

Leah had forgotten her water bottle that day. Part of it was fear that it would spill on her laptop, so she had debated whether or not to bring it and ended up forgetting it on her kitchen counter anyway. We've been friends for more than a decade so we ended up sharing my waterbottle, passing it back and forth.

Leah emailed me this morning. Apparently, she's down and out with a nasty case of Norovirus. She spent all of the night making offerings to the porcelain throne. She emailed me to warn me that she could have been asymptomatic/incubating the virus when we shared the waterbottle…so…she told me to be prepared and to sanitize the bottle (her exact words, "kill it with fire")…the same waterbottle that I had brought on my date today…that I had drank out of multiple times today. Yeah…if I wasn't infected the day I was with Leah, I definitely must have done it to myself today.

The sushi is sitting like a hunk of cement in my stomach. Despite the upset tummy, I ate a lot. It was 'all you can eat' so I knew I was going to get my money's worth. Also, it would have been awkward to stop eating when my date was still going at it with gusto. Piece-by-piece, I loaded up my stomach like a novice tetris player. My poor stomach was packed like a tin of sardines by the halflway mark…and my date was still showing no signs of slowing down.

That leads us to now. I've been in and out of the washroom at least seven times in the last hour. I stopped counting around my fourth unproductive trip.

My stomach will clench and I'll feel a dizzying sensation, like a whirlpool has spontaneously manifested inside of my guts at some random point and is churning my stomach-contents at an alarming rate…and I'll race the combined nausea and urge to go to the washroom…with nothing to show for it.

I'm beyond frustrated right now. My tummy is packed so tight that it feels as rigid and solid as the bathroom counter I've been white-knuckling as I desperately try to get my churning stomach and clenching torso to agree on which end to eject the sick and stuff from.

All I have to show for my hour of frustration is what feels like a very bruised tummy (I've been really, really rough with it, trying to squeeze the mess to either end with no success) and a small handful of nasty, barely-there-belches. Sushi tastes great going down. Ramen tastes great going down. The aftertaste, should it come back up, is revolting. It's sour and salty, and the gross hot air I've coaxed up my throat honestly makes me wonder if warlocks are real and if one of them cursed me in such a way that my entire digestive tract did a 180. The taste of those burps is disgusting! If the taste of the hot air is bad, I don't even want to imagine the hell that's brewing in my stomach.

My stomach clenches painfully. Fresh tears race down my cheeks, squeezed out by my tightly-shut eyes as I bite my lip and white-knuckle the counter next to me. It hurts! Ithurtsithurtsithurts!

Twenty minutes later, the cramp ebbs with nothing to show for it. The tug-o-war in my digestive tract continues as my digestive organs try to decide which end will get the nastiness that continues to brew within. I can't decide between 'I'd kill for someone else's hands on my belly right now' vs. the image of clawing out my griping insides and wringing them out like a stubborn tube of toothpaste, pushing the sickly goop of norovirus and too-much-food out before re-inserting the guts where they belong.

[husbandohunter]

May I request a Childe X Reader fanfic where the reader has been pushing herself too hard lately and so Childe has to forcefully get her to rest? ty

By my side [Childe x Reader]//Genshin Impact

Synopsis: You were an artist and he was an adventurer. Two people from vast backgrounds and Childe just wants to spend some time of his busy life with you. However, things didn't really go his way...at first.

(Childe x F!reader. Its all fluff)

(A/n): Perfect request anon. I too, would like to have a Childe in my life. Been getting 5-6 hours of sleep on average 😃😁. Yeah kind tossed some extra ideas with artist s/o, its a perfect reason for anyone to be busy.

============================

Once recieving the permission to take a week off from his diplomatic duties, the first thing Childe thought of was none other than his lovely significant other.

The harbinger knew quite well what lays ahead of his ventures to Liyue. During his quest for the archon's gnosis, he encountered many interesting events, such as meeting the rumoured traveller hailing from afar and a broke yet courteous man who turned out to be the ultimate ruler of this very country he walks upon then there was the battle against a dead god until he revived it using the sigil of permission. All of them were great additions to his story as Ajax the hero, something he always wanted to pursue since childhood. In which, also gave him something nice to write about when preparing letters for his siblings living back home. But little did the harbinger know that he'll one day bump into the heroine. A little too soon. Through your little art shop, he met you, a sweet and audacious woman with plenty of humour. That was how it all began.

While he strides down the streets between Liyue's exquisite buildings, Childe suddenly stops in his tracks and looks up to the sky. There, was painted a scenery of an evening dusk, sun rays relfected across until red and orange hues cast a river stream that led to the ends of the world. He watched the birds follow that streak like it was a path made for them to fly towards. A new adventure. You would have loved to captured this in your pictures.

And then he wonders, what might you be painting right now?

"Hey babe, I'm home~"

In a sing-song voice he calls out to you by your nick-name. You knew that Childe was an active member of the Fatui and that his time was limited, hence he made sure to write to you as well. Of course long distant relationships only makes the waiting more anticipated. When he does pay a visit, you'd run straight into his open arms, leaping off your feet to engulf him in one enourmous embrace. Then his hands will hold against your waist as he spins your round and around in the air, stealing the laughter out of your lungs before planting you back on the floor. Sometimes Childe would consider that being far away wasn't be such a bad idea as long as he was able to experience this, the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. However...

"That's great."

He was met by a response similar to the wintry grace of Snezhnaya.

Huh?

All the fantasies he had from earlier shatters in the background as he stands there frozen. You didn't even spare a glance to the entrance, eyes still glued to the large canvas displayed at your front, too busy to even care. Childe clicks his tongue between the awkward silence with an uncertain expression. When there was no signs of initiation on your part, he shuffled his way to where you were and observes from behind.

"Well you're particularly quiet today," he muses to himself, placing a hand over his hip, "I guess that painting of yours must be really important then."

It was obvious that he was trying to nudge you into his favour. Something that you've found endearing was how quickly your boyfriend can be when he's in a needy state. So you quickly twisted over to peck him on the cheek before going back to work.

"That's better," Childe satisfiedly grins, "So who is this project for?"

"It's a commission requested by a wealthy family serving the Qixing. They're really influential in terms of the market and can really give me a competitive edge. I have to get it done in five days."

His tone flactuates as he squints his eyes, "Five days you say," he disliked the news of your schedule taking over his own, Childe only managed to take a week off and after that, he'll be away for quite some time, "Why don't you take a break? From the looks of your progress, it seems to me that you've been working on it for hours. I've got plenty of interesting stories to tell and you know, nothing can compare to sharing a warm meal within your company," he leans down to your ear level, "How does that sound?"

Several seconds went by as he waits for some sort of reaction, "Oh. Right," you blurted out and the harbinger only smiles, "I made some food earlier this morning. You can go help yourself if you're hungry."

Today was not his day.

Childe pulls out the wooden chair and slumps into the seat, a defeated huff escaping his mouth as he stared at the crystal shrimp placed on the table. It was hastily wrapped by plastic, most likely cold for a while, just like the romantic evening he had planned in his head. Normally you'll be sitting on the otherside while listening to the many tales he went through along the way. Although painting was your passion, it was undeniable that you also enjoyed his kind of lifestyle if you ever had the choice. He was rather surprised on how someone ambitious like him would end up with such a simplistic person but quickly accepted it as life was meant to be unpredictable, just the way he likes it. As Childe entertains you with his stories, he'll listen to your giggles amidst eating the homecooked meals that you both prepared together.

"I wonder if she ate already," he mumbled to his lone self. You most likely did but Childe knows you well. Artists are obsessed and they can go as far as to neglecting their own health for the sake of their masterpieces. Hence, he made sure to remind you to eat properly through the letters he wrote to you.

The harbinger takes a quick glance around the kitchen. It was a mess. The cupboards were slightly opened, metal pots were still displayed on the stone stove and the stench coming from the sink....

Childe pushes himsel up to see what was the cause.

Not even the dishes were washed.

Running his fingers through his bangs, he sighs wearily, "Old habits die hard huh?" And above all else, when artists are obsessed they also forget how disorganized they can become. Childe begins to roll up his sleeves before taking off his gloves. At times like this he'll have to pitch in and take care of it for you, "Looks like I'll be here for a while."

Throughout three sunsets and three moonrises, Childe had no option but to observe you from afar, minus the few attempts he made to regain your attention again. How you would go to bed much later than him, waking up before he opens his eyes and the effort he put into making your food only left with too many leftovers. It wasn't that you were unappreciative, instead, your mind had become too focused that your body was considered a second priority. Like anyone else, Childe genuinely thought you possessed great talent and supports you wholeheartedly. He loved it when you painted pictures just for him as if they were scenes coming out of his hero story, reminded by his adventures, capturing every detail. However he also needed to learn how to deal with this stubborn side of yours.

"Hey babe, I just finished preparing our dinner. Don't you smell that? Such a rich aroma, you should go eat."

"I'm busy."

Your diet were just small bites, the rest being substituted by coffee. Childe could clearly tell that you weren't getting enough sleep either as there were dark circles forming underneath your eyes and slowly, he was starting to become a little irritated.

Three hours passed midnight but you were still awake in the same place doing the same thing. Childe leans against the doorframe with arms folded, already changed into his sleeping clothes. He clears his throat to break the silence, "Ahem."

Your wrist hangs in mid air by the sound of a strange visitor, it was your boyfriend. Gaze in a daze, you lazily turned your head, "What time is it?"

"Way passed the sleeping hours as you can see," he points with his thumb at the table clock in a half-hearted manner, "You should already be in bed by now and don't think you can coax yourself out of the situation this time," his eyes parted in slits as he added with a smile, "Otherwise I might just have to force you myself."

You shook your head, "Give me one more hour? There's some finishing touches I really want to add so," clasping your hands together, you beamed sweetly, "Pretty please? I'll finish up soon."

"Oh really?" Childe challenges, head tossed back like he was interrogating you instead, "I believe that was also what you told me yesterday. And the day before? Adding up all of those days that would be.....four in total?" He deliberately counts upon his fingers before facing you again, this time his expression was slightly more serious, "As much as I find your determination remarkable, there are moments when you need to consider a sufficient amount of rest and this just isn't going to cut it."

"Four days already?!" You exclaimed, "Jeez, I don't even know if I'm halfway done."

Pressing his lips together, Childe glares in an acutely deadpanned countenance, it was also his time too, "Can't you ask this commissioner to extend your due date to next week? In your case, mora shouldn't be the issue since, well...you're dating me anyways."

It's true. Childe was the main reason why you didn't have to live as a starving artist. He had all your expenses fully covered from the marketing aspect to your residence, you simply chose to work out of pure will.

"I don't want to always rely on you so much," you confessed, "This commissioner could turn my whole career around. If I'm able to gain his favour, maybe I'll get promoted to a court painter for the Qixing! Who knows when there will ever be a chance like this again," pumping your fists, you spoke purposefully, "I'll pull an all nighters if I have to!"

Childe brings his hand to his forehead, you looked as if you were nearly about to collapse and yet still considering the option of an all-nighters? The harbinger should've detained you days prior before.

"Hm? Childe, what's wrong?" He suddenly falls deadly quiet and you watched him walk closer towards you, "What are--"

Hooking an arm behind your knees and the other at your back, your boyfriend lifts you up in one full swoop as he tossed you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"Guess we'll have to do things the hard way," he remarks cheerfully.

"W-Wait," you flailed your arms and kicked your legs but to no avail. Childe was an experienced combatant indeed, "Put me down! I have work to do."

Your protests fall upon deaf ears as the harbinger carries you to your room. You were oddly lighter than the last time he carried you, the strength less vigor than before, it was obvious that your body was in need of relaxation. He suddenly thinks there was a possibility that you would maintain this habit while he was absent.

I should probably visit more often.

Using his free leg to nudge the door open, he places you upon the shared bed in a gentle manner. You winced at the impact of the soft sheets, surprised by how much it affect you.

"There we go. All done. Man, you really are a stubborn one, aren't you. Makes me a little worried since I can't spoil you all the time."

He quickly invited himself to the empty space on your bedside and wrapped his arms around your figure, pulling you close and feeling you whole. Childe made sure there was no escape once putting his chin above your hairline so that you could feel his warmth as much as possible.

"This is--" you stuttered. His tactic was enough to make your limbs soften and you could almost hear him smirk into the distance, "This is cheating..."

"You think so?" He comments as if pledging innocence, "I don't know babe. Where I come from those who take the initiative are the ones who end up claiming the prize," pulling back, Childe takes the opportunity to observe your pouty face, "I don't make the rules. It's just how it goes."

You wanted to argue back but he suddenly took the bedsheets and covered both of your bodies with, completely trapping you with his presence. He snuggles into you further as if you were a bear made of linen and you felt the drowsiness taking over your mind. The way he gently pats down the back of your head was enough to instantly lull you into a deep sleep.

"Cheater," you mumbled.

He laughs softly, the rumbles emitting through his chest, "I love you too babe."

Even after you've let go of your resistance, Childe continues his actions until he was sure that you were resting. He had been longing to touch you like this since living a chaotic life only made peaceful moments much sweeter, "You're such a hard-worker you know that? I'm proud of you but you have to know when to call it a day," he whispers, "If not, how can I go on trips while knowing that you're still refusing to eat properly?"

You closed your eyes and said nothing in return. All your senses were too cloudy to come up with a reassuring response. Childe listens to the way your breath evens as you intake his scent during the process. It smelled like the soap you used in the showers, lotus leaves mixed with his own unique musk. You could only focus on him. His comforting embrace. His slightly accelerating heartbeat because you were together with him.

Letting out one final yawn, you succumbed to his spell and allowed your energy to drift away.

The corners of his lips tug upwards, "Sleep well princess."

Childe reaches over to your desk drawer and shuts off the alarm clock before turning over to face you again. He couldn't fall asleep immediately, not when he had to consider taking care of the commissioner who gave you an impossible deadline. But that will be saved for another day, for now, he observes in silent serenity.

If he were to quit his job for a year, what would his life be like?

Peaceful. Something opposite of what he was living right now. Something similar to the life he had back home. As you arrange the many paintings in your little home, he'll offer to help you among the places you couldn't reach. Without a doubt, Childe was far taller in comparison. Taking strolls into the streets and trying the new dishes the merchants came up with. Then in the evenings, you'll both go to dinner dates while listening to the storyteller revealing the rumours of the legendary Tianquan Qixing. Although Childe loved the adventurous life he led, he had to admit that your domesticity and family-bringing atmosphere was a tempting idea.

Maybe one day.

He lightly takes a strand that had fallen over your nose and tucked it smoothly behind your ear. The soft snores coming out of your parted lips caused his gaze to melt. And so he steals them with his own, placing a chaste goodnight kiss.

One day I'll be sure to bring my family here with us.

Closing his eyes, he joins you in your slumber, hoping to see all that he envisioned in his dreams.

[vintagedolan]

mixtape | track seven

| masterlist | faceclaims | playlist |

*contains smut*

When Nicole died, Indiana convinced herself that someone was holding down a fast forward button on her life. Some greater power with a universal remote, carelessly keeping a finger shoved down on the little button with the double arrows, with no regard to the fleeting few days she had left with her most important person.

History seemed to be repeating itself, with the best physical representation being the very quickly evolving tiny homes.

The first thing on Grayson’s agenda when they’d made it back to NYC was to decorate the property for Halloween. It hadn’t seemed like the most sound plan to Indy, considering last time they were out in the field it was just raw building materials, a platform and lots of grass. But when she climbed off the back of the quad, away from Grayson’s warmth and into the chilly air, she was standing in front of a house, or at least the bones of one, with the beginnings of the loft and stairs formed inside. It wasn’t polished yet - in fact, there wasn’t even a front door to hang the spider wreath that he had bought at Home Depot. But there was a house, and it stood as a reminder that time was passing quickly.

Despite how over the top the Dolan’s were about it, Halloween was a blink. Ethan was still in California, spending a few more days with Eden, but they facetimed in their costumes anyways - Indy had been convinced into dressing up at the last minute, which resulted in a witch costume that consisted of black leggings and a black bodysuit, which got covered up by a spare hoodie of Grayson’s early in the evening, brought on by the ever-dropping Jersey temperatures. But they celebrated with Lisa, and with E squared across the miles with a bonfire and too many pieces of candy, and Indy realized at the end of the night that it was the first holiday she’d had with family in years. It filled a vacant room in a back hallway of her heart that she didn’t realize had been abandoned, and as soon as the calendar turned to November, she was determined.

“Thanksgiving. Me, you, Lisa, Ethan, Eden, Cam, Charlie and Devin. Thoughts, opinions?”

Grayson quirked an eyebrow from the other side of the couch, face lit by his laptop screen.

“Vegan thanksgiving?”

She nudged him in the side with her foot, getting the perfect angle from where she was laying to tickle him. “Nah, we’re gonna cook a whole meal that 25% of the participants can’t eat. Sounds like the holiday of dreams.”

He poked her with a toe. “Yeah, that sounds good to me. Might have to find an extra table at Ma’s though.”

“I can plan out a menu, make sure everyone brings something. Charlie can bring plates, for all our sakes.”

“Then Ethan can bring cups, cause god knows he doesn’t know what the fuck to do in a kitchen. And I can do the menu, you’ve got enough on your plate.”

“It’s not that bad this week,” she countered, but before she could say anything else he’d picked up her planner, looking at all the little color coordinated blocks that she’d drawn out. Grayson had never had a planner before, much less an hourly one, and it stressed him out a bit just to see how little time she didn’t have allotted to something. His finger moved over a little block in dark blue, a tiny scribble inside it - time with g :).

“You block out time for us to hang out?”

“I block out time to do just about everything but pee,” she laughed, keeping her eyes on her textbook as he continued to look through her pages.

“You haven’t peed in like… 3 hours. Drink your water.”

She stuck her tongue out but did as he asked, watching the way he found something on the page and frowned, eyebrows creasing across his forehead.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He answered it too quickly, and it was her turn to frown.

“Babe. What is it?”

“It just says, uh, ‘deposit from Kenneth’. Who’s Kenneth?”

Her breathing stopped for a moment. She hadn’t heard that name said aloud in years.

“Oh um. That’s my dad. Kenneth Cross.”

He switched from realization to guilt in an instant, flipping the planner shut. Grayson wasn’t privy to much information about Indiana’s father, but he didn’t need much to know that the relationship wasn’t great.

“Shit, Dee, sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

She closed her textbook, sitting it aside with a sigh. Sitting up, she crossed her legs on the couch, a bid to get a little closer to him.

“No, it’s okay. We probably should have talked about it by now anyways. What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me.” He offered her his hand, knowing she liked to toy with her fingers when she talked, hoping it would help.

“Well. He wasn’t always a shit head. Actually, he used to be a pretty good dad. When Charlie and I were growing up, he was always there. He coached Charlie’s basketball team, then mine. He helped mom with dinner, we all went on vacation together. I mean, I had a good childhood, I really did. But things changed when mom got sick.”

“How long was she sick?”

“Six months. It took her fast, much faster than usual with her stage and her type. I thought my dad would step up, but he didn’t. He shut down. And I get that, it was hard, but we needed him and he just… wasn’t there. Charlie had to take her to appointments because I couldn’t drive yet. He stayed at home and worked, and drank, and then drank some more and called it work. He never talked about mom, never even admitted to himself she was sick I don’t think. So Charlie and I did our best, and we stayed with her as much as we could, especially towards the end. I’d ride the subway out of the city to get to school cause I slept at the hospital most nights. And I guess Charlie and I didn’t realize, but he was working on selling the house while we were doing all that, before she was even fucking gone. So, when she did go, all of a sudden she was gone, and my house was gone, and Charlie was going to school, so it was just me and him.

“We moved into a smaller house. He didn’t talk to me. He was a shell without my mom. And I thought it would get better but it didn’t. So, I taught myself how to be okay without him, and without my mom… without anyone. I think he realized it too, and some part of him felt bad. But he knew he couldn’t fix it. So, the summer before college, he said he’d pay for wherever I wanted to live for school. I couldn’t swing rent on a Jet’s salary, and I wanted to get out of his house, so I agreed. I moved in here freshman year, and we haven’t seen each other since. Haven’t even talked on the phone really. He deposits rent in my account each month, and as soon as I can get enough money to not have him do that, I’m going to tell him to stop. I don’t want him to think I need him, for anything.”

Indy looked up for the first time since her story started, and she sucked in a breath at the sight of Grayson’s watery eyes. He blinked it away and cleared his throat, but the way he opened his arms up told a different story.

“I don’t like hating him. But I don’t know how to forgive him either.”

“C’mere,” he mumbled, waiting for her to readjust and climb on top of him. His arms wrapped around her tightly, like he wanted to press her into him and make her a part of him.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that with your mom like that, I can’t imagine.”

Indy lifted her head and looked at him with sad eyes.

“Yes you can.”

The knot in his throat grew, and he kissed her head when she relaxed against him again. He let the silence settle for a few minutes, tracing a heart against her back and pressing his lips into her hair over and over.

“I had my mom though. She helped us through the entire thing. And I had Ethan, and Cam. And I know you had Charlie, but thinking about you having to do that without a parent.” He shook his head. “I hate it. Not to mention the rest of the bullshit he’s probably put you through that you’re too nice to tell me about.”

It was her turn to get teary.  

“Well, I’m okay now. I made it, and so did you.”

He ran a thumb over her cheek with a soft smile.

“Wish you didn’t have to make it through it at all.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

Grayson shifted then, rolled them over to the side so Indy was between him and the back of the couch, coiling his arms around her tightly, shifting her up enough for him to kiss her. He let his hand roam down her back, over her ass, grabbing and moving until her leg slotted above his.

“I love you,” he said, hoping she knew just how much. She moved her hand from his cheek, let her arm wrap around him, trapping him closer to her.

“Love you more.”

He shook his head at her, making her laugh against his skin.

“You don’t have a nap written in your schedule, am I gonna screw it all up?”

“I can shift things. I’m flexible.”

He laughed again, a beautiful sound that bounced off the walls of the apartment and filled the space. Indy kept her leg wrapped around him, holding him close and finding his lips with hers again, breathing him in - her favorite distraction.

“Flexible hm? How flexible?” His voice had dropped slightly, throat gruff.

She knew they weren’t going to sleep, so she gave in, dipping down to kiss along his neck, taking charge a bit more than usual.

“You know, I think we might be the only couple who can switch from parental trauma to horny within 60 seconds,” she mused, smiling at the rumbling laugh it got out of him.

“Maybe we’re just built different.”

“Hate that,” Indy mumbled, moving back up to kiss him again. He wasted no time in coaxing her shirt off, sitting them up with her in his lap so he could do the same to his own, getting her bra off quickly after his own sweatshirt was gone. There was no better feeling than her skin against his, he was sure. Her hand landed on the middle of his chest and she hummed, smiling.

“You didn’t shave your chest hair.”

He pulled back a bit with an incredulous look. He hadn't even thought about it, but she was right. “You noticed that?”

“I notice everything about you. You’re my favorite thing to study,” she smiled, and his heart melted in his chest. The only way he knew to respond was to pull her back to him. In a bed, he would have rolled them over, climbed above her, but the couch limited him and he was at her mercy for the time being.

She didn’t seem to be in much of a rush, and between the slow roll of her hips and the kisses she pressed along a path from his jaw to his collarbone, he was very much wishing she would pick up the pace. His hands slid down to her hips, pressing her down against him in a bid for friction.

“Easy,” Indy laughed his favorite laugh, the breathy one that seemed like an afterthought. “If I’m gonna rearrange my schedule, I get to set the pace.”

“Well then, take it away,” he chuckled, but it faded into more of a groan when she nipped at his shoulder, letting her hands run down his sides. She left goosebumps in the wake of her nails, and he couldn’t help but shudder as she toyed with the waistband of his sweats for a moment, like she was playing a game. Grayson Dolan wasn’t used to being at the whim of anyone, and it was liberating in a way that had his nerves buzzing.

Indiana was perhaps enjoying herself a bit too much. Usually, she was so overwhelmed by him that she didn’t have time to really take him in. So, she soaked up the opportunity of having him displayed out for her, tracing her fingers over every plane of him - the v of his hips, the muscles over his ribs. Down his arms, back up to his shoulders, running her thumbs over his scruff as she cupped his face. When she made it back down to his abs she felt them flex under her hands, his hips bucking up just barely against hers.

“Baby.” His tone was stern, and she played into a bit, looking at him as innocently as she could.

“Hmmm?”

“You’re teasing.”

“I’m admiring.”

“Okay, then you’re cheesy and you’re teasing.”

“Guilty as charged,” she murmured, shrugging a bit.

Bad move.

His arms wrapped around her tightly, ensuring he didn’t lose his grip as he planted a foot on the floor and rose up just enough to roll them, getting her underneath him on the couch. It happened so fast that all she could do was gasp, eyes wide as she stared up at him, the blues bright with shock.

“Now, where were we.”

His cockiness was back in full swing, but he paused at the pout that came over Indy’s face.

“What?”

“I kinda liked being up there,” she said, running her hands along his arms as he held himself up above her.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna switch again?”

“Kinda.”

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal. Pants off, then we switch.”

“Deal.”

He stood up first, taking her hand and pulling her up to her feet. They shimmied out of the pants and underwear quickly, leaving them in a pile on the rug in a rush to get back to each other. The mood shifted yet again when he guided her onto his lap as he sat down, lighthearted and fun as she got herself settled. Grayson had never had lighthearted sex before he met Indiana Cross. It was always scratching an itch, even when it was with people he was in a relationship with. She seemed to unlock another side of him, one that made it so much more fun to have her above him, struggling to keep her hair out of her face and get close enough to him at the same time. He wasn’t sure how she managed to be adorable and sexy at the same time, but when she finally got herself lined up and began to sink down onto him, he didn’t have the brain power left to care.

“Shit Dee,” he groaned, using every bit of self control he had to keep his hips still, letting her set her agonizingly slow pace.

She whimpered with every inch that she moved down, finally taking all of him somehow, arching her back for a moment before she caved, leaning forward onto his chest, burying her face in his neck.

He started as slow as his body would let him, groaning as she started to grind her hips, searching out an angle that kept the pressure building. It took a moment, like it always did when they tried a new position, but when she found it Grayson knew by the way her nails dug into his shoulders. He grabbed her hips to hold her there, memorizing the way their bodies fit together so he could get right back to that same spot over and over again.

“Gray,” she whimpered into his ear, bracing her forearms on his shoulders as he chased her high for her, determined to have her shaking. All she could do was moan and hold on as he thrusted into her faster with a renewed purpose, only stopping when she clenched so hard that he could barely move.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Indy whined, every muscle in her body tightening down in defense of how overwhelmed she suddenly felt, breath catching in her throat as her orgasm ripped through her. His arms coiled around her back as if he was trying to hold her together as she shook, and he chased the last of his high, lifting her off of him at the last possible second before he came, white streaks landing on his torso. He knew it would be a mess and he didn’t care - he pressed her back to him, wrapping her up for a moment in his arms and letting the two of them come down.

“Woah. Good woah,” Indy mumbled, pressing kisses to his neck where she could reach.

“I second your good woah.”

“Good.”

“Do you have time in your flexible schedule for a shower? I got you all sticky.”

She sat up and pretended to ponder it for a moment, making a show of quirking her eyebrow just to make him laugh. “I suppose I could pencil it in. C’mon.”

She climbed off him and took his hand, leading him to her bathroom with a smile. They paused in front of the mirror for a moment, and it was the first time in a long time that Indy felt happy to be looking in one. But still, she turned around and looked up at her boyfriend - he looked better in real life than in his reflection anyways.

“You know, if you play your cards right, you might just win yourself a round two.”

That was all it took for him to pick her up so fast she squealed, carrying her behind the privacy of the shower curtain for a second taste.

-------------

Bekah’s hands were always cold, but they felt like ice cubes in Indy’s hands. She rubbed along her skin in a bid to warm her up, eyes wandering over to Grayson.

“She’s pale,” he murmured, keeping his distance as he stood at the end of the bed. The sight of her so still in her hospital bed was unsettling. He had expected their first visit back to be filled with smiles, and ‘I miss you’s’, stories of California and her recovery.

Instead, they’d walked into Bekah’s room to find her fast asleep underneath her Halloween blanket, brows furrowed in what he hoped was concern and not pain.

“Her body is probably just trying to get used to the new cells. Not making enough blood, she’s probably up for another transfusion soon.”

“How do you know?”

Indy nodded towards what Grayson had assumed was an IV pole - he supposed it was, but instead of the usual bags of clear or milky liquid, there were just empty hooks.

“An hour.”

Bekah’s voice was dry and horse, and although it was quiet, it made both of them jump.

“Hey! How’re you feeling?” Indy immediately perked up, painting that smile across her face that Grayson had started to associate with everything hospital, from the sounds to the smell of bleach.

“Tired. My next transfusion is in an hour.”

“Did the doctor say anything about your counts?”

Bekah looked at her and rolled her eyes, wincing as she tried to sit up in bed. Indy reached to help her but she held a hand up.

“I have a transfusion in an hour, you tell me what my counts are,” she muttered, sitting up for a moment before she let out a sigh and put her face in her hands.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay Beks,” Grayson said.

“No, it’s not. You all came to see me and I’m being an asshole.”

“No one is nice when they don’t feel good,” Gray offered, moving to the other side of the bed and resting a hand on her shoulder. It was a simple gesture, a small attempt at consoling, but it was too much for Bekah. The sniffles turned into broken sobs that shook her entire body so hard it looked like she would come apart.

“I’m just tired of this. I’m tired.”

There wasn’t an adequate response to give, so the room filled with silence apart from her sobs as they did their best to hold her together, wrapping their arms around her, around each other. Indy’s eyes were red by the time Bekah’s cries quieted, and Grayson scrambled to come up with something, anything, to lighten the mood.

“Well, if we have an hour, that means we have time for an episode of something. Didn’t you say you were watching Vampire Diaries while we were gone?”

Bekah nodded, laying back against the pillows.

“Then let’s watch one and just chill. Save your energy.”

He set it up quickly, turning off the lights and pulling his chair over to the side of her bed as it started to play. When he looked over, there was just enough light to see that Bekah had reached for Indy’s hand. And to his surprise, she reached for his too. He took it, trying to ignore the way his throat tightened at the feeling of her squeezing weakly - a silent thank you as the episode began to play.

-------------

The first two weeks of November passed with unrelenting speed. Indiana buried herself in her school work, carving out what she could for quality time for Grayson, even if it was just going out to Jersey with him for a movie night that ended with her asleep on his lap before the opening scene was done. He didn’t mind - he just liked having her around, watching her get closer with Ethan and his mom, knowing she was safe because she was there with him. It was hard to help someone who was so determined on being independent, but he did what he could and she did the same, spending what little time she had encouraging him and supporting him.

Grayson had his own work to focus on, and it filled the time nicely as they worked to get their brands up and running through the holidays, plus the task of finalizing the plans for the details of the tiny homes. Somehow, it was already the week of Thanksgiving before he stopped to take a breath, which he found in the backyard with his brother the day before the holiday.

“Listen. I can make rolls. I can’t fuck that up.”

“Ethan, you could fuck anything up, including rolls. Just get cups. And things to put in the cups.”

“Fuck you,” Ethan grumbled, tossing the football a bit harder than necessary across the back lot. Grayson wished he’d put on gloves, but

“When is evil coming in?”

“She lands tonight, gotta go pick her up at 10:30. Is Indy staying out here tonight too?”

“No, I’m staying at her place, her sister and her boyfriend fly in tomorrow morning so we gotta pick them up. You’re picking up Cam tonight too right?”

“Yeah. Damn, I feel like dad,” Ethan laughed, a puff of white in the cold air.

Grayson waited for him to elaborate, throwing the ball back.

“He was always the chauffeur. I mean jesus, how many times do you think he picked us up from the airport when we came home?”

“True, he fucking hated that drive too. Complained about it the whole time, every time.”

“Like you don’t hate driving into the city.”

Grayson quirked an eyebrow at him, tossing the ball a bit harder, trying to put a different spin on it.

“Okay, fine, used to hate it. Now you just like it cause you get laid at the end of it.”

“True,” Gray grinned. “That makes me sound like a douchebag though.”

“You are a douchebag.”

“We’re identical twins, so if I’m a douchebag you’re a douchebag by association,” Grayson said.

“True. You aren’t a douchebag when you’re around Indiana, I’ll give you that.”

“Yeah, she wouldn’t put up with that shit.”

“You are a simp though.”

“Says you.”

“I never said I wasn’t.” Ethan shrugged, offering up a smile as he threw. “Eden really likes her by the way. Says they’d be great sister-in-laws in the future. I told her to chill with that shit though.”

Grayson missed the ball, not even bothering to watch it bounce away on the ground.

“Why?”

“Well, you said you were never going to ask her to leave, or move or whatever. And you live in LA, we live in LA, so... I mean, being here this long is just because of the tiny houses. And I know you, you can’t do long distance bro, you’re too physical.”

“Oh fuck you, I can survive without getting my dick wet if it means being with somebody I love.”

“That’s not what I fucking meant, I mean you’re touchy, and you need to be close to the people you love. Like physically close, as in in the same room, in the same house at least. That’s why I haven’t said shit about you being at her place every night of the week. I get it Gray, it’s how you are. But that shit won’t work when you’re on the other side of the country, and I know you aren’t going to ask her to fly out there to see you after how bad those flights were for her. And I love you, and I’m gonna support you, but you can’t fly home every weekend either. We have businesses, we have shit to do. Work.”

“I know that, I’m not stupid.”

“And it makes me feel like a shit brother but you always tell me that I’m supposed to keep you on track, so if that means being the bad guy then that means being the bad guy.”

“E I know.”

“I’m not saying you have to like break up with her or anything but, I just, I think it’s gonna be hard. Like really really hard.”

“Ethan. I know.”

“I just don’t want to see you hurt, that’s all.”

“Yeah. I get it. But can you just drop it for two fucking seconds? It’s almost Thanksgiving, let’s just focus on that. Besides, you’re the one who said to wait to cross the bridge when we come to it,” Grayson huffed.

“It’s the last week of November almost. Hate to break it to you, but the bridge is right in front of you.”

The thought made his stomach drop.

“Let’s go inside. S’cold.”

--------------

It felt unnatural to have her sister in the back seat, but that’s where Charlie climbed in after Grayson had helped them load their minimal luggage into the back of the car and made his introductions. They’d borrowed Lisa’s SUV for Devin’s sake, knowing that his long legs would be cramped in the backseat of anything, especially the truck.

“How was your flight?” Indy turned almost fully in her seat, trying to soak in every minute she had with her sister - they had to fly out bright and early the next morning.

“Bumpy,” Charlie laughed, picking at her nails in her lap. Indy frowned when she noticed - it was her nervous tick.

“Devin I have no idea how you fit in coach bro, I barely fit and I’m tiny compared to you,” Grayson chimed in, checking over his shoulder as he pulled out of the pick up lane.

“It’s a struggle my man, it’s a struggle. But I don’t think anyone in their right mind would look at you and call you tiny. You’ve got me beat in every department but leg length.”

“Hey, if you’re actually serious about growing muscle I can throw together a workout for you while you’re here.”

“For real? That would be sick bro, I could really use the help.”

Indy held back her laugh at how they both slipped into bro mode so quickly, and Charlie seemed to be on the same page as she snickered. Eventually conversation gave way to music, Indy proud of herself for finding a perfect 2000’s throwback playlist that had everyone singing and bouncing around in their seats. By the time they made it to the house, they were all a bit breathless and full of nostalgia.

When they climbed out onto the gravel, Charlie stuck close to her sister.

“Lisa is mom. And Ethan is the twin, Eden is the sister, Cameron is the girlfriend?”

“Cameron is sister, Eden is girlfriend,” Indy laughed. “Thank god you asked.”

Charlie gave a bit of a chuckle, and Indy nudged her.

“They’re good people Char. Don’t worry, they’ll love you.”

“I just… haven’t done this in a while.”

She wrapped her arm around her older sister’s shoulders as they approached the house, squeezing her lightly.

“I know sis. I know.”

Inside, Eden was trying to be subtle as she peeked through the blinds on the windows, watching the whole crew approach.

“They’re here! Come to the door, they’re here!”

“Babe, that’s creepy. Just come sit down,” Ethan laughed, waiting for Cameron to make her next move in chess.

“It’s not creepy, it’s friendly,” she countered, but she stood back from the door at the last moment to try to make it less intimidating.

“Hey guys!” Grayson’s voice boomed loud through the house as soon as he opened the door, his excitement obvious. Cam and Ethan abandoned their chess game for a moment, and Lisa came from the kitchen with a warm smile.

Indiana officially met Cameron for the first time, happy that she went in for the hug. Lisa hugged everyone, making everyone laugh when she looked up at Devin and said “my god you’re tall.”

Once everyone had met everyone, Lisa clapped her hands.

“Alright, let’s get to work!”

The Dolan’s did things in stations it seemed, which pleased Indy’s organizational side that usually went a bit crazy around the holidays. Lisa was nice enough to assign each couple a dish to work on, which of course became a competition, like everything seemed to. Indy wasn’t sure how they were going to truly compare E squared’s vegan stuffing to Charlie and Devin’s vegan mac and cheese, but she didn’t care.

Because Grayson was beaming beside her as they worked on peeling potatoes over the trash can, and everywhere she looked she saw smiles. Devin was swaying his hips to the music while Charlie tried to copy him, just a blip behind the beat. Ethan and Eden raced to see who could chop vegetables quicker until Lisa told them to slow down so someone didn’t end up needing stitches.

LIsa was the master of the operation, working on three different things at once, waving off Indy’s offer of help.

“I used to feed all three of them and their dad. Cooking for an army is second nature,” she teased, but that familiar tone was in her voice that tugged at Indy’s heart. Ethan eventually connected to the speakers and shuffled a playlist filled with everything, from Elton John to Cudi. Grayson got vegan butter on his shirt at one point while dancing too hard, and when Indy laughed he swiped it off with a finger and smeared it on her nose. The kitchen got so hot they cracked a window, with the revolving door of the oven trying to handle all the dishes and all the bodies close together.

By 2pm, everyone took turns carrying everything into the dining room to the massive which Cameron had decorated. Everyone took their places at the table, with LIsa at the head, Grayson and Ethan beside her with the girls beside them, and Charlie beside Indy, Devin beside Eden, who had seemed to hit it off with him in their short few hours of knowing each other, and Cam at the other head.

“Before we start, I think we should all go around and share something that we’re thankful for,” Lisa proposed. “I’ll start. I’m very thankful for my health, and for my family. For my wonderful daughter, and my amazing boys, and my husband, who I love and who watches over us every day.”

She could only speak for herself, but it was a safe bet that everyone’s throats tightened. Ethan cleared his before he spoke.

“I’m thankful for my family, for the quality time we get to spend together. For my brother’s ability to deal with my ass and his help in chasing our dreams and making that shit happen. And for Eden, because… well just because.”

Eden laid her head against his shoulder for a moment before she spoke up.

“I’m thankful for my dream job, and getting to do something I love every day. I’m thankful for Ethan, for loving me and keeping me sane. And I’m thankful for all of you, especially you Lisa, for welcoming me into the family.”

“I’m thankful to be here, to meet new people and get to eat some awesome food. Thank you, for inviting us in and sharing your holiday with us,” Devin said, polite as ever.

“I’m thankful for the wine,” Cam grinned, sipping from her glass quickly just to get an eye roll out of her mom. “And for all of you, and good food, and for family. Charlie?”

Charlie threw Indy a nervous glance before she spoke.

“I’m thankful for my sister, and my boyfriend, who always keep me together and on track, and who make me laugh. And I’m thankful for new friends, and good food.”

Indy had been so intent on listening to everyone else that she hadn’t even thought of her own response.

“I’m thankful for my sister, and for all of you guys, who have been so kind to me. I’m thankful for this guy,” she bumped Grayson’s shoulder. “For loving me, and supporting me in everything I do. And, I’m thankful for the years I had with my mom. I wish she could be here today, but I know she’s up there watching, and she’s thankful that I have you guys.”

She ignored the way her eyes stung, turning to Grayson, who squeezed her thigh under the table.

“I’m thankful for my family, and for the way that dad guided us to be who we are today - all of us Dolan’s. And I’m thankful for Indy for showing me what strength and determination looks like. And for everyone here, because we’re all family. I love you guys.”

The weight of his words hung in the air for a moment as everyone soaked them in.

“Alright, dig in!” Lisa broke the silence, reaching for the rolls.

Grayson squeezed Indy’s thigh once, tracing a little heart with his index finger when she leaned over to kiss his cheek before turning back to the table. They all ate until their plates were clear, almost all of them heading back in for seconds. The final verdict was that the vegan mac and cheese was the winner of the side dish competition, much to the pride of Devin. The evening settled into various activities, from Grayson teaching Devin proper pull up form to Charlie letting Eden take test shots on her camera. Indy mostly watched from the sidelines, happy to see all the people she loved all together in one place.

Her family.

“Thank you for this.” Lisa’s voice startled her a bit, but she relaxed when the older woman moved to stand beside her.

“I should be thanking you!”

“No. We didn’t do Thanksgiving last year. Everything was still too… raw, I suppose. Everyone is here because you asked them to be. So, thank you, truly.”

The tears that Indy had been fighting all day finally found their place on her cheeks, and she sniffled through a laugh when Lisa hugged her.

“Well, thanks for sharing your family.”

“It’s not sharing if you’re a part of it my dear.”

She pulled her close for a hug before the two of them folded themselves into the mix, running around in the cold air of the backyard and enjoying each other’s company as the night drew to a close. They opted for pie and vegan ice cream to finish off the night, and Charlie insisted they take some pictures before the food comas took over. She’d thought ahead enough to bring a tripod, and she sat it up in the living room, making sure every couple got a few that they liked, and that they all got one together. Lisa requested one of just her kids where they of course all goofed off enough to annoy her. Charlie would send them all in the next few days, Indy’s favorite being the one of her on Grayson’s back, wrapped around to kiss his cheek while he grinned with his eyes squeezed shut. It became her lock screen as soon as she saved it, and Lisa went on to get the family one framed, as well as the one of all of them together too, both beside each other on the mantel held with equal importance.

---------------------------------

The Thanksgiving leftovers only lasted two days in Indy’s fridge. With the stress of preparing for four cumulative finals, she didn’t have time to cook anything, and the microwaveable vegan leftovers were a god send. So was Grayson, who stayed by her side each day as she studied, quietly keeping himself busy with work until she needed him. It was a nice co-existence, both of them understanding the need for quiet but enjoying each other’s presence nonetheless. By Wednesday, she was only left with one last final, though it was her hardest, and she couldn’t convince herself that she’d prepared enough despite pulling multiple all nighters. He quizzed her when she asked, even though he butchered half the pronunciations. His commentary was the comedic relief she needed to get through it though, and she was more than grateful that he was there.

“Last set, and then you need to take a break.”

“But-”

“No buts. Unless you’re talking gluteus maximus.” He grinned when she rolled her eyes. “Baby you’ve been going non stop for 4 hours now.”

“Okay fine, hit me with it.”

“Soleus.” She pointed to the side of his calf. “Extensor carpi ulnaris.” The outer side of his forearm. “Zygomaticus major.” His cheek. “Iliopsoas.” The inside of his thigh.

“Dee, you know these. You literally don’t even have to think about it, you know them.”

She shook her head before he even finished his sentence. “I need more practice.”

“The only thing you need more of is sleep,” he countered. “C’mon, we’re both exhausted, let’s just take a nap.”

“Once we finish the set, then we can.”

“Fine. Serratus anterior.”

She tickled his ribs, making him squirm away from her.

“Biceps femoris.” She heaved his leg up from where it was resting on the couch, pointing to a spot in the middle of the back of his thigh.

“Teres major.” It was a reach, but she made it around to the back of his armpit.

“Teres minor.” She poked the same spot, just a bit harder.

“Okay, ouch, don’t abuse my teres. Uh, gastrocnemius.” She was gentler on his calf.

They went through the rest of the stack like that, with Grayson doing his best to say them correctly while Indy poked and prodded.  

As soon as he flipped the last card he yawned, sitting the stack aside and leaning forward to grab her, dragging her on top of him and nuzzling his nose into her hair. Indy sighed and relaxed into him, his warmth and the weight of his arms settling her body down. She could remember the days where she’d always wanted something as simple as this, just laying on her couch with someone to hold, and she tried to soak it in.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you more,” Grayson countered, pressing a kiss to her forehead. His hands moved under her shirt over her back, finding space.

R-E-L-A-X

“Can’t. My mind won’t stop.”

“Well, I’d offer to sing to you or some shit, but your ears would probably bleed,” he chuckled.

“S’okay. I’ll just dream about muscles or something. Innervations.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Oh yeah, riveting stuff.”

She wiggled around to get comfortable, her cheek squished against his chest as he rubbed her back.

“Sleep, have your little anatomy dreams,” he teased, reaching over the back of the couch for a blanket to drape over the two of them.

It took a little while, but she managed to drift off to the soothing sound of his heartbeat and the feeling of his fingers against her skin.

And she dreamed.

Indiana was in a hallway. White, smooth walls with doorways that stood black and brooding on either side. Her stomach turned a bit, unease washing through her veins as she took a few small steps forward, moving to peek past one of the frames.

“Don’t sweetheart.”

Her head shot up. At the end of the hall was Nicole. She looked young, even younger than Indy’s last memories of her. Youthful, and full of life, her blonde hair familiar as it hung down and framed her face.

“Mom.”

“Hi my love.”

Indiana ran. She barreled past the doors, not even giving them a second thought as she finally, finally landed in her mother’s arms. The tears were inevitable, but she didn’t care that she shook as Nicole held her, the way only a mom could. Held her body, but held her soul.

“Where have you been? Where’d you go?”

“I’ve been here the whole time. Right here with you.”

“I miss you. I miss you so much.”

“I know. But I’m here.”

She pulled back, letting her mom brush her hair behind her ear the way she always used to when it fell into her eyes.

“Look at you. You’re all grown up. Look at those beautiful eyes. So blue.”

“Just like yours,” Indy said.

“Just like mine.”

A part of her knew that she was dreaming. She knew her mother was gone, that this wasn’t real. But her heart refused to accept it, because she could feel her mother’s skin, hear her voice, feel her like she hadn’t been able to in so long. So she just stared. Tried to memorize every part of her face, every smile line, every freckle. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, but Nicole was the one to break the silence.

“Baby. I need you to be careful.”

Indy frowned. “Careful?”

“With your heart. I need you to be careful with your heart, with my heart.”

“Momma what do you mean?”

Nicole looked to the left. Indy followed her gaze, surprised to see that the light was on in the doorway.

The doorway to Bekah’s room.

“Beks,” she breathed. Her feet automatically moved, taking her into the room until Nicole’s arms wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her back.

“Indiana,” Nicole cautioned. “No.”

“No, no Mom it’s okay, she’s getting better, see? Look, she’s fine.”

She pushed forward, but Nicole’s grip only tightened.

“No baby. Look.”

Indy listened. And she watched. Watched Bekah try to sit up in her bed. She was probably calling for Jessica, or Emily, or maybe even Indy. Her mouth opened, and no sound came out, her eyes going wide for a moment before she fell back against the pillows, chest rising too fast, too shallow. Indy knew what that meant.

“No. NO! Beks! Bekah!”

“Shhhhh baby, there’s nothing you can do, Indiana stop, there’s nothing you can do.”

“BEKAH!” She cried anyways, fighting her mother’s grip as she watched the monitors light up, heard their mocking monotone calls as they alarmed. Nurses appeared, and Indy watched them do all the right things, give all the right medicine.

She didn’t wake up.

“No, no no no no,” Indy wailed, thrashing in her mother’s arms.

“Indiana. Indiana. Dee!”

She was back in her living room, and Grayson was scared.

“Wha-” she looked around, bewildered. She was sitting up, which disoriented her a bit, though she was with it enough to realize she was still in Grayson’s lap.

“Hey, you’re okay, you’re safe,” Grayson said, eyes still wide. He pushed her hair back out of her face as she looked down, only then realizing that she’d balled up his shirt in her hands. She let go, looking at the disheveled fabric, which was also splotched with dark spots.

“I’m- sorry, I don’t… I uh… I had a nightmare. Sorry.”

“It’s okay baby,” Grayson murmured. “You okay?”

Those two words brought on a whole other wave of tears, and she crumpled into him, shaking her head as she cried.

It took him by surprise for a moment - he knew she didn’t like to cry, and he’d never really seen her so upset. So he took a moment to process, and then he lifted her arms up over his shoulders, coiling his own around her and squeezing her to him as tight as he could without crushing her. He didn’t speak. He just held her, let her get it out of her system, whatever it was.

When her sobs turned to sniffles and his shirt was fully soaked through on the shoulder, he spoke up.

“What do you need? What can I do?”

She pulled back from him, frame seeming even smaller somehow as she sat there.

“Can you go check on Bekah? I know it’s Wednesday, and I know we’re going to tomorrow but… you don’t have to, I just, I know she’s alone up there, but I have so much work to do, and-”

“I can go. I’ll go,” he said. The pieces fell together in his brain, and he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Thank you,” she exhaled, shoulders slumping back down.

“Are you gonna be okay here by yourself while I’m gone?”

“Yeah, I need to study anyways, I’ll keep myself busy. Just need to know she’s okay.”

“Okay. I’ll make sure she’s good, might hang out for a bit and watch something if she’s up for it.”

“That sounds amazing. Thank you.”

He didn’t like the idea of leaving her there, but he could tell she wouldn’t have any peace of mind until she knew that Bekah was okay. It reminded him off all the times he’d called his mother in the middle of the night in those last few months before he’d officially come home, just to make sure his dad was still there.

“If you need me, call me okay? I’ll turn back around.”

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I love you,” she said, kissing him quickly.

“I love you more.”

He shifted her off him onto the couch and got up, putting his shoes and coat on quickly before he could convince himself to stay. It was already dark outside despite it only being 6pm, and he kept his head down on the streets on his way to the hospital, mind racing until he got up to the unit and signed in.

He half expected Bekah to be lying still in her bed, on her back with all her machines on. Or, at least for her to be drained and tired like she had been the last few times they saw her. But when he cleared the doorway she was sitting up in bed on her phone, random Tik Tok audio’s playing. She looked up at him and smiled her brightest smile.

“Earrings! It’s a Wednesday, the fuck are you doing here?!”

He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“You get an extra dose of me this week, deal with it,” he teased, unzipping his coat and laying it over one of the chairs.

“Where’s Indy?”

“Studying for finals. It’s a me you date tonight, you pick. What’re we doing?”

“Well, I restarted Vampire Diaries.”

“Restarted? Bro, you were on season 7 yesterday!”

“Yeah so? The best seasons are the first two, we’ve been over this.”

“Whatever, scootch over.”

She did as he asked, though he had to put the bedrails down to even fit halfway on the mattress.

“Here, get in here so we can send some motivation to Dee,” he said, pulling out his phone and opening snapchat. They moved so just their noses-up were on screen, making Bekah laugh as he sent it off.

She screenshotted it and sent back a heart, which put his mind at ease enough to relax and attempt to enjoy an episode, though he wasn’t really following the plot considering they were almost halfway through the first season.

“So, what’s happening exactly?” He finally asked 20 minutes into the episode.

“Stefan is trying to be all ‘you deserve better than me’, and Damon just doesn’t give a shit. Essentially, Stefan doesn’t want to hurt Elena so he wants her to make the decision to break it off so he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t want to be the bad guy.”

“But if he loves her, then why does he want to break it off at all?”

“Well cause he’s bad for her. She would have to give up so much for him. She’s having to lie to her friends, hide all this stuff for him. Change her whole life really. But she wants to, because she loves him, he just doesn’t think it’s fair to ask that of her. But like… he’s still asking her to do it just by being with her, you know?”

He knew.

“I mean, and he’s a fucking vampire. Yah know, suck suck and all that jazz,” Bekah laughed. “If the rest isn’t a deal breaker, then that definitely is. I mean, yeah, Damon’s a vampire too but at least he just accepts it, and he doesn’t ask her to change or anything.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I’m Team Damon, if you couldn’t tell,” she tried again.

“Yeah. Me too.”

Grayson tried to shake himself out of his thoughts, but it was proving difficult. Luckily, Bekah just mistook it as him being super invested in the show, which made her happy. Jessica let him stay an extra fifteen minutes, and he took a quick video of Bekah wishing Indy luck on her last final before he left and headed out.

The walk home was worse. It was darker somehow, colder as his mind raced with realization after realization. He did his best to do the math in his head. It was December 3rd, which meant 30 days until he was supposed to go back to LA. All the way to the other side of the country, only coming back to Jersey every few months if he was able to. Ethan’s voice rang in his head as he trudged through the lobby and into the elevator.

That shit won’t work when you’re on the other side of the country.

He tried to breathe it off, put on a positive face before he opened Indy’s apartment door, smiling when he saw her on the couch, pencil tucked behind her ear as she looked over diagrams.

“Hi! How was it?”

“It was good, she’s good. Looks great actually.”

His phone buzzed in his pocket once, then again, and he pulled it out to check it.

A notification of a payment from the joint bank account, and then a text from E.

Booked the flights for the 2nd. Hope that’s cool.

“Everything okay?” Indy asked.

He put his phone back in his pocket and smiled.

“Yeah. Everything is fine.”

[stiltonbasket]

In which Wei Wuxian needs a break, Jiang Cheng is smitten, and Xiao Xingchen finally makes his way to a safe haven.

Unfortunately for Wei Wuxian, twenty-five-year-old father of two and co-owner of Lotus Pier Bakery, his days always start at four o’clock in the morning. 

Right after his alarm rings, he showers (sometimes) brushes his teeth (if he remembers to) and combs his hair (if he can’t get away with wrangling it into a messy braid, which works for three days out of every five) before stumbling down the stairs to the kitchen, where he spends the next two hours mixing pastry dough and preparing enormous rows of stuffed baozi. After the buns and pastries are done—and pastry is always finicky, even for him—he takes out his pans of bread dough and bakes until his hands are numb from kneading and mixing, right before whipping up a sponge batter and making four different flavors of cake with it: plain, chocolate, a green tea sponge that is ridiculously popular despite only smelling like tea (though it’s still a good cake, as proven by his sister’s fondness for it) and strawberry. He also puts on a pot of lotus and pork rib soup, since the bakery serves meals during lunch and provides a free cup of soup with every order.

At seven-thirty, he hears the sleepy sounds of his brother moving about on the second floor, going about his own preparations for the day. Jiang Cheng’s morning responsibilities include getting himself ready, making sure Wei Wuxian’s six-year-old-son (an actual ray of sunshine, brought to life in the shape of a boy called Wen Yuan) is dressed and packed for school, and giving baby Xiao-Yu his first bottle before the breakfast rush begins. 

Wei Wuxian’s children are utter delights, though, so he counts that part as one of the many privileges that come with being an uncle to the two most precious baby boys in the world. 

“There’s also A-Ling,” Jiang Cheng says grumpily, when he comes down with shaving foam still stuck to his ears and A-Yu wriggling in his arms. “And I don’t have to change his diapers, Wei Wuxian.”

“It’s only once a day,” Wei Wuxian coaxes. He grabs the baby from Jiang Cheng and gives him a smacking kiss on the nose, his heart melting all over again as Xiao-Yu tries to imitate him and ends up licking his face instead. “How’s the most perfect baby in the universe doing today, baobei?”

Xiao-Yu only babbles at him, since he only just passed his tenth-month birthday and can’t really manage speech outside of the occasional “baba,” (directed at Wei Wuxian, of course) or the odd “mama,” which is also directed at Wei Wuxian because he is, as he tells everyone who asks him out and then runs the second he explains, very much a single father. Parenthood’s very bad for the dating scene, but he’ll gladly remain single for the rest of his life to make sure he can give his best to A-Yuan and Xiao-Yu. 

Not that any of them but Yanli ever thought about anything like romance or marriage, after the Jiang estate burned to the ground with their parents in it and left them dependent on a family friend’s charity for the next year and a half. 

A-Yuan comes bounding into the kitchen five minutes later, dressed in a tidy little button-up and neat grey shorts with a backpack strapped to his shoulders. “A-Die!” he cries, flinging his arms around Wei Wuxian’s waist and nuzzling against his stomach until his father bursts out laughing at how much it tickles. “A-Die, I’m ready. What do I get for lunch today?”

“First things first,” Wei Wuxian tells him, as A-Yu observes them through the mesh walls of his playpen with one chubby finger in his mouth. “Did you and your shushu finish all your breakfast!”

“Mm, we did! Shushu made eggs!”

“Then you can go pick out one of the buns in the cooling rack for you, and one for A-Ling. And two for your peacock uncle, since he always eats too much.”

Once A-Yuan makes his choices—a soft baozi with mushrooms in it for him, and and a green onion pastry with tomatoes for Jin Ling—Wei Wuxian fills up two tiny thermoses with hot soup and then fills up A-Yuan’s Spiderman water bottle, which is completely covered in the rabbit stickers he hoards every time someone takes him to the doctor’s office. 

“Lunches packed,” Jiang Cheng drones, starting up the various drinks machines behind the bakery counter as A-Yuan grabs his cousin’s lunchbox and tries to pack it himself. “I am now going to make coffee. And tea. And milk tea, since my elder brother is a cruel, cruel man.”

“The McDonalds down the street would have put us out of business if we hadn’t started serving bubble tea,” Wei Wuxian scolds. “And Wen Qing likes the way you cook the tapioca, so don’t even complain.”

He leaves Jiang Cheng blushing in front of the gargantuan coffee-maker and hustles A-Yuan out through the little door that separates the staff-only area from the dining room just before a large, expensive car pulls up just outside the sign in the window that reads Lotus Pier Bakery. 

“It’s Peacock-uncle,” A-Yuan pipes up, still amazed by the sight of Jin Zixuan’s luxury sports car, as if he doesn’t ride to and from school in it every day. “And A-Ling, and Auntie!”

Yanli breezes in half a second later, pouncing on A-Yuan the moment she crosses the threshold and covering his face with kisses. “Good morning, Yuan-bao,” she sings, as A-Yuan turns into putty in her arms and tucks his face against her shoulder. “Are you ready for school?”

“I’m always ready,” he informs her, before proudly displaying the two lunchboxes hanging from his elbow and the brown-paper bag held carefully in one hand. “See, I packed A-Ling’s lunch, all by myself! And Peacock-uncle’s!”

“Peacock-uncle’s going to be hungry again by lunchtime,” Jiang Cheng calls, sticking his head up over the espresso maker. “And he’ll be here at noon with the rest of the Jin crowd, just wait.”

“A-Yuan won’t be here at lunchtime,” Wen Yuan says peacefully. “A-Yuan will be at school.”

After that, Wei Wuxian gets A-Yuan settled in his booster seat, squeezes A-Ling, and waves at his brother-in-law with Jiang Yanli until the car vanishes down the street, leaving Yanli to put up her hair and march back into the kitchen to start cooking for rush hour. 

“A-Cheng, you’ve got the drinks and the registers covered, right?” she asks, before grinning from ear to ear as a young woman with a badge clipped to her shirt comes in and stares at Jiang Cheng across the counter until his face looks more like a roasted beet than anything remotely human. “Good morning, Wen Qing!”

“I’ll take my usual coffee order and a spinach roll,” Wen Qing says, sending a short, small smile at Yanli—which is more than anyone else except Jiang Cheng ever gets, because Wen Qing is a medical resident with no sympathy for anyone but her patients, A-Yuan, and inexplicably Wei Wuxian’s bad-tempered brother, who loses most of his senses whenever she walks into Lotus Pier and only gets them back about an hour after she leaves. 

“You’ve just missed A-Yuan,” Wei Wuxian complains, stocking the display case next to the cash register. “He kept asking when we could see you yesterday, you know.”

“I’ll try to get up earlier tomorrow,” she yawns, carefully not paying attention when Jiang Cheng overturns a box of sugar packets in an effort to wrap up her spinach roll as neatly as he can. “Or you could video call me at night, when those of us who aren’t bakers are most active. Like normal people do.”

“I go to bed at eight o’clock like an old man, thank you very much,” he sniffs. “My schedule’s murder on my old lifestyle—”

“You mean spending all night gatecrashing sorority parties like you used to back in college?”

“—and I have children to look after,” he finishes sagely. “Do you want soup, too, Wen Qing? I can throw in a free bowl.”

“We won’t make any money that way,” Jiang Cheng scolds him, providing a wonderful show of hypocrisy as he hands Wen Qing a cup of coffee with three protective sleeves on it to make sure she doesn’t burn her hands, a heat-safe straw jammed down the side, and a warm paper bag containing at least one more fresh pastry than Wei Wuxian remembers her ordering. “Here. Good luck today, Miss Wen.”

Wen Qing tosses a mouthful of coffee down her throat and then turns to stare at Jiang Cheng.

“If it weren’t for you and your perfect coffee,” she says, “I would have dropped out years ago.”

And then she strides out the door and climbs back into her car, leaving Jiang Cheng dumbstruck in her wake as Wei Wuxian doubles over and screams with laughter until he cries. 

“Stop that,” Jiang Cheng mutters, when Xiao-Yu’s adorable baby giggles ring out alongside his father’s. “Look, now Xiao-Yu’s doing it.”

“He knows denial when he sees it,” Wei Wuxian tells him. “Honestly, A-Cheng. A-Yu’s just trying to help!”

The rest of the day goes on much as days at Lotus Pier Bakery usually do; happily, but so very busily that Wei Wuxian ends up staggering back upstairs for a second shower with Xiao-Yu when the lunch rush ends. The eatery serves coffee and baked goods from opening to closing, and is open for dine-in restaurant meals from eleven to two-thirty; Yanli does most of the cooking, while Wei Wuxian does the prep work, and Jiang Cheng handles the take-out baked goods sales and the drinks and helps wait tables until time comes to wipe down the tables in the dining area after the lunch customers finally finish eating—and the result of it all is that all three of them are so drained that they can hardly keep their eyes open, especially after dealing with parties bigger than about four or five. 

“How is it only three-thirty,” Wei Wuxian moans, slumping wearily over the counter with Xiao-Yu tied to his back when Jin Zixuan comes by to drop A-Yuan off and pick Yanli up later that afternoon. “I want to sleep, A-Jie.”

“Have you looked into getting any more part-timers?” his sister asks, pressing a cool, soft hand to his cheek. “I know Xue Yang’s doing well, but he only comes three times a week.”

“A-Yang’s a gremlin,” Wei Wuxian dismisses. “And he barely talks, it scares the customers. I was thinking of having someone move into your old bedroom, but of course it isn’t so easy with Yuan-bao and A-Yu here.”

“What about Wen Ning?” Jin Zixuan suggests, absentmindedly turning A-Yuan upside down and swinging him back and forth while Jin Ling begs for a turn on his other side. “A-Yuan’s his cousin, and he dotes on A-Yu, so it could work out, couldn’t it?”

“Not until he finishes his degree. And he’s got a job lined up after that, so there wouldn’t be any point,” Jiang Cheng shrugs. Wei Wuxian and his siblings all went to college, graduating with degrees in dance performance, mechanical engineering, and economics, in order of age—but then the fire came along and ruined everything about a year before he and Jiang Cheng were set to graduate, and all the three of them wanted to do after that was spend as much time together as they possibly could, so they ended up opening the bakery instead. “And we don’t know anyone else well enough.”

“Well, something will turn up,” Yanli soothes him, tiptoeing up to kiss his forehead and then Wei Wuxian’s before lifting A-Ling into her arms. “Promise me you’ll get some rest, A-Cheng. And A-Xian, you have to promise, too.”

“We promise,” they say dutifully, before watching her leave with her husband and son. 

Letting her go doesn’t seem half so bad these days, since they know how loved she is at home, and that she’s always going to come back to them in the morning. 

“She’s right, you know,” Jiang Cheng sighs, after a long pause. “We really do need to get some new staff, or we’ll run ourselves into the ground.”

“I’ll start making ads tomorrow night,” Wei Wuxian promises, sending A-Yuan upstairs for his afternoon nap and dearly wishing he could go have a nap, too. “Let’s get through the rest of the day, and then I’ll put in a call to the printers’ so we can put up flyers.”

___

As it turns out, however, the answer to their quandary comes about two hours later, after Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng put the “closed” signs in all the windows and shutter the blinds behind them. Jiang Cheng is just about to unroll the blinds on the reinforced glass doors when he takes in a sharp breath and shouts for Wei Wuxian, who comes rolling out of the dining room in five seconds flat before trotting over to stand beside him. 

“Is it just me,” he says, “or is there someone staring at me outside?”

Wei Wuxian looks. There definitely is someone outside, dressed in shabby, misshapen clothes and holding a dark little bundle to his chest, and that someone looks more than a bit familiar. 

Almost, he realizes, like a certain long-absent member of his family, from whom he has not heard anything in the past two years save for three very hurried phone calls. 

“No way,” he breathes, unlocking the door and running out into the street just in time for the someone to fall straight into his arms and burst into tears. “Xingchen!”

[skinnylittleredwrites]

My best friend, my lover.

TITLE OF STORY: My best friend, my lover. CHAPTER NUMBER/TITLE/ONE SHOT: 2/? AUTHOR: skinnylittlered. WHICH TOM/CHARACTER: Actor!Tom. GENRE: Romance. FIC SUMMARY: Andrea and Tom have been friends since the beginning of time. Until a confession of love is made. This story follows the events of their subsequent relationship (sequel to You Wanna Play that Game? ) RATING: Explicit (language, references to sexual activity). WARNINGS/TRIGGERS/AUTHORS NOTES: - FEEDBACK/COMMENTS: -

Chapter 2.

I don’t see how I could ever tire of this.

Surely, this feeling might be greatly influenced by the fact that, due to his absolutely hellish schedule his job all but demands, and the very static nature of my own job – I am, more often than not, essentially tied to my desk and the seemingly never ending piles of papers that consume most of my time at work and sometimes my free time as well, so more time than I’d ever care to admit to myself or any who may inquire – we have probably spent somewhere in the vicinity of maybe a fortnight in each other’s presence in the last three months and, while I would have been completely content with the situation should things have transpired in that way, there’s more to a relationship, I’m being told, than fucking each other’s brains for the whole of the time we’re together. Thusly, precious time which could have been dedicated to mindless penetration was regrettably wasted on romantic niceties and such other nonsense which I could have really done without, regardless of how cute they may be.  

This is precisely why, as I find myself kneeling against the headrest of his bed – well, technically, our bed now – and being pounded into with the fervour that I thought was only reserved for pubescent boys furiously masturbating against any surface even remotely resembling the softness that is specific to the female kind, I am relishing maybe more so than I generally would during copulation. Not to cause any misunderstanding, Tom has proved himself to be quite the competent lover, effectively obliterating the sparse doubts I may have amassed in regards to that topic. Doubts, I should add, that were compiled during the not infrequent locker talk that I either overheard or was a present participant to over the years of our friendship. Honestly, men have such a way of perorating about their sexual conquests that it renders a female of the even coarser sensibilities (or maybe especially her) to regard their grandiose claims as at least dubious if not entirely unbelievable. But, fortunately for all the parties involved, that is both myself and him, those claims are, irrefutably if not quite as monumentally, backed up by facts - he is a man of a certain degree of mastery, not to be overlooked, when it comes to gratifying the beautiful sex.

And here I am, being thoroughly gratified – thoroughly being the operative word – as I am taken from behind, with great enthusiasm. He’s got me by a fistful of hair and a fistful of hip, grunting as he thrusts into me, and it is music to my ears, accompanied by the sounds of his pelvis slamming into my ass – a symphony of absolute debauchery if I’ve ever heard one. I, naturally, being the refined erotic artist that I fancy myself to be, am holding my own to this most exquisite harmony of sounds, positive that my moans and screams of pleasure can be heard from across the street, but I indulge in expressing my satisfaction shamelessly, completely neglecting any sense of the basest form of propriety or moral value instilled in me since infanthood. I revel in the delights of the flesh to the uttermost extent, I am unabashed and completely incorrigible and I am -

Oh, god, I’m -

I cry out my climax, bending backwards toward him in a way that I am certain might be highly uncomfortable if not impossible were it not for the adrenaline shooting through me. He reaches to my ear and whispers rough words that would otherwise be insulting, that he would not be caught dead addressing a woman in a different scenario, but right now only intensify my pleasure, coaxing it out of me. I whimper and I come, as I am commanded, and it doesn’t register in my brain that I am no longer at my apex even minutes later, when he stiffens to his own release.

Panting and sweating, we both let ourselves fall on the crumpled sheets of our lovemaking. Tom is, soon enough, fast asleep, but I am, although physically spent, nowhere near enough to drowsy. I am somehow full of energy but unable to manifest it, and, to save myself from the eventual frustration that will overcome me in this paradoxal state and because of it, I raise from the bed and head for the shower, pondering almost disinterestedly at the domestic tasks that I have to accomplish for the day and other such things.

It’s been three months. Three very convoluted, intense, consuming months. So much so, that, except for the occasional talks we have confronting the subject during our very infrequent times together, we did not really have the time others may have to slide into conjugality, it’s still quite foreign territory, although broadly discussed. Between travelling to every and all corners of the world, filming and catering to his fanbase and, winning awards, we tried to fit in our newly developed liaison. We went on dates and held hands and our interactions slowly metamorphosised, without losing the friendly quality of the ones prior to our respective confessions, into something entirely new, but still very familiar. Our romance, we learned, is in the small things. Not much of our demeanour towards the other has changed, but the subtleties which make all the difference in the world are ever present, and those lay in our knowledge. He doesn’t look at me any differently, nor does he speak to me differently, nor does he hug me longer nor tighter, but his love, professed and recognised, gives other meaning to what was before. There are, of course, the intimacies that are entirely strange to the realm of platonic, but those are hardly ever on display – I am the part of him that the world shall merely know of, but never know – and to the couple of us, they seem but a natural extension to something that was present all along. But that does not domesticity make. This we shall learn as we go, one morning waking up together at a time.  

Or one homemade meal at a time? I speak the question rhetorically, as there is no one in the room to answer, and giggle at myself a bit as I’m chopping various vegetables for supper.  

Cooking was not an activity that I have ever particularly enjoyed or was any good at. Obviously, nobody is particularly proficient at anything from the onset, lest for an inherent propensity that might as well be divinely gifted, as the general consensus seems to be with the average folk, but I appeared to be, from early times, especially unskilled at any culinary endeavours. My attitude towards the matter was the insurmountable obstacle toward my progression in the field – I would never, for the life of me, be caught in the kitchen, either by myself or others, when the convenience of the ready-to-eat, brought-to-your-own-door meal was an available commodity, even in college, when money was less than it is now. With an upper middle class family to support me and a part time job as a barista, money was hardly the issue – it would be highly hypocritical of me to not acknowledge the very fact that beauty pays for itself; I am an example of the basic caucasian standard of classic beauty: honey blonde hair, blue eyes and a slim oval face, the body that I religiously keep fit to serve my vanity more than my health or any other purpose, and a sweet disposition that I nearly cunningly employ to my advantage, I would never dare say that life wasn’t made easier by those cumulus of facts.  

But cooking, or any other traditionally womanly activities, I discovered as I was growing up, became more tolerant, even pleasant when their result has a recipient. I may not enjoy preparing my own food, I am still as guilty of succumbing to pre-prepared commodities as I was in my youth when mine is the only mouth that needs feeding, but I certainly do enjoy putting a meal together for my partners, and Tom is no exception. If anything, he’s the instance reinforcing the rule. In the little time we’ve had together, I’ve made it my mission to bring him a home he can take refuge in anywhere we may be.

“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

Ah, speak of the devil, there he is, all six feet and two inches of freshly roused glory, donning just boxers and a tee, and a self-satisfied smirk on his face, for somewhat reason.

“I did not buy it then; I don’t buy it now.”

“First of all, you said you did-”

“I lied.”

“And second, mean.”

“Am I?”

“You hurt my achey breakey heart.”

“I think your heart is just fine, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he chuckles against my neck as he hugs me from behind, sending a shiver down my spine. “My heart is mighty fine, although I do wonder about my stomach. It is very sanitary to be cooking in your underwear?”

"I am wearing a t-shirt!”

“...and no pants.”

“Well, I was going for sexy, not sanitary.”

“You’re always sexy.”

I huff.

“There’s no point to flattery, Hiddleston, with me, you can already get anything you want.”

“I’m not flattering. I do think you’re sexy. Always have.”

“Always?”

“Yeah. I never really wanted to admit it to myself, because that would have been... problematic, but I did. You’re a very beautiful woman.”

Although I am very much aware of that, his declaration still puts a knot in my throat and, like the sap that I am, my eyes become moist with overdramatic tears. I turn and rest my forehead on his chest, holding his body closer to mine. “I know.”

He laughs at my muffled reply, but is quick to chastise my illogical crying.

“Oh, dear, none of that. I can make a list of all of the things that are absolutely awful about you, then you can hate me and stop the waterworks.”

Sentiment promptly forgotten, I take a step back and glare at him.

“There’s nothing awful about me, I’m perfect!”

“Like hell you are,” his laugh is mirthful and unforgiving.  

“Fine. Tell me three things which are awful about me.”

His reply is matter-of-fact and not at all hesitant.

“You’re self-centred, vain, and not only slightly superficial. And, while we’re at it, your cooking’s not fantastic, either. I think you take after your mother.”

“That last one was mean and uncalled-for! But, fuck, I sound terrible. Am I so terrible?”  

The fact that I pulled out the puppy eyes on him on that last bit surely only emphasises some of my shortages in good character, because I’m doing it just to torment him. I know he doesn’t and I know he’ll feel especially bad for being so blunt in his criticism, and he’ll pull his very own variation of the puppy-eyes on me to be granted forgiveness later, which I will of course provide after making him repent.  

Orally.

“Why are you smirking all of a sudden?”

“Huh?”

“What’s with the face?”

“Ah, nothing. Up for takeout pizza?”

“Fuck, yeah.”

Yeah, we’re going to be just fine, Tom Hiddleston and I. Maybe not one homemade meal at a time, though.

________________________________________________________________

Author’s notes: It’s been about four years since I last wrote pretty much anything in any way literary (maybe some poetry here and there), and I decided that I miss it (and was pestered by some folks very dear to me to get my ass in gear and just do it again) so, yeah. Decided that, since I was so comfortable with the medium of fanfic, this would be a good place to give my writing bones a good crackin’, and so far things have been surprisingly nice. I honestly thought the fandom was dead, but it seems that you guys are still alive and very much kicking. 

Aaaaanywaaayyy.

I wanted to send out a huge, huge thanks to those of you who stuck for so long. It makes a girl shed a tiny but highly valuable tear. Also huge thanks for those of you who have stumbled upon my work while I was gone, those who sent messages and likes and kudos and reblogs and all that fun stuff. I came back to quite a number of those and, well, let’s just add another tiny tear to that previous one. Also thanks to those of you who are new to the my tiny blog of stories, another tiny tear and I will be full on tiny crying.

Thank you! 

[sickjoonie]

“reappearing after having slept for over 24 hours with messy hair, sleepy eyes and bare feet” this is so a Yoongi thing after working non-stop in his studio! I was gonna try to write it myself but I lost the motivation I had.

don’t worry i think all your motivation went to me bc this turned out to be 2k lol

uhhh cat!yoongi because i wanted some sleepy cat yoongi in my life and so did you you just didn’t know it until now

-

yoongi stretched, hearing his back pop. he had been sitting in his studio chair for hours on end, working on perfecting a song. it felt like forever, but he had finally reached a point in which he felt confident about the result of his producing.

he was exhausted, having spent the entire night finalizing his song. he couldn’t remember the last time he slept; his cat instincts were screaming at him to just curl up and fucking rest. now that the song was finished, however, he would finally be able to properly go to bed.

screw having a normal sleep schedule. yoongi slept when yoongi wanted to sleep.

he saved everything for the second time and turned everything off, satisfied with his work. it felt refreshing, he mused, to be able to turn everything off without any worries about what he needed to do next. he headed back to the dorm with sleepy eyes and a settled heart, ready to hibernate.

he had just gotten back when he was intercepted by jimin.

“ah, hyung is back!” jimin greeted with a hug, nuzzling yoongi’s neck affectionately.

yoongi hummed, body leaning into jimin’s embrace. jimin smelled nice, yoongi observed. he smelled familiar and sweet and comforting. yoongi was a bit more sensitive to smells from the cat part of him and always was drawn to the scents of his bandmates. he found himself unable to pull away.

jimin giggled, noticing yoongi’s clinginess. he only really got like that when he was super tired and about to fall asleep. “you must be exhausted from working so hard,” jimin cooed, rubbing yoongi’s back. he could hear the beginning of low rumbles in yoongi’s chest, signaling contentment.

“mm,” yoongi groaned. even standing, he was struggling to keep his eyes open.

jimin took advantage of the normally grumpy yoongi’s sleepy state. he pulled back from the embrace to look at yoongi, cooing once again seeing his droopy eyes and ruffled hair, kitty ears droopy. “so cute.”

yoongi pouted in response. “wanna sleep.” he yawned, eyes watering.

jimin smiled fondly, taking the opportunity to press a kiss to yoongi’s nose. “sleepy kitty,” he teased, “let’s get you to bed.”

he guided yoongi to bed, a hand resting gently at his waist. he only left his side when yoongi kicked him out of his room so he could change into his pajamas. normally, yoongi didn’t care about what he slept in. but he had been working non stop and it had paid off; he deserved some luxury.

he put on his favorite selection of pajamas (namjoon’s hoodie that hung well past his hips and over the start of his tail and a pair of jungkook’s sweatpants) and opened his door back up to let jimin back in. he didn’t expect to see hoseok standing there as well, in his own pair of pajamas.

as soon as hoseok saw yoongi, looking small in the oversized sweatshirt with sleepy eyes, he cooed loudly and embarrassingly.

“isn’t he adorable, jimin ah? the cutest little kitty” hoseok cupped yoongi’s face, the rapper whining.

jimin easily agreed. “he’s worked so hard, it’s time for him to sleep.”

hoseok nodded and removed his hands, instead going over to yoongi’s bed and sitting on it. yoongi followed after him, relief of finally being able to sleep flooding over him.

jimin pulled the covers back for him and he curled up, tail wrapping around his waist, letting jimin tuck him in with no complaints. normally, he would at least try to keep up his hyung image by scolding jimin, but he was too tired and soft now.

“do you want me to hold you until you fall asleep?” hoseok offered, heart melting at the site of yoongi curled up comfortably.

yoongi gave a small nod. there was something about how hoseok held him that made him fall asleep so much faster. his scent was most comforting. or perhaps it was because of how hoseok put all his affection in his cuddles, paying attention to the minor things to make yoongi as comfortable as possible.

hoseok slipped under the covers, ignoring jimin’s pout as he messed them up. he pulled yoongi into his arms, letting the elder bury his nose into hoseok’s shirt and place his hands gently on hoseok’s waist. hoseok rested his head on top of yoongi’s hair and petted around the ears, making sure he felt safe and cozy.

jimin fixed the covers around them until all that was left of yoongi to be seen was his hair underneath hoseok. jimin smiled, content with his work. he could hear yoongi purring, a signal that the cat hybrid was very pleased and affectionate.

yoongi was warm and very cozy, the smell of hoseok next to him and the feeling of his body intertwined with yoongi making him relax naturally. his eyes finally closed completely and the tiredness in his bones overtook his body until he was lost to reality, finally asleep.

-

yoongi woke up to someone petting his hair and rubbing his tummy. he stayed still, enjoying the affection and the relaxing tingles it sent through his body. he purred softly, ready to drift off back to sleep at any moment.

he was so relaxed that when the warm hand moved off his belly, he whined and finally opened his eyes to pout.

even in his sleepy haze, he could make out the familiar boxy smile.

"good morning hyung," taehyung giggled, amused by yoongi's pout. "did you sleep well?"

yoongi groaned, stretching and yawning. "it was good." he felt refreshed, no longer sagging under exhaustion or ready for another nap. "rub my tummy so more."

taehyung smiled fondly, his hand moving back to yoongi's stomach and moving in soft circles. yoongi let his eyes slip close again, content with taehyung’s presence and affection. the purrs returned once again.

“i think it’s time for you to get up, hyung,” taehyung tried to coax him out of bed.

“never. i’ve morphed into this bed, i cannot be removed from it without dying.”

taehyung rolled his eyes at yoongi’s dramatics. “you’ll starve to death first. you slept for 24 hours, hyung, i can feel your tummy rumbling.”

yoongi pouted, but knew taehyung was right. he was really hungry and thirsty. he also needed to use the bathroom. he expressed this to taehyung, who rolled his eyes again and said,

“then use it, coward.”

yoongi reluctantly departed with his bed and used the bathroom. his body was stiff, the way it normally got after sleeping an abnormal amount of time. he yawned widely and stretched after he had done his business. in the mirror, he could see his hair sticking up all over the place, his cat ears almost being hidden by it all. the bags under his eyes were gone, however, and his cheeks had a warm flush to them.

he padded out of the room and headed to the kitchen. taehyung had been very accurate; he was extremely hungry and prepared to destroy any food on sight.

only when he entered the kitchen, seokjin was already in there. he could smell food and his mouth watered, ears perking up in anticipation and tail twitching.

seokjin turned to see yoongi practically drooling and laughed. “good morning yoongi yah. somebody’s hungry.”

yoongi nudged his way under seokjin’s arm, peering at all the noodles and rice and soup his hyung was making. said hyung laughed at yoongi’s wide eyed expression and scratched behind yoongi’s ears fondly.

“it’s almost ready, go sit down with jungkookie. make sure the kid isn’t still dead to the world.” seokjin gently shooed him off, returning to his work.

yoongi moved to the eating area where jungkook was currently laying dead asleep on the table. yoongi wasn’t surprised; the bunny hybrid was nearly impossible to wake up in the mornings. he did, however, know the trick to getting jungkook up.

yoongi carefully draped himself over jungkook’s back, nuzzling the back of the boy’s neck and purring loudly. moments later, jungkook was stirring, brought out of slumber by the kitty on his back. his fluffy ears were droopy and adorable and yoongi couldn’t stop the rush of fondness for the youngest.

“rise and shine brat,” yoongi whispered, though there was too much fondness and purring for any insult to be traced with his words.

jungkook groaned dramatically, stretching before gently pushing his hyung off his back. “you’re finally up.”

yoongi ruffled jungkook’s already messy hair and settled next to him. “a whole day of sleep. it was heaven.”

jungkook yawned widely. “sounds like it.”

seokjin then walked in the room with some plates, followed by taehyung carrying bowls. they set down the food in front of jungkook and yoongi before settling down themselves. yoongi’s mouth watered and he eagerly picked up his chopsticks, eyes wide in anticipation.

“you’re a lifesaver, jin hyung,” yoongi admired. seconds later, he was digging into the food, groaning obnoxiously at how good it tasted. it was warm and delicious, the perfect meal for an empty belly.

he didn’t pay attention to the quiet chatter between taehyung and seokjin (jungkook was still too dead to hold a conversation), instead making his way through all the rice and noodles and stew seokjin had made. he finally stopped once he felt the pang of fullness in his belly, setting down his chopsticks with a content sigh.

seokjin noticed yoongi’s empty dishes and smiled. “have enough to eat there?”

yoongi nodded, patting his full tummy. he wasn’t completely stuffed, but he also knew that there was no room left; it was a bit bloated from all the food. it left him with a warm, cozy feeling. the only thing left to do was find someone to cuddle him and pet him and his morning would be complete.

he cleaned up his dishes and set out to the living room, hoping to find one of the members there. sure enough, there was namjoon with a book in hand and a fluffy pastel pink sweater on. namjoon made for excellent cuddling material, something all the members collectively agreed on. sure, he was a bit awkward about it, but it was nothing different from the normal awkwardness they dealt with.

namjoon was tall and long, making him effective at holding members close to him and completely surrounding them. he was warm and just the right amount of soft (as much as they joked about it, his “namtiddies” were very comfortable to lay on) that all the members treasured the time spent cuddling him.

yoongi had his target. he walked across the living room and climbed onto the couch, facing namjoon.

namjoon peered up from his book, only to be met with sad kitty eyes, fluffy tail twitching and ears pointed up in an adorable manner. namjoon was physically unable to say no to what he knew yoongi wanted.

wordlessly, yoongi climbed into namjoon’s lap, shifting around until he was settled. he rubbed his cheek against namjoon’s chest, purring loudly as he felt the warmth of his younger member surround him.

“uhm- good morning hyung?” namjoon was confused, to say the least. he always was whenever yoongi decided to cuddle him. mainly because yoongi never verbally admitted to it. he more or less forced himself onto namjoon’s lap and demanded attention silently by staring at namjoon and purring loudly until he got it.

“hm, don’t tell jin hyung, but i think his food is pornographic material.”

namjoon sighed, unsurprised yet still tormented. “i take it you enjoyed breakfast and now want some attention.”

yoongi hummed, bumping his head against namjoon’s free hand. “you know the drill. put your hand to use for something other than touching dick.”

namjoon groaned but started petting yoongi, so he could care less about whatever crisis he sent namjoon into. he purred happily, pleased with the tingles it sent down his spine whenever namjoon scratched around his ears.

“i’m glad to see you got the rest you needed, hyung,” namjoon piped up after a while.

yoongi admittedly felt much better; was this what having a normal sleep schedule felt like? “i think i’ll pass on pulling any more mini hibernations, but thank you.”

namjoon smiled. “so long as you try to work on your sleeping schedule, you’ll be fine.”

yoongi didn’t bother making any promises, knowing that around comeback, he would most likely break it. he did consider it, however. he felt like he was a brand new person. maybe having a normal sleeping schedule would be worth it.

….but then again. he is min yoongi, part cat and full time workaholic.

normal sleep schedules were overrated anyways.

[archetypal-archivist]

Rant incoming- me being upset with myself and my poor self-care. May delete this later, idk. Seriously, long and ramble-y. 

Can I just say how pissed off and annoyed I am that I once again fucked up my body? Seriously, again. It’s so dumb, especially since it’s not really in the “this is immediately concerning, get to a doctor” way, and it’s not a self-harm way, and it’s definitely not a “this was intentional” way.

I just didn’t eat enough. Or sleep enough. Or the right amounts. Or at the right time. And not because I set out to do that, but simply because I got so caught up in other things and I just didn’t care enough to pay attention beyond a “Huh. I’m fucked up,” several days too late.

Again, it’s so dumb. See, somehow I’ve gotten to the point where I’m headachy all too often, I get cold and sleepy after eating anything at all, I don’t feel hungry most of the time, and I’m sleeping but it’s from 8 or 9 am to 5 pm. I stay up too late so I go to sleep at a weird hour and my schedule is forgiving enough to just let me. I eat at a weird hour because it’s been nearly 18 since I ate last and that was a piece of brioche bread and some water and now I’m starving. Or it’s dinnertime, but I’m not feeling hungry and I want to finish this piece of homework so I just choose not to eat and then I look up and it’s 3 am.

And now all the effects of that are slamming me all at once at a time when I need to be on normal human-person time, and it’s incredibly frustrating because there’s no way to speed run recovering from this without a very unhealthy hard reset. I know this, because this has happened before. A lot.

This exact damn pattern happens over and over again and it’s never intentional- it’s just that I don’t care enough about myself and what my body and common sense tell me. I know exactly what I need to do to live a normal, healthy life with good habits and yet I consistently don’t because changing myself takes effort. Or even when it doesn’t take effort, even when I have done a hard reset- haven’t slept in so long that I crash at 10 pm and sleep until 9 am, skipped dinner because I was sleepy and now I want breakfast... Even then it’s all too easy to fall back into poor habits because I like being nocturnal. I like playing games for hours on end, because the enjoyment I get from that outweighs how nice it feels to eat.

That’s not to say I’m not careful of course. I’ve never fainted, or fallen asleep somewhere dangerous. The meals I do eat are carefully proportioned and balanced to include all the food groups and nutrients I need. I’m not malnourished, I’m simply not eating enough. I am fully functional as a person, but I’m often operating at half-capacity for so long that I mistake it for full capacity. In all honesty, I have no idea what I can do when well-rested, well-fed, and with a healthy schedule that lasts longer than two weeks because I haven’t been that way in ages. 

Do you know? I’ve accidentally skipped meals to the point where I’ve made myself nauseous. I know how to coax food into a starving body and what’s safe to eat when you don’t feel up to eating because I have been there. I have felt cold and shivery all too often because I’m low on calories, and right now, as soon as I eat after a solid 20 hours with nothing but water, instant noodles, and fruit in the middle, I feel a burst of aching cold and exhaustion. 

It’s so dumb. I know why it’s happening. I know exactly what got me to this point. And yet it feels so stupid because I ought to be better than this, my body should know better than to throw a fit, because it’s been here before and every time I’ve bounced back. I dunno, just. I feel bad. I feel bad right now and it sucks and I hate it and I’m frustrated.

Because guess what? I know this is going to happen it the future. I know I’m going to be right back here because “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is something very real in an awful way. And every time this happens, I get a little more used to feeling this way and thus the alarm signals start blaring a little later than they did before- or I don’t “feel bad enough” to stop and actually start self-caring it up. Because if I felt so awful last time and made it through unscathed, then surely I don’t need to stop and hard reset just yet, right?

Just. Uggghhhhh. And once again, I know how bad all of this is. I am well aware that this will have long term, invisible consequences in the future. I’m not stupid, I know what I’m getting into. I just can’t convince myself to care. As BBC Sherlock often called it, “it’s just transport.” The body is a thing that gets you from one place to another and suitable determination and an ability to ignore what it tells you allows you to push it a lot farther than one might think.

Again- none of this is intentional self harm. I’m not happy that I live like this. I’m not happy that I can’t bring myself to care- to put the effort in. I’ve done therapy for this stuff and the general response was “Either fix the problem or live with it. So long as the system you have works for you, and you don’t feel inclined to put in the effort to change it, the best thing you can do for your mental health is to stop beating yourself up over it.”

And yes, that’s wise. That’s more or less where I’ve settled right now. But I’m also acutely aware that there will be a point in time where I push myself too hard, too far, and things just collapse in on themselves. It’s simply not sustainable and there’s a ton of problems that come with how I live. And yet at the same time, I’m generally functional as a person and I’ve yet to damage myself on the short term enough to need immediate intervention.

In short... situation’s fucked, y’all.

[neubauje]

BEGT ch. 21

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 20 - Chapter 21 AO3

Toshinori finds himself awake before Aizawa, with only a half hour to spare before the alarm would have gone off anyhow, the sun already well-established overhead, and the sounds of rush-hour traffic beeping and screeching on the highway in the distance. Curious how things are going with Gran Torino and Midoriya, he quietly reaches for his phone to check for messages or other updates, moving slowly in the hopes of letting Aizawa finish his recharge.

(10:08pm, Yesterday, Midoriya Izuku) I have to make up for ten years of getting used to having a quirk... that’s a lot of remedial study, but it needs to feel like second nature!

(8:42am, Today, Midoriya Izuku) I get it now, I’m not the egg, I’m a frozen pastry! Gotta cook evenly.

(8:50am, Today, Gran Torino) Where did you find this kid?!?

All Might chuckles and shakes his head, sets the phone aside, and shuts the waiting alarm off. He glances once more at Eraserhead, who had gotten his hair tousled and crumpled against the pillow, and had wormed one leg out from the side of the blanket, but otherwise seems far more peaceful than his usual day-to-day visage would suggest. Toshinori tries his best to sneak out of bed silently, but a soft groan behind him indicates a failed effort, and he sighs and climbs to his feet with a sheepish shrug back at the younger teacher, whose eternally-tired eyes are now staring blearily past him as Aizawa stretches his limbs out with a little tremor of strain. "Sorry, didn't mean to wake you." (more under the cut)

Shouta rolls halfway onto his back to meet the gaze of his taller peer, and sits up with an indifferent shrug, "It's fine. Still better than a couch." He ruffles idly at his hair, brushing a few stray locks out of his face, and climbs out of bed, leaving a wrinkled mess of blankets and sheets behind, at least until he catches on to Yagi taking the time to tug them back up into a neater arrangement, and pauses to help on his side, taking mental note on etiquette for non-sleeping-bag living. "You're due to eat," he reminds the stomach-less hero good-naturedly, "And I could too. Something easy?"

Running through a quick mental inventory as he fishes an elastic from the night stand and pulls his hair up, Toshinori nods and ducks into the bathroom to take his retainers out, then heads for the kitchen to double-check a couple expiration dates. "Yeah," he grins at Aizawa and refreshes himself with a quick splash and scrub in the sink, "I'm thinking pancakes."

Eraserhead smirks in a silent agreement and steals into the bathroom himself for a few minutes, dragging the bottoms of those long, pink-patterned pajama pants along the carpet as he emerges, his face and hands damp and his hair messily combed up into a loose ponytail. He ambles over to peer around Yagi's shoulder, raising one eyebrow at the runny consistency of the batter in the bowl, but says nothing to contradict the more experienced chef as he leans back against the counter. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Hm?" Yagi glances up at the offer as he pulls a wide griddle from the back of a sparse cabinet to set on the stovetop, and as an afterthought, he grabs a smaller one to set on the counter, as well as another mixing bowl from the next shelf down. "Here," he hands off the bowl to the younger teacher, who puzzles over it curiously, "Why don't you scramble us a few eggs?" He jerks his head toward the fridge, and Shouta nods seriously to take up the task.

Aizawa tries, in earnest, to accomplish this simple culinary task. But the loner of a hero lacks even the most basic of cooking skills, having gone from pampered living as a child, to college campus cafeterias, to instant packaged foods and takeout. After just a couple minutes, his grumbles of frustration draw Toshinori's attention, and the older teacher glances over to see Shouta reaching gingerly into the bowl to pluck out the broken shells from the goopy mess of eggs.

"Everything ...going okay over there?" All Might tries not to grin too hard at the sight of Eraserhead, struggling in the kitchen, as he pours a hefty puddle into the skillet and leaves it to brown, sidling up behind Aizawa to get a better look at his progress. "Oh dear." He sighs and reaches over Shouta's shoulder to pick out the rest of the eggshells, then takes one more egg from the carton to give a quick demonstration. "Like this," he coaxes softly, giving a couple firm raps against the countertop, "Just make a little starter crack, then pull it apart with your thumbs." He turns the egg over to show the motion, his fingertips dwarfing the egg with their size as he nimbly cracks it open over the bowl.

Aizawa watches the example raptly, and carefully repeats the steps on the last egg. He winces a little as the left half of the shell starts to fracture and buckle under the pressure of his thumb, but he manages to get the gist of it without another mess-up. "Aha. And then just... stir it?" He fetches a whisk and jabs it against the yolks, giving a half-hearted swirl to the mix, looking up as Toshinori nods a confirmation and adds a dash of milk to it. "...Sorry I'm not more helpful. Never learned for myself."

"It's not too late to learn now," Yagi encourages him, speaking over his shoulder as he teases a spatula under the edge of the first flapjack. "Eggs are a good place to start, anyhow. Good protein, you know, and lots of ways to use them." He hums softly to himself as he makes a fluid gesture with the skillet and flips the hotcake over in midair, then scoops a smaller one into the pan beside it. “Learned that from the American chefs,” he boasts, “Can’t do it with the thick puck-shaped cakes like you usually see.”

Shouta watches with interest from a foot or two away, idly stirring at his own mixture as an uncharacteristically soft little smile melts over his features. The taller hero seems to be just as much in his element here, in the kitchen, as he ever does out on the streets or in front of the cameras. Aizawa muses silently that Toshinori's cheer and charisma might very well translate into any setting, once he manages to build some confidence on the subject. He can only hope to see that sunny personality start to shine just as brightly in the classroom, not too far in the future.

(Inspired by this pic from Kotilae!)

After a leisurely breakfast, and a couple of showers, there's still a good few hours before they're due back on campus, so Yagi makes good on his word to show Shouta on a quick tour around the shopping mall nearby. The complex of shops and kiosks is sadly lacking in the way of department stores, and for the time being, the most they're able to find as far as furniture is a plastic three-drawer bin, and a decently-wide plastic bookshelf - some assembly required. Toshinori tucks these under each arm to let Aizawa spend a little more of his accidental nest-egg on clothing and other supplies, until the two of them can't carry anything more, and they trudge back to the apartment, belabored with their new additions. The assembly of the new plastic shelf would have to wait for later that night, as there's no estimate on the box of how long it might take to complete, and by this point, both teachers are growing anxious to report back to UA. Rather than taking the subway to campus again, All Might leads the way across town, leaping in his great, bounding hops, and pausing just within sight atop rooftops and other structures. He waits for the stealthy Erasure hero trailing along behind him to catch up, with his erratic mixture of scarf-slinging and parkour, as he plots out his own version of the overland route between work and home.

Once at the campus, the two roommates part ways to attend to their own schedules and duties, catching sight of each other again only once, during the staff meeting to start the planning stages for the end-of-semester exams. Neither Eraserhead nor All Might are particularly happy with the prospects of sending the students through the same paces of robot-based evaluation, but the newcomer to the faculty holds his tongue, while the jaded veteran teacher bitterly recounts the multiple times he’s already been shot down during previous attempts to steer the exam away from the impractical automatons. The respective frowns on either face shift only slightly as the two pros lock eyes briefly across the table, and Aizawa shakes his head a little and sighs, silently vowing to tell Toshinori all about his gripes with the current system, just as soon as the meeting lets out.

The commiseration session is cut short preemptively, however, when All Might is pulled aside as they leave the conference room, by that same solemn police officer who’d responded to the call at USJ, beckoning the Symbol of Peace for a word alone. “Go on without me,” Toshinori nods toward Aizawa as he leads Tsukauchi into the staff lounge, “I’ll catch up.” Eraserhead turns reluctantly and heads for home, keeping an eye pointed upwards the whole way for that telltale blur of blue, white, and yellow soaring overhead through the sunset-streaked skies. But it never comes.

The younger teacher is halfway through following the instructions on another box-meal from the pantry, attempting to cobble together some dinner, when All Might lets himself in from the balcony, under cover of relative darkness. “Hey,” Shouta calls over the sound of sizzling pork belly, “What was that about?” He glances up, about to poke fun at how long it had taken Toshinori to ‘catch up,’ but stops cold when he catches sight of the older pro’s expression. “...Yagi?”

The Number One Hero had immediately deflated as soon as he’d stepped foot on the balcony, still trailing steam and the hems of his slacks as he’d come in from the humid night air, and the lines and shadows of his gaunt face had fallen even deeper than usual. “It was... an information leak from the police, about the villain I fought at USJ. The one who smashed your face in.”

“Nomu.”

“Yes.”

Aizawa tears his eyes away and turns back to the pan to stir it absentmindedly, suddenly losing his appetite as he recalls the pain and humiliation and fear of being pinned beneath that hulking monster. “What about him.”

Toshinori draws near and listlessly rummages through the cabinets for a jar of mushrooms, and drains their fluid slowly into the sink. “They ran DNA testing on him. He was a low-profile thug, relatively normal-looking, who’s been altered to contain the DNA and quirks of four other people.” Yagi sighs and adds the mushrooms into the pan, and stares at the mixture for a long moment, his vision going out of focus, before he pulls away and collapses into one of the chairs nearby. “We only know of one person who can do that... I thought I’d killed him, six years ago. Apparently not.” The lanky hero sighs again, curling forward to plant his elbows on the table and wedge his fingers into his hair, eyes sinking shut in shame and frustration.

The would-be chef freezes in place as he processes the information, not even flinching when the speckles of grease fly out of the pan to catch at the skin of his hands. His voice rumbles out softly, low and inflectionless as he speaks without meeting Yagi’s eyes, “Since when do you kill people, Toshinori.”

“I don’t, not usually,” All Might shakes his head and looks up, his heart breaking a little at the flat delivery of his new friend’s words, what had sounded like betrayal or accusation or suspicion, “This was... a special case. The villain who gave me this scar, the nemesis of every hero who has carried the mantle of this quirk that I have. Had. He killed the one before me, and now... will probably finish me off, too.” Toshinori cringes and turns to meet Aizawa’s judgement, “All For One. He’s not as much of a tall tale as the history books would suggest.”

“If he’s actually the one behind this,” Aizawa backtracks for a moment, still reeling as he recounts the various rumors he’d heard in connection with that legendary name. “It could have been caused by something -or someone- else, right?” He reaches to turn the stove-top off, and splits the meal onto a couple of plates, setting them on the table and joining Toshinori in the other chair.

“Anything’s possible, I suppose,” Yagi mumbles, though the resigned way in which both heroes pick at their food seems to indicate that neither one of them truly believes it.

[satorisa]

Lift the Veil - Chapter 5

Lift the Veil - Chapter 5: War of My Life

Rating: T

Summary: After living in Tokyo for the past six years, she decides to head back to Azumano to escape the big city. However, she now has to face everything that she tried to flee from all those years ago. How exactly will she fare when the pages of a long forgotten book start turning once more?

Read On: FanFiction.Net, Archive of Our Own

Risa may or may not have a drinking problem, but I most certainly do know that I have a problem with how this is progressing because I’m behind on my editing schedule for this fic because life but mainly because I have no clue what I’m even doing. 

On that note, enjoy this mess of a chapter. 

War of My Life

I’ve got a hammer and a heart of glass; I got to know right now which walls to smash.

Waving goodbye to Saehara, I left the police station feeling energized with the noon sun on my skin. Ritsuko stood outside, dressed in a fashionable ensemble that she complemented with a designer handbag. She smiled before somehow managing to run towards me in her heels to give me a hug.

“How’ve you been?” she asked excitedly as she let go of me.

“Good,” I replied as we started walking towards the café that was, according to her, to die for. She reminded me of my high school self, back when she was level-headed and I was the hyperactive one more in touch with my girly side. I supposed owning and managing a couple of high-end boutiques does that to someone. “Work’s been easy, and it’s nice being back home. What about you?”

“I’m great!” she exclaimed with an enthusiasm for life that I no longer had. “The boutiques have been doing well, and the suppliers are wondering if I can extend the market to a bigger city like Sapporo!”

“Really?”

“Yup! I get a lot of customers who come by the boutiques since a lot of our better merchandise is marked as store-exclusives.” She smiled. “Honestly, I didn’t realize I’d have this much fun working with the fashion industry. When my friend decided to rope me into entrepreneurship, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.”

“Wasn’t it hard?”

“Of course! I nearly quit in the beginning since I was selling unknown brands from a tiny little boutique, but one regular turned into several regulars who attracted more upcoming designers which, in turn, brought more regulars, leading me to where I am today. It’s amazing to see how far everyone I’ve worked with has come, and seeing all my hard work paying off has been the biggest reward for me!”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Well, what about you?” she asked. “Don’t you like what you’re doing?”

I paused, unsure of how to actually respond to her question. Once upon a time, I had big plans on becoming a news anchor, completely obsessed with the fact that I’d become famous in my own right by showing up on TV every day. I settled on editing being my entry job simply because I was relatively decent with writing and grammar but, somewhere along the way, I became attached to books. Even though I still aimed to be a news anchor, I now had to determine whether I kept that goal because I really wanted to become one or because it was my childhood dream.

“Yeah,” I finally answered, trying to hide the small crisis that innocent question brought. “Working in Tokyo was too much, so I decided to move back here. The workload is nothing compared to my last job, but it still keeps me preoccupied for most of the day.”

She nodded, staying silent as if waiting for me to elaborate as much as she did. However, before she could say something to egg me on, we arrived at our destination—unfortunately christened Castelnuovo Bistro—and were seated in a booth under some dim lighting.

After ordering, we started talking about our college lives which, eventually, led to us sharing all the dumb things we did as students. However, no amount of laughing and eating could get my mind off of earlier. Even as we headed back to the police station, joking as if we were back in high school with Mari to complete our trio, I could barely focus on what exactly we were talking about.

And, when I walked back in, both Saehara and Hiwatari stopped their conversation, staring at me with bewilderment as I sat down, opening my laptop to drown myself in work and forget about my sudden displacement in life.

For study breaks, my friends and I always headed to the Starbucks overlooking Shibuya Crossing, somehow managing to find a vacant table in the midst of all the Tokyo chaos. Over personal drinks and shared snacks, we’d discuss what I secretly called the topic of the day.

One time, unfortunately, they all decided to focus on their love lives. They ranted on about terrible exes and failed romances or praised their current partners, proudly boasting about their healthy relationships. I sat there reading (The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry felt too out of place amidst the love lives of young adults in this century) while nibbling away at my baumkuchen, hoping that I could stay quiet and unnoticed for the rest of this conversation.

Unfortunately, they could read neither my mood nor my expression, so they eventually turned to me with smirks and curious eyes. They were all journalism majors and approached me because I seemed just like them: a girl who only cared about how well other people perceived her. Finding it hard to connect with others, especially as a first-year in college, I clung to them if only for my weekly dosage of social interaction. (It took me a while to finally separate from this group of people, but that wouldn’t happen until I finally got closer to other people in Japanese literature who eventually introduced me to other people in journalism.)

“Come on, Risa-chan!” one coaxed. “You’ve got to have some interesting stories!”

“I came from a small town in northern Japan; the only interesting story I’ve got is the fact that my sister’s been in a relationship for four years.”

Another pouted. “We’re asking for your stories though! Nothing passionate? Sexy? Steamy?”

I silently laughed at the memories that resurfaced, mentally berating myself for my stupidity. But then my mind, whirring from comprehension, presented two memories regarding the first word. I cringed at the juxtaposition of them, and I could feel my tears rising up.

“Please,” I croaked, ready to chug my chai latte after I said my piece. “The only thing that was hot and steamy was the bits of salmon floating around in the soup.”

They looked at each other, slightly confused before forcing a laugh. Any lover of language would have either groaned or snorted at my remark. Clearly, I had found myself in the wrong group of people.

Blocking out the rest of their conversation, and the memories trying to flood my brain, I downed my drink, trying to forget everything with its comforting warmth.

“Harada-imouto, be a pal and let me go home early today!”

Looking up from my laptop, I saw Saehara in front of me, bowing at such a steep angle that I thought he might just tumble over. I nearly dismissed him without hesitation considering the Saehara I knew probably had a dumb reason to excuse himself, but I decided to give him the benefit of doubt.

I braced myself for his terrible answer. “…why?”

“I’m having dinner with Akane and—”

“Why are you still here?” I screeched, somehow too caught up with the pitiful image of his girlfriend having to wait for his sorry ass to consider that Saehara might’ve just played to my pathos. “You’ve got better places to be than this dingy place!”

Thanking me, he rushed out at such a pace that I couldn’t help but believe his claim. He usually left the station at a casual stroll, and I smiled at his burst of energy and enthusiasm before returning to my work. I had around an hour left before I wanted to leave for the news station so I could polish up my pre-broadcast work without running into Hiwatari.

“Is my station really that dingy?”

Looking up from my work, I saw Hiwatari standing nearby with a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. Startled by his presence, I slightly jumped, noting the flicker of concern on his face before his composure settled in.

“All police stations are dingy,” I answered. “To be fair though, I might’ve spent too much time in one back in Tokyo.”

He nodded. “I can imagine that the ones in the city weren’t as well-maintained, although I am glad that that was just your biased opinion. I do take good care of my station, but I am willing to work on improving it if need be.”

I didn’t acknowledge his statement. Hopefully, my disinterest would dissuade Hiwatari from continuing this conversation, but his figure lingered in my peripherals, detracting me from the work I was trying to focus on.

“Your sister invited me over for a meal whenever I was free as thanks for the other night,” he awkwardly started.

My focus waned from my growing agitation at Hiwatari’s inability to take a hint and at Riku’s well-meant yet completely insensitive offer. “Why tell me that?”

“I figured that you would’ve appreciated the notice.”

“You don’t have to be considerate of my feelings now.” I turned to him, allowing my frustration to seep through my furrowed brows and frown. “Besides, don’t you think it’s kind of late to be caring now?”

He somehow maintained his expression despite my sudden accusation. With a nod, he muttered a soft-spoken apology before he turned away and retreated back to his office. Once I heard the door shut, I gathered my things and escaped from the police station, running towards the news station in a feeble attempt to get my mind off what happened.

I knew that what I said rattled Hiwatari; he had a habit of excusing himself whenever he was uncomfortable. Not that it was easy for a layman to read the subtle changes in his expression and mood, but Hiwatari always felt apprehensive whenever he found himself in a vulnerable position. A lot of men did that to protect their manly pride or ego, but, for Hiwatari, it was one of the consequences of living with Krad for around fourteen years of his life.

Honestly, I hated that I knew this. I hated the knot that appeared in my stomach when he stiffened up before quickly excusing himself. After all these years, after everything that happened, I still couldn’t stand seeing Hiwatari anything less than his normally aloof and composed self.

I somehow managed to keep myself collected and made it to the news station without catching too much attention. The security guard greeted me with a smile, and I returned the gesture, trying to leave any thoughts of Hiwatari at the door of the building.

Heading towards my cubicle, the staff seemed as calm as always, chatting about the usual topics of the handsome Police Commissioner (not that that was helping my case and ick) or the cute new editor from Tokyo (please) before I settled down at my desk. Even with the trivial and slightly annoying conversations occurring around me, it set up the white noise I needed to fully focus on the rest of my work.

Until they started gossiping about something that turned my productivity into an existential nightmare.

“Oi, Kawamura-san, did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

I peeked over the cubicle, looking at the women in the cubicle next to mine. One of them was sitting, the other standing, but both were idly holding a steaming cup of coffee.

“That the Captain’s going to promote the new editor.”

“Eeeeh? Already? But she just got here!”

“But she graduated from Tokyo University and interned at the NHK! Don’t you think she’s overly qualified for her current position?”

“So what? She just got here. Who cares about where she came from? I’ve been working here far longer than she has, and I’ve yet to receive some huge bonus or substantial raise!”

“You’re just jealous!”

“And you’re not? She comes here from Tokyo, gets stationed at the police department with Hiwatari-san, and is already on her way to getting promoted! It’s not fair!”

“I know right!” she leaned closer to her confidant, but I could still hear her obnoxiously loud voice. “Did you hear this though? Apparently, she grew up here before disappearing off the face of the earth, and now she’s returned despite all her success. Do you think it’s a fraud? Maybe she’s running from something? Relationship issues?”

By this time, I was already so far into the conversation that I was silently responding to their blathering mouths with my changing expressions. They somehow moved onto another conversation that lost my attention without noticing that I was obviously eavesdropping, and I returned to my work, glad that I was on my way to not having to see Hiwatari first thing in the morning. But did I really want this? Anyone would be glad to have a promotion since that meant a more prestigious job with better pay but…

Damn. How dare I have these second thoughts now. I should be happy about this.

Hearing my phone ring, I looked down to see a text message from Daisuke saying that his parents wanted me over for dinner and that Argentine and Towa terribly missed my company. He, unfortunately, couldn’t be there in case he needed defuse his rambunctious family since he made plans to have dinner at my house, so I texted Riku that I would be over at Daisuke’s for dinner and continued working until I had to leave.

“Risa!” Mrs. Emiko greeted, pulling me into a hug. “It’s been forever!”

“Emiko, please, you’re choking her!” Mr. Kousuke called when he emerged from the kitchen.

She pulled away with a huge grin, ushering me into the living room before excusing herself to check up on the food. I sat next to Grandpa Daiki, bowing slightly before turning my attention to an Alphonse Mucha documentary that so happened to be on. I became so engulfed with the show that I didn’t notice Towa and Argentine slowly creeping up behind me.

“Boo.”

Startled out of my seat, I turned around to see the personified artworks hovering over me from behind the sofa. Towa had a grin that eclipsed her face and Argentine, sly bastard, covered his chuckling mouth with his gloved hand.

“Still as sensitive as ever!” Towa chirped before skipping back into the kitchen to help the Niwas prepare dinner.

Argentine offered his hand, helping me up with an apology, before setting up the table. I followed him and, despite his protests, laid out the wine goblets and silverware.

“You are the guest, Risa-sama.”

“And, as the guest, it’d be rude of me to just sit around doing nothing!”

He sighed before heading into the kitchen. From previous experience, I knew Mrs. Emiko would kick me out if I stepped onto that hallowed ground, so I settled back down next to Grandpa Daiki and dove back into the interesting world of the Art Nouveau movement.

Back then, when I practically spent every waking second with Daisuke, Riku, and Hiwatari, we tended to drop by the Niwa household after school. Riku and Daisuke always retreated to the latter’s room before dinner, getting their daily dosage of alone time together, so I spent that time studying at the dining table with Hiwatari’s guidance. And when he had to work overtime, Towa and Argentine took a break from maintaining the house to keep me company. On occasion, when Grandpa Daiki was awake or in, he’d sit at the head of the table with a steaming cup of green tea while reading or writing something.

This slightly cramped and always noisy household became my second home, and I found a second family with the Niwas, too. I used to joke around about getting to know the in-laws back then but, on the extremely off chance that Riku and Daisuke didn’t work out, I knew they’d still be family to me.

The doorbell rang, and I shot up to let whoever it was in. I didn’t think too much about who it could be but, opening the door to see a slightly startled Hiwatari, I squeaked.

“Good evening, Harada-san,” he mumbled, taking off his shoes and brushing past me without much of a scene. “Auntie, Uncle, I’m home.”

The quartet in the kitchen marched out, greeting their wayward “son” with fanfare. I returned to my spot by Grandpa Daiki, wondering why he didn’t bother to join them.

“Not greeting your practically grandson?”

“He doesn’t need this old coot to fawn over him; the rest of the family gives him enough attention anyway. Besides, it’s been a while since I’ve seen my practically granddaughter-in-law.” He shot me a toothy grin before patting my shoulder to comfort me. “I told them not to invite him for dinner with you, but they just didn’t listen to me.”

After coming back to Azumano, I hated how everyone assumed that I had gotten over what happened. Sure, their conclusions were valid, but my being back here didn’t mean that I had finally made peace with what happened. Like any other adult dealing with a lack of closure, I left it as far behind me as feasibly possible so I could move on with my life. And here I was, still running away from it just to keep myself afloat and somewhat sane.

I took Grandpa Daiki’s hand and smiled, grateful for his gesture. It was nice to know that someone still kept what happened in the back of their mind even after my long absence.

“Risa, honey, dinner’s ready!” Mrs. Emiko called. “And could you please help Dad over? Thanks, dear!”

Despite his old age, he was still fit enough to move around without aid. Mrs. Emiko probably worried about her aging father yet, despite Grandpa Daiki’s notorious stubbornness, he let me help him to the table if only to avert my attention from Hiwatari’s presence at the table.

Argentine insisted on having me sit next to him, so I found myself wedged between him and Grandpa Daiki. I found it funny how I became closer to Argentine even though he kidnapped me back then. I certainly kept my distance from him after meeting him at the Niwa household once but that somehow turned into him poking my ticklish sides when I was too engrossed with my work to get a rise out of me (and entertain whoever else was around.) Maybe it happened from listening to all his long-winded stories, filled with melodramatic tangents, about Qualia. I was a blooming teenager obsessed with love, and he probably found solace from my genuine interest in his life.

“How are Towa and Argentine?” Hiwatari asked, rightfully concerned over the artworks wellbeing.

“They’ve been good,” Mr. Kousuke replied. “Emiko���s been working them to the bone like always. It’s a mystery how they’re still holding up so well.”

The married couple squabbled from his remark, and I glanced at Hiwatari’s expression. With his smiling eyes and upturned mouth, I found myself recalling those looks he—

“Risa-sama, are you okay?” Argentine asked. He, luckily, didn’t draw any attention towards me. I exhaled the breath hitched at the back of my throat and drank some wine to wash it do.

“I’m good. Sorry to worry you.”

“It’s alright as long as you are fine.” On his other side, I saw Towa jab him while taking a bite. “Erm, if you don’t mind, could you share some of your experiences in Tokyo? Towa and I were wondering what it would be like to be in a big city.”

They couldn’t leave Azumano due to reasons along the lines of being delicate and an extreme liability, so I picked out stories that I knew would catch their attention. Hooked on my words, they reminded me of children with their enchanted eyes and fascination with the simplest of things. Eventually, the table quieted down as I started talking about my college misadventures.

Argentine found himself attached to the many themed cafés dotting Akihabara, while Towa clung onto the melting pot of Harajuku’s fashion scene. Mrs. Emiko and Mr. Kousuke, however, were thoroughly entertained whenever I’d talk about my college hijinks. (I mean, at some point the couple was snorting in laughter. Pretty sure they were getting a kick out of this.) Grandpa Daiki would sometimes smile, and Hiwatari looked like he was having a ball with it. Whenever he would catch me watching him though, he would feign indifference, faking a cough to hide his laughter and cover that smirk he couldn’t seem to get off his damn face.

To think I was somehow concerned over this man a few hours ago when here he was, perfectly fine while relishing in my embarrassments.

Eventually everyone calmed down and the conversation moved to other topics, like the artworks asking if they could take a short trip to Tokyo and the art-savvy men wondering what could possibly go wrong. (Apparently, it was so bad that the three of them couldn’t wrap their head around the potential chaos that would occur.) I finished the grand meal of Tournedos Rossini (courtesy of Emiko’s grand tastes and Argentine’s odd talent for creating fine cuisine) before my eyes drifted to Hiwatari, who looked content surrounded by such animated company for dinner.

Honestly, why the hell was I always staring at him?

“The past is always too hard to leave behind,” Grandpa Daiki sighed.

“It’s not like it’s easy to leave it behind when it’s right in front of you.”

“There will never not be a day when it’s not in front of you,” he reminded before sipping his water.

I groaned, downing the rest of my red wine. Grandpa Daiki offered his untouched goblet, and I quickly finished it as well. Did he want me to drink for him? Or maybe he wanted to help me by letting me loosen my grip on reality?

Eventually, dinner came to end when Grandpa Daiki excused himself to get some sleep. Both Mrs. Emiko and Mr. Kousuke left to help him upstairs despite his protests. Towa and Argentine started to clean the table, keeping me in my seat despite my protests to help. They emerged from the kitchen after they tidied the table, each of them carrying a flower-adorned porcelain plate with a matching teacup. Argentine set his set of china down in front of me, and I stared in awe at the intricately decorated petit four and could smell what seemed like jasmine tea from my cup. Hiwatari had a different petit four in front of him, and his cup was filled with black coffee that eclipsed the flowery aroma in front of me.

“Enjoy the desserts!” Towa chirped.

“You won’t join us?” I asked.

“There’re dishes to wash,” Argentine answered. “Besides, Satoshi-sama likes time to himself.”

“Well, if he likes time to himself, I should help you then.” I started to get up from my seat, but Towa pushed me back down.

“Nu-uh. Madam said that no one gets up from the table until they need to leave.”

“Well then, I have to go.”

“Risa-sama!” The artworks simultaneously called over the scraping chair as I started my long overdue escape.

“I never thought the day would come when Risa Harada would pass on an offer of cake and tea.” When those cold words sliced through the air, I stopped. I turned to see Hiwatari’s icy glare, unmoving as he mechanically sipped his coffee. The striking color of his eyes only aided his intimidation. “If you have a problem with me, you should personally tell me instead relying on off-hand comments and running away.”

The Hiwatari I knew would’ve sulked for a bit instead of passive aggressively confronting anyone; I was the one guilty of doing that. But what fueled his uncharacteristic pettiness? Was it to call me out on my disdain from earlier in an eye-for-an-eye type of deal? Or was he trying to undermine me by using my own methods?

I shot him a look before sitting back down, readying myself to verbally battle with Hiwatari. Immature, I knew, that our communications had finally boiled down to this, but unrelenting stubbornness was an uncanny trait I shared with the young man hailed as such a mature role-model; we could never just admit our wrongs. Besides, I wasn’t going to take this without a fight. I wasn’t that young woman who allowed herself to get hurt by others anymore. And if ignoring him meant protecting myself, I didn’t care what others thought of it.

Besides, the damn hypocrite had no right to call me out on that.

“Oh, boo-hoo. I’m so sorry that I heart your pathetic pride,” I responded with sarcasm. “I didn’t realize that I had to be nice to your frozen majesty when I came back.”

“It’s common courtesy, although I highly doubt you know what that means since you’re making a fuss at someone else’s house.”

“I wouldn’t be like this if you hadn’t started it.”

“Did you need to continue it though?” he scoffed. “Six years later and your volatile temper is still as prominent as ever.”

“As it should be considering I have good reason for it compared to that nasty attitude of yours.” I took a bite of my cake. “Tell me, how does it feel to have karma bite you in the ass?”

The calm front that Hiwatari somehow maintained gave way to the storm brewing inside of him. He shot up, slamming his hands on the table; a cacophony of clattering china and spilled drinks followed. I flinched, slightly terrified at his sudden ferocity almost reminiscent of Krad, but I had to maintain my ground.

“Harada-san, how could you be so damn stubborn?”

I glared at him, gingerly laying the fork down before I threw it at his face. “Self-preservation, Hiwatari-san: something you know very well. After all, would you keep someone in your life when you know that they’re able to ruin everything in one-fell swoop?” His eyes widened, and he fell back into his chair looking devastated. “See? You wouldn’t, so I have every right to do the same.”

Finally finished with letting out those pent-up emotions, I focused on the food in front of me, stuffing myself with the cake before emptying the teacup without break, burning my tongue from its scalding temperature. I left the house without a farewell, avoiding the frozen artworks who were unfortunately caught in the fray and the bewildered older Niwa couple standing by the foot of the staircase.

I ran back to my house, trying to at least keep myself composed until I got to my room, but when Daisuke opened the door, I broke down crying right there on the stoop, screaming into my hands until Riku pulled me into an embrace.

[patriciahaefeli]

The following blog essays were part of another blog I had - and lost the password to!  It was called simply "Here's What I Have to Say About That"

 Resolutions 

     There was a nun at my all-girl’s Catholic college who used to like to call me into her office for little “chats” during my sophomore year. It was awkward. She’d ask me lots of questions, and in between fidgeting, looking out the window and tearing at my cuticles, I’d answer her. For a long time it seems, I kept thinking the questions were just polite banter, and eventually she’d tell me why I was there, or where this was leading. Once it became clear that she wouldn’t be explaining any of that, I just waited to be dismissed. 

     Sister Catherine Joseph (we called her “CJ” or “Ceeje,” behind her back), was energetic and petite, and the thick wooden rosary that hung from the belt of her floor-length habit swung wildly back and forth as she speed-walked through the corridors. In the early 80’s, most of the Dominican sisters wore the shorter habit and a simple coif and veil. Clearly, she didn’t have to wear the longer version, or the wimple that wrapped around her pixie face like a starched, white bandage. Once, in an effort to avoid one of her questions, I asked her about that. “Its important to me that I’m visible,” she replied briskly, as if she’d been asked this before and was mildly defensive about it. It occurred to me then that she liked to save people, and I wondered what she thought I might need “saving” from. 

    We were talking about poetry one fall afternoon, and I, happy to be in neutral territory, was on a roll, defending my appreciation for Sylvia Plath when, seemingly out of nowhere, she interrupted me. “Do you believe in God?” She inquired; as though this were a perfectly seamless segue. My shoulders sagged. Here we go, I thought. 

      “Oh Sister,” I moaned, “do we have to go here?” 

      “Do you think you can shock me?” She countered, looking amused. 

      “I don’t particularly want to,” I mumbled. 

      “Don’t want to what?” She probed. 

      “Shock you, Sister. I don’t particularly want to shock you! Oh fine, you know what? Yeah, I do. I believe in God…I also believe in Jason.”  She peered over at me with a questioning expression. I sighed. “You probably don’t go to many horror movies do you?” I asked wryly. Then, not waiting for the obvious answer I continued, “Jason is the killer in the Friday the 13th movies. Like Michael Myers in Halloween? You know, the axe murderer movies?” She looked at me, expressionless, waiting. “So, there’s like a formula to these movies. Basically, the killer preys on a bunch of high school or college kids who fall into three groups: The first two include those who don’t believe he’s really out there. They’ve heard the stories, so when they go on a weekend camping trip, and someone brings it up, it makes them kind of nervous, but deep down they figure that’s all it is, a story. Folklore. Then, there’s always that one kid who’s all glib about it, laughing him off as some stupid campfire tale, maybe even sneaking up on the others and jumping out at them, imitating him even, and finally, there’s the one who believes in Jason one-hundred percent.” I smiled at her, “Wanna guess which one survives?” 

      “Oh by all means,” she said, leaning back in her chair and bringing her index finger up to her mouth, “enlighten me.” 

      “The one who believes, Sister! In fact, the one who laughs Jason off – who thinks he’s invincible and that there’s no such thing as axe murderers? He dies the most awful, gory death of all. And frankly, they all die pretty horribly. Except for one.” 

      “The one who believes,” She echoed. 

      “Exactly!” I said, feeling pretty satisfied with my explanation. There were a few minutes of silence after that while she studied me with large blue eyes made even larger by her thick glasses. She ran that index finger back and forth across her closed lips several times and then it stopped right in the middle. After three decisive taps against her mouth she spoke. 

      “So in this scenario then, you are the believer,” She confirmed rather than asked, but still, I nodded my ascent. “And what you believe in,” she was learning forward again now, “is the possibility - no, the probability of some violent, terrifying, force just waiting to strike?” 

      “Well, actually, it’s not that simple,” I began, happy to clarify. “I believe that terrible, violent, terrifying things can happen, so that they won’t happen.” 

      “Ah,” she said, nodding and leaning back again with what I thought was a posture of serious contemplation of my idea. When she spoke again, both her words and her inflection conveyed a mixture of pity and reproach. “I had no idea you were so powerful.” 

      Walking to the parking lot afterwards, I remember feeling suddenly uneasy about having revealed this particular belief system. I’d been nurturing my “horror film philosophy” for a while but I’d never actually said it out loud before, and I felt a little exposed. Like she’d lured me into some kind of trap and then got all judgmental on me. What started that whole conversation anyway? Oh yeah, God. That’s it. She asked if I believed in God and we ended up talking about slash ‘em up, serial killer movies. Well, not “we” actually, just me. That probably pissed her off. There’s probably something blasphemous about that. Shit. 

      I should point out that at the time, I’d fairly recently had my first real experiences with tragedy and loss. The kind of senseless catastrophes that nearly everyone experiences sooner or later; that mark the beginning of the end of that sense of invincibility all young people enjoy. Ultimately, I’d responded to this with a fierce resentment about the lack of notice, and I began to obsess about the myriad careless ways people could set themselves up for that kind of ruthless ambush. 

     Suddenly, things like going about one’s daily activities without a moment’s anticipation of the scope of possible tragedies that might strike seemed arrogant and reckless. Attending to the mundane routines of eating a meal, or ironing a shirt, without once considering that at that very moment, irreversible tragedies might strike, became for me like portals to cataclysmic events. In the interest of self-preservation I suppose, the fact that I’d been blind-sighted became the central issue, and I developed a perspective on life (and death) that focused on preparation for the next one. My resolve to never feel completely safe was, therefore, a preventative measure, like hanging garlic on the door to ward off vampires.

      I had no idea you were so powerful. 

      That sentence had marked the end of our little chat session that day, and the beginning of a series of chats we would have over the next several months. She would, over time, gently coax me out of this convoluted mindset. She was the first person to suggest to me that believing in my own ability to influence events, whether it was through a kind of hyper-vigilant apprehension or any other method, was not just a painful way to live, it was actually pretty contemptuous of the idea that there was, in fact, a power greater than myself. And that, by the way, was the height of arrogance. 

      Oh yeah, God. 

      In the thirty-plus years between then and now, I’ve found it challenging, to say the least, to have that complete confidence in God that Ceeje had. I say I do, and I certainly think I do most of the time, but relinquishing that illusion of control, trying to stop attaching all kinds of weird meanings to a variety of talismans, can be a very slippery thing for me. I’m a lot better at it when life is going according to plan and the people I love are happy and safe. Oh yeah, then I’m a model of reliance on a divine authority. “Everything happens for a reason” is such a serene axiom to embrace when everything is going well. It’s all part of God’s plan. Surrender, under these circumstances, is so sweet. 

      Part of the reason that all of this comes to mind has to do with the conversation that I had with my doctor recently after my annual check up. He’s an older guy, my MD, and once he finished up his review of the numbers, assuring me that all was well, he took off his bifocals, set down his clipboard, and looked me in the eye. “So, how’re you doing?” After telling him I was great, for some reason I felt a welling up of emotion. “I’m fine, really,” I said, fighting back tears, “It’s just that I can’t sleep.”  We had nice conversation after that, and by the end of it I realized that he’d basically told me the same thing Ceeje had told me thirty years ago: That worrying like it’s my job is a lot of wasted energy and no matter how much I do it, no one is going to put me in charge of the future. 

      Intellectually, this is not news to me. What did surprise me was the immediate, gut-level certainty I had that part of the reason I was doing it was because, deep down, I still have the idea that if I don’t do it, I’ll be punished for my naiveté. I worry like it’s some kind of vaccine. As though imagining disastrous outcomes for a number of situations somehow immunizes you from those worst-case scenarios. 

      It’s nuts. 

      The truth is, I find myself thinking about Jason more than I’d like to admit. His looming presence is manifested in a variety of ridiculous behaviors on my part, and I tend to recognize them only in hindsight. I can, for example, become utterly committed to the idea that if I worry half the night instead of sleep, I’ll hear him coming and be ready. If I go to the gym and run (too long) or pedal maniacally (for too long) on the elliptical, I can fool myself into thinking I can take him, axe and all. If I clean and organize and label things just so, he won’t be able to get past the barricade of orderliness I’ve arranged. If I tick off all of the items on my crazy schedule, he won’t be able to slide the blade of his machete between the layers of efficiency I’ve created. 

      Oddly enough, when I am gripped by the conviction that these rituals are what’s holding it (or me), together, and that doing anything less would be akin to investigating that noise in the basement with nothing other than a flashlight, I’m the last to know. Nor does it occur to me during these times that if I were to direct half of that energy toward cultivating a deeper faith in the God of my understanding, I might just have a shot at not only peace of mind, but I’d free myself up for becoming a greater source of support for those who need me. 

     Which brings me to my kids. As a parent, it’s a fascinating thing to watch your child and recognize, with sudden clarity that their mannerism just then was exactly like yours. Or to hear the inflection in something they just said and find that it was so much like your spouse’s that it’s eerie. They imprint so much more than we realize. In some ways I’ve tried really hard to be aware of this. I consciously conceal, for example, my wildly out-of proportion anxiety about things like the dentist, horseback riding, and sharks. 

      Still, my youngest can be a bit of a “fretter.” She goes through periods of getting herself all tied up in knots about everything from grades (nothing but A’s will do), to global warming. During these times, her motto seems to be that it’s never too soon to begin to obsess about the future: How she’ll manage in high school, where she’ll go to college, even what type of career she’ll choose. As a small child, the sight of homeless people made her cry. When she began suffering from migraines last year we suspected that these things might be related, and sure enough, we left the neurologist’s with a prescription and a recommendation to help her find ways of de-stressing. I couldn’t help but feel like she was furiously treading water in my end of the gene pool. 

      I rarely trust simplicity and this is as simple as it gets: I don’t have to become the guy who makes fun of Jason, and scoffs at the notion that bad things might happen (he gets split down the middle by a chain saw, or impaled to a tree for crying out loud). But I don’t have to live life like the cowardly lion either, who hopes his repeated incantation “I do, I do, I do believe in ghosts” will somehow keep him from harm. I believe that Ceeje was right about all of it. There really is only one way to prepare for a future that no mortal can predict or control, and that is to live today with optimistic enthusiasm. 

     So, at the risk of sounding all New-Age-y, I’m making some changes in 2016. My resolution begins anew with each new day. I will try to remember to just breathe; to enjoy things more and to have more gratitude for each moment of each miraculous day. To love more, and laugh more, and to ask God every single day to give me the willingness to trust in Him and let tomorrow take care of itself. I’ll let you know how it goes. ☺ 

 12 Jan 2016 

 Pain 

      Just got back from a nice five-mile walk/run up here in Cape Cod. I run a little more of those miles than I walk these days, and I’m pretty happy about that. The minute I feel my hip start to complain I stop running and start walking. As I told my husband the other day, I’d rather do this and able to do it again tomorrow, than be grounded for a few days with a really inflamed joint. He just smiled and said, “That’s great honey. So unlike you!” What he means is that, historically, moderation has not exactly been my “thing” but that’s another story. I’ve had to learn this approach to exercise, and I had a good but very demanding teacher: Pain. 

      It all started on a beautiful summer day in 2009: We were out on the boat in Cape Cod Bay and our youngest and two of her friends had just taken a giggling, hair flying, grinning ear-to-ear ride on the tube. My husband steered the Boston Whaler sharply to the right and then the left, and when the tube hit the wake they shot up in the air and squealed with sheer joy. It looked so easy, and fun, and I wanted to do it too. 

      When it was my turn, I decided that the best way to get from boat to tube was to descend the ladder and, on all fours, back onto the tube. I did this for two reasons, 1) I figured that this way my hands would be facing the handles, as they should, without me having to awkwardly turn around, and 2) I wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of basically mooning everyone on the boat. Seemed logical enough. What happened, however, was that once my lower body was on the tube and I was in the process of letting go of the ladder, I realized that my weight was not distributed evenly. It was, in fact, pretty much all at one end of the tube; that end being the one closest to the boat. My awareness of the situation occurred in the precious few seconds I had before the tube pitched forward. Instinct took over. In an effort to avoid having my face slam into the back of the boat, I let go of the tube with one hand and with more velocity and force than I thought possible for me, wind-milled my right arm around to break my inevitable fall. 

      So, yeah, I broke more than my fall. Somehow they got me, my arm hanging uselessly at my side, back onto the boat. Three little girls under the age of seven sat across from me with wide-eyed apprehension so I whispered when I told my husband, “I might get sick.” With all the concern and compassion of a man who loves his boat almost as much as his wife he whispered back, “You look really pale. Do you want me to help you get to the side of the boat?” 

      It took about forty-five minutes to get from the house to the hospital in Hyannis. The pain was excruciating. The throbbing in my arm and shoulder was a thing in and of itself. For some reason, it was very important to my husband that I eat the sandwich he’d packed for me before we left. He suggested it more than once. The first few times, I merely shook my head no. After that, I stopped answering him altogether. For one thing, I was nauseous as hell. More importantly, however, his suggestions were an irritating interruption to my counting. Like a woman in the last stages of labor and childbirth, I was on another plane. In my mind, I was counting to one hundred, and then starting over again. The only thing that existed for me on that drive was the counting. Not the car, not the radio, not the sandwich. The counting and the pain. The whole of my consciousness had narrowed to those two things, and I could endure nothing else. 

      The hospital X-Ray revealed two fractures of the greater tuberosity of the humerus (the big ball of bone where the arm meets the shoulder). They gave me some type of pain-killing injection, put me in a sling, and sent me off with a prescription for pain meds and instructions to see my orthopedist when I got home to New Jersey. By the time we got back to the house we were all laughing about it. It seemed like a silly thing, mildly embarrassing. Our girls jokingly agreed to tell people that I’d suffered an “extreme wakeboarding” accident. Above all, it was an inconvenience. I’m a personal trainer, and this would affect the bootcamp class I led in the early morning, as well as my own workouts. Still, I figured in a couple of months I’d be good as new. No biggie. 

      I saw my first orthopedist about a week later. He took another set of x-rays and outfitted me with a bizarre looking sling intended to immobilize that shoulder. In early September I went back to work as a middle school teacher. The very first day back we had all kinds of professional development workshops to attend. By the afternoon session, I deliberately chose a seat in the back of the room and hoped no one noticed the tears streaming down my face. I figured out early on that Percocet made me feel crappy, but the pain was unremitting. I kept thinking that If I started taking it, when, exactly, would I stop? It wasn’t just my shoulder at this point either; my whole arm ached all the time. 

      I white-knuckled it for the next three weeks. When I returned to the orthopedist, I described the pain and said that I’d noticed an even greater reduction of my range of motion during that time. I asked if he thought I should have an MRI. He was dismissive. Told me he’d send me for one if I wanted it, but he didn’t feel it was necessary. He recommended that stay I immobile one more week, and then begin physical therapy. I left with yet another prescription for Percocet. 

     At five weeks post injury I began PT. Immediately, my physical therapist used the term “frozen” to describe what was happening with my shoulder. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I did know that I was on a mission. “Just tell me what to do,” I said determinedly. “I’ll work through the pain.” I was so willing to “work through it” that one of them told me later that they were all concerned that first week that I might pass out. 

      And yet, it didn’t help. In fact, the pain seemed to be getting worse, and my range of motion seemed to be decreasing. Writing with my right hand hurt, driving and working on the computer was worse, and writing on the board or playing the piano was out of the question. I was a regular runner at the time, but I found even a brisk walk left my shoulder and arm throbbing for hours. I began to joke with my family about the possibility of just cutting my arm off and getting a hook. “I could be really useful with a hook,” I would say, curving my fingers into a “C” shape. 

      At night, the pounding ache intensified. When I did sleep, I slept badly. Always overtired, I counted the days until my next doctor’s appointment, and when the day came, my husband came with me. “She’s really not a complainer,” he told the Dr. “she’s in a lot of pain all the time, and it’s gotten worse, not better.” The doctor shrugged and suggested a cortisone shot might help. I guess I should have known I was in trouble when he asked my husband and one of the nurses to hold me down for the injection, but when the Lidocaine kicked in, the tension I’d felt melted. I felt….nothing, and it was blissful. 

      “This is awesome! Is it normal that I can’t feel my neck or chin though?” I asked, half-crying, half-giggling. Needless to say, they quickly ushered me into the x-ray room where a nurse sat with me in the dark as I cried. I didn’t know at the time that they were sort of hiding me from the other patients in case I was having some kind of allergic reaction and went into anaphylactic shock. I didn’t know that my husband was out front arguing with the office staff, demanding my records and x-rays (he had already decided we weren’t going back). All I knew was that it didn’t hurt anymore. The nurse patted my hand and consoled me, telling me I’d be okay. I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t crying because it hurt. I was crying with relief. It was the first time in seven weeks that I wasn’t in constant, inexorable pain. The absence of it made me positively giddy for about an hour. Then, all I wanted was to go to sleep. I was exhausted. 

      Unfortunately, the only thing about that injection that worked was the local anesthetic, Lidocaine. Within 24 hours the throbbing was back with a vengeance. Back at school on that rainy, muggy, Monday morning I gave in and fished a Percocet from the vial in my bag with hands that were literally shaking from the pain. I taught my first class of the day measuring out the pain by the hands of the clock. I noted each ten-minute increment and silently committed to just ten more before I…before I what? I never finished that sentence in my mind. Ten minutes, repeat, ten more. When the bell rang I waited for the halls to clear and then began my walk to the bathroom furthest from the classrooms. 

     On the way there, I cradled my screaming right arm with my left, and gave my undivided attention to the floor tiles. Carefully measuring my stride, I focused on putting one foot exactly into the center of one gray floor tile, then the other into the center of a red one. I just have to make it to the bathroom, I thought. One gray one, one red one. Once inside, I called my husband. As soon as I heard his voice the uniformity of the tile game fractured like a kaleidoscope on fast-forward. “I can’t take this anymore,” I sobbed. “It never lets up. I swear, I’m not kidding about getting a hook. I want to just cut my arm off…either that, or drive my car into a brick wall.” 

      The very next day I had my first appointment at Hospital for Special Surgery. Right away they did an MRI and, in addition to confirming that I did, in fact have a terrible case of adhesive capsulitis (otherwise known as frozen shoulder), I had also torn my rotator cuff in that accident. “Frozen” shoulder is the term they use to describe a condition where the surrounding soft tissue becomes wildly inflamed. It thickens and hardens, causing a decrease in range of motion and a shitload of pain. In general, it lingers for about a year. My new doctor scheduled another cortisone injection for me that very day, this one guided by ultrasound. When she handed me yet another prescription for Percocet, I refused it, told her I had plenty and that I thought it might make me depressed. At that point, she wrote two new scripts; one for PT and the other for Vicodin. 

      That entire school year I went into New York at least once a month, sometimes more for Dr.’s appointments. I got cortisone injections every three months and went to PT three times a week. In June, I had another MRI. This time, she showed me how the rotator cuff tear had worsened, and despite my history with inflammation and frozen shoulder, my best option was still surgery. To her credit, she was honest. She warned me about the difficult recovery, said it was likely I’d become “frozen “ all over again, and told me that people who had total shoulder joint replacement had less pain afterwards than the rotator cuff repair folks.

      Well allrighty then. 

      I had my surgery almost a year to the day of the accident. In the interest of saving time, I’ll give you the highlights of year two: Rotator cuff surgery is hell. By the time I returned to work in October I had developed frozen shoulder again, and soon after, my other shoulder began to throb as well. I ignored it until I couldn’t ignore it anymore, until the obsessive counting of things to pass the pain/time was interfering with my life, then told the doctor. She immediately sent me for an MRI and a cortisone injection. I would have two more on that side before the situation merited surgery as well, although far less complicated or invasive. More PT. 

      Basically what this amounted to was year two of chronic pain. It became the very center of my existence. It was the filter through which I experienced everything. It drove my actions, and my thinking. I would catch myself moaning involuntarily, and look around to see who had heard. It was an evil enemy presence, and I rotated through periods of being at war with it, trying to ignore it, and then surrendering to it, trying to make peace with it. We went everywhere together: To work, to my kids soccer and softball games, to the supermarket and out to the movies. It needled me at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it reduced me to tears at least once a day. It changed me. 

      I am a person who endures through laughter. I can joke about nearly anything, the more irreverent, the better, and yet, I found myself smiling mirthlessly at things I once found funny. At times, it felt like it defined me. I became the human barometer. I knew before the six o’clock news did that it was going to rain tomorrow. Pain told me loudly and clearly. Sometimes I experienced it as a solid block of sensation. Other times it was a pulsing, living thing, at once separate from me and a part of me. Certainly I thought you could see it when you looked at me. It was so big, and loud, and mean, and insistent. I was crumbling under the exponential pressure of it. It was always there, and it was wearing me down. 

      In between PT and cortisone, I took prescription anti-inflammatories when I could get them, but getting them isn’t easy. Here’s what I learned about pain management practices: Narcotics are shockingly easy to obtain. You want Percocet? Piece of cake. When I mentioned my shoulder/arm situation to my gynecologist, even she offered me a prescription for it. Vicodin? Like taking candy from a baby. Then, somewhere along the line I picked up a prescription for Tramadol, which is described as being a “narcotic-like”, pain killer. It had none of the side effects of the other two and was truly a Godsend for me for a time (oddly enough, although most healthcare professionals agree that, “Yeah, that’s the best,” it is often the last considered when writing prescriptions). But anti-inflammatories, while not dangerously addictive opioids, are h ell on your stomach and most Orthos are loath to prescribe them. 

      I used to look at my impressive cache of painkillers and think, no wonder so many people get hooked on these things. They’re so abundantly accessible! I consider myself fortunate in that I hated how fragile they made me feel emotionally. Percocet in particular left me nauseous and brittle. I was on the verge of tears all the time. I’m not being dramatic when I say that prolonged pain is corrosive enough by itself, coupled with depression it is the stuff of suicide, and I don’t know how one can experience chronic pain and not be depressed. Add Percocet to that and you’ve got a frighteningly toxic cocktail. 

     So, good ole over-the-counter Ibuprofen became my drug of choice. Frozen shoulder worsens at night so I took them every night, sometimes several times a night, so I could sleep. Once, when I admitted to this regimen, my physical therapist reluctantly divulged a good stomach-saving tip: Take Omeprazole (over-the counter strength Prilosec) first thing in the morning before eating to protect my stomach lining, and then take the Ibuprofen after eating breakfast. That became my routine. 

      I dreaded rainy days. Rainy, cold, damp days intensify inflammation. Standing on the sidelines of my kid’s soccer and field hockey games was often insufferable. I got special therapeutic massages and went to a kooky little acupuncturist who gave me bruises the size of oranges. I researched foods with anti-inflammatory properties and began drinking a concoction of hot water, ginger and cayenne pepper every morning (after my Omeprazole). The dad of one of my daughter’s friends referred me to a quack in Colorado who sold pricey special herb patches for reducing inflammation and controlling pain. I ordered them in bulk. 

    I knew the aisle for sports related injury soreness at CVS like the back of my hand. A drawer at home grew heavy with tubes of BioFreeze and Arnica, Blue Emu and Aspercreme. After visiting family in Wisconsin, a friend at work brought me back a mentholated gel used on horses with tender flanks. I tried it. I took krill oil, glucosamine and turmeric supplements. Hell, I would have entertained the idea of an exorcism or a voodoo hex if I thought it would work. Desperation isn’t discriminatory. 

       And then I stopped talking about it. When people asked, “How’s the shoulder?” I’d shrug and say, “Okay.” I knew that even if I could describe the exhaustive grind, the emotional fragility, the sleeplessness, it wouldn’t matter. People don’t get it, and frankly? It’s boring. It’s the same record over and over and over and over. Yup! It hurts. Still hurts! Hurting again! Sharp, dull, throbbing, pulsing, pounding, stabbing, aching, sickening screeching PAIN. And the answer to “You should try…” was always, “I have.” There’s no cure. That makes people uncomfortable, so you say, “Okay.” And you feel abysmally alone. 

      Then, just when I was beginning to see the light at the end of the upper body tunnel, and had started training for a half-marathon, I began experiencing a new pain – this one starting at my hip, and running down my entire right leg. And it got worse at night. Keeping me up. Rain, cold, humidity, sent my right leg throbbing like a lighthouse searchlight. Oddly enough, when I ran, it felt fine, when I stopped, I was limping. WTH? 

      Enter year three of pain. Back to the orthopedist. More MRI’s. This time, a torn labrum in my hip. Did I want cortisone? She asked, or maybe I’d like to try a new type of injection, one that uses your own body’s Platelet Rich Plasma to heal itself? “It isn’t yet FDA approved, so insurance won’t cover it. It’s gonna hurt like hell when I inject it, but people have had good results, and with your history of adhesive capsulitis…” 

      “Okay. Yeah, sure. When can I do it?” 

      Over the next eight months I got two of them. Thousand bucks a shot. More PT (they got me my own Christmas stocking that year). The good news? Eventually, those injections worked. It took some time, and I am cautiously optimistic. 

      I have developed the habit of personifying the pain. I know that it lurks there, like a predator, waiting for me to give in to the urge to push it too far, to run that extra mile, and it might pounce and drag me under once again. I am grateful to live relatively free of pain these days. I promised myself a few years ago that I’d never take that for granted again, but I often do. The absence of it is oddly unremarkable. It slinks off gradually, almost stealthily and you don’t even notice it right away, and then one day you wake up and think, dare I think it much less say it? (Because it lives and breathes and it will hear and punish you for this respite, for your relief.) 

I know others who suffer and I have a special understanding of who and what they live with. I feel a level of compassion for them that I didn’t always have. I hope my eyes say go ahead and talk about it. I won’t be bored, or turn away too soon, and if there’s no cure, I swear, I can take it. Introduce me to the evil twin, the traitor living in your body. I get it. I do. 

 27 Aug 2015 

 Words and Music 

      I learned to read music before I learned to read words. Those odd little opaque symbols that represent notes and tempo and phrasing were my first alphabet, and translating them to sounds on the piano felt natural to me. I was no prodigy, and yet, I have this distinct memory: I must have been four years old, just before I had my first lesson. I remember having a clear sense that I would be able to do this; that some part of me, in fact, already did. At my very first lesson, my hands slid comfortably into position on the keys as though into well-worn gloves, and my teacher looked skeptical when I denied having ever done this before. 

      At the piano, I am what people used to call “classically trained,” which is not at all as grandiose as people imagine. What it means is that for years I spent countless hours with C.F. Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist, learning scales and arpeggios, and my entire repertoire of study was concerned with the “classical” composers. I practiced, often with a metronome ticking, observing music expressions written in Italian, and following phrasing notations made by the composer. As a more advanced student, I had a teacher who insisted that I memorize the notes and phrasing of the Bach Inventions and could say them aloud before I ever played them. 

      If this sounds very strict and Victorian, I can assure you that for me, it didn’t feel that way. It suited me in ways I could not have defined back then. There was a discipline in the way I was taught that was oddly comforting. I could count on these things being static and sure: the staccato of the Bach, the dissonant precision of Prokofiev, the indulgent angst of the Chopin. It would be a few years before my mother began to say that she could tell the kind of mood I was in by what I played and how I played it, but from the beginning, there was some intrinsic connection between the music and my inner workings. 

      I had a similar experience with learning to read words. The prospect of it thrilled me! I assumed that not only was I meant to read, but that I would love reading the books that lined the shelves in our house. I pretended to read long before I actually knew how. I would hold books on my lap (often upside down,) the way I had seen my brothers and sisters and parents do it, contemplate the hieroglyphics on the page and in my mind, I made up the stories that I knew were hidden there. I knew that someday the mysteries of this code would reveal themselves to me, and that this would be a very, very good thing. 

      It is hardly surprising then, that at the very heart of the adult me, there is a dorky adolescent who is fifty percent “Band Camp,” and the other fifty a (library) card-carrying word nerd. For as long as I can remember, I’ve kept a little notebook filled with words that I especially like. I am the gal who is always slightly more obsessed with the goings on in the “Pit” during Broadway musicals than I am with the actual play. I leave movie theaters talking about the sound track that no one else seemed to hear. Last Spring, I saw Johnny Matthis perform, and while my husband talked non-stop about his long and trailblazing career, all I kept saying was, “But did you see his pianist? He did all the arrangements and he was conducting that entire orchestra with one hand and playing with the other – it was nuts!” 

      I love all kinds of music, and have an appreciation for rap that my students find amusing (me being so elderly and all). The linguistic complexity intrigues me, and the cadence reminds me of songs I’ve made up when I had to memorize things. To this day, I can only name the continents if I sing a little song in my head in which each is named. There are instrumentals that can make me cry. Add words to that, and well, there are certain places that combination can reach within me that even I cannot access voluntarily. 

      This is, I realize, probably at the very core of why I find it difficult to play the piano for an audience. The music is so tied to my emotional make up that it often leaves me feeling too exposed and vulnerable. Years ago, someone who didn’t run, and who couldn’t understand my need to run for miles asked me what, exactly, it did for me. I thought for a long time before I answered, struggling to find the words to express what I wanted to say. In the end the best I could do was this: “Have you ever heard the very beginning of U2’s “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For?” I asked him. 

       “Yeah, I think so.” He said, looking perplexed. 

      “Well, that’s kind of what my head sounds like until I run.” 

      “Ok,” he laughed, “I’ll guess I’ll have to listen to that. But tell me this, what does it sound like after you run?” 

      Again I struggled for the words, until finally, “A Chopin Sonatina.” 

      “Weird.” He said. 

      “Yeah,” I said simply.

      I know that the connection I feel to words and music is in some ways unique to who I am. And yet, who among us could have learned the ABC’s without that song? Who hasn’t exclaimed, “Oh! I love this song!” And turned up the radio feeling strangely proprietary about what my daughter would call her “jam”? I like to ask my students, “How many of you know all the words to your favorite song?” Without exception, every hand goes up. Then I give them an evil smile and tease them saying, “You are so busted right now! There is no reason you can’t memorize everything you need to know for Friday’s test!” 

      Sometimes these two loves of mine collide in strange ways. I imagine, for example, Joan Baez telling Bob Dylan, “Babe, really though, don’t you mean ’Lie Lady Lie’?” Like a game of Operation, some songs connect viscerally to places and people and situations: I cannot hear Natalie Cole’s This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) and not belt it out too, chasing away any remnants of a bad mood. Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets? It will forever remind me of a girl named Joyce who I walked to school with every day. Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street makes me think of a boy I knew who will never grow old, and the entire David Bowie album, Ziggy Stardust, brings me right back to the kitchen of my very first best friend and the drinking parties we had at her house in high school. 

      I was a Beatle girl first and a Rolling Stones girl second. I listened to Donna Summer’s On the Radio album over and over so many times that my brother once yelled up the stairs to me, “Enough is Enough Tricia!” A friend, and the son of my old piano teacher, introduced me to Warren Zevon. We sat in his room listening to “Werewolves of London” and turned to one another to deadpan the line, “I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vics - and his hair was perfect.” Then we’d smile, feeling like he was our own personal and very cool discovery. 

      The other morning, I set my iPod to “shuffle” and stepped on the elliptical. About forty minutes later, a song came on that I haven’t heard in a long time. At one time, it had special significance to me, yet I began to sing along, grounded and unmoved by those ancient associations. Then, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, just as the string section swelled and the vocalist began again, some instantaneous charge was ignited, fusing the past and present and causing my voice to catch. A bark-like sob discharged obstinately from my now short circuiting lungs. Almost as quickly as the moment began, it was over. 

      What the hell was that? I wondered, wiping tears with the back of my hand. But some part of me understood that the music had travelled straight through the insulated me like a hot, electrical current, aiming straight for the bare conductor somewhere deep within. The result? Musically induced momentary overload. 

      I’m home alone tonight, a rare thing these days. I sat down and played the piano for a solid hour-and-a-half and in that time I believe I ran the gamut of my emotional arpeggios. I still like the discipline of the classical composers, but a few years ago I had a small treble clef tattooed on my inner ankle with the words “a piacere” above it. An admittedly rare Italian musical phrasing instruction, it means to play “as you like it.” 

      In life, as well as at the piano, I need the reminder that sometimes not following someone else’s rules is okay too. I can trust myself to find the words, make the choices, and know that whether I am right or wrong, the sound that demands to be felt is true: A piacere. 

 21 Nov 2014 

 The Acrimonious Acronyms of Education 

      It’s a peculiar time to be a public school teacher. I have just spent the better part of the last ten months “teaching to the test” as they say (all the while encouraging us not to say it) because I had no other sane choice. In April, I paced fretfully as my ELA classes sat for the LAL section of the Big, Bad NJ ASK state test. My colleagues and I feel enormous pressure to ensure that our (read: our student’s) scores make AYP so that the DOE lifts the “Focus School” designation, which will force a hasty retreat by the ever-present RAC team. 

      Then, just as we all heaved a sigh of relief at having that behind us, we were reminded that our students still had to take a combination of four MCU tests; one covering the final unit, and the other three representing a “post-test” administered to see if we (teachers) met our SGO’s this year. Tiered with a variety of growth percentages associated with the myriad ability levels in a single classroom (thank you, NCLB), the final Excel spreadsheet analysis requires a level of mathematical wizardry that make my English teacher’s eyes twitch with anxiety. 

     The final numbers will inform our SGPs, which are linked to our educator codes, which become part of our final evaluations, which tie directly to our continued enjoyment of gainful employment. After all of that, the only thing left to do was to compile a binder of “artifacts” that prove that I carried out the PGP (which used to be a PIP, then a PDP– stay with me here) I developed last year, and then create a new PGP for next year. My new one includes methods of teaching three-part objectives that will prepare my students for the upcoming PARCC all the while pretending to not be “teaching to the test.” Natch. 

      When, you ask, did I have the time to plan and implement meaningful, engaging classroom experiences while slogging through this artifact uncovering, evidence building, number crunching spectacular exercise in what corporate employees refer to as good ole C.Y.A.? (Cover Your Ass.) Ha! As the kids (remember them? See paragraph #2) say: LOL. 

      The real irony is that the more gnashing of teeth that goes on with regard to these test scores, the more irrelevant the actual children who generate them seem to become. I have found myself more than once this year holding my breath as I ran my index finger down two rows of numbers, exhaling only when I got to the bottom and confirmed that the second column was equal to, or higher than, the first. 

      I used to look at the names too. 

     It used to matter to me a whole lot more who was doing well and who was struggling and why. I picked up on things like changes in handwriting or a sudden drop in grades. The comments I wrote on their essays in purple ink addressed the content of their essays as often as the construction. Only a few years ago I would not have considered trying to provide students with a prepared set of examples to use in almost any explanatory quote essay, or a single generic metaphor to use to get points for including figurative language. I would not have advised entire classes to kill two birds with one stone in terms of point gathering by beginning any picture prompt essay on that state test with the English teacher’s one-two punch, the hook-dialogue combo, “’Wow!’ Said Tom.” 

      When I coach them to do these things, I call it a “tool chest.” In my mind, it’s more like the frenzied clamoring for the daggers and spears placed in the cornucopia at the start of The Hunger Games. It’s not just that it’s a numbers game now instead of a word game. It’s that it’s a game, period. Survival is the goal and it’s quantifiable. The key players, however, are nameless and faceless to the people who are making decisions about them and for them. 

      Meanwhile, here’s a succinct little example I like to give people about just one of the many failings of NCLB: I teach writing. If a student in my class has been I&RS’d and winds up with an IEP that recommends a modification that says “Whenever possible, allow this student to speak his responses instead of writing them,” then by law, that is what I have to do. If I don’t, his parents have grounds for a lawsuit. Against me, his writing teacher. When April comes along, and that same student has to take the state test, that IEP simply won’t fly. He may be given additional time, but he will have to write the essays. Here again, the state plays by different rules and we are left scratching our heads going, “Uhm, WTF?” 

      Another curious morsel: The “Model Curriculum,” conceived and designed by the DOE, now drives everything that math and English/Language Arts teachers do, as well as when we do it. For ELA, however, the MC recommends that we teach the persuasive essay in the first few months of the school year. Then in April, just prior to that Big Bad test, they recommend that we teach the narrative. This is particularly baffling when you consider the age group. 

       Dear NJDOE, Have you MET the average 13 yr. old? Here’s a fun idea:          Send one upstairs to get something, and then hold your breath. When they come back a half-hour later (if at all) empty handed and completely mystified about why they went up in the first place, you’ll be lucky to get CPR. 

      Love, 

      Middle School Teachers 

      Did I mention that the persuasive essay is also the “big ticket” item on that test? Forty-five minutes long and worth more than twice as many points as the narrative essay. Upon reflection, the sequencing of the Model Curriculum KMYW (Kinda Makes You Wonder). Knowing all of this, I personally defy the MC and go back to the persuasive in April. Wildcard rebel that I am, I also explain to kids the point system that will be used to score their (read: my) essays. 

    I provide a frame of reference for them that I think might help. I tell them to think of it like a video game or a sporting event, or if necessary, The Hunger Games. One is reminded of the great coaches of the past, the Knute Rockne’s, the John Wooden’s, (or maybe just John Belucshi’s Bluto speech in Animal House?) as I wrap up my final motivational pep talk with…“We’re after points, guys. We need lots to win! Now let’s go out there and kick some NJ Ask!!!!” 

      There is no doubt in my mind that teaching kids to write clear, effective arguments is an important life skill that will serve them well no matter what they decide to do with their lives. Still, the minute we get a break from all of this testing and formulaic writing, I dive into what I consider the fun, creative stuff for the few remaining weeks we have. This often includes poetry and the personal narrative. 

      One of the activities I’ve done for a few years now is the “Chicken Soup Story.” First, we read a bunch of them. Using the Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul or Pre-Teen Soul books, I photocopy what I think are stories that cover a variety of topics that will interest both the boys and the girls. We read them out loud and talk about them. I keep about a half dozen copies of those books on the shelf in my room and encourage students to borrow them and read as many as they can. 

      We discuss how sometimes, the events described in them are small, but the impact on a life is big. We wonder aloud about why sometimes those who seem to “have it all” are unhappy, while those with real challenges appear to find joy in their lives. We talk about the value of things like honesty and trustworthiness, determination and forgiveness. We define what it means to have good character, and how much there is to learn not just from our experiences, but how we respond to them. 

       This is, quite obviously, The Good Stuff. Along the way they enthusiastically identify the themes of each selection, and admire the word choice and vivid imagery provided by the authors. We note how well snippets of dialogue move the story along, and how after the main character’s epiphany (what plot diagrams call the climax) there is some type of resolution, even if it is only a greater understanding of some aspect of life. By the time that I tell them that they too, have had enough experiences in life to create an original Chicken Soup Story; that they can reflect upon and write about what they’ve learned from these experiences, there is an energy in the room that I haven’t seen all year. They are genuinely excited. They want to tell their stories. 

      And tell them they do. It is the end of May by then, and as I read their stories I finally “meet” my students. I discover that David had a two year-old sister who died last June and he worries all the time about his mom’s sadness. Marco’s dad was a gang member and is now in prison. He wonders if his dad remembers him, because he hasn’t seen him in years. Angie wants so desperately to be popular, that she goes along with the nasty, bullying tactics of her friends, and then goes home and into her small apartment feeling so guilty that she methodically cuts herself with a razor. Rosa’s uncle molested her for years, but he was a drug addict then, and he’s clean now so it’s “all good.” Delilah wants to be an artist, and those doodles she’s constantly drawing in her notebook? They help her organize her thoughts before she writes in a way no graphic organizer would. Carlos is living at the YMCA in one room with his mom and younger sister. That’s why he didn’t come to detention that time, because he doesn’t take the regular school bus home, there’s a special one that comes for him every day. He wrote about how he was glad he had this opportunity to tell me this in “private.” Luis, a serious, considerate boy, is the oldest of three children, and the only one who is not severely autistic. It’s sometimes hard to focus in school because his parents need his help with his siblings, and he feels protective of them as well. Krystal’s parents went through an ugly divorce last summer, and she had to go to court and choose which parent she wanted to live with. No one seems to be paying attention at all in Destiny’s house, because she stays up until 2:00 or 3:00 every night texting, Instagram-ing and Facebook-ing. As a result, she is often so tired during the school day that she gets in trouble for falling asleep. Raphael cooks dinner every night and takes care of his two younger siblings because his dad works nights and his mom is working two jobs. 

      But why would we want to know anything about that? That’s just messy, that is. You can’t calculate it, and there’s no section on the bubble sheet for that #2 pencil to code in the right letters or numbers for exhaustion or depression or anxiety or pain and then write a well-organized five-paragraph essay either supporting or refuting the value of same sex schools using details, facts and examples to support your opinion until you see the words STOP! Do not go on until you are told to do so. 

      I understand the need for all the numbers. Truly, I do. The concept of data-driven instruction looks really good on paper too. I get it. It’s a logical approach that seems to make sense just as I’m sure NCLB seemed back in 2002. I just think that some really important stuff is getting lost in the process. The connection I have to my students as people, for one. All the components of a student’s life that can’t be quantified for another, and the sense that this new world has a kind of survival of the fittest sensibility for teachers that leaves us with no option but to squelch every instinct we have about the real, true indicators of instructional effectiveness in favor of making our quota. 

      In an effort to keep the educational conveyer belt humming we’re becoming factories, funneling nice, neat black numbers into little white squares on a grid. Numbers that often have little or no real connection to the people they represent. Numbers that, when all is said and done, are really being used to evaluate teachers, not to help students. 

 20 Jun 2014 

 The $1 Valentine 

      A few years ago, I had a bubbly, brown-eyed girl named Zoey in my 8th grade class who was head-over-heels in love with one of the 8th grade boys. She talked about little else, wrote Jonathan inside the hearts that she drew all over her notebooks, and became apoplectic if his name was called over the PA system. 

     Her devotion to the crush she had on this boy was common knowledge; her openness about it endearing. She even talked to me about it. When I asked her if he knew, she rolled her eyes, smiled widely, and nodded her head yes. When I asked if he returned her affections, she glanced away, pulled her black, high top Chuck Taylors up onto the seat of her chair, pressed her chin down onto the knobby knees of her skinny jeans, and shook her head no. She explained to me that boys like him did not go out with girls like her. “He is way out of my league right now,” she explained, still smiling. “He could have anyone,” she said, throwing her arms wide to illustrate the point. 

      This fact, however, did little to lessen the single mindedness of her obsession, or to prevent her from sharing her worship of him with anyone who would listen. I knew Jonathan. He had the confident kind of good looks that kids now refer to as ‘”swag,” and in truth, he probably did have his pick of those 7th and 8th grade girls. Tall and lanky, he wore his dark brown hair short in the back and long in the front and carefully disheveled. He walked the halls with the athletic gait of a boy who knows he’s popular, and looked down at his adoring posse through amused hazel eyes framed by long, black lashes. 

     I had him in another class and found his cockiness disappointing. He couldn’t help but know how beautiful he was, I supposed, but he seemed to believe that this, combined with a certain amount of oily charm would get him through. He’d flash his dazzling white smile at me and explain that he’d forgotten his homework, or that he didn’t have time to study because basketball was in season. When I told him that this did not excuse him, that brilliant smile would quickly fade and he’d mutter something bitterly under his breath. The “it” girls around him would commiserate with him about the unfairness of it all, and would sometimes offer to do it for him. More than once, I’d seen him turn on the charm to get others to do his work. 

      In short, I thought privately that Zoey could do so much better. She was quirky and bright and creative and funny and I didn’t like seeing her devote so much emotional energy to a boy who, in my opinion, was conceited, manipulative, and vapid. 

      I was the advisor to the school newspaper back then, and Zoey was a valued staff member. We were gearing up for the February issue, which ran the much-anticipated Valentine’s Day messages. Kids could buy the space to write a message for a friend or crush for $1.00. Zoey was an eager promoter of the Valentine’s Day messages. I knew, as everyone did, that she had purchased and written several for Jonathan, so I worried a little more than usual about how willing she was to put herself out there for this boy. Not only could I not imagine him caring very much about her declarations of love, I was afraid that he and his friends would be unkind about her lack of subtlety. I also knew that while he would have many admirers, there was a good chance she wouldn’t have any. 

     The V-Day Messages were our biggest fundraiser (second only to the sale of a DVD that our paper once mistakenly advertised as the “8th grade ‘Copulation’” instead of Compilation). Kids would line up to get those little slips of paper, and then write sweet assurances of love and friendship. They sent them to their bff’s as often as they sent them to the boys and girls that they “liked”. 

      The messages had to be carefully read and sometimes edited, and then typed up prior to the publication of the paper. They were printed alphabetically by the name of the recipient, and it never ceased to amaze me how many were addressed to “Babe.” Those beginning with the name “Jonathan” were a close second. I couldn’t help but notice that he, on the other hand, had not sent one. 

     It was not unusual during this time for students to come running to my classroom waving dollar bills, hoping to get a message in before the deadline, or hoping to retract one already written (middle school romances being short-lived and fickle and all). I always typed them up myself, to avoid the inclusion of any inappropriate messages and that’s what I was doing in my classroom one day after school just before Valentine’s Day when Jonathon tapped lightly on the door. I looked up and the first thing that struck me was his sheepishness. The swaggering self-assuredness was gone, and he stood there for a minute, hands in pockets, shifting from foot to foot, looking everywhere but at me. “Jonathan?” I began, “Are you alright? What’s up?” 

      He pulled one of his hands out of his jeans pocket, and out of it dropped a dollar bill onto my desk. “I need to buy a valentine,” he said, glancing up at the board with feigned interest. 

      “Well, the deadline has passed Jonathan, it’s really too late at this point—“      

     “Mrs. H., please.” He said simply, imploring me with his eyes. 

      “Okay then, make it quick.” I sighed, slipping him the paper. He wrote quickly, folded the paper in half and tossed it onto my desk. By the time I unfolded it and read the name he’d written on the line next to the word “To” Jonathan was gone. Smiling to myself, I placed it at the bottom of the pile of messages I was working on and continued to type. The paper would go to “press” the following morning and I needed to get these done. 

      Near the end of the next day, the school paper was distributed. Students quickly grabbed their copies and immediately flipped past the regular school news to get to the pages at the end, the ones with the valentines. Some of them elicited smiles and some prompted tears, and still others caused fights (mostly among girls), but it was the very last one that I’ll always remember: Zoey T. - You flatter me and make me smile. Happy Valentine’s Day. – Jonathan. 

      It would have been so easy for any 14 yr. old boy to blow her off, to make fun of her ever present adoration with his friends, and dismiss her as some geek stalker. Perhaps Zoey was right. Jonathon was never going to feel about her the way she felt about him, but judging by her elation over that one sentence, it was more than enough for her to be acknowledged and appreciated by him. It did not escape her (or me) that hers was the only one he’d sent, and that small, sweet gesture forever changed my impression of him. 

     Jonathan did understand his power, and he had risen to the occasion. He knew didn’t have to love her back. All he had to do, was be kind. 

 16 Feb 2014 

 It’s a Different World….Or is it? 

     I was eight years old and in fourth grade the day it happened. I was walking to school one morning and had just gotten to that larger-than-usual lot six houses up from mine, when I noticed the large, black car driving slowly next to me. I looked over, and saw that the passenger side window was down. The driver, a man with dark, slicked back hair was saying something to me, but I hadn’t heard him. I paused, and took one step closer to the car. “Excuse me?” I said politely. 

      “Do you want to earn ten bucks easy?” The man repeated, his voice quiet, urging me to move closer. 

      “Oh, uhm, no thanks.” I said simply and I continued walking. I wasn’t scared. In fact, I was almost certain that he meant raking leaves. I didn’t like to rake leaves, and I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, so I figured that raking his leaves was out of the question. It was a no brainer. I met my friend Randi at the corner as usual and we walked the remaining two blocks to school. The conversation with the man in the black car never came up. It just didn’t seem important to me. 

 ********************************************************************************* 

    I didn’t trust my memory, so I asked my mom about this the other day: “Mom, how old was I when I began walking to school by myself?” 

      “What do you mean?” She began, mildly incredulous. “You always walked by yourself!” 

      “You didn’t walk me? Even in Kindergarten?” I prodded. 

      “Of course not. Well, maybe the first day. All you kids walked.” 

      It wasn’t a long walk. The equivalent of about three blocks. Sometimes I walked with my brother, who was three years older than I was. Eventually, I began to walk part of the way with a friend who lived on the top half of my long, oak-tree lined street. She met me at the halfway point. There were exactly seven houses between my house and the corner where I met her. Between the sixth and seventh house there was a larger-than-usual lot that had even more oak trees. I remember that when I first began walking to school by myself, I was little enough to be terrorized by an unruly gang of squirrels who hung out there in the autumn months. Every day, when I got to that part of the sidewalk next to the larger-than-usual lot, I stopped and watched them dart around, frantically collecting acorns. At times we’d reach a kind of stand-off, the squirrels staring me down like delinquent teenagers until I’d gather my nerve to take off and run straight through them, often in tears. 

      I am from a generation that did not have formal “play-dates”. We went outside. We found the other kids who were outside. We played until it got dark, or our mothers called us home. The house I grew up in sat in a kind of small suburban valley bordered on two sides by sloping hills. The houses on my side of the block all had small backyards that ended in a narrow wooded area that rose up and separated them from the backyards the next block over. I spent countless hours in there, playing hide and seek, looking for fossils, collecting leaves or filing jars with lightning bugs. I played often with the boy next door and we called it “the jungle.” 

      One summer morning, I filled my father’s Marine canteen with water and we took it with us. All afternoon, we were explorers in the jungle, carefully rationing out the water in that canteen so that we would “survive.” Another time, convinced that we had seen a snake slither down between the roots of a tree, we snuck back into the house just long enough to grab two towels and two pieces of lined paper before heading back out. We didn’t hear our mothers calling to us at dinner time, but I will never forget the sound of his mom’s laughter as she described to mine how she had found us sitting cross-legged beside the tree trunk, towels wrapped around our heads, blowing into sheets of paper rolled up like “flutes,” which we were pretending to play in an attempt to charm the snake back out of the hole. 

      The most trouble I ever got in as a kid happened when I was six years old. I was a couple of blocks over at my friend Patti’s house when we decided we wanted to go to the park. The park, however, was an off-limits trip for me without a grownup. The park meant crossing Lakeside Avenue, a wide, four-lane mini-highway at the bottom of Patti’s street. I called my mom to ask if I could go. Her answer was a firm, “No.” In an uncharacteristically brazen attempt to persuade her to change her mind, I pushed her, pointing out quite reasonably that Patti was seven. Mom wasn’t having it though, and she proceeded to launch into an equally rare explanation of why. She told me that Lakeside Avenue was too dangerous for a six and seven year old to navigate alone. 

      If asking her twice was unlike me, what I did next was just sheer lunacy: I went anyway. I went, and have this picture in my mind of Patti and me, smiling as we walked, single file, with our arms outstretched for balance, as though on a tight-rope, along a log at the edge of the lake when Billy, Patti’s brother, came running toward us across an open field like Paul Revere, yelling, “Tricia! Tricia! Your mother knows you’re at the park! She knows and she’s coming for you!” 

     Holy Mary, Mother of God. This was bad. This was very, very bad. This was scary. Another child might have tried to run or hide. I knew that my only choice was to go home and face it. I walked up Morningside Road and turned right onto South Prospect Street, where I saw her at the other end walking toward me. I trudged toward her, walking the proverbial “Green Mile.” Suffice it to say that for at least a week, my sore rear end was a daily reminder of the consequences for being sneaky and defiant. And of course, in addition to breaking one of the few rules she had about where I could play, I had scared her. My dad had a little joke about mothers in general, saying that in these circumstances, “That which doesn’t kill you, gives her the right to.” 

             ************************************************************* 

     Randi and I were in the same class. When we arrived at school on the day the man in the black car spoke to me, our teacher, Mrs. DeJohn, chose Randi to begin “Show and Tell.” Usually, Show and Tell consisted of a half hour of kids holding up cool snow globes from Disney, or a really sweet piece of quartz from a museum gift store that would make everyone wish that they too, had one. 

      Not that day. That day, Randi stood up in front of the class and told the exact same story about being approached by a man in a black car as what I had experienced. Funny thing was, at that moment, lots of smiling little 4th grade girls started eagerly waving their hands saying, “Me too!” 

     It seemed exciting! We looked at one another, marveling at this thrilling coincidence. None of us really noticed at first that Mrs. DeJohn had walked quickly out of the classroom to the main office down the hall. That night, I was in my PJs ready for bed when the doorbell rang. We rarely had evening visitors, so there were plenty of questioning looks between my siblings and parents as they went to open the door. A few minutes later, I was sitting on the couch between two large police officers, feeling very self-conscious in my pajamas, looking at hundreds of pages of mug shots in a big black binder. 

      I didn’t choose the right guy, which later on, wasn’t surprising to me at all. I hadn’t really paid attention to him. The fact that he stopped me and asked me that question seemed a bit odd I suppose, but there didn’t seem to be anything menacing about it. To be honest, those squirrels terrified me a hell of a lot more. I didn’t pick up on danger at all. And as I write this, I think of my 10 year-old daughter, who is two years older than I was at the time and the hair on the back of my neck stands at attention. 

      Randi was the one who “caught” him. A few days later, she saw him again. This time, she was able to point him out to her mom, who called the police right away and they picked him up. Turns out he was a pretty scary guy. Adults were tossing around words in low voices like pedophile, and child pornographer, and then they’d glance over at us kids, pointedly turn their heads the other way, and speak in whispers. 

              ************************************************** 

      My youngest, Elizabeth, has always ridden the bus to school. Her bus stop used to be at the nearest corner to our house, which is visible from our dining room windows. Until this year, I walked her, and waited with her-and never considered allowing her to do this alone. In fact, on those days that she took the bus home, if there were no parent waiting for her, they wouldn’t have let her get off the bus either. 

      This is the world we live in now. This year, the bus picks her up directly across the street from our front door. It was a significant rite of passage that, as a big 5th grader, she asked if she could walk to the bus stop and wait alone. Doing this was a point of pride with her for the first month or so of school, and then a few weeks ago, just prior to the announcement that the famed New York WNEW DJ, Dave Herman, was arrested for attempting to transport a 7-year-old to St. Croix with the intent to engage in sexual activity with her, there were two attempted “lurings” of young girls in our town. Parents were notified immediately via mass emails, and the kids were told too. 

     The next morning, I watched as she walked down the front walk and crossed the street to wait. I had just closed the front door and was standing in front of the dining room windows scanning the empty opposite side of the street for her when, before I had a chance to panic, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find her there, shaking and crying, saying, “I’m scared. Come with me.” 

      I hate the fact that she is afraid. I hate that when she asks to go play by the creek behind our house I say yes with a twinge of uneasiness I doubt my mother ever had. I hate that when her very best friend moved from the house next door to a couple of blocks over, she lost the ability to just yell, “I’m going to Lulu’s,” and walk out the back door. I hate that I sometimes feel like the “helicopter parent,” overprotective with an overactive imagination. I hate that those emails fuel that fear. 

      I think that I had a much simpler childhood. But did I? Dave Herman is 77 years old for God’s sake. How many women my age owe their damaged bodies and psyches to that particular monster? Were we just naïve? Or is it the fact that things like this were only spoken of in whispers? That parents whose children were victimized made sure that they were also “protected,” so that they weren’t stigmatized as well. “Protected” translates to a generation of kids who were told not to talk about it. Who were molested, and then silenced without explanation. What that translates to, is a nightmare I cannot imagine, and I realize that while I do not want my child to live in fear, I’m glad she is more cautious than I felt the need to be.  We talk often about the idea that no adult stranger ever needs her “help”, and if she really believes they do, that she should say, “I’ll be right back with my mom/dad.” 

      I wish she’d come in the house more often with the smell of fall leaves in her hair after playing outside for hours. I wish her biggest fear had to do with a constellation of gray squirrels racing around her, or her mother’s wrath for breaking the rules. She doesn’t know the specifics, but I could tell by her reaction that morning that she understands that there are other, more sinister things to be afraid of, and it comforts me and breaks my heart in equal measure. 

 8 Nov 2013 

 Cape Escape, Part I 

      The drive up is, at best, five hours. We live in New Jersey, so we say that, “the drive up.” Rhode Islanders taking the same route refer to it as going “down”. If the kids are with us, among my responsibilities as annoying parent is that of identifying the crossing of state borders by turning in my seat to announce, “Connecticut Welcomes You!” Our youngest likes to count the bridges along the way, and she knows that it is the fourth bridge that really matters, the milestone that means you’ve entered another kind of place. 

      If you travel in the wee hours like we do, you can avoid the four lanes of traffic that typically merge toward it, and there’s something truly magnificent about the Bourne bridge at dawn, how it scoops you up and over the shimmering canal, and then eases you down depositing you right smack in front of the rounded, Disney-esque, topiary of the words “Cape Cod”. This, however, is nothing more than cheerful irony. As we navigate the bustling hub of traffic entering and exiting the rotary that surrounds it, we have arrived at what natives of the area refer to as “up Cape.” 

      Our final destination, however, means continuing to wind around and follow the flow of traffic north for at least another hour, heading “down Cape.” The second rotary has considerably less fanfare, but has the distinction of being referred to as the “elbow” of the Cape. Soon after, the main arteries of highways give way to numbered, vein-like, county roads, off which smooth paved local streets are carved out between dense, green forests. They twist and turn, snaking up and around in gentle rolling hills until you lose your sense of direction completely. Slivers of images beyond the trees distract you. The shock of red as a kayaker glides quietly along a lake, the cool, mercury glint of a kettle pond appearing and disappearing among the leaves of flowering dogwoods. 

      If you’re renting, or here for the first time, what you’re looking for at this point is probably one of the thousands of dusty capillaries of dirt roads sneaking through canopies of White Pine and Bebb Willow, Scarlet and Black oak. They appear as little more than sandy paths the color of fortune cookies amidst the green. Often carpeted in dead pine needles, you’d never imagine the secret treasures beyond, the surprise they’ll reveal at their end. 

      Something about them draws me in completely; I long to explore each one and sometimes, especially in the off-season, my husband will indulge me and we’ll pick one or two of these roads and plunge in, submerged in the deep, dark, emerald of the pines, then ascend from the undergrowth just in time to happen upon a cluster of rural mailboxes, hear the cry of a gull; small clues that hint at the possibility that there’s something up ahead. And then nothing. The road might narrow to the point that the wild blackberries and sheep laurel slap the car doors as you bounce along, and just when you begin to think you must have gone wrong, all at once, the shadowy cape of branches and thicket come to an abrupt end. There, with some great, sweeping flourish, the woods unfurl, giving way to a panoramic expanse of endless deep turquoise water punctuated with white caps, and mirrored by an impossibly blue sky dotted with bleached white puffs of cloud. 

      All of this a picturesque canvas, the backdrop to a small settlement of manicured lawns carved out between moors of sassafras, witch hazel and wild beach plum bushes. Upon each sit the greyish brown of cedar shake cottages. Framed by lavender and hoards of pink hydrangeas, they arrange themselves like paintings at the edge of a cliff. 

      Our house sits like the dot on an i at the end of one such dirt road. Camouflaged by tall pines and low-lying lady slipper and beach heather, it is barely visible even at the top of the road. Once you make the turn onto the driveway there’s a small oval of blue beneath a lantern, the same blue as the shutters on the house beyond, with “Haefeli” etched into it. To the left is a perfect postage stamp of a lawn, bordered by a white picket fence and an arching white trellis, through which you glimpse the first patch of blue water just beyond. 

      New Englander’s like to name their homes. The early settlers did it out of necessity, before there were street names or house numbers. More of an affectionate tradition today, the names range from reverent to humorous, reflecting life’s mottos, inside jokes, a personal philosophy, or just clever wordplay. Whatever the sentiment, they are not chosen hastily, and to their owners, they hold great significance. The blue plaque above our garage reads, “Searenity” and it seems to me now that it was one of the many things bought as a retaining wall of ownership; a valiant effort to stake our claim on a thing of beauty, and deny the possibility of loss. 

      From this side, the side we call “the back” although it’s really the front, the house appears to be quite pleasant. Average sized, typical expanded Cape style, detached garage. You walk in the front door to face the staircase, the living room to the right. Even if it’s your first time here, you’ll put your bags down on the long weathered bench against the wall and follow as though some kind of magnetic pole was pulling you left toward the kitchen. You might tilt your head down at this point, and when you look up, no matter what the weather is, your eyes widen, a small, murmured “Oh,” leaves your breathless lips, and you stop dead in your tracks. 

      The great room sits three steps below the sea green of the marbled kitchen surfaces. Shaped like a ship’s bow, the walls, what there are of them, are white. The muted beiges of Orientals break up the warm glow of the hardwood floors beneath, and a big, comfy, “L” shaped couch in a pale buttery yellow takes center stage facing away from you. A couple of strategically placed armchairs covered in white sailcloth follow suit, but what they do face is not a television, and you won’t notice anything in that room right away anyway, because you’re not meant to. The real attraction lies beyond the eight enormous windows that form the “walls” on the starboard and port sides. Designed to showcase what no interior designer on earth could even hope to conceive, they make up the “front” of the house, and through them, a spectacular view of the ever-changing grandeur of the shoreline appears to have been captured all around you in one huge, continuous, white framed, sequence. 

      Trust me on this: It never gets old. 

      Aside from the memories our family has built here, this is the very heart of the house. A good thing to keep in mind, because being in it is the closest you can be to sitting in the copse before the dune grass, protected from the elements, looking out on the colors of the water and the sky; things that have always been, and will always be. Things at once immutable, and unremittingly changing. Things that no one can take away. 

      There are few things in life I treasure more than the early morning on the Cape. Waking to the lazy, rhythmic sound of the tide, I’m generally the first one up. I slip downstairs, pour a cup of coffee and take in that magnificent view. Eventually, I make my way outside for what used to be a long run alone, and has become a long walk, often with my husband. 

      Depending on my mood, I jog out the dirt path to its end and then choose: To the left a stretch of undulating pavement takes me a few miles past kettle ponds and out to the main road. The right leads to the salt marsh, and beyond that, First Encounter, a stretch of beach that marks one of the first stops made by Myles Standish before he moved on to Plymouth. The way to the latter is my favorite. The blue Manitoba flycatcher boxes stand deep in the marsh to attract the greenhead flies, a real necessity especially on days where the wind is still and the tide is low, and millions of Fiddler crabs scuttle around the muddy edges close to the road. 

     There is a very specific Cape Cod sort of Americana along this road too; heart shaped, painted driftwood American flags and my favorite, an arrangement of clam shells pressed into the soil on the side of the road, painted to create a seaside version of Old Glory. At its end, the road is lined on both sides with the dunes, the tall sea grass curved in frozen arcs as a reminder that stillness doesn’t last for long near the sea. 

     In recent years, as the fear of losing this place to forces outside our control became more acute, we’ve savored our time here with a fierce determination. My husband, who found the original house and realized a childhood dream as he built it, railed at the writing on the wall, channeling his rage into a myriad of improvements. Each project ensured a fortress-like permanence, an impenetrable force field of devotion to his promise. On occasion, he’d disappear and I’d find him on the upper deck staring straight through sunsets. With his face bathed in the orange glow of the early dusk, he’d detail the plots of elaborate strategies, swearing “As God is my witness” soliloquys, cursing the fates that led to this, and ultimately sighing deeply. “We are here now,” he’d say. “Today, it’s still ours.”  Another year would go by and we both believed it. 

      Then, a few months ago, a maelstrom of forces collided and the threat could no longer be ignored. Right to the bitter end, (and probably beyond) we fought and haggled and reasoned. We schemed and bargained and we prayed. But in the end, the decision was made for us, and other priorities prevailed. Battle weary and still disbelieving, we alternated between numb acceptance and weepy grief. “It will be alright,” we told one another, “we’ll find another one.” 

      Mitch Album wrote, “All endings are really beginnings, we just don’t know it at the time.” So here we are. We gathered this weekend not to mourn, but to celebrate the time we’ve had in this house, and to scout out our next one. The girls brought enough fireworks to make July 4th seem small by comparison and we set them off on the beach our first night. Last night at dinner we recounted our favorite stories. It was our youngest’s idea. She said we should each tell one memory that was funny and one that was “endearing” about the house. We willingly obliged, going around the table, laughing until we cried as each of us shared morsels of history and I was struck by what they all had in common, by what was strangely conspicuous to me about each of those memories: None of them had to do with the house. Not a single one. 

      Our love of this place, our history as a family, does not require the wood, or the glass, or the marble, or even the view from that room. In that moment I knew that we did the right thing coming here this weekend and that the cycle of our grief is almost complete. We looked at some beautiful properties today, and although I will always feel an inextricable bond to this place, I’m beginning to feel excited about starting again. I can go up to bed now, and know that late tonight, when I wake as I always do, I will listen for the sound of the surf, and rise to marvel at the reflection of the moon on the water. I will hear the soft rustle of the curved dune grass and it will serve to remind me that all that is most beautiful here, all that I treasure most, endures because it will bend rather than break. 

      We will find another dream on Cape Cod, but wherever our next house is, I know now that bow or no bow, it’s just the vessel. Our love for each other, the sound of our laughter, and the strength and resilience we share, those are the true elements of our “Searenity”. 

 Haefeli Time Capsule 25 Bay View Dr. Eastham, Ma 10-14-13 14 Oct 2013 

 My Baby Turns 18 

      Eighteen years ago today, I wore my favorite maternity dress to work, a pastel floral that was both cool and comfortable; two things that cannot be overstated when one is eight months pregnant. It was, as I recall, one of those gorgeous spring mornings when it seems that virtually overnight, all of the trees had conspired to birth new green buds. The cherry blossoms debuted their spectacularly brief appearance, and everywhere you looked, clusters of pink petals pressed against a background of clear blue sky. On the drive to work, I sang along with Sheryl Crow about how all she wanted to do was have some fun. 

      I began my workday in a “Status” meeting, and somewhere around the middle of it, I looked around the table at my all-male co-workers and said, “Would anyone mind if I left? I feel a little…. off.” Never had this group agreed on something so quickly. Lots of enthusiastic nods. I stood, and as I as walked to the door, almost an entire month before my due date, my water broke. 

      What happened after that has all the elements of an I Love Lucy episode. Thankfully, only one of the men seemed to notice that something was up, and he followed me out of the room. I was talking to one of the secretaries at that moment, both of us staring down at my now soggy shoes as I murmured something like, “So I guess I need to go home now?” 

      “You can’t drive!” She exclaimed, and seeing my deer-in-the-headlights expression, took charge. She turned to Rick, the man who had followed me out, and barked, “You live near her. Can you take her to the hospital?” 

      I barely remember getting into the car. What I do remember is the sudden panic I felt when Rick said to me, “Just think, by this time tomorrow, you’re going to be a mother.” 

      “Yeah,” I said, dazed. 

      I was thinking about the baby shower gifts still in their packaging on my dining room table at home. My shower was only two days before. I wasn’t ready. How could this happen today? I wasn’t having contractions, but all of a sudden, I was scared. I asked him to drive a little faster. Forty or so minutes later, we arrived at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston. 

     I knew my husband was meeting us there, but I didn’t know the older couple that was walking out of the hospital as we walked in. Rick greeted them warmly with anxious promises to, “talk to them later.” I gave them a hurried, “Hi!” and waddled through the door, conscious of their inquisitive glances in my direction. Jeeze, haven’t they ever seen a pregnant woman before? I wondered distractedly. “Who’re they?” I glanced at Rick over my shoulder. 

     He stopped walking for a minute, and I turned to face him. With just a hint of hysteria, he replied, “My in-laws.” 

     We both lost it. “Oh, Reeekkky, you got some ‘splanin’ to do!” I managed to spit out right before I peed my pants. 

      Nineteen babies were born at St. Barnabas that day. Emily Walsh Halpin was one of them. She was only five pounds, but then, she was only seventeen inches, so she didn’t really look scrawny, just sort of miniature. They handed her to me and I looked at her teeny- tiny body and face and said, “You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” and I cried a little. When the pediatrician came the next morning to check her out, he declared her perfect, and added that, “Sometimes good things really do come in small packages.” 

      These are the things you remember. This is the story I told Emily every year on her birthday for years. There are other little details I remember too, like the outfit I brought her home in. It was a white onesie with rosebuds all over it. Preemie sized, it was still way too big for her. As they wheeled me out of the hospital holding her in my arms, I tried for a look of Mona Lisa-ish serenity, the way I thought new mothers were supposed to look and feel. What I really felt, looking down on this perfect little human, was something closer to terror. I looked around desperately for the person who would hand me the “book” before they let me take her home. You know, the “how-to” manual, the guide. Keeping Your Newborn Alive: For Dummies. 

      I had three full months off from work for maternity leave, and they proved to be one of the most stressful periods of my life, a murky, emotional, Bermuda triangle of bliss offset by grief and loss. I was inexperienced and she was colicky. I had never been a great sleeper myself before her arrival, and after she came I teetered on the verge of exhaustion all the time. I walked miles with her in my arms throughout the old Victorian house we owned, wondering what I was doing wrong, and if she would ever stop crying. Once, during our nightly walk the song “Happy Together” by the Turtles came on the radio and she suddenly stopped crying. After that, it became “our” song, and I sang it to her every night, long after her infancy: “Imagine me and you, I do/ I think about you day and night/ it’s only right/ to think about the girl you love/ and hold her tight/ so happy together!” 

      My marriage at that time, always an erratic EKG of highs and lows, had entered a cold, flat-line of silent accusation and resentment. By July, after one final downward spike, I packed up my white Celica and left. I was nursing two- month old Emily at the time, and the day I moved, my milk dried up. 

      And then, at the beginning of September, my father died. I had stopped at my parent’s house on my way home that night to see him. I looked at him sleeping in the hospital bed my mother had arranged for him, then kissed his head and left. About an hour later, as I sat rocking Emily in my rented home, I heard the phone ring. I knew. I let it ring. I rocked. I gazed at my sleepy baby, who was fed and warm and I watched her eyelids twitch and her mouth make little O’s. I closed my eyes, breathed in her baby smell, and kissed her soft, downy head. Finally, I put her down in her crib and whispered, “I don’t think you’re going to get to know your Grandpa.” Then I forced myself to make the call to confirm what I already knew, my dad was gone. 

      For a long time, I recalled the autumn that followed with an aching sense of loneliness and self-doubt. When I left him, I never imagined how many times I would go from staring at my infant, memorizing her little yawns and sighs, her smiles and hiccups, to glancing up instinctively, longingly, to meet the eyes of her father, the only other human on the plant who I believed would be equally rapt. At those moments I felt my single parent-ness most acutely, and I learned quickly to convert the funneling spiral of sadness that came with it into anger at his shortcomings, and at myself, for not being “enough” to change them. 

      Now I remember that period as being one filled with too many blessings to count. My superiors and colleagues at work were like family to me. The night I called my boss (and friend), to tell her all that had transpired during my maternity leave comes to mind. “What can we do to help?” was her sincere response. The memory of that still chokes me up. They rallied around me, letting me work from home two days a week, taking a never-ending interest in my “Emily” stories, and whether or not they actually were, doing a great impersonation of “rapt”. 

      Then there was the fact that the other three days a week, my mother, only three blocks away and happy to have Emily all to herself for a while, took her so that the only concern I had about child-care was how much she would be spoiled. It is no exaggeration to say that Emily came as a gift to both my mother and me at a time that could have been defined by loss. In ways we could not, and did not articulate, this new life saved each of us and gave our days a light-ness and a hope that held more power than the pain. She simply filled us up. 

     Here are the pictures, the flashbacks, the slideshow in my head: She was a pea in a pod that first Halloween. Right before Christmas, I propped her in front of the fireplace and took beautiful photographs of her right before the fire department had to come because I doused the Duraflame with water when we were done and the house filled up with smoke. The first time she went to her father’s overnight, I walked around feeling like my arm had just fallen off and I cried myself to sleep. She walked at nine months. In fact, one of the first words she said was, “Awk!” holding up her chubby arms for me to hold while she took her first aided steps. The summer after she turned one, my sister and I rented a house at the beach for a week. Several times each day I coated her in sunscreen before setting her down in the sand where she rolled around and emerged like a breaded chicken cutlet. 

      When Emily turned two, I bought a little white two-family house. I painted her room pink and planted a little garden in the yard while she sat next to me on the grass babbling lines from a book we’d read many times called The Story of Little Babaji (a presumably more politically correct version of my beloved, and now banned, childhood favorite, Little Black Sambo, although for the life of me, I cannot see the bias or the difference other than this child is Indian instead of African). Every night we played the same game while she soaked in the tub. I would close the shower curtain a little bit and say, “Where did Emily go? Is she in the kitchen? Is she in under the table?” And from behind the curtain she would answer “Noooo!” her voice giddy with the notion of fooling me. Over and over I would ask if she was here or there and she would answer me from behind the curtain. Finally, I would yank it back and “find” her and she would scream with delight. It never got old. 

      She got her first big girl bed in that house, and I smiled sleepily each night at the sound of her bare feet padding from her room to mine. One spring night I came home from a stressful day at work and noticed the maple seedlings all over the driveway. I put down my bag, picked one up, pealed it open and stuck it on her nose. Then we opened more and threw them up into the air to watch them spin to the ground. “Helicopters!” I exclaimed. “Hep-ti-collars!” She repeated happily, and I laughed out loud, my workday completely forgotten. 

     After I realized how much she loved the rhyming sing-songy words of most children’s books, I decided to try reading poetry to her instead. Every night for weeks she requested Robert Frost’s, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”. I added some gestures to it for her, pointing at my head when I said, “I think I know” and other motions that I thought would give it meaning and entertainment value for her. She was not quite four the night she stopped me from reading it again saying, “I’ll do it,” and to my delight she did, reciting the entire poem, adding a little shimmy of her own as she said, “He gives his harness bells a shake!” 

      Then there was the summer evening that she styled my short hair for me, adorning my locks with at least a dozen little bows and clips, kinda like Buckwheat in the Little Rascals. We both agreed I had never looked better. After dinner we heard the tell-tale jingle of the ice cream truck so I grabbed my wallet and her hand and ran outside to meet it. A neighboring mom and I stood making small talk as we waited our turn. Right before she turned to leave she gave me a sly smile, “So Trish, where’re you going?” 

      “Going? Where would I be going? What do you mean?” I asked perplexed. 

     She gestured to her head, and then mine, and at that moment, standing outside in front of half the neighborhood, I remembered the state of my hair. 

     This would prove to be a theme. One of her earliest school picture days I sent her off with her “bob” cut perfectly combed and secured with one tiny red bow clip. When the pictures came, she not only had the red bow, but several other clips and a hair band as well. It seems that she was working the, “If one is good, ten are better” philosophy. At the time, I was actually a little upset about her crazy little “do”. Now, it has become one of my favorite pictures. 

      Funny how that happens. 

      I called her my, “OK Mom,” kid, because that was her standard response to me, no matter what I said. She was never defiant or fresh. Really. Once, when she was about four, she used a bad word and I marched her into the bathroom and just grazed her front teeth with the soap. Honestly, it was not a true bar-of-soap-in-the-mouth thing. I just wanted to make a point. Boy, was she furious. She stormed away and then stormed back in, face red, fists balled, and she shook her little finger at me and said, “I’m thery, thery, thery, angry with you!” 

      Suppressing laughter, I countered with, “Well, then we have something in common, because I’m kinda angry with you too!” 

      “Humph!” She snorted, and stomped away. 

      Emily was four when I remarried and seven when I had her sister, Elizabeth. That same year, her cousin, who shares the same birthday, went off to college. I think that’s what prompted her to tell me for the first time that when she went to college, she wanted me to be her college roommate. “I promise not to hold you to that,” I told her, but for years afterward, she insisted that she still meant it. 

     Today, she is eighteen. Her life has not always been as charmed as what I’ve written here implies, but whose is? On the other hand, some of the challenges she has faced have been enormous, and she has handled them with more grace than I could have at her age. In three short months, she will go off to college, and no, I will not be her roommate. What I will be, is, well, sort of abbreviated. Not missing an arm perhaps, but not quite as whole as I am with her here. 

      I have always said that my children saved me from a life of complete self-absorption, and I cannot quite imagine my life without her here. I will miss all that she is, and she is so many more things than I can describe. She makes me laugh. Even as a child she had a very dry, sophisticated sense of humor. When she was in Middle School, I once stood over her, furious, yelling at her for listening to her iPod on an impossibly high decibel saying, “You’re going to go deaf from that, and I’m NOT GOING TO PAY FOR YOUR HEARING AIDS!!!! She looked up at me and after just the slightest pause, threw back her head and laughed. I ended up laughing too. Lately, I have to remind her not to make me laugh if we’re in public and I’ve been drinking a lot of water. It’s dangerous. 

     Over the years I have been in awe at her capacity for forgiveness, and shocked by the irrevocability of her stubborn streak. Her eyes communicate everything you need to know about her inner climate. Her smile, which reduces those eyes to mere creases, is nothing short of radiant. She is a wonderful writer, and a gifted photographer. She is resilient. She not only survives the difficult events of her life, she survives with a determination to be happy. She is aware of this, because it was a decision. A decision she made at seventeen after losing her father to cancer. She decided to be happy in spite of anything. 

      I cried when I read her college essay, and not because she chose to take the obvious route and play the pity card, but because she didn’t. She described some of the difficult things she had endured, yes, but instead of capitalizing on the woe-is-me aspect, she focused on what she had learned: “From blissful to brutal, my exposure to the ups and downs of life presented me with a decision; I could potentially retreat into my anger and sadness or I could do the opposite. I could live my life with the glass half full, and accept that things will not always be easy, but life will go on, and I can always find a way to thrive.” 

      Yep. That’s my kid. I’m so proud of the woman is she becoming and sometimes I honestly don’t know where she came from. 

   We’ve been blessed. In many ways raising a child does take a village, and over the years, every time I glanced up from her to ours, including family, friends, and caregivers, they have never failed to offer us “rapt”. She even told me the other night at dinner (in what I like to think was a partially kidding tone) that she might still be willing to have me as her college roommate if only I wouldn’t nag her so much about the fact that her room’s a mess. That was sweet, and tempting as it is, I still promise not to take her up on it. But man, am I gonna miss this kid and count the days until her room is messy once again. 

 23 May 2013 

 Straight Talk 

      After a busy weekend of our kids’ soccer and softball and field hockey games and practices, Monday mornings in my house can be a grim reminder of all of the things left undone. I race around the kitchen making breakfast and lunches while my husband rifles through my youngest’s backpack, firing comments and questions at me in rapid succession: “Did we ever fill out that form for Elizabeth’s camp stuff?” “We really need to get that basement cleaned up.” “Are we going to make something for the Harvest Fest?” 

      On a good day, I smile inwardly and simply answer the question or murmur agreement. On a bad day, or after a long week of forced togetherness like the one we just experienced compliments of “Sandy,” these types of questions illicit answers mildly tinged with irritation: “Ooooh! Oui Oui! I love it when you speak French to me!” I coo sarcastically. Because, of course, what he really means is “Moi,” and sometimes, I guess I just wish he’d say so. At least I think I do. The reality is that there’s a solid chance that on some days that wouldn’t go over well either. 

      On the other hand, speaking French to me occasionally is a giant step up from another kind of question. The one that begins, “How would you like to….” For that one, the cartoon rendition would show the words screeching down a giant lightening bolt headed straight to the top of my aluminum spine. The thought bubble would read: No I wouldn’t like to, thank you very much. How would you like to just ask for what you want instead of acting like you’re doing ME a favor? Sometimes, he goes the flattery route. School and camp forms will pile up on my desk for all of the kids and he’ll shrug in an aw shucks kind of way and say, “You’re so much better at this stuff than I am. I’ll help you if you need me to.” Allow me to do the translation: I hate filling these papers out and I never want to see them again. Please take care of this and then let us never speak of it . 

      Ugh. As my sister and I like to say, “If only everyone were a lot more like us.” Humph, and tsk. 

      Okay, okay, so I probably have a few annoying habits of my own when it comes to communicating clearly. What I think of as “gentle prodding” for example, some people might perceive as manipulative. Passive-aggressive even. I’m sure my husband is not at all fooled by my fondness for questions like, “Do you want me to take out the recycling honey?” I’ve also caught myself beating around the bush with that that oddly indirect-direct question, “Can you not put the dirty glasses in the sink?” I sometimes find the “I” statement favored by relationship experts to be a tough one to swallow. I know I should say things like, “I feel devalued when you bring your best friend into the delivery room while I labor to have our child.” And yet, I’ve heard my own pre-epidural voice squeeze through clenched teeth to utter things closer to, “Dude, he takes one more step into this room and you won’t live to see your newborn.” 

      A long time ago, I decided that when I reprimanded my children, I wanted to do so in a loving way. My own mother had sounded and looked furious when I broke the rules, and the effect that had on me was that I felt, at that moment anyway, that she really loathed me. The very idea that she raised seven children without ever having read a single book about child rearing is a concept that my generation finds reprehensible (and she finds hilarious). I didn’t want my kids to ever feel that way. I read the books. I embraced the mantra, I don’t like what you did, but I still like you. Now a senior in high school, my daughter doesn’t hesitate to tell me that she has always found it enormously creepy that I smile when I’m describing both her crime and her punishment. Truth be told, I see her point. 

      A friend of mine told me that both she and her husband prefer to deliver many of their most difficult messages through conversations with someone else while in earshot of the other. It might go like this: He comes home one night and is snappish with her. Then, over dinner, he’ll announce to the kids that he’s cranky because he’s, “Really tired because I didn’t get home from work until late last night and had to be back in the office early today.” She will then turn to the family dog and loudly apologize for forgetting to refill his water bowl saying, “I just haven’t had a minute to think all day” and then patiently ticks off the number of chores and responsibilities she has managed to jam into her day. I’m sure marriage counselors have a name for this style of indirect banter. I’m equally sure it falls into the category of “frowned upon,” and yet the message is abundantly clear. 

      As a teacher, my students who return after a day’s absence often ask me, “Did we do anything yesterday?” I try not to feel insulted. I’m fluent in this language and know that what they really mean is, “What did I miss?” Unfortunately, my standard reply, “No, we waited for you,” is frequently misinterpreted. Pronoun usage is at its most interesting when report cards come out. Inevitably I will hear one child say, “She gave me a C,” and another say, “I got an A.” 

      I’m considering embarking upon an experiment. I’m going to be more direct. To consciously choose my words in a way that is a clear expression of what I’m trying to say. I’m sure it’ll save a lot of time, which will free everyone up for better interactions overall. No more reading between the lines, no need to crack the code. What you hear is what you get. Oh yes, I think this is going to be good. But on second thought, maybe I should ease into this. Practice on the dogs first. Yeah, I’ll start tomorrow. 

 4 Nov 2012 

 Schoooool’s Out. For. Summah! 

      The big joke among middle school teachers is that hardly anyone chooses middle school. Middle school is the true pariah of school districts. Most teachers start out in the high school or at one of the elementary schools, and for one reason or another, get transferred. Some couldn’t find a job in their subject area in an elementary or high school. Once in, however, many middle school teachers wouldn’t leave if you (ahem) paid them. Maybe it’s because we have the privilege of bearing witness to a metamorphosis. There are few phases in a child’s life where they undergo so much transformation. 

      It’s a weird, complex age, the whole twelve-to-fourteen year-old period. I teach the new ones, the seventh graders. Making the transition from elementary school to middle school is nothing short of exhausting, and frequently traumatic for them. No longer are they in one classroom all day with their best friends. They arrive, with brand new backpacks and sneakers and excitedly navigate a brand new building, filled with new kids and new teachers. Gone are those sweet little desks that held all their books and papers. In their place are hall lockers with new lock combinations to deal with in that frenzied three-minute timeframe they have to get from one class to another. The novelty of changing classes for each subject is tempered by the fact that they change teachers as well, and each of us have different personalities, expectations and breaking points. By the time they get to fifth period lunch and realize their “bff” isn’t there until sixth, the shine is pretty much off the penny. 

      The drama of changing clothes for gym cannot be underestimated. They’re riding the fence, both physically and emotionally. Some days they really want to be treated like little kids, others, they’re convinced that they are mini-adults. This is the age of braces and unfortunate forays into hair and makeup experimentation. It marks the onset of puberty and all the emergent feelings that accompany that. The girls, many of whom already occupy the bodies of women, tower over the boys in seventh grade, but by eighth I’m often looking up at those same boys teasing them, saying, “What did they feed you this summer?” 

      Most of all, they’re goofy. Seventh graders get hysterical while reading “A Christmas Carol,” every time the character named “Dick” is mentioned. They have to be reminded (often) of the necessity of deodorant, and don’t even get me started on the copious spraying of “Axe” in the hallways after gym. They write all over their hands and arms, and are obsessed with their cell phones and chewing gum. 

      If their name is Robert, and you ask them what they’d like to be called (Rob? Bobby?) It is entirely possible that they will misunderstand and reply, “The Dark One.” Girls with beautiful, old names like Catherine will take the opportunity to reinvent themselves and ask to be called “Lexie.” They develop crushes, form cliques, bully one another and are young enough and idealistic enough to believe that they have a great shot at being a professional skateboarder, actress or rapper (in my district, I have yet to have a child lay claim to President). To them, the eighth graders seem arrestingly exotic. The eighth graders, well aware of this, work their worldly image for all it’s worth; “making out” in the hallways, rolling their skirts to make them shorter and whipping out that hair elastic to cinch their shirts tighter in back. They call the “little” seventh graders “cute.” 

      I teach Language Arts, what we used to just call “English.” In my school, Language Arts and reading are actually separate subjects, so what I really teach is writing. In September, when I first get them, if I assign an essay, more often than not, I will get a paragraph. Then I have until April and the dreaded NJ Standardized Test to turn that into five well-organized paragraphs. Along the way, I grade literally thousands of papers. 

      Sometimes I keep a private record of the “best of” the essays I’ve graded. I have included them here exactly as they appeared in their essays: 

      “Once I got lost and a stranger picked me up and drove me home. My mom was so happy she gave him four hundred dollars but he just gave it back. But my mom did let him date my sister…” 

      “I am trying to improve my grades so that I can be on the on-a-roll.” “Many reality shows are supposed to be real but most of them are fake. Studys of Julie Arts, which is an acting school, say that more then 67% of people need to know how to act when entering to be in an reality show.” 

      “Parents will save more money on clothes with hammy downs, and not hassle with new clothes when you can just past the clothes down.” 

      “According to the First Commandment, we have the right to free speech.” 

     “My aunt Linda was a teacher until one of her students made a website called ‘Ms. Linda Crowfeet STINKS!!’ My aunt got a law suit and won, but she still goes to therapy lessons four times a week.” 

      “My grandmother Becky had eighteen children in the years 2000 to 2002 and she went to the therapist once a week because it was hard for her to keep track of each one and pay bills at the same time.” 

      Back in 2004, I took the opportunity to use the fact that it was an election year as a “teachable moment.” Instead of essays, I had the kids choose a candidate, research their stand on the “issues” and then write campaign speeches. Many of these were priceless, (the comments in parenthesis are mine, I couldn’t help myself): 

      “I have a lot of other things to say about healthcare, but it would take forever, so I will move on…” (Oh, if only it worked this way in real life!) 

      “I will also give poor seniors free vitamins, and make hospital payments and education payments free!” (Free payments! Where do I sign?) 

      “Kerry is presenting a plan to identify, disrupt and eliminate terrorist networks. They will be hunted down and slaughtered. They can run but they can’t hide. He will use military forces if necessary…” (Ah, but only as a last resort…) 

      “Finally, I’ll talk about the environment. I say that since I have taken office, the U.S. has been enjoying air, water and land… " 

      “The last issue I’ll talk about is healthcare. We work hard and still don’t have enough money to buy ourselves a new outfit every month. That’s because we give so much money for healthcare and other programs.” (Ugh! I hate that!) 

      “I am very alarmed that Americans are concerned about Iraq and other foreign policies.” (Yeah, aren’t they aware of the outfit problem??) 

      “In addition, if what he says is true about doing enough for our environment, then why do we still have filters for our water? We aren’t satisfied. Why do thousands of people every month catch asthma from inhaling bad air? We aren’t satisfied, are we?" 

     “Education is very important because if you don’t have one you won’t get no where in life. The No Child Left Behind Act gives schools the chance to be flexible and learn new ways to spend government money.” (I ain’t touching this one!) 

       “I believe in making changes for my country such as lowering taxes, and making schools a little non-strict. I want to be as good a president as Bill Clinton, God bless his soul.” 

      “I offered a tax credit to dry cleaners that use environmentally friendly technology so it can clean and decrease the waste lagoons so we can swim in them again. I will also help the hog farmers.” (I just don’t know where to begin…) 

      “I have been thinking about starting a new program to keep forests healthy. One way is to allow companies to cut down trees that could end up being part of forest fires.” (Clever! Now why didn’t I think of that?) 

      “John Kerry is also a kind man because he chose me, John Edwards, as his vice presidential running mate.” (Hmn…) 

      Someday, I’m going to write a long, detailed essay challenging the rotten propaganda Chris Christie has generated about New Jersey’s teachers. I’ll extoll the virtues of my co-workers, talk about the fact that most of the teachers at my school have Master’s degrees they’ll never get reimbursed for, work longer hours than most people imagine, and spend a ton of their own money on supplies that make school better for kids. 

      I know of at least one teacher who buys her own class set of paperback books for her kids to read, and another who keeps a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly in her closet. She often makes sandwiches for those kids who forgot to bring their lunch, or have none to bring. Most of us have second jobs. 

      The faculty at my school have identified and helped children who were being hurt or neglected at home, cutting themselves, starving themselves, using drugs, and being bullied for their sexual orientation. They’ve come in early and stayed late and tried, really, really, tried, to develop lessons that were dynamic and engaging and meaningful. The creativity, compassion and dedication I work alongside with fairly blows the mind. 

      Yes, there are perks. I have loved being able to be home in time for most of my kids’ soccer and field hockey and softball games. Having the summers off? I kid you not, it rocks. But on this last, hot sweaty day of the school year, sitting in a 105 degree classroom with a bunch of the quirkiest pre-adolescents on the planet, who were asking me again if next year, I will really mail to them the letters I had them write to themselves for 8th grade graduation (and yes, I will), my irritation was interrupted by a young, first year teacher who I mentored this year. She came by to chat for a few minutes, so we talked about summer plans and then said good-bye.

     I got one of those glimpses of how quickly it all goes by, and what a gift it is to be able to share this awkward slice of their lives. That young, bright, poised, first year teacher was my student back in 2001. What a remarkable thing it is to remember her then, and see her now. 

      The bottom line is that no one goes into this profession for the money, and if you go into it for the shorter hours, vacation days and summers off, you won’t last. As for me? Well, I’m in it strictly for the laughs. :) 

 21 Jun 2012 

 How a Corporate Climber Went Back to the Classroom 

      In mid-August of 2001, I ended a fifteen-year run on the track of Corporate America, spent mostly with one large company. Leaving that firm, that world, was a wildly spontaneous decision on my part, fueled by the perfect storm of lifestyle changes, bad career choices and a rare opportunity to return to public school teaching. I felt exquisitely lucky that August. I had no idea how lucky I was. 

      I had wound my way around and up throughout the firm and landed in Communications, where that English degree was finally put to good use and I got to write for most of the workday. I made a respectable living, the people were fun, and my work was valued. Still, when I saw the internal posting for a Communications Director spot, a little voice egged me on. Not only would this new job be a nice promotion, it would secure the all-important “Vice President” title as well. A title that was, in a large financial services firm like this one, coveted as much for the attendant ego gratification as it was for the annual cash bonus it merited. Sure, it reported directly to a First VP with a monstrous reputation, but all the right corporate buzzwords were woven into this one job description: Lucrative, high profile, high exposure. 

      It was a two-hour interview. She was everything she was rumored to be: Arrogant, high-strung and mercurial. Somehow, she got me to agree to a month-long “audition” so to speak, during which I communicated with her mainly via email, and then sent her speeches and articles and presentations appropriate to the things she described. Toward the end of the month, she called me at 5:30 in the afternoon and said that she needed a speech for the opening ceremony of a corporate-wide event. “No problem!” I chirped enthusiastically, then, with a little nervous laugh I added, “Wait, isn’t that tomorrow?“ Unapologetically, she assured me that she was, in fact, scheduled to deliver said speech at 9:00 a.m. the following morning. There was a pause, and she finished with a deadly coy, “Oh, well, maybe it’s too much to ask.” 

      I heard the challenge in her tone and knew this was a test. I was frantic. I did my best impersonation of nonplussed. “I’m on it,” I told her, and then I called the babysitter and asked her (again) to stay late. There were others taking a stab at that speech too. She chose mine, and that was the day she asked me to “name my price.” Her choice of words unnerved me, but once again, I shook it off. In keeping with the “go big or go home” mentality I was working at that point, I told her (in an equally even, challenging tone) an absurdly high number. She didn’t flinch. There, I thought, game on. 

      The truth is that I was as close to selling my soul to the devil as I would ever be and I should have never, in a million years, imagined that I was anywhere close to being in her league in any kind of game, much less the game I was signing on to play. 

      The older me, the one who reflects on this and other times in my life, wonders about the fact that I disregarded every instinct that I had about her. She made no attempt to camouflage her difficult disposition, and I sensed early on that the hoops she had me jumping through were getting higher and higher. Why was I not asking myself if I could work for someone like that? Instead, I embarked on this mission to excel, to please, to succeed, frankly, where no man had succeeded before. 

      Which brings me to the notion that I could have, for example, just listened to the man who currently held the position. He was more than willing to share his experiences (not to mention his anti-anxiety meds) with me. He explained to me that because he had not yet been with her for a year, the only way he could transfer out from under her and still stay with the firm was if he was willing to see the firm’s counseling service and plead emotional problems. As it turns out, he was. And he did. 

      Ego is such a formidable force. I dug in my Brooks Brother’s heels, looked away from the evidence and my obstinate resistance to considering it seriously. There was something familiar and disquieting about my own choice in that regard that lingered like old perfume. Ego notwithstanding, there were probably a number of factors that knit together my stubbornly skewed perception. I had remarried the year before, but the financial insecurity of the single mom was still with me, as was the secret suspicion that I wasn’t good enough. I had something to prove, and was probably rein-acting something personal; hoping that this time, it would have a different ending. The really creepy part is that I think she honed in on that. As a former trial attorney, she had a knack for making quick and accurate assessments of people. I’d bet my bonus that she was gifted in terms of jury selection. She could smell vulnerability, and she was shameless about capitalizing on it. In a very dysfunctional way, our pairing was serendipitous. 

      It was the end of January when she called to offer me the job. I remember her exact words: “I am pleased to offer you the position, and to meet your salary requirements as well.” With a quiet reserve I did not feel, I accepted her offer, briefly discussed an official start date and hung up the phone. I walked calmly to the nearest ladies room, checked every stall to be sure I was alone and then I let out a delirious whoop of joy. There may have been a few salsa moves a la Victor Cruz. I’m certain that there was fist pumping and an exuberant chorus of one yelling “Yes! Yes! YES!!!” 

     Had I known at the time that this moment would be the best I was going to feel for the next six months, I would have reveled in it even more. 

     If things had turned out differently, I’d spin this is as a cautionary tale: Denial and greed and pride, oh my. But the luxury of hindsight compels me to view it as one of life’s watershed moments, one that would soon trigger other watershed moments, and before it was over, huge chunks of my life would be altered and re-defined. Here was this not entirely blind curve in the road and I was just entering the turn, all juiced up on a dangerous cocktail of adrenalin and ambition. 

      I moved into my new offices by Valentine’s Day and the honeymoon period began. I would split my time between Princeton and downtown Manhattan, just as she did. The first two months were filled with certain regular initiatives that became my main focus. Little by little, however, these were interrupted by unreasonable demands; ancillary “projects,” the corporate writer’s equivalent of, “Would you pick up my shirts from the cleaners?” 

      One of these was a “roast” that she absolutely had to have for an old friend of hers whose retirement party was that same evening. I’d never met the man, and she insisted that she was too busy to fill me in. His secretary was out of the office that day as well. I hadn’t a thing to go on other than one of his colleagues telling me that he was “bald, and liked to golf.” A normal person with a normal boss would calmly discuss the impossibility of the situation with their superior. Knowing this was not an option, I went into the bathroom and threw up instead. Then I wrote it, flying by the seat of my pants the whole way. 

      By April I was having regular migraines. At the end of May, the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend to be exact, Boss-zilla interrupted my daughter’s sixth birthday party at our house. “I. NEED. YOU!” She screamed accusingly into the phone. I’d learned to keep my responses level, unemotional. Don’t feed the monster. She was fairly hysterical as she spewed her diatribe straight from the deck of her summer home in the Hamptons. 

      That evening, after cleaning up party debris, I got on the computer and stayed there until the wee hours creating a PowerPoint presentation with talking points and the stump of a speech on the same topic. I hit “send” at about 4 am and fell into bed. Then I turned off my phone and didn’t look at email for the rest of the weekend. When I got back to the office on Tuesday, she ignored my presence, but left an “Action List” on my desk consisting of thirty-two items due at the end of the day. Later, I would discover certain intriguing details of a brouhaha that took place after she had presented my weekend work to her superior, calling it “unusable.” He declared it “outstanding.” As I read his email expressing his appreciation for my “fine work,” I felt a glow of satisfaction that only slightly eased the knot in my stomach. Above the subject line I saw that Boss-zilla been copied on that email. 

      Soon after, in June, she called me in to declare a speech I’d prepared for her “turgid.” I almost laughed. She continued, saying something like, “You know, it’s kind of pretentious-“ 

      “I know what turgid means.” I cut her off, my tone a warning. 

      We locked eyes. I held her shocked gaze knowing that my own was cold. Bring it. 

      At the end of July I saw an ad in the paper for an English/Public Speaking teacher at a nearby public middle school. I had taught high school English briefly right after college, and daydreamed of going back to it someday. Add to this the fact that my new husband and I had four school-aged kids between us, and together we agreed that I should send a resume. I was at the beach on vacation when they called me for an interview, and by the time I went back to work, I had my letter of resignation in hand. 

     I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect her to try and convince me to stay, which she did. Pulling out all of the stops, she used everything at her disposal actually, to change my mind. Another watershed occurred with shocking clarity, revealing what I’d been so reluctant to see before; that ours had all the earmarks of an abusive relationship. And just like that, it was done. Shifted. Over. All the angst, the self-doubt and the ire that she inspired just vaporized. My secretary, who had taken the call when the offer came, sat in my office with me and laughed until we cried over the fact that I was really going to do it, I was jumping ship big time, and for a ridiculously low new salary. 

     Ironically, here again, had I known what the future held for me, I would have reveled in the moment even more. 

      Two weeks later I was home, off for a few days before beginning my new/old career. The relief I felt was indescribable. I remember sipping coffee on the deck, marveling at the ubiquitous nature of landscaping in my neighborhood. I’d never been home to see it before! Never imagined there were so many of them! The sound of lawn mowers was incredibly soothing to me; a constant, lazy drone that I hadn’t really heard since childhood it seemed. It came to represent everything I’d missed sitting in sound-proofed, over air-conditioned offices for too many years. 

      One week after that, I was at the beginning of my first full week of teaching. As the kids filed in for my period 2 Public Speaking class, one of them said to me, “Mrs. H., did you hear? A plane just flew into the World Trade Center.” In a kind of fog, I went upstairs to the library where someone had told me there was a news program on the TV, along with a clear view of the Manhattan skyline. There was. 

      With excruciating slowness, details emerged about the attack. I stood there staring out at the clouds of billowing black smoke where there once stood two powerful buildings and silently contemplated the unspeakable evil behind these acts. I prayed for friends and family members. At one point, I tried to make out the two cousins to the Twin Towers, the North and South Tower of the Financial Center, and shivered, finding it difficult to breathe. “What day is it?” I croaked, to no one in particular. “Tuesday.” Someone answered. 

      I stared straight ahead, heart pounding, trying to process the thousands of emotions and scenarios running through my head, shifting like a deck of cards from terror to frustration to confusion and rage to uncomprehending gratitude. 

     Right up until three weeks prior, I spent Tuesdays at 2WorldFi, otherwise known as the South Tower of the World Financial Center. My office, on the 40th floor, faced the swiftly collapsing World Trade Center buildings. Thank you, Boss-zilla (who is, as of this writing, alive and as cantankerous as ever), for assuring me that most of my co-workers were fine too, in spite of the fact that the windows of my old office blew in like a child’s soap bubble in the wind, spraying glass and debris throughout the entire floor. 

 Our pairing had been serendipitous indeed. 

 12 Jun 2012 

 Oh, Baby 

     I recently attended a baby shower. In many ways, it was typical. Lots of pink decorations, great food, and a nice sized pile of presents wrapped in pastel paper. For the most part, the vibe was upbeat and supportive. Only the grandmother seemed reluctant to take the plunge and celebrate. She spoke little English, but her disapproval was palpable. She was all folded arms and a grim expression. Occasionally, she’d let out a disgusted “tsk, tsk,” accompanied by a bewildered shake of the head. It would be easy to assume she was angry. I figured she was sad. Or afraid. Her granddaughter, the mom-to-be, had just turned fifteen. 

      “Maria” was my student last year when she was in 7th grade. I may as well cut to the chase here; With any luck we hide it well, but teachers who deny the reality of “teacher’s pets” are lying. Maria was one of mine. Why? Maybe it was because she is so smart and yet so unable to envision a connection between that quick mind and her best shot at a ticket out of an underprivileged existence. Maybe it was because she is a tangled mess of contradictions; Street gang tough on the exterior, fragile and incredibly sweet underneath; Uber-responsible at home, and a complete flake about school; Intellectually sharp, and completely lacking in ambition. Maybe it was because I knew she was looking for love in all the wrong places, or maybe it was simply because she often trusted me enough to let down her guard with me. Perhaps I’m kidding myself about all of that. The reality is probably that I didn’t choose her at all, she chose me. 

     There was nothing unusual about Maria’s visit that September morning. I wasn’t the only person she had charmed, and she often wrangled her way into the school building earlier than most students were allowed. Once in, she frequently wandered down to my classroom for one of our early morning chats. This time, I knew almost immediately that something was up. She was nervous and edgy, literally wringing her hands, and she kept referring cryptically to some new “drama” that was unfolding in her life. Finally, she just spilled it, “I’m having a baby.” I had been walking around the room, pushing desks together and arranging papers, but at that point I stopped, and slowly lowered myself into one of my student’s desk chair. I didn’t have to ask, I knew by the way she had phrased it, by the way she didn’t say, “I’m pregnant,” but I couldn’t stop myself, 

     “What are you going to do Maria?” 

      “I’m going to keep my baby,” she announced, lifting her chin with just the tiniest bit of defiance, “I’ve always wanted to be a young mom.” 

      Young mom. When I think of young moms, I think of women in their early twenties. Married women. Women, period. This fourteen-year old person sitting in front of me was a child. A child who had learned at home what to say (in English) to DYFUS when they knocked on the door, and more importantly, what not to say. A child who had told me once that she and her mom had been arguing, and not about the fact that she was sexually active and out at all hours of the night, or even that she had done some creative “translating” of the notices that went home, but about the fact that Maria hadn’t been “there for her.” 

      “There for whom?” I asked, sure that I had misunderstood. 

      “For my mom.” She replied, so matter-of-factly that I could have cried. She was barely thirteen at the time. 

       There had been rumors last year of a previous pregnancy. One where nature had intervened and granted her a reprieve. For a while afterwards, she was quiet and subdued, pale and moody. Little by little, her outgoing nature began to emerge once again, and at about the same time, the hickies began appearing again too. These she wore proudly, like red and purple neck accessories, or maybe just the only visible, tangible evidence that somewhere, someone loved her. 

      I’ve lost a lot of sleep over this kid. 

      She left my district shortly after we had this discussion. DYFUS surprised them this time, and certain realities of their living conditions could not be overlooked. Thankfully, there was a family member in an another town willing to take them in, and once she was settled, she got in touch with me. At that point, the usual and important boundaries between student and teacher were no longer imperative or practical. I simply decided that I was going to do what I could for her, and see her through this. 

      We exchanged cell phone numbers and began to have fairly regular conversations and dinners. We talk about her schoolwork, which high school she should apply to in her new town, her family, and the boyfriend who just turned eighteen and is idealistic enough to be excited for the birth of his child, and naïve enough to assume that his offer to “help her” with whatever she needs is a generous concession to his role as father. She brings me her sonogram pictures and her fears about childbirth. We talk about what motherhood is going to be like and how much it’s going to cost. 

      Only recently, she came to my home and met my kids. She sat at my kitchen table while I cooked and wrote down the recipe and the steps of the preparation. When we were done eating, she politely asked if she could take the leftovers home. Without so much as a glance in my direction, my girls started rifling the cabinets for other things she could take too and I knew then that they were right there with me, drinking the Kool-Aid. Maria had cast her spell once again. 

      When I drove her home that night, I apologized to her for missing her birthday, explaining that my oldest daughter’s father had passed away and it had been an all-consuming week for me. “That’s okay,” she responded, and then went very quiet for a while. When she spoke again, she said this: “My dad is dead too. He was murdered in our country.” 

      She’s excited to have her baby. Says she can’t wait to be a mom and all of her 8th grade friends tell her what a great mom she will be to the little girl she is carrying. I cannot deny that she has a nurturing sensibility. I’ve seen it in action with her six-year old brother, and her sweet, but emotionally fragile mother. She is a caretaker for sure and she longs for the unconditional love an infant can offer. 

      But who will take care of her? 

    This is the last and most compelling of her contradictions: This conspicuous lack of self-pity or bravado. Just an innocence that is incongruous with the experiences she has had already in her young life. She simply doesn’t know how to have expectations. She is that overused term: survivor. Figuratively speaking, dodging bullets has been a way of life for her. She has no doubt that she can do it all, because well, what choice does she have? 

    At times, I swear, the desire to take care of her and protect her is overwhelming. I have this picture of her in my head from her shower. The young boy is beside her, his arm slung awkwardly around her shoulder, smiling self-consciously for the cameras. If not for her giant belly, it could have been an eighth grade dance picture. I doubt she’ll have one of those now, and I understand completely why the grandmother looked so grim. A baby is such a beautiful, life-changing miracle, but who among us was really ready for that change? I thought I was, and I still struggled at times. I also had a lot more in the way of resources than she does, I can tell you that, and I wasn’t trying to get through freshman Algebra at the same time. 

      I hope Maria accepts all the help that is offered her, and I hope she is offered a lot. I hope she finishes school, and has the chance to go to college. Most of all, I hope this child brings her immeasurable joy, and that she is loved and cherished by everyone around her, because no matter what else Maria does, it will never be more important than this. 

 9 Apr 2012 

 Run Away From Your Problems 

     Anybody remember the 1977 best seller, The Complete Book of Running? Great book. The cover was a picture of the author’s bare legs topped off by a pair of red running shorts. When he wrote it, Jim Fixx had a story to tell about his journey from overweight couch potato to confirmed running junkie. His message was clear: Barring very few physical considerations, you too, can be a “runner.” I read it in the early 80’s and there are a couple of odd tidbits in it that cling to the cobwebs of my brain even today. For one thing, Fixx claimed that while perspiration produced by sedentary folks was stinky, the sweat generated during running was “virtually odorless.” “So, go ahead,” he encouraged the corporate masses, “Take that run during your lunch hour, skip the shower, and suit back up!” Eeeeww. 

      True or not, this is, in my opinion, just one of those things that give runners a bad name. This conjures up images of the Boston marathon champion Uta Pippig, who, with diarrhea streaming down her bare legs at the finish line, told the TV commentator that she “looked worse than she felt.” Uta, sweetie, you just crossed a widely televised race finish line in front of thousands of onlookers. You did not stumble incoherently out of the Amazon having just survived against insurmountable odds! You are giving the average spectator way too much credit. I’m pretty sure there were only a handful of people who cared how you felt at that point, most were horrified at first by how you looked, and then by your shamelessness about ignoring it for the sake of a run. 

      Then there was Amber Miller, who ran/walked the Chicago marathon at 39 weeks pregnant. She later noted that race medical workers seemed “startled” to see her as she hauled that huge belly past mile markers. No kidding. She actually began laboring during the race, and about seven hours later was fortunate enough to deliver a healthy baby girl. To her I can only say, “Dear Amber, There’s no ‘do over’ in pregnancy and childbirth. There will, however, be other races.” And then there’s ole Jim Fixx himself, who dropped dead of a heart attack at aged 52 while he was, of course, running. 

      There’s an undeniably elitist mentality among runners too. Secretly, they’re all purists, believing that running is far superior to any other exercise because it requires next to nothing, there’s no class at the gym, no equipment, and no instructor. All you need are your legs and a pair of sneakers. You just go out the door, thumping bass music optional, and it ends when you want it to end. “Elite” runners, especially marathoners, don’t even bother to conceal their condescension when you mention things like Spin classes or Zumba. They smile, and maybe even throw out a dismissive, “That’s great!” Right before they tell you that you should just run. Or not. Which may be even worse. Because then you might be getting the pat on the head, the atta boy reserved for the little kid who just struck out…again. 

      In spite of all of this, I am happy to be counted among those who love to run. There’s a part of me that completely understands the mania of it, the unadulterated compulsion to hit the pavement. I was a runner for the better part of 30 years. My Sauconys are the first thing I pack when I go on a trip. I have run on boiling hot asphalt and cool early morning beach sand. I have made running playlists on my iPod to help me escape the monotony of the treadmill, and had near-spiritual experiences while running trails through the woods in Autumn. I have, as Jim Fixx promised I would, found it easier to breathe while running in the rain because of the higher nitrogen content in the air. 

      Here’s a little insight for those of you who think we’re nuts: Only non-runners see people out “jogging” and think it’s about weight management or getting a little exercise. “Real” runners find that attitude just a little precious. Real runners know the truth, and we can spin it a thousand positive ways, (and they would, in fact, beat the alternative) but it pretty much comes down to those whacky madcap twins: Addiction and Obsession. 

      I recently posted a “status” on Facebook that was essentially a good long moan about how much I needed a good run right now. An old high school friend who has been sidelined with an injury commiserated with me, saying that she literally cried when she drove past people out running. God, I so got that. I was really glad she said it too, because I had felt it and thought I was being melodramatic. Truth: I have never heard anyone express anything close to that kind of desperate yearning to get on the elliptical, or to (yawn) go into warrior pose at “Yoga in a Toga.” Oops. I’m sorry. That was a little condescending wasn’t it? Just a little slip. My bad. Maybe I’m just jealous. At this point I want to love both of those things, but I can’t seem to work up the same passion for them, and it’s killing me (softly). 

      My friend Vivian opted to have two hip surgeries in less than a year even though she was told she could live a completely “normal” life without them. That normal life, however, would not include running and for her, there’s nothing normal about that. This is a woman who has run a marathon a year for as long as I’ve known her. Being “grounded,” first by her injuries and then by her recovery period has been a tougher road for her than the ten plus miles she routinely does just because it’s a Tuesday. “I feel like a part of me has disappeared,” she admits. “I miss the wonderful feeling I get when the endorphins have kicked in, especially after a very long run, and I am on top of the world. It’s a ‘high’ that lasts throughout the day.” As a writer, she has found running to be a catalyst for creative ideas. “Sometimes,” she reveals, “I’d even run with one of those little golf pencils and a piece of paper in my running shorts.” In fact, her blog, Catching a Third Wind/ The journey from injury to recovery (www.athirdwind.com) was created in part to chronicle her surgical experiences and the dreaded physical therapy that follows, as well as to provide a forum for others who are temporarily derailed from running due to an injury or surgical procedure. 

      I’ve never run a full marathon and I have a bad case of marathon envy. I was training for a “half” when I began experiencing the pain that yet another MRI would reveal stems from a labral hip tear – the same tear my friend Vivian had repaired. My situation is a little different, and I decided to try a different path to recovery, but I can tell you that I completely understand her choice to Just Do It. And then do it again. 

      I personally prefer to run alone. Over the years I have just pounded anger, anxiety, frustration and fear right into the pavement. People have told me they’ve seen me (looking slightly deranged, no doubt) with my fingers flying, playing the air-piano as I run and I know it’s true. If it’s classical music on my iPod, I’m a featured soloist. During my runs I’ve carried on (both sides of) conversations that I wisely never ended up having, and composed letters I’ve never sent. I’ve mulled over the day ahead, and made up stories. I’ve cracked myself up, and let myself cry. I’ve left the house happy and contented, and come back euphoric and brimming with a sense of endless possibility. I’ve run to escape the bad neighborhood of my head, and returned to place more like Easy Street.

     I’ve prayed. 

     Hell, I ran when I still drank and smoked cigarettes! (And my buddy Jim told me, in a somewhat conspiratorial tone, that I could do that too.) In my twenties I ran off hangovers and, to borrow a Charlie Sheen-ism, the “cringeable” behavior that goes with all of that. 

     I tell anyone who is just beginning to run that the best kept secret about running is that anyone can be a runner. Anyone. Put on a pair of sneakers and go out the door. Start with five minutes, walk, do it again. It doesn’t matter where you begin, from the very first step, you are a runner. I also tell people that in my experience, no matter how long I’ve run, the first mile is almost always the hardest. It takes that long to get your rhythm, for your heart rate and breathing to level off, and to feel like you are in the “zone.” It’s after that first mile that the magic kicks in. I don’t think I’ve ever run far enough to “hit the wall,” but the “runner’s high”? Absolutely. And let me tell you, adrenalin is good stuff. What that means for me is that fairly consistently there’s a point on my run when I get this invincible, I could run forever feeling - as long as I keep running forward. But of course, my runs are always large loops. As I round the bend to head back, I’m reminded that you can run away from your problems at least temporarily. Sometimes that’s all you need. 

      Here’s another thing running guru Jim Fixx said, and I’m paraphrasing here: He said that in his opinion, running is to exercise what vodka is to alcohol consumption. In other words, it’s the most direct and potent means to an end. I haven’t tasted vodka in a long time but, for a variety of reasons, I like the analogy. Running is the most direct and potent means to an end, and the end is way more than exercise. It is, pure and simple, the best way I know of to untangle thoughts, dilute toxic emotions, and positively channel the overdrive nature of an obsessive personality. That’s the way it works for me, and that’s why I keep coming back to it. Cheers! 

 2 Apr 2012 

 The Brady Bunch? - Not!! 

     My husband likes to tell people that ours is a “his, hers, and ours” family. When he does, someone inevitably gushes, “Oh! Like the Brady Bunch!” A friend who knows us better overheard this exact exchange once. Without lifting her eyes from the newspaper in front of her, she grunted, “More like the Osbornes.” She was right of course. It’s a messy world here in the land of the “Five H’s”, as we used to call our patchwork of kids, and yet, recent events have given me cause to reflect more deeply about this complicated and quirky family that is the epicenter of my existence, and how far we have come. I have much to be grateful for, and sometimes, I take it very much for granted. 

      In all fairness, my husband’s description is accurate. When we got together, he had three children from his first marriage, I had one, and later, we had one together. It is not irrelevant to say that all of these children are girls. It is not irrelevant to point out that when we married, our kid’s ages ranged from four to ten, and that every single one of them was fighting to stake out their territory. Did I mention that we’ve never had fewer than two dogs at one time-that sometimes, there were as many as four? We didn’t have “girly” girls either. Our girls were the skateboarding, soccer/softball/basketball playing, as soon as it snowed, “let’s make a jump out of the deck steps and snowboard,” kind of gals. Get the picture? 

      And of course, though we were loath to admit it at times, they were children of divorce. At this point in my life, I don’t care what anyone says (and I will certainly catch hell for this), the fact is, there are very few positives about divorce for kids. No matter what the situation was before, once it’s gone they feel the loss, the sense that the earth is no longer solid beneath their feet. 

      I didn’t used to believe that. Didn’t want to anyway. I remember the first time it became eerily clear to me. I was at a Halloween dance at my daughter’s small Catholic elementary school standing shoulder to shoulder with the moms of my daughter’s two best friends. We had been brought together that year by our kid’s friendship, not the other way around, and it suddenly occurred to me that we were all single. I watched my child that night, in her yellow “Belle” dress with the long white gloves, searching her four year old face for some sign of….What? Incompleteness? A sense that she felt “less than” or maybe just different? Her two best buddies were seemingly well-adjusted, really sweet, happy little kids, but I don’t believe for a minute that they gravitated towards one another purely by chance. I think that being a child of divorce had already shaped those three, defined them in some really basic, fundamental way, and they had instinctively found one another and held on fast. 

     So, it’s really no surprise that when I remarried, I had hoped to seal the fault lines caused by divorce and create a bedrock of future security for all of our children. It’s probably also no surprise that for literally years, our girls struggled against the mantle of molten rock that simmered beneath their disappointments, and predictably, against one another. My husband and I were both ferociously devoted to our kids, and yet we sort of ridiculously underestimated just how hard it was going to be to merge these lives of ours into something that could be termed a “family.” 

     In retrospect, I think that trying so hard to force our happy ideal on our children made the first few years even more brutal at times. But Lord, how we tried! And cried…And fought. Then exhausted, we’d regroup, strategize, and rebuild. We read books about “blended families,” and “combined families,” step parenting and child psychology. We tried separating them, singling them out for one-on-one time, and then forced togetherness in the form of “family meetings” where most of the open “sharing” was communicated with scorching glares that shimmered like seismic waves across the dinner table, needing no verbal translation. 

     When our youngest was born, the one we had together, she proved to be like the last piece of tile in a complex mosaic, bringing everyone together in a way that seemed more complete and whole, but still, I cannot claim that she alone sealed the deal. 

     The best advice I got during this time came from a friend who stubbornly refused to indulge me in my complaints. I would call her, often in tears, vent my frustration, and then ask her what to do. Over and over she said simply, “It’s going to take time, and a lot of love. You respond to all of it with love. That’s all.” 

     Yeah. And in case of an earthquake, you drop, cover and hold on. 

     When did the tension recede? I wish I could tell you. Time is a funny thing. For all the times I wished and wondered if it would ever happen, when it finally did, it was crazily anticlimactic. If there was an exact moment when it shifted, I missed it. The earth did not move the way I would have predicted, and I doubt that any particular event preceded it. It seems more likely that it occurred so slowly, so gradually; that the concentric rings of our children’s radiating hostility attenuated, and then dissipated completely. What I do know is that seemingly overnight, the sullen silences gave way to sudden bursts of laughter. I came downstairs early one Saturday morning and on tiptoe, followed the voices I heard coming from the basement. Halfway down the steps I paused, closed my eyes and smiled as I listened to their giggles muffled by the comforter they were cuddled up beneath as they played video games together. 

      Confidences were shared and secrets protected. A fierce loyalty replaced accusing eyes and if someone was foolish enough to talk “smack” about one of them at school, they’d have all of the others to contend with. At one point, they seemed to have bonded over a collective eye roll whenever my husband or I spoke. Ah! I thought. This is good! “Us” against “them” became “them” against “us”! This felt like a very good sign indeed. This was as it should be. 

     Strangely enough, the day they sat around the family room doubled over with laughter, calling each another names and teasing each other mercilessly, I knew we had arrived. We were, officially, a family. Where once they had Do Not Enter signs on the doors to their rooms, now we can’t get them out of each other’s rooms. They have stockpiled memories that they pull out and revisit like cherished heirlooms. They stick up for each other, and when necessary, they set each other straight. They can argue and know they will make up. They can fight over clothes, and food, and who left the hair in the drain because they are better than friends, they are sisters. 

      When the oldest ones went off to college, they cried and held each other tight. And when one of them was in need, one by one they made their way home and rallied around her like, well, sisters. The love grows exponentially with each moment shared. 

      As a family we are a case study of challenges met with a stubborn kind of perseverance. At times it has certainly seemed as though against all odds, we have endured. The Brady Bunch, we are not. Norman Rockwell? Not so much. But as part of a demographic that boasts a 60% divorce rate (for second marriages with children), in many ways, we’ve thrived. So far, anyway, we seem to have built something here that has remained intact in spite of the cracks and fissures in our history. 

      Lately, it occurs to me that maybe the most significant proof of this is this magnificent gaggle of girls we have who, given enough time and with enough love grew to become best friends who no longer use the word “step” before “sister.” They have given me more than I can ever repay, have enriched my life in a thousand ways big and small. From them, I have learned so much. In many ways, they have raised me. I’ve benefitted from their warmth and humor, their vulnerability and their strength. I am grateful for their unwavering loyalty. For the family they first resisted, and then embraced so willingly. 

     Time and love. Who knew such a simple formula could yield such rich rewards? Oh, and don’t forget to drop, cover, and when all else fails, hold on tight. 

 18 Mar 2012 

 When There Are No Words 

     My oldest daughter’s father is seriously ill with cancer. It’s strange, I’m not exactly sure when I stopped referring to him as my “ex-husband,” or even just “Frank.” Even with the friends who knew us both when we were together, I still tend to use, “Emily��s Dad” when I talk about him. It’s easier. On some level, I think it began in order to attach some much-needed distance to a relationship that was once so fraught with emotion that it was nearly unbearable. This title erased our history, and implied that somehow, the relationship was solely with my daughter. It was a distilled version of “ex-husband,” of which, for me, the “ex” may as well have been a prefix meaning, “to fail.” 

      His weakened condition has brought up a lot of things for me. Memories that I had successfully suppressed for years have been resurfacing at the oddest moments, and I am awash in the feelings that accompany them, if only for a few minutes. A song on the radio, an aroma, a certain angle of my child’s face in contemplation can bring it on, and off I go, tumbling around in a tidal wave of love, or rage, or anguish. The awkward truth is that he and I didn’t have the luxury of “outgrowing” one another, or even something as mundane as falling “out” of love. Speaking strictly for me, the marriage ended with a deep sense of longing for another outcome. The one thing I think we both know is that there was a mountain of unfinished business. 

      It seems now that for a very long time after the divorce, anger was my very best ally in the fight against the pain. There came a time when I could no longer distinguish between the two emotions, and that too, would have to be worked out later. I had bought an old two family house when we split, and was glad that Emily would have a yard. I couldn’t afford an electrician, so a friend helped out with the new wiring I was required to install. When he was done, you would flip a switch in the living room and the lights would come on the hallway. It didn’t really bother me. In fact, years later I would say that my old house and I were completely in sync. We both had faulty wiring: If you traced my anger back to its source, more often than not, you would find something entirely different; sadness, fear, embarrassment, frustration, etc. 

      But it was all so long ago. In time, I did move on. I dated, fell in love and remarried. He moved on as well. If he and I tend to be a little too formal with one another when it comes to the co-parenting of our child, I suspect that is a shield we employ to guard against everything I’ve said before. It’s all very polite.      

     My daughter, however, is firmly entrenched in my past. She simply adores her father. She has his wicked sense of humor, and she looks like him too. She’ll come home from his house and tell a story about something he said or did, and I can hear his voice when she imitates him. I see him, with his head thrown back unleashing that big, booming laugh. They have worked the knots in their relationship and developed an ease with one another over the years that is enviable. They enjoy one another’s company; and truly, how many fathers and daughters can say that? People often say that she looks just like me, but when they do I always counter with, “Have you met her father?” More often than not, if they think she resembles me, they have never seen him. 

      So, as evocative as this has been for me at times, ultimately, it is she who rattles the cage of my reveries and eclipses whatever reality I think I exist in at any given moment. It is she who reminds me that the true reality is, that there is absolutely no heartbreak that compares to watching your child suffer. At sixteen, this kid has experienced more death and dysfunction that most people see in a lifetime. Cancer has been a constant, black thread running through the fabric of her life for literally years, taking one of Frank’s sisters first, and then one of mine. Her fifteenth birthday will be remembered forever as the day she sat sobbing in her room after finding out that both a close friend and her father had been diagnosed with cancer. The friend, thank God, recovered completely. But in her experience, this is the exception, not the rule, and at the moment, she vacillates between an anger and a grief that threaten to engulf her with their enormity. 

      No one understands this better than me actually, and yet, I am sometimes at a loss to know how to help her. The days she goes to see him in the hospital are the worst. I know that words are often not nearly enough, and the thing is to just hold out my arms and hold her. On occasion, when she is particularly raw, she tells me she cannot bear to be touched, so she pushes everyone away and is unreachable in a world of nothing but loud music and headphones. 

      A few nights ago, I sat on my bed listening to her choking, inconsolable sobs echoing off the tile walls of the shower, and I was paralyzed by the sound of it. I found myself in that barely breathing, heart pounding, heightened-sense state you experience when you think you’ve heard an intruder in the night. I didn’t even realize I had been crying along with her until I heard her weeping subside, and the water turn off. When she emerged, blotchy and red-eyed, I asked her if she was ok, and she kind of tossed her head and in a congested, five-year old’s voice answered, “Yeah, I think I’m done now.” 

      “I think I’m done now.” 

      During her most recent visit, she witnessed just how indiscriminate and cruel this disease can be. She watched as the last shred of his dignity was peeled away and his family, who had wished to protect her from the realities of his prognosis, could no longer encourage her to hope for the best. She sent me texts that whispered of her panic, of the crazy tug-of-war between her desperation to flee his room, and her fear of ever leaving his side again. Cell phone in hand, I paced the floor until the back door opened. She dropped her bags and ran straight into my arms and for the longest time we said nothing. Our tears said it all. 

      What I would like, at this point, is to prevent the inevitable. A simple solution; a win-win: Remission for him; a father for her. To go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow to find the facts have changed. To be able to say the words that would forever remove the deepening crease between her eyebrows, and put some color back in her cheeks. To promise her that yes, he ate today and will get stronger. Yes, the chemo is working. Yes, he’ll see her in her prom dress and her graduation gown. He tear up at her college graduation and walk her down the aisle. He’ll be there dammit, he will. 

      Here I am again, yearning for a different outcome, but this time, for my child. For his child. In the meantime, I’ve been too busy to sleep much at night. I’m knitting something very big and purple and ugly instead. What is it? Who the hell knows, and I don’t care what it is because it gives me something to do and I can’t read because I can’t focus on the words when I’m trying this damn hard to act sure and solid as a rock while secretly trying to bargain with God (craftily sandwiched between prayers because maybe he won’t notice?) and control the universe. 

      Last night I had this dream: Emily and I are driving at night to visit a college when I realize that we are driving without headlights and can’t see what’s ahead. Yeah. You don’t have to be Dr. Phil to figure that one out. 

      It seems like such a long, long time ago when she was a toddler and I was a single mom working full time and I thought it was really hard. I hated leaving her. Once, when I was talking to a co-worker about it she told me, “It is hard. But the thing nobody tells you is that they need you even more as they get older.” I think I remember that conversation so clearly partially because I wondered what the heck she meant by that. Need you how? When you’re still at the stage where you’re changing diapers and they can’t feed or dress themselves, nothing anyone says can make you believe that the teenage years are going to be anything but a breeze. Hell, her kids could drive! It was beyond the scope of my imagination. 

      When she was little, and afraid of things that came in the night we had a little routine that she liked. She’d tell me what she was afraid of, and I’d tell her what I would say to any “monster” that tried to “get” her. My part of this went something like this: “You go away you monster! You leave my Emily alone! Nobody gets to Emily without going through me, and NOBODY gets past MOMMY, so you just go away!” She bought it too. You could see the relief spread across her face like sunshine chasing a shadow. I was strong… I was invincible… I was MOMMY. 

      Like everything else, I had to learn the hard way that what that woman told me that day was true. They do need you more. But there’s another thing “they” don’t tell you, and that is that around the same time, the pendulum of your power swings way over to the left of invincible, and that it’s a lot easier to offer protection than it is to teach acceptance. To stand by and watch while your child learns that often, the most painful things in life teach us about our capacity for compassion, and resilience, and that sometimes, they even leave something in the wake of all they take. That when the time comes, there is Grace in being willing to relieve someone we love of their suffering, even if it means the continuation of our own. 

    Because Emily, though I wish with all my heart that it were so, I’m afraid you’re not nearly “done yet.” 

 7 Feb 2012 

 In Style 

     My mom is 87 years old. When I showed up at her house last week wearing my best pair of “distressed” designer jeans, she looked me up and down and then asked me what had happened to my “dungarees.” When I explained that the worn spots and holes were intentional, that they were, in fact, quite stylish, she pressed me further: “You didn’t pay for them did you?” I didn’t have the nerve to tell her exactly how much I paid for them, which, roughly speaking, equaled the national budget of some third world countries. Her question didn’t insult me because, you know, she’s kind of old. She says things like “swanky”, when describing a cool restaurant. What does she know about this stuff? 

      I was reminded of that conversation a few days ago when I picked up a magazine and read an interview with a very young, very overexposed (in every sense of the word), starlet. During the interview she revealed that after she gets a manicure, she actually requests that they scrape the tips of her nail lacquer off, so that the end result is a “look” that is chipped and worn. She likes this better, and goes on to point out that wearing it this way doesn’t then commit what is evidently the ultimate sin, of trying too hard. “She prefers this to that whole ‘polished’ look?” I wondered aloud. “She pays for this?” I shook the pages at my friend in disbelief. “Ridiculous”, was my final, disgusted word on the subject. 

      Somewhere deep down, however, I had a nagging sense of déjà vu. It continued when I went to the hair salon to have my roots tended to. I’m there like clockwork every five weeks. It is my firm belief that if you decide to color or bleach your hair, then you really must commit to it fully. Yes, it is costly, it’s also inconvenient, and it takes too long in my opinion. That is the price you pay for fooling with what nature intended. Do it right or don’t do it at all is my motto when it comes to hair color. In fact, about the only thing I look forward to about the whole ordeal is getting to sit and read silly magazines without feeling guilty that I should be doing (or reading) something else. 

    I’ll just go ahead and admit it: I have been a fan of Drew Barrymore ever since she dressed up E.T. like one of her dolls. I followed her troubled youth in the media and I sometimes feel like I know her a little. It’s probably a tiny bit weird how proud I am of how solidly normal she appears to have emerged from the dysfunctions of her childhood and early fame. She’s a cheerful survivor of a ruthless business as well. So, when my husband recently criticized a photo of her sporting two-inch deep “rootage”, I jumped to my girl Drew’s defense. “She’s probably really busy. I’m sure she’s not the typical Hollywood prima donna type, running to the salon every two weeks. Cut her a break.” 

      Weird. 

      But I was wrong. As I settled into my chair at the hairdresser’s (slightly high from the fumes of the color processing on my head), I read the most recent article featuring Drew. Peering awkwardly through shingles of highlighting foils, I learned the truth, and the truth is, not only does she want her hair that way, there’s a name for it: Ombre. 

      I had to look this up. The word itself is French. Well, of course it is. If you’re going to have roots down to the tips of your ears and call it fashionable, you may as well give it a French name right? The literal translation is, “graduation”, as in; your hair gradually gets lighter at the ends, because you’ve let it go so long your roots are really long. According to a style trend website, (which featured dozens of Hollywood types embracing this look) “It’s a beachier, more natural looking version of the enduring ‘visible root’ trend.” 

     Lord! I thought, it’s an updated version of another “root trend”? An ‘enduring’ one at that! And I missed it! Completely! These women are not too busy after all. They’re not even too lazy. They’re going for a more natural look; A devil-may-care, slightly bored, I’m not trying too hard look. Oy Vay! They’ve gone Ombre. 

    While I am in no way a slave to trends or fashion in general, I do make an effort to not succumb to the middle-aged mess syndrome. I don’t want to become dowdy. I find myself walking a fine line these days in terms of deciding what is “chic” and what is simply too young for me. I have a hunch Ombre hair is one of the latter. It’s right up there with the “smoky eye,” (which looks to me like smudged mascara and liner after a long day teaching Middle School), the Lady Gaga shoes with the six inch platforms, and something called “Grunge Chic”. I will admit to having tried black nail polish and that too, ended up in my daughter’s room. High-Waisted, bell-bottom jeans? As my friend Maryann says, “I wore them the first time.” 

      It’s funny, when I was in my twenties I was way more conservative in my tastes. I was all about the classic wool pant, blazer, and crisp white button down. In my thirties and forties I sort of careened off in the opposite direction for a while. I got tattooed for one thing. Several times in fact. Cut my hair really short and dyed it blond. I think it was partially an, “if not now…when?” kind of thing. Besides, I had left a long run on the corporate track and gone back to teaching. I no longer had to wear suits and pantyhose. I was having fun with it. 

     Now, in my (very) early 50’s, I have a new fashion mantra, which was previously known only to my daughters and close girlfriends. You won’t find it mentioned in any magazine, although I’m convinced that it should be. It is C.T.S.U., as in, Cover That Shit Up. I’ll lift something off the rack and note, “This is a good CTSU top!” Or, “I need more CTSU bathing suits this year.” Come to think of it, I’m about ten minutes away from Not Your Daughter’s Jeans. At least I don’t call them dungarees. 

      Among the looks I will not be rocking anytime soon: I will not walk around with dark roots, deliberately chipped nails, anything with “micro” or “mini” in the description, or any makeup trend that looks like it was applied in a crack house. If this is trying too hard, well, then I’m guilty. Or maybe I’m just getting older. I did, in fact, ask my daughter a few minutes ago if she had any more crème rinse. “Crème rinse?” she asked, looking completely baffled, “What’s that?” 

      “A swanky version of conditioner” I replied dryly. 

 28 Jan 2012 

 Lessons 

      One of the most important classes I took in college was horseback riding. When I first saw it listed in the course offerings as an option for fulfilling my physical education requirement, I was giddy. I had never been on a horse before. Everything I knew about horses had come from television shows and movies. The night before my first class I fell asleep with romantic images of beautiful smiling people on horseback. They galloped down the beach (sometimes in white dresses) at sunset, with their hair whipping behind them. When I woke up that morning, I was chomping at the bit (sorry, couldn’t resist), to join them. 

      The course was being taught at a local indoor riding academy. About eight of us had arrived at the start time, and we stood in the lobby/observation area watching riders trotting past us, practicing “posting” atop sinewy chestnut mares. The sounds of their hoofs was muted by the protective glass between us, and the soft, deep, brown soil floor of the rink. Our instructor came to collect us and immediately ushered us through two sets of doors into the long, brightly lit stable. 

      The smell hit us like a wall; a mixture of manure, damp straw, sweat and leather. We got an insanely brief lesson in how to approach a horse from behind without getting kicked in the head, how to saddle and bridle it, where to hold the reigns as you walk it, and were told to assemble in the rink in five minutes. 

     The horse to which I’d been assigned was a glistening mahogany gelding named Midnight. Stick my fingers in this creature’s mouth? Was this a joke? First of all, I was pretty sure my horse’s teeth were much larger than the average horse’s. Secondly, horses in general seemed a lot bigger and taller than they did on TV and thirdly, the way ole Midnight kept throwing his head around was a sure sign he didn’t want me to do it either, and that was enough for me. 

       Finally, I got a friend to do the bridling for me. On the walk to the rink I failed to hold the reigns close enough under Midnight’s jawline and this allowed him to swing his enormous head up and over and into my chest repeatedly. With a girly little squeal I’d push it back. I hated this already. Once in the rink we were told to mount our horses. 

      I needed a set of those little steps to get my foot in the stirrups and swing my leg up and over. Once up, I sat up straight in the saddle, looked around, and tried to resist the urge to throw my arms around Midnight’s muscular neck and hold on for dear life. Where was that knob that was supposed to be on the saddle? Why did he insist on dipping that long neck down to bury those steamy flared nostrils into the earth? I had the sensation that I would just slide right down and that wasn’t entirely bad. Bad was how crazy vulnerable I felt. Midnight was a veritable freight train of a horse; all taut, rippling muscles. I didn’t expect to be so high up. What if he took off? What if I fell off? What if he fell on me? I didn’t like this at all. My palms were sweaty, my throat was dry and tight. I was very, very afraid. 

      I knew what was coming, could feel the heat creeping up my neck to my face, my bottom lip began to quiver pathetically, and then, to my absolute horror, I started to cry. At this point, the instructor, who had been a tad drill-sergeant-like, walked over to me. She saw the tears, the snot running down my nose and her expression softened. Quietly, and kindly, she began to tell me a story. It was about an experience she had had with an out-of-control horse. It seems that her horse had gotten spooked by something, and took off like a bat out of hell through the woods where she was riding. No matter what she did, this horse would not stop. In fact, the more she pulled on the reigns, the faster the horse went. 

     Right about the time that I was wondering what in the name of God she was thinking telling me this at this moment, she got to the punch line: Finally, in complete frustration, she dropped the reigns completely. At that point, the maniacal horse unexpectedly slowed to a cantor, and shortly after that, stopped completely. “You see,” she explained gently, “The tighter I held onto the reigns, the more I was driving the metal “bit” into his mouth, and he was just trying to escape the discomfort.” Our eyes simultaneously came to rest on my white- knuckled hold on the reigns. I looked back up at her, and, terrified as I was, I let go. 

      I never forgot that story either. This particular metaphor plays over and over in my life like the lyrics to a favorite song. To this day, every once in a while, I find myself so consumed with fear (what if?) that I catch myself in that white-knuckle control mode. When it becomes unbearable for me, and everyone around me, I try to make a mental checklist of the things I actually can control. Inevitably I find that it’s a pretty short list. In fact, what I can control usually comes down to exactly one thing: My response to whatever it is that is happening! Simply put, my attitude. 

      I can beat my head against the wall trying to change this person or that situation, try to manipulate events and outcomes and all it does is make me crazy until I let go of the reigns. I throw my hands up and just accept what is. There’s some kind of magic in that. Because somehow, every single time, the minute I let go, something changes for the better. 

 18 Jan 2012 

 Im-Perfect Parenting 

     My oldest child, Emily, is sixteen. I know, ‘nuff said, right? Actually, she is a terrific kid. When she was younger, I referred to her as my, “Ok Mom” kid, because that was her response to everything I said. Easy. Not defiant or tantrum throwing. Yep, I had a perfect kid. I used to stand on line in grocery stores watching other people struggle with unruly toddlers who were angrily demanding that their mother’s leave RIGHT NOW, or complaining that THESE ARE NOT THE GUMMIES I LIKE!!! And I would smile understandingly at the mom while secretly thinking, “Jeeze. Get that kid under control!” 

      Some of you will be happy to know that I’ve paid the price for that particular brand of smugness with child #2, who is not, shall we say, of the “people pleasing” variety. Who has, in fact, not only pitched grand mal fits on the grocery store line, but has launched glass jars of pickles over the side of the cart and loudly demanded to know why the fella on line in front of us was so BALD. 

      Hmn. Karma’s a bitch. 

      Elizabeth’s 5th birthday party was, in fact, a “princess” theme. But since we had invited the boys in her class, we kind of kept that on the lowdown and I made sure that while the little girls got pretty pink princess goodie bags (with crowns and pink nail polish inside), the boys got really cool laser swords. There was one little boy, however, who really wanted a princess goodie bag. Now, far be it from me to impose gender restrictions on party favors, but I simply didn’t have enough. So, I kept shoving the cool sword at him and he kept stealing other girls’ goodie bags. The whole thing kept me pretty entertained during the last half hour of this soiree. 

      Finally, when the last “princess” had left, and I had pried the pink goodie bag out of his hands and placed it safely in hers, I handed him the sword yet again. His sweaty little hand reached up to grab mine and coax me down closer to his face, “You know,” he began, little beads of sweat forming on his pink cheeks, “My mom really doesn’t like it when I come home from parties without a goodie bag.” “Hmn.” I replied. And this time, I smiled with understanding. Period. 

      Of course, grocery store line tantrums and birthday party etiquette turned out to be the really easy stuff, and it turned out that the child formerly known as the “perfect” child, was as delightfully flawed as the rest of us, thank God. At the moment, she has me slightly dizzy over a subject that instills fear in every mother’s heart: The Driving Permit. Don’t misunderstand me. Here again, my firstborn started out just like a dream. She passed the written exam with flying colors, went fairly unwillingly to her driving lessons with a foul-mouthed, chain smoking driving instructor who is beloved by the local teenagers. She got enough driving hours to get her permit, and then had one teensy little incident in which she parked a little closer to the sidewalk than the curb. We laughed about it. I thought it was a non-issue. 

      Somehow, I failed to notice when she quietly tucked her permit away in her jewelry box and never asked to drive again. When I asked her if she wanted to drive, she invariably said, “I don’t have my permit.” Cool, I’d think, as I slipped behind the wheel. Still, as time went on, her reluctance began to seem weird. What the heck? I thought kids were dying to drive? God knows I was. When she started to point out cars on the road that she’d really like to get for her birthday, my response was incredulous, “Are you kidding? You don’t drive! You think when you turn 17 and get a license you’re going to be handed a car?” Clearly we had to have a talk. At this point, she reluctantly admitted that she was afraid to drive. Of the two issues at hand here, (the assumption that there would be a car being one of them) this, I thought, we could negotiate and work through. 

     Once I agreed to abide by a few hundred (okay, okay, I’m exaggerating!) “rules” for when she did drive, she agreed to move the permit from the dresser into her wallet (baby steps!) Among her rules are the following: #1 – No music or cell phone use is allowed (pinch me!–this alone may reinstate her perfectness) #2 – No one can TALK when she is, a) Merging onto a highway, b) Making a left-hand turn (really? Okay, I guess…), c) Exceeding a speed limit of 40 mph or, d) Performing ANY type of parking. There’s a certain amount of irony to this considering the fact that as she drives she never stops talking; to other drivers, pedestrians, parked cars and other inanimate objects. 

 I’ll say it again, hmn. But not, of course, during left-hand turns. 

     She’s getting better. A lot better, in fact. Her confidence is increasing in direct proportion to her driving ability and she asks for the keys all the time now. It’s all good. By the time she turns 17 in May, she will be ready. A fair amount of her friends have already reached this particular milestone and I have gotten glimpses of what our next big conversation will be: The car issue. We live in a town, like many other towns, where extreme affluence and abject poverty co-exist. Our family is, thankfully, somewhere in the middle. Many of her friends, however, fall squarely in the extreme affluence category. Two of them just got brand new cars for Christmas, and I just don’t know how I feel about this. 

      No doubt it’s a lot safer to buy your kid the Mercedes version of a military tank instead of letting them drive a $400.00 1967 Volkswagen Bug like I did, but there are other consequences of such indulgences. Entitlement can be a very dangerous thing in and of itself. Sure, I’m aware that there’s a middle ground here, but seriously, what happened to borrowing the family car to go to your part-time job to save money to get your own car? As the youngest of seven children, when we waxed philosophical about the cars, or anything else we wished for, my father (born and bred in Pennsylvania), liked to say, “Well, like they say in the Old Country: ‘Sava you money.’” 

      I often say that the only thing I’m sure of about being a parent is that I’m not making the same mistakes my parents did. But boy, have I made others. Lots of them. Back when my children were perfect, I didn’t worry about this stuff. 

 Hmn. 

 9 Jan 2012

[readbookywooks]

11 What will break me? This is the question that consumes me over the next three days as we wait to be released from our prison of safety. What will break me into a million pieces so that I am beyond repair, beyond usefulness? I mention it to no one, but it devours my waking hours and weaves itself throughout my nightmares. Four more bunker missiles fall over this period, all massive, all very damaging, but there's no urgency to the attack. The bombs are spread out over the long hours so that just when you think the raid is over, another blast sends shock waves through your guts. It feels more designed to keep us in lockdown than to decimate 13. Cripple the district, yes. Give the people plenty to do to get the place running again. But destroy it? No. Coin was right on that point. You don't destroy what you want to acquire in the future. I assume what they really want, in the short term, is to stop the Airtime Assaults and keep me off the televisions of Panem. We receive next to no information about what is happening. Our screens never come on, and we get only brief audio updates from Coin about the nature of the bombs. Certainly, the war is still being waged, but as to its status, we're in the dark. Inside the bunker, cooperation is the order of the day. We adhere to a strict schedule for meals and bathing, exercise and sleep. Small periods of socialization are granted to alleviate the tedium. Our space becomes very popular because both children and adults have a fascination with Buttercup. He attains celebrity status with his evening game of Crazy Cat. I created this by accident a few years ago, during a winter blackout. You simply wiggle a flashlight beam around on the floor, and Buttercup tries to catch it. I'm petty enough to enjoy it because I think it makes him look stupid. Inexplicably, everyone here thinks he's clever and delightful. I'm even issued a special set of batteries - an enormous waste - to be used for this purpose. The citizens of 13 are truly starved for entertainment. It's on the third night, during our game, that I answer the question eating away at me. Crazy Cat becomes a metaphor for my situation. I am Buttercup. Peeta, the thing I want so badly to secure, is the light. As long as Buttercup feels he has the chance of catching the elusive light under his paws, he's bristling with aggression. (That's how I've been since I left the arena, with Peeta alive.) When the light goes out completely, Buttercup's temporarily distraught and confused, but he recovers and moves on to other things. (That's what would happen if Peeta died.) But the one thing that sends Buttercup into a tailspin is when I leave the light on but put it hopelessly out of his reach, high on the wall, beyond even his jumping skills. He paces below the wall, wails, and can't be comforted or distracted. He's useless until I shut the light off. (That's what Snow is trying to do to me now, only I don't know what form his game takes.) Maybe this realization on my part is all Snow needs. Thinking that Peeta was in his possession and being tortured for rebel information was bad. But thinking that he's being tortured specifically to incapacitate me is unendurable. And it's under the weight of this revelation that I truly begin to break. After Crazy Cat, we're directed to bed. The power's been coming and going; sometimes the lamps burn at full brightness, other times we squint at one another in the brownouts. At bedtime they turn the lamps to near darkness and activate safety lights in each space. Prim, who's decided the walls will hold up, snuggles with Buttercup on the lower bunk. My mother's on the upper. I offer to take a bunk, but they make me keep to the floor mattress since I flail around so much when I'm sleeping. I'm not flailing now, as my muscles are rigid with the tension of holding myself together. The pain over my heart returns, and from it I imagine tiny fissures spreading out into my body. Through my torso, down my arms and legs, over my face, leaving it crisscrossed with cracks. One good jolt of a bunker missile and I could shatter into strange, razor-sharp shards. When the restless, wiggling majority has settled into sleep, I carefully extricate myself from my blanket and tiptoe through the cavern until I find Finnick, feeling for some unspecified reason that he will understand. He sits under the safety light in his space, knotting his rope, not even pretending to rest. As I whisper my discovery of Snow's plan to break me, it dawns on me. This strategy is very old news to Finnick. It's what broke him. "This is what they're doing to you with Annie, isn't it?" I ask. "Well, they didn't arrest her because they thought she'd be a wealth of rebel information," he says. "They know I'd never have risked telling her anything like that. For her own protection." "Oh, Finnick. I'm so sorry," I say. "No, I'm sorry. That I didn't warn you somehow," he tells me. Suddenly, a memory surfaces. I'm strapped to my bed, mad with rage and grief after the rescue. Finnick is trying to console me about Peeta. "They'll figure out he doesn't know anything pretty fast. And they won't kill him if they think they can use him against you." "You did warn me, though. On the hovercraft. Only when you said they'd use Peeta against me, I thought you meant like bait. To lure me into the Capitol somehow," I say. "I shouldn't have said even that. It was too late for it to be of any help to you. Since I hadn't warned you before the Quarter Quell, I should've shut up about how Snow operates." Finnick yanks on the end of his rope, and an intricate knot becomes a straight line again. "It's just that I didn't understand when I met you. After your first Games, I thought the whole romance was an act on your part. We all expected you'd continue that strategy. But it wasn't until Peeta hit the force field and nearly died that I - " Finnick hesitates. I think back to the arena. How I sobbed when Finnick revived Peeta. The quizzical look on Finnick's face. The way he excused my behavior, blaming it on my pretend pregnancy. "That you what?" "That I knew I'd misjudged you. That you do love him. I'm not saying in what way. Maybe you don't know yourself. But anyone paying attention could see how much you care about him," he says gently. Anyone? On Snow's visit before the Victory Tour, he challenged me to erase any doubts of my love for Peeta. "Convince me," Snow said. It seems, under that hot pink sky with Peeta's life in limbo, I finally did. And in doing so, I gave him the weapon he needed to break me. Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, "How do you bear it?" Finnick looks at me in disbelief. "I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking." Something in my expression stops him. "Better not to give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart." Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece. "The more you can distract yourself, the better," he says. "First thing tomorrow, we'll get you your own rope. Until then, take mine." I spend the rest of the night on my mattress obsessively making knots, holding them up for Buttercup's inspection. If one looks suspicious, he swipes it out of the air and bites it a few times to make sure it's dead. By morning, my fingers are sore, but I'm still holding on. With twenty-four hours of quiet behind us, Coin finally announces we can leave the bunker. Our old quarters have been destroyed by the bombings. Everyone must follow exact directions to their new compartments. We clean our spaces, as directed, and file obediently toward the door. Before I'm halfway there, Boggs appears and pulls me from the line. He signals for Gale and Finnick to join us. People move aside to let us by. Some even smile at me since the Crazy Cat game seems to have made me more lovable. Out the door, up the stairs, down the hall to one of those multidirectional elevators, and finally we arrive at Special Defense. Nothing along our route has been damaged, but we are still very deep. Boggs ushers us into a room virtually identical to Command. Coin, Plutarch, Haymitch, Cressida, and everybody else around the table looks exhausted. Someone has finally broken out the coffee - although I'm sure it's viewed only as an emergency stimulant - and Plutarch has both hands wrapped tightly around his cup as if at any moment it might be taken away. There's no small talk. "We need all four of you suited up and aboveground," says the president. "You have two hours to get footage showing the damage from the bombing, establish that Thirteen's military unit remains not only functional but dominant, and, most important, that the Mockingjay is still alive. Any questions?" "Can we have a coffee?" asks Finnick. Steaming cups are handed out. I stare distastefully at the shiny black liquid, never having been much of a fan of the stuff, but thinking it might help me stay on my feet. Finnick sloshes some cream in my cup and reaches into the sugar bowl. "Want a sugar cube?" he asks in his old seductive voice. That's how we met, with Finnick offering me sugar. Surrounded by horses and chariots, costumed and painted for the crowds, before we were allies. Before I had any idea what made him tick. The memory actually coaxes a smile out of me. "Here, it improves the taste," he says in his real voice, plunking three cubes in my cup. As I turn to go suit up as the Mockingjay, I catch Gale watching me and Finnick unhappily. What now? Does he actually think something's going on between us? Maybe he saw me go to Finnick's last night. I would've passed the Hawthornes' space to get there. I guess that probably rubbed him the wrong way. Me seeking out Finnick's company instead of his. Well, fine. I've got rope burn on my fingers, I can barely hold my eyes open, and a camera crew's waiting for me to do something brilliant. And Snow's got Peeta. Gale can think whatever he wants. In my new Remake Room in Special Defense, my prep team slaps me into my Mockingjay suit, arranges my hair, and applies minimal makeup before my coffee's even cooled. In ten minutes, the cast and crew of the next propos are making the circuitous trek to the outside. I slurp my coffee as we travel, finding that the cream and sugar greatly enhance its flavor. As I knock back the dregs that have settled to the bottom of the cup, I feel a slight buzz start to run through my veins. After climbing a final ladder, Boggs hits a lever that opens a trapdoor. Fresh air rushes in. I take big gulps and for the first time allow myself to feel how much I hated the bunker. We emerge into the woods, and my hands run through the leaves overhead. Some are just starting to turn. "What day is it?" I ask no one in particular. Boggs tells me September begins next week. September. That means Snow has had Peeta in his clutches for five, maybe six weeks. I examine a leaf on my palm and see I'm shaking. I can't will myself to stop. I blame the coffee and try to focus on slowing my breathing, which is far too rapid for my pace. Debris begins to litter the forest floor. We come to our first crater, thirty yards wide and I can't tell how deep. Very. Boggs says anyone on the first ten levels would likely have been killed. We skirt the pit and continue on. "Can you rebuild it?" Gale asks. "Not anytime soon. That one didn't get much. A few backup generators and a poultry farm," says Boggs. "We'll just seal it off." The trees disappear as we enter the area inside the fence. The craters are ringed with a mixture of old and new rubble. Before the bombing, very little of the current 13 was aboveground. A few guard stations. The training area. About a foot of the top floor of our building - where Buttercup's window jutted out - with several feet of steel on top of it. Even that was never meant to withstand more than a superficial attack. "How much of an edge did the boy's warning give you?" asks Haymitch. "About ten minutes before our own systems would've detected the missiles," says Boggs. "But it did help, right?" I ask. I can't bear it if he says no. "Absolutely," Boggs replies. "Civilian evacuation was completed. Seconds count when you're under attack. Ten minutes meant lives saved." Prim, I think. And Gale. They were in the bunker only a couple of minutes before the first missile hit. Peeta might have saved them. Add their names to the list of things I can never stop owing him for. Cressida has the idea to film me in front of the ruins of the old Justice Building, which is something of a joke since the Capitol's been using it as a backdrop for fake news broadcasts for years, to show that the district no longer existed. Now, with the recent attack, the Justice Building sits about ten yards away from the edge of a new crater. As we approach what used to be the grand entrance, Gale points out something and the whole party slows down. I don't know what the problem is at first and then I see the ground strewn with fresh pink and red roses. "Don't touch them!" I yell. "They're for me!" The sickeningly sweet smell hits my nose, and my heart begins to hammer against my chest. So I didn't imagine it. The rose on my dresser. Before me lies Snow's second delivery. Long-stemmed pink and red beauties, the very flowers that decorated the set where Peeta and I performed our post-victory interview. Flowers not meant for one, but for a pair of lovers. I explain to the others as best I can. Upon inspection, they appear to be harmless, if genetically enhanced, flowers. Two dozen roses. Slightly wilted. Most likely dropped after the last bombing. A crew in special suits collects them and carts them away. I feel certain they will find nothing extraordinary in them, though. Snow knows exactly what he's doing to me. It's like having Cinna beaten to a pulp while I watch from my tribute tube. Designed to unhinge me. Like then, I try to rally and fight back. But as Cressida gets Castor and Pollux in place, I feel my anxiety building. I'm so tired, so wired, and so unable to keep my mind on anything but Peeta since I've seen the roses. The coffee was a huge mistake. What I didn't need was a stimulant. My body visibly shakes and I can't seem to catch my breath. After days in the bunker, I'm squinting no matter what direction I turn, and the light hurts. Even in the cool breeze, sweat trickles down my face. "So, what exactly do you need from me again?" I ask. "Just a few quick lines that show you're alive and still fighting," says Cressida. "Okay." I take my position and then I'm staring into the red light. Staring. Staring. "I'm sorry, I've got nothing." Cressida walks up to me. "You feeling okay?" I nod. She pulls a small cloth from her pocket and blots my face. "How about we do the old Q-and-A thing?" "Yeah. That would help, I think." I cross my arms to hide the shaking. Glance at Finnick, who gives me a thumbs-up. But he's looking pretty shaky himself. Cressida's back in position now. "So, Katniss. You've survived the Capitol bombing of Thirteen. How did it compare with what you experienced on the ground in Eight?" "We were so far underground this time, there was no real danger. Thirteen's alive and well and so am - " My voice cuts off in a dry, squeaking sound. "Try the line again," says Cressida. "'Thirteen's alive and well and so am I.'" I take a breath, trying to force air down into my diaphragm. "Thirteen's alive and so - " No, that's wrong. I swear I can still smell those roses. "Katniss, just this one line and you're done today. I promise," says Cressida. "'Thirteen's alive and well and so am I.'" I swing my arms to loosen myself up. Place my fists on my hips. Then drop them to my sides. Saliva's filling my mouth at a ridiculous rate and I feel vomit at the back of my throat. I swallow hard and open my lips so I can get the stupid line out and go hide in the woods and - that's when I start crying. It's impossible to be the Mockingjay. Impossible to complete even this one sentence. Because now I know that everything I say will be directly taken out on Peeta. Result in his torture. But not his death, no, nothing so merciful as that. Snow will ensure that his life is much worse than death. "Cut," I hear Cressida say quietly. "What's wrong with her?" Plutarch says under his breath. "She's figured out how Snow's using Peeta," says Finnick. There's something like a collective sigh of regret from the semicircle of people spread out before me. Because I know this now. Because there will never be a way for me to not know this again. Because, beyond the military disadvantage losing a Mockingjay entails, I am broken. Several sets of arms would embrace me. But in the end, the only person I truly want to comfort me is Haymitch, because he loves Peeta, too. I reach out for him and say something like his name and he's there, holding me and patting my back. "It's okay. It'll be okay, sweetheart." He sits me on a length of broken marble pillar and keeps an arm around me while I sob. "I can't do this anymore," I say. "I know," he says. "All I can think of is - what he's going to do to Peeta - because I'm the Mockingjay!" I get out. "I know." Haymitch's arm tightens around me. "Did you see? How weird he acted? What are they - doing to him?" I'm gasping for air between sobs, but I manage one last phrase. "It's my fault!" And then I cross some line into hysteria and there's a needle in my arm and the world slips away. It must be strong, whatever they shot into me, because it's a full day before I come to. My sleep wasn't peaceful, though. I have the sense of emerging from a world of dark, haunted places where I traveled alone. Haymitch sits in the chair by my bed, his skin waxen, his eyes bloodshot. I remember about Peeta and start to tremble again. Haymitch reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. "It's all right. We're going to try to get Peeta out." "What?" That makes no sense. "Plutarch's sending in a rescue team. He has people on the inside. He thinks we can get Peeta back alive," he says. "Why didn't we before?" I say. "Because it's costly. But everyone agrees this is the thing to do. It's the same choice we made in the arena. To do whatever it takes to keep you going. We can't lose the Mockingjay now. And you can't perform unless you know Snow can't take it out on Peeta." Haymitch offers me a cup. "Here, drink something." I slowly sit up and take a sip of water. "What do you mean, costly?" He shrugs. "Covers will be blown. People may die. But keep in mind that they're dying every day. And it's not just Peeta; we're getting Annie out for Finnick, too." "Where is he?" I ask. "Behind that screen, sleeping his sedative off. He lost it right after we knocked you out," says Haymitch. I smile a little, feel a bit less weak. "Yeah, it was a really excellent shoot. You two cracked up and Boggs left to arrange the mission to get Peeta. We're officially in reruns." "Well, if Boggs is leading it, that's a plus," I say. "Oh, he's on top of it. It was volunteer only, but he pretended not to notice me waving my hand in the air," says Haymitch. "See? He's already demonstrated good judgment." Something's wrong. Haymitch's trying a little too hard to cheer me up. It's not really his style. "So who else volunteered?" "I think there were seven altogether," he says evasively. I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. "Who else, Haymitch?" I insist. Haymitch finally drops the good-natured act. "You know who else, Katniss. You know who stepped up first." Of course I do. Gale.