Back words

My words came back to me.

I was tired. Overworked. Anxious for the training session I wasn't nearly ready to lead on a subject I really didn't know. I had spent too many hours at work, more than I could count, and I would again in the morning. I'd work at night. I'd get up early and work again from my couch. I'd get back to the office by seven. In between, I really didn't want to volunteer.

Home and couch beckoned. Dinner. Nap. In the lobby, I deliberated before heading out the door that would take me home instead of taking me to the Metro.

On the corner, I paused, wondering which direction to cross and I tripped over my own feet as they headed north instead of east, toward the red line that would take me to the church.

"Just an hour," I thought. "I'll stay just an hour and then I'll go home."

I hadn't been in forever, and still I deliberated. I didn't want to go.

When I walked in the door, though, familiar faces looked up and smiled.

"Kristin! How are you?"

My spirits lifted and I chatted with friends as I slid a letter from its envelope and started to look for books.

"Have you been hiking recently?" I asked, and "How is work?"

"Did you talk to Tracy? Does she need anything else from us?"

"Anybody want to come and help me pack?"

Peanut butter cookies and oatmeal raisin on one table. Pringles on the other. The room was filled with volunteers, some that I knew and others I didn't. Not yet. But there was time.

"Kristin, this one's for you," a friend said, handing me a letter.

"Oh, wow," I responded. "That's my first letter."

"Really?" asked one while another protested, "There's a whole stack for you over there."

A stack of letters from prisoners addressed to me.

Most people I know wouldn't find joy in that, personal satisfaction in letters from convicts, but I couldn't seem to stop smiling. The men in the letters, the inmates, wrote in response to letters and books that I'd sent. They thanked me. They blessed me. One man hadn't even received one of my packages but heard of me from a fellow inmate. Apparently, I was earning a reputation as "cool" in at least one Texas prison.

On some level, it might have been a little intimidating, but they didn't know my full name. My address. Anything about me but the brief notes I wrote, but I did write. I didn't use a form letter. Poor, tired penmanship and all I sent personal notes about the books I picked and packed for these strangers.

Another inmate I remembered. He'd written a letter without response. I couldn't find the original and the follow up didn't include any suggestions, so I sent him some of my own favorite books, ones that I loved, and I sent him a note. Then I discovered that I wasn't supposed to notes with books to Utah prisoners; other packages had been denied for that very reason but he got it. Appreciated it. Wrote back to thank me for the response, the books, for introducing him to authors he'd never read.

And suddenly, there they were. My words. Back to me. Those words, my letters, made a difference in the lives of men I'd never even met.


Tag: Writing Books Prisoners

Speechless

The words wouldn't gel. They couldn't come out right. They meant too much, represented too much, and in the end, they just ended up garbled. Meaningless. And I kept trying. Putting pen to paper. Putting fingers to keyboard. Trying to pull the words from my head and failing.

Failing.

"Who are we really?" I asked a friend. "We're all just the sum of our stories but nobody knows them all. Some things remain unsaid, but they're part of us, right?"

"If a tree falls in the wood and there's nobody there to hear it..." I started but didn't finish. "I'm adding existentialism to my crisis of mortality."

"Are you sure you don't want to add a crisis of conscience?" she asked. "Spirituality? Get them all."

I didn't, though. Just words and stories and they stayed on my mind through the long walk, the night, the next morning. The things I said, the things I didn't say, I wouldn't write. They didn't make much sense. The words just wouldn't come out right.

"Music," I thought. "That's got to help."

Other people had sorted out their words. Daniel Martin Moore begged me to come be close and be rested. Vampire Weekend advised that I stay awake to break the habit. Sing in praise of Jackson Crowther. Then, they asked...

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
I've seen those English dramas too
They're cruel
So if there's any other way
To spell the word
It's fine with me, with me

Why would you speak to me that way
Especially when I always said that I
Haven't got the words for you
All your diction dripping with disdain
Through the pain
I always tell the truth

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
I climbed to Dharamsala too
I did
I met the highest lama
His accent sounded fine
to me, to me

Check your handbook
It's no trick
Take the chapstick
Put it on your lips
Crack a smile
Adjust my tie
Know your boyfriend, unlike other guys

Why would you lie about how much coal you have?
Why would you lie about something dumb like that?
Why would you lie about anything at all?
First the window, then it's to the wall
Lil' Jon, he always tells the truth

Check your passport
It's no trick
Take the chapstick
Put it on your lips
Crack a smile
Adjust my tie
Know your butler, unlike other guys
Why would you lie about how much coal you have?
Why would you lie about something dumb like that?
Why would you lie about anything at all?
First the window, then it's through the wall
Why would you tape my conversations?
Show your paintings
At the United Nations
Lil' Jon, he always tells the truth

And I realized, sometimes I just haven't got the words for you.


Tag: Writing

Complicated

Avril Lavigne doesn't generally run through my head. Skate, maybe, but no sprinting. Today, though, she can't stop running and I can't stop wondering, "Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated?" Maybe it really is better to ask forgiveness rather than permission.

When I found out that I'd won an ice cream party from Edy's, I couldn't stop grinning. Who could resist ice cream for 100 and the chance to hold a party for neighbors, friends and family without cost at all? To make people happy?

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! And I am a bit of a screamer. I had to stop buying the sweet frozen treat when I went through a half gallon in five days. Half gallon. Five days. Even the light version starts to settle around the middle so no ice cream for me. At my free, neighborhood ice cream party, though, I will gladly eat a scoop or three.

Now, my yard isn't so much a yard as a tiny Japanese Maple surrounded by ivy on a postage stamp of land. I couldn't quite feed a hundred without blocking traffic. I couldn't feed five so I decided to hold the party at a park near my house. Just down the street, it had plenty of room for table and ice cream, Frisbees, footballs and bocce, kids and dogs. The park would be perfect, and I started researching to find out what I needed to do in order to stay all legal-like.

In the course of my searching, I discovered that most [read: all] of the parks in my neighborhood were actually national parks. Part of the National Park Service. Equipped with all sorts of rules. I definitely needed a permit. I read. I bookmarked. I found directions and made my way to the Park Service office to fill out my application. Two days, three offices and half a dozen phone calls later - $50 later - my application was pending.

Late this morning, I walked from my office on Independence down to Potomac Park to visit the second of the offices, the place the second phone call after the first visit had led me. It was a little warmer than I thought. A lot warmer. Downright hot, actually, and I had forgotten to change into my sweat shirt, as in a shirt in which I sweat. I wear one when walking to work, knowing full well that I'm going to get all gross under my backpack, which does nothing for professionalism, and change in the office. (I wear a lot of trousers/skirts with shirts lately, changing in the second stall from the left.)

A mile and three quarters after realizing that I didn't want to walk, I made it to the office and signed in with a guard who seemed less than pleased to be working over her lunch hour, so she kept eating. In the permit office, a nice young man offered to help me while a not-so-nice young man interrupted with his own questions.

"What is it that you want to do?" the man behind the counter asked me.

"I won a contest - ice cream for a hundred people - and I want to give it out."

"Distribute it?"

"Distribute it."

"Do you want to sell it?" he asked.

"No, I just want to give it out. Have an ice cream party."

He left to find out if I could actually do that in the park by my house. Exactly 10 minutes later, the thought of asking forgiveness rather than permission crossed my mind. Exactly 30 seconds after that, I thought of the fines I might have to pay and decided against it.

"Your application needs to be reviewed by the Parks East Office."

"Is that the one in Anacostia Park?" I asked.

"No," the guy said.

"Yes," said a woman behind the counter.

"That's where it's located," the guy said.

"But they sent me here," I protested. "Yesterday."

In the end, he took my application and my money. My free ice cream party wouldn't really be free at all, but in 24-48 hours, I might or might not have a permit, which meant that I might or might not invite people to join me for cold, dairy goodness in just over a week and a half. Otherwise, I'd have to figure out a plan B. With any luck, it wouldn't take two days and three offices, half a dozen phone calls and $50.

I was running out of time and money but in a week or so, I would have plenty of ice cream.


Tag: Ice cream Party Red Tape Washington DC

Fireworks

I don't remember a lot of firework displays from childhood but I do remember Independence Day. For a number of years, I was at camp or at the lake, at Pop and Gram's, somewhere away from the bottle rockets' red glare. They were rained out. They weren't that important.

Roadside stands linger in my memory as do stories of accidents and emergency room visits. Layered salads. Jell-O in red and blue. The city band in the big pavilion at the city park. South Beach. Las Vegas. With the bright lights of the Strip, I probably wouldn't have noticed fireworks.

My favorite 4th of July came a few years back when I celebrated with Marines and missionaries, volunteers and ex-pats at an embassy in Guyana, the people who were the face of our nation to so many people in other countries. There were no fireworks then, and I didn't miss them.

Years before that, a friend and I took a roadtrip over the long weekend. Three days in Ohio, an amusement park, a party with my friends from college who had just discovered they were expecting their first child. (They have four now.) We made it back in time to join a few friends at the Capitol for the annual concert and we saw Ray Charles, as well as the firework display.

This year, I really didn't make plans. I joined friends at a barbecue and then headed home. I didn't want to find myself stuck in Arlington due to road closures so I left pre-climax. I went home.

Then I grabbed my camera and headed down to the Mall for the fireworks. Even though crowds make me nervous. Even though I'm a "grown up." Even though I had walked 14 miles and really just wanted to curl up in a ball. I added five miles and a whole bunch of oohs and ahhs and I enjoyed every boom, burst and flash.

 

 

Tag: July 4 Washington DC

Sam

Freedom in a glass, a.k.a. Pabst Blue Ribbon ran from the tap, but I chose Sam. Sam Adams. The summer ale. I brought some to the barbecue, too.

Football and flip cup, bocce and beer pong, ball toss. I didn't play any games; though, a friend and I practiced the ball toss while attention was diverted elsewhere. We were terrible but nobody seemed to care. The mix of friends, old and new, my friend and her boyfriend and their worlds colliding came together to celebrate our nation's birth and that of a couple of friends. A Yankee Doodle dandy and another Yankee Doodle sweetheart.

I made my way down to the Mall for fireworks, adding five miles to the 14 I had already walked, and made plans to walk again on Sunday and the next weekend and the weekend after that. I packed a little. Slept a little. Laughed a lot and the weekend wasn't over.

Barry Manilow on the Mall didn't hold my attention until it was replayed on public TV and I was sorry I missed him, Aretha, too, but not sorry enough to regret spending a day in the sun, a day in the grass and breeze with friends and friends of friends.

As I drove with the roof down and wind in my hair, I listened to National Public Radio. With news and classics and shows that I could only hear on NPR, I heard that the president would host military families for a barbecue and fireworks, and that made me happy, too. It seemed a fitting way to celebrate our nation's independence.

As did the Sam. Sam Adams. He was one of our Founding Fathers. He helped lead the American Revolution and shape American republicanism. His name also found its way to a lovely summer beer.


Tag: Fourth of July

Explosive

Grandmother's house

Over the river and through the wood, there's a place I've always known.

It's changed through the years – the yard isn't the same without Grandpa's intervention. As nice as it is to walk through the grass that he never allowed or leave the patio furniture outside, I'd rather have Grandpa back.

I miss the loud, flowered furniture with shades of orange, brown and olive. It looks much "nicer" with chairs, carpet and sofa ranging between blue and green, if not the same, but nothing can modernize the wooden panels downstairs.

In the living room, there used to be a glamour shot of me from an unintentional makeover at a Mary Kay recruiting party. My senior photo. Pictures of my cousins, my mom, my aunts and uncles covered the end tables and shelves. My grandparents wedding, my great grandparents, my great aunts and uncles posed, danced and ducked along the walls.

I don’t remember much else of the decorations – the swordfish over the old TV. The paintings in "the boys' room." The clock in the kitchen.

Over the years, it's housed so many people: My grandparents, of course, and their children in need of refuge and shelter. My sister and her kids lived there over the past year, fleeing an untenable situation with a threatening neighbor, and they probably will again. Soon. But it will not be the same.

On Wednesday, my grandma moved out. She should be much happier in her new home – she's a social creature (I know where I get it) and there are others in the facility, people she's known for years longer than I've been alive.

There's a barbecue tomorrow and the family's all going. Grandma's going. And my family will have a blast because they're together. My mom, aunts and uncle, my brother and cousin. They've been around all week (some have been there forever). Climbing Grandma's roof. Cleaning the gutters. They've been cleaning and packing and moving Grandma out of the place I've known longer than anything else.

I'll be back soon, especially if my sister and brother-in-law move to Minnesota. I'll head over the river and through the wood in a great big plane. It won't be the same, but that will be fine. I'll get to see Grandma. Maybe I can even wrangle a game of Boggle out of her, if I can tear her away from her friends.


Tag: Family

Christmas in July

Friday is my favorite day of the week. More than Saturday, even. It's the sweet, sweet anticipation of the break to come that drives me wild, more so than the break itself.

On most levels, I knew that Friday was a holiday, July 3, the federal observation of Independence Day, but for the most part, I forgot. Work was busy. Life was busy. When Wednesday came, I just thought of it as Wednesday.

Thursday morning, though, as I considered hitting snooze on the alarm, I remembered: Holiday.

"I don't have to work tomorrow," I thought. "I don't have to work!"

It was like Christmas in July without the trampling of temporary Walmart employees, without shopping at all or familial obligations. I awoke and realized I would have a whole day to myself. No work. No plans. No anything.

With Thursday as the new Friday, I leapt from bed and turned off one alarm, turned off the second alarm, and started to work, far earlier than I would have arisen on a normal workday. I would again. And again. And again over the weekend. Because that's what happened whenever I could sleep in; I'd end up so excited I couldn't sleep at all.

Tag: Holiday

Confirmed

I had almost forgotten about the swine flu, about the face masks and infrared scan at the airport, about the sanitizer and flu kits at work. In the flurry of news from Iran overcome by the flurry of news about Michael Jackson, the flu all but faded from my mind.

Granted, I did receive an alert when it reached "pandemic" status, which really only sent my thoughts off on a tangent of pandemonium and endemic and pandas. Pandemic meant nothing to me. I knew there were cases worldwide. The numbers meant nothing to me – 27,717 cases in the US with 127 deaths since all of this started in April.

Was it just April?

I first heard about the flu in April, when my plane was parked far from the airport and we were shuttled through medical screening. Questions in Spanish were delivered by people in lab coats and masks after we filled out the forms in English. Infrared screening to see if we had fevers. I never quite figured out what they would do if we did.

In May, the girl at the airport, the one checking our passports at the airline desk, took of her own mask and sighed. She said she was tired of it.

"That's effective," a friend said as we waited in line and I rolled my eyes.

"I'm sure it's annoying."

The pretty masks of the days of SARS had been relegated to closet shelves and trash cans. The ones I saw in May more closely resembled those at the hospital, those I had worn at the hospital when visiting someone in quarantine. They seemed ineffective then and more so now.

The numbers grew as the concern started to wane. I knew people had died but not personally. Life got in the way and I stopped thinking about it until I read through my email Tuesday morning.

Someone in my building had swine flu. Someone who worked in the area I'd worked for the past two days had been confirmed. An industrial hygienist came in to "sanitize the space with microbial cleaning," and coincidentally, the agency had planned to install antibacterial gel dispensers over the weekend. The building was probably cleaner than it had been in a while. A long while. But still I wondered about this flu, this new flu, this thing about which I knew nothing so I looked it up.

In the United States, most people who have become ill with the newly declared pandemic virus have recovered without requiring medical treatment, however, CDC anticipates that there will be more cases, more hospitalizations and more deaths associated with this pandemic in the coming days and weeks. In addition, this virus could cause significant illness with associated hospitalizations and deaths in the fall and winter during the U.S. influenza season.
- Centers for Disease Control

I wasn't too worried. I wouldn't wear a mask at my desk or stay out of the office; though, I would use the dispenser. Everybody did. It gave us something to do while waiting for the elevator.

I wouldn't worry about getting the flu but the CDC recommendation would throw me off, "If you are sick with a flu-like illness, stay home for 7 days after your symptoms begin or until you have been symptom-free for 24 hours, whichever is longer."

Seven days at a minimum? I didn't have time for that.


Tag: Swine flu Work