I Love First Meetings

In many of my stories, the first meeting between main characters is a favorite scene to write and to read.  Here's the first meeting between Evan and Caleb in Dreams We Remember.  Do keep in mind that this has been revised only once.

The quiet footstep slunk by my door each night.  

I left high school at sixteen, forsaking my senior year of in favor of community college.  I then managed to whittle away three entire years, each semester signing up for five classes and proceeding to drop at least two of them after a month or so, throwing in a couple summer sessions because I hated hanging around the house.  Worked at a bike shop, Albertson’s, Starbucks.  Bought myself a beater Taurus to spin girls around in and stuff with old books.  The latter purpose was my guilty hobby that not a soul but mine knew of.
Reading facilitated my education more than any of my classes, which I spat at and passed with honor student ranking.  If I threw up on a piece of paper my teachers adored me; if my heart tried to leak out the scores plummeted.  So I swallowed my instruction with ipecac syrup and tucked Hemingway and Stevenson beneath my pillow.
I grew up in a modest city on California’s Central Coast, so my family visited San Francisco at least once a year.  Often we merely drove through on the way to see relatives in Nevado, but once in a while we’d bustle through Chinatown or attend a Giants’ game.  I loved the city for its architecture and its fog, and my attendance at any state university would please my family.    
At nearly twenty I was fairly old to be a newbie in the Mary Park Residence Hall.  I showed up with a duffle teeming with books and underwear, thrilled to be on my own in a place of learning.  My roommate had been at SFSU since freshman year, and why he didn’t room with a buddy was beyond me.  He certainly knew enough people.
I adjusted well to dorm living.  Pre-made meals suited me perfectly.  I’d never had any trouble making friends, feeling like I had fifty after the first week.
One night in late September I woke to the sound of footsteps.  They crept as inconspicuously as possible, shoelessly, careful step upon careful step.  I thought little of them and went back to sleep.  But the next night they came again: same time, same rhythm.  They came every night for a week, and finally I waited until they had been long past, then slipped on my robe and snuck out.
The hall was empty and I breezed through it carelessly.  I had no idea where the footsteps headed, and peeking into other dorm rooms seemed blatantly unacceptable.  I wondered why I had decided to follow the footsteps; they likely led into the bathroom.  But the same time every night?  And gone so long?  I never heard them return.  When I reached the bathroom I stealthily opened the door and entered.
I knew I had found the owner of the footsteps in the fellow student before me.  He sat on the floor with his back leant against a stall, his eyes closed but clearly not sleeping.
He twitched, hearing something, and opened his eyes.  Upon seeing me he started terribly.
“Good evening,” I said.
He couldn’t look at me, smashing his teeth together.  I think he tried to respond, but it was all he could do to plaster his face with some semblance of composure.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
He painfully closed and opened his eyes.  “Couldn’t sleep.”
“You come every night.”
“I can never sleep.”  He stared straight ahead, his jaw bulging in his narrow face.  
“I’m up tonight also.  May I sit with you?”
He took a shaking breath.  “Of course.”  We sat silent.  I thought his eyes would close again, but they only shimmered at the chipped porcelain sinks.  For his weight he was unbelievably tall, his legs extending nearly across the room, and for a young man who had presumably seen the sun within his lifetime, extremely pale.  A jagged, raised scar twisted along the side of his neck, a Lucifer vein writhing through the skin.  He was like one terminally ill, spending his final hours alone in the dark, starved and abandoned, waiting to die.  The scar flourishing as he failed.  A horrible thing: swollen and red.  It could only be an incision, but then the surgeon who put it there should have been stoned. 
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Caleb.”
“Mine’s Evan.”  I took his hand up from his knee.  “You’re frozen!”
He snatched his hand away.  “Then you had best not touch me.”
“I had best share.”  I pulled off my robe and tossed it in his lap.  
He looked even more uncomfortable than before.
“Come on, Caleb!  You went to kindergarten, didn’t you?  I have fleece pajamas and a robe.  You’re multiple inches too long for your pajamas and robeless.  Sharing.”
He thought me insane.  “What do you want?”
“For you to put that on.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re cold and I’m sweating like an idiot.”
His tight shoulders softened a little; he stood and put on the robe.  We sat still and awkward again, but at least in my mind he was a bit more comfortable.
“Did I really say that?”  
He turned to me.
“Did I really say ‘I’m sweating like an idiot?’”
The green eyes actually met mine, and we began to laugh.  His voice had been thin, but laughing lent it new fullness.
“I certainly am making an idiot of myself,” I said.  “In every way I can muster.”
“You’re the idiot?  I’m the one sitting on the bathroom floor at one a.m.”
“But I followed you.  I could get nabbed for something like that.”
He laughed again, then subdued.  “Sorry for waking you.  I try to be quiet.”
“I waited for you to go by.”
“How often do you hear me?”
“Have every night for a week, but only because I listen.”
“You’re the first, thankfully.”
“Do you do this every night?”
He nodded.
“Since when?”
“A month after I started.”
“When was that?”
“Three years ago.”
“You’ve spent every night in the bathroom for three years?”
“Almost.  Not those between semesters, of course.”
“Do you go home for breaks?”
He couldn’t answer a moment, gathering strength for the next round of questions.
“Never mind.  Believe it or not, I don’t actually mean to interrogate you.”
A hollow chuckle accompanied his glance.  “This is not interrogation.  I spend summers in various cheap hotels.  FAFSA likes me so even my dorm fees are covered; I save up to pay for summer accommodations.”
“That sounds better than going home.  Maybe you can show me the best places.”
He smiled.  “Gladly.  Thanks for the robe.”
“Don’t mention it.  I feel smarter without it.”
Another laugh enlivened his frame.  “We can go back to the rooms now.  You’re falling asleep.”
“Am I?”
“Your eyes are heavy.”
“But you’ll stay all night.”
“You know all my habits!  Then just fall asleep here; I’ll wake you in the morning.”
“When do you break for lunch tomorrow?”
“Eleven thirty.”

So Many Stories!

Usually I go at least a week between stories.  I get an idea, think about it a while, write a little, leave it, write a little more, leave it, and then get going and pull an all-nighter to finish it.  Then it sits.  Then I revise it.  Then my mum reads it.  Then it's "done."

But not lately.  Soon after Weary Angel I got the idea for Fog Spill.  I obsessed over that a few days, nearly finishing it.  But now it won't end.  I'm ready to end it, but every time I start an ending I hate and therefore abandon it.  I adore the first meeting between my main characters:


Here was my stop!  I jumped from my seat, grabbed my backpack, and scurried out to the base of the peak.  It was cold, but a beautiful cold, brimming with crisp life and a mist of joy.  I breathed deeply of it, tightened the straps on my shoulders, and started up.
This day was better than all in my memory.  Hiking was my favorite thing.  To travel up, further from anything corrupted by the darkness or stained by bad experience.  And today was the best type of day: the cold white-silver and black-silver chilling the sky and bringing out the color in color, so that the brilliance of the whole world climbed up from underground hopes and forgotten wishes.  And I traveled with it; climbing up and up, while the color climbed up and up, so that it swallowed me and made me a part of the vibrancy. 
I reached the bowl’s edge.  Laughing I scurried up to the top, then fell silent.  The blessing was too great.
As looked into the bowl I saw the fog swelling.  Closer, closer to the top.  The beginning of a fog spill.  And here I was, standing right where it would spill over.  It welled before my feet, the slightest bit pooling forward and wrapping about my ankles.  That small bit crept up my legs, then leapt to my arms, and slipped to my shoulder, and curled about my neck.  A playful little fog child!  I laughed, and the fog warmed.  I’d never felt warm fog before.  I smiled and relaxed into my wisp of fog and it wound around my face and neck and shoulders, then it was gone.  I turned about in search of it, but stopped when I saw the glory just in front of me.
A wall.  An enormous wall of deepest cloud.  Beauty such as I cannot describe.  It must have bloomed a mile above my head.  Then, then…then the fog spilled.
Over me.  Around me.  Around me so that I stood small and awestruck within the sky.  As a young child I had always wanted to climb up into the fog with a jar, so that I could catch a bit of it to keep forever with me.  But now I knew the jar could not hold the fog.  It was too great, too magnificent, too perfect for any mortal thing to hold.
Laughing.  The fog laughed!  I laughed with it, and it wound gentle and warm about me once again.  It had a beautiful voice, the fog.  Low and quiet, yet bursting with the joy of a thousand children.
But where were my feet?  In sudden panic I cried out, for I was no longer on the ground.
“What troubles you?” said the soft, low voice.
“I’m going to fall!”
“Fall?  I wouldn’t let you fall.”
At once there were solid arms around me, and I clung to the neck of my rescuer.  
“See?” he said.  “I had you all the time.  Silly girl, thinking I’d drop you!”   
“Where are we now?” I asked, still feverishly clinging to him.
“Halfway down the mountain.  Open your eyes; it’s beautiful.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t be there.”
“I shall.”
“You’re a dream.  When I open my eyes you’ll vanish, and I’ll fall.”
A sudden chill came over him; I was wrapped in a freezing embrace.  In a moment I felt my feet on the earth.  The now icy hands loosed my hold, and the form stepped back.
“You’re on the ground,” he said.  “Open your eyes.”
I did, and saw a young man before me.  His skin was so light he seemed half invisible, and his hair also: white-grey.  I hardly noticed the clear blue of his eyes, because the tears in them pained me to faintness.
“Am I still here?” he asked.
“You’re shivering.”
He turned to hide his face, but I rushed forward and wrapped my arms around him.  A spark of warmth ignited in his heart, spreading rapidly throughout him until it flowed into the air because he was full.  Now it was his arms wrapped around me, and I lay comfortably against him.
“May I carry you again, Kiva?” he asked.  I laughed, and we thrust into the sky.  This time I kept my eyes open and saw the beauty.  The incredible, wonderful beauty; the little mountains poking into the sky, the tiny creek dripping along the city’s edge – even the busses and cars were lovely from my place with the fog.
“Kiva!” I exclaimed.  “You called me ‘Kiva!’”
“That is your name.”
“But I never told it to you!”
“I love you.  How could I not know your name?”
“Can you love me already?”
He smiled, then ran his fingers through my hair and kissed my cheek.  It was so strange, but I loved him too.  Not the imitation love girls feel when they think a boy is handsome or sweet, but the real kind.  The kind that goes beyond any explanation.  The kind that doesn’t understand explanation.  
“I love you too,” I said.  “But I don’t know your name.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”  A horrible guilt threatened me.  “I love you, truly love you, but I don’t know your name!”
“Hush, Kiva,” he said, rubbing between my shoulders to soothe me.  “You know it, but are too worried to find it.  Relax and you’ll see it’s right there.”
  I had to relax, because his hand and voice made anxiety impossible.  I struggled to keep my eyes open, his strength and gentleness overwhelming me.  I felt so small, but in a good way.  The way a baby feels small when a parent cradles him, and he knows that neither darkness nor fear nor evil can touch him.
“Afton,” I said, sleepily.  “Of course your name is Afton.  You were right: I knew it all the time.”


     So, yeah...I do really, really want to hike Bishop's now.  Anyway, I love this part, and some parts which come after.  But at the moment any ending I try sounds like I got sick of the story and just ended it.  Somewhere it died, and I don't know where.

Then there's Dreams We Remember.  I felt silly calling it "Dream Story," even as a working title, but my actual title isn't too different!  My mum once told me that I should try envisioning my stories as movies to help with description.  I used that tactic to come up with a title.  You've seen movie commercials; they're all the same.  Scene...scene...scene--scene--scene--SCENE!!!...Title.  Walking home from the bus I threw a bunch of scenes together and tried out different titles until finding my favorite!  This story is longer, of course, so I don't expect to rush through it.  But it is certainly present in my brain.  Certainly.

I walked up the street.  It would have been dark but for the street lights, which left the sky wallowing in that ugly grey.  Not dark, not light.  Not even a place in between.  Something that should have been night lit by candle but wasn’t.
And the houses pushed up in the unnatural light.  I always liked them: narrow and tall, in all sorts of funny colors like sea-foam green and Easter bunny purple.  They wouldn’t be the same in modern colors: any shade of taupe or ivory or chocolate if its residents were daring.  I liked their silly balconies extending eight inches out from the house front, filigree works of painted iron acting as rails.  I liked the cement steps at each doorway, the goldish chain bolt locks, the stains of scrubbed graffiti amid twists and dots of new graffiti.  I adored those skinny little houses.
My heart leapt when I turned into one, one with musty mini-blind covered windows and rust around the doorknob.  I set my hand to the salmon pink stucco wall, wondering why I was here and why I reached to undo the lock.  But why didn’t seem to matter.  I opened the door and stepped inside.
Warehouse.  Not the look, but the feel.  An echoing, cold warehouse.  I noticed no object but a staircase.  I stared at it, waiting.  Waiting until hearing a tiny, timid foot on the step.  It lingered where I could see it but not its owner, small and fragile and covered in a soft black shoe.  So quietly it sat there, I wondered if I did hear it step or only saw and made the sound in my mind.  
“It is me,” I said.
I saw no more of the foot; I saw too much else.  Long woolen skirt and delicately knit cotton sweater rushing forward.  A face happy, and deeply beautiful.  Bright green eyes.
A smile and two fine arms caught me, but I broke away.  I didn’t know her, this beautiful girl so glad to see me.  She understood, somehow.  Calmed her fire and stood still.  Let me look at her some minutes, at her slight form covered in loose clothes.  Her face only a bit younger than mine, but full of such innocence that it cleansed me to look at it.  She bit her lip to keep still; she wanted desperately to come around me.  So lovely, and so absolute in her waiflike way.  I longed to grasp her in my arms and feared that I should do so.
She couldn’t wait any longer and stepped forward.  I scrambled back until hitting a corner.  The wisp of sadness I expected her to show didn’t come, in fact her happiness grew.  I couldn't flee further.  Though she hadn’t trapped me.  Joy filled her in advance, for she knew that in a moment I wouldn’t run.  Her tiny hand extended near my face.
“Can’t you leave me alone?” I asked, trembling all over.  She terrified me, this beautiful girl with love in her eyes.
Her smile deepened.  Her fingers lit against my cheek.
“No,’ I whispered, slamming my head as far into the corner as I could.  But the little hand brushed through my hair.  I caught my breath and looked up toward the ceiling.  Again, again the touch which set my spine to squirming and my mouth to begging.  Stop.  Stop.  Please stop.  But no.  And I didn’t want her to.  I’d never felt a thing so perfect as her hand.  Brushing, stroking, tenderly over my head as if all of me was a wound she meant to heal.  At last my eyes could meet hers, truly meet the faultless green.  For a moment we both kept still.
A sob burst from me and I took her wrists, shaking, weeping, laying her palms to my face and pressing into them.  She leapt into my arms so that her baby feet left the floor, and kissed me so that every memory of other than joy dissolved.  Her laugh and her touch calmed my anxious need; soon I stood relaxed.
“What are you?” I asked.
She giggled and cupped her chin in my hand.
I thought.  “My sister!”
She nodded, turning her eyes in a playful circle.
“Sort of my sister?”
She shook her head.
“All my sister, but not at all my sister.”
She jumped and clapped like a child, then took my sleeve and pulled me further into the house.
In the kitchen she sat me on a stool.  After setting a mug on the counter she held up a half-full coffee pot.
“I’d love some,” I said.
She pursed her mouth.
“Would I not love some?”
She looked at the pot, then turned and poured its contents down the drain.  She motioned me forward to help her up onto the counter.  Her just above five foot frame did little to aid her in reaching to the back of a cabinet, but she managed and let me lower her to the ground.  In minutes she had ground fresh beans and boiled water.  With a laugh she stirred one and a half spoonfuls of sugar into my mug.
“You know just how I like it.”  She shrugged her shoulders with a coy smile.  Of course she knew how I took my coffee.
I took only two sips of that coffee.  It smelled better than the finest café, and tasted exactly as its scent.
“What’s the matter?”
Her face had lost every semblance of the one I knew.  Beautiful still, but still.  Petrified as a museum statue.
She grasped my hand and ran.  Pulled me out of the kitchen and up the stairs.  She tripped and I caught her in my arm.  For a blissful second she relaxed in my protection, but at once clambered to her feet and pulled me up.  Up, up, up -- up more stairs than I could see and into a hall.
She opened a door and shoved me through it.  A closet.  She tried to close me in, but I stopped the door.  Tears in her eyes.  Tears pleading with me to let her close the door.  But had I not shed tears to dissuade her from nearing me?  And look what happiness came of that!  She shook her head, looking back to the staircase.  I heard the front door and she panicked, shoving me with all her little strength.
“What are you afraid of?  Let me protect you.”
No.  No.  She shook her head.
“I’ll keep you safe.  I swear!”
Her hand over my mouth.  Then off: her lips instead.  My knees went like water.  I sat upon the floor.  The door closed.

Quite a time ago I came up with a story entitled Traveler's Joy.  I planned to give it to my dad for Christmas, but haven't finished it yet.  I know how I'd like to write pretty much all of it, and much is already written.  But it still needs plenty of work.


Think of the ocean.  Green-blue stretching endlessly, and plunging unfathomably, overwhelming the eyes and nose and throat with salty passion for adventure.  Where by sealing the eyes one can feel the Lochanside wind, or smell the fish-flooded ports of Japan, or hear the suntanned Sardinian pipe for countrymen and wayfarers alike.  Where body is sand and soul is sky and spirit is an uncontainable rush of water.
So small a body, yet so great a soul, and so intense a spirit sat and yearned for a tiny taste of this splendor.  She sat with her back to the forest, which she loved because it had cared for her since her first moments, but her face to the sea, which she loved for reasons she did not know but could not ignore.  How vibrantly it startled her vision!  How forcefully it enthralled her lungs!  
“Dear Neptune!” she cried aloud, holding out her arms as a child asking to be picked up.  “Darling Neptune!  Can you not carry me away, that I may float on you forever?  Even in tempest will I cling to you, so great is my love!”
She sat here long, somehow content to merely look upon her heart’s desire and at the same time long for more of it.  When the sun vanished into that long, straight horizon she still didn’t turn for home, for even without light the glorious deep lapped and tossed within her mind, and the briny air sang that her love lingered close, though invisible.  Eventually, though, she felt that gnawing discomfort beckon her home.  She didn’t have to go: no family waited up for her, no friends anxiously peered from their windows in search of her approaching form, yet she must go home.  Perhaps the trees could not rest until she lay cradled in their branches, and the squirrels paced until her feet tottered past their doors.
She liked to think so.  Most fairies had a companion by the time they reached her age.  Some had to journey far to discover this companion, but they always knew where to go, because their hearts tugged them their.  She had never known that tug, that irresistible pulling, like the voice of an embrace.  She felt called home, but only by the natural fear of “staying out too late.”  Perhaps that’s all she would ever feel.  Perhaps she would be made wise and solitary; an esteemed fairy lady, looked to with reverence. 
But that seemed so wrong!  Turmoil she could take, but turmoil with a friend.  Not just a friend, a companion, whom she could love and trust and dote upon.  She wished for him more than she wished for the ocean.  The ocean only seemed so much like a companion: it could be calm, or fierce, or sad, or elated.  If she could have no companion, she wanted the ocean.
Up she flew, then nestled down under a leafy cover.  Soon she dropped asleep, dreaming what she always dreamed; dreams of her companion.
And the ocean.


I wrote an introduction based on a doll of mine.  She was a Christmas present who was back-ordered until March.  Thus it happened that she and I kept up a letter correspondence.  Yes, she was a fairy doll.  I was twelve and my parents had to get me this lovely collectible fairy doll before I was too old.  Little did they realize that I made a Peter Pan Promise long, long ago.    


I do not know how many stories have been written about fairies, but am entirely positive that the number is too large for counting.  The moment a person (and he would indeed have to be a very, very smart person) named them all his conclusion would prove incorrect.  For at that moment, in some part of this wide and ever-changing world, someone’s fey tale would be flowing from whimsical thought into enchanting, thrilling, inky word.  
But, though the number of stories written about fairies cannot be imagined, the number of stories written by fairies is far more comprehensible.  It is to this number that I wish to add my little story; for fairy I am, and it is my own narrative that I tell.  I daresay it will not rank among the great chronicles left by the winged-folk which have preceded me, but I certainly felt like the character of some fable while I lived it.  Besides which my dear friend insists that I share it, and I have never yet been capable of refusing her anything.
I should describe myself and my kind before advancing, as it is quite probable that the majority of my readers have never met a fairy.  We have always been secretive, but once we were not so rare a sight.  Anyone who ventured near our dwellings (which were as innumerable as the stories written about us) in a manner not obtrusively brutal was almost sure to see at least one of us.  I say “obtrusively brutal” because I do not wish to inspire the notion that only quiet, softly moving children could extract a fairy from hiding.  My friend, for example, is anything but quiet and soft.  She can be, but it takes a great deal of effort; at school she is the epitome of good behavior and attention every teacher longs for, but once safely on her way home she bursts into tears from the sheer exhaustion of being so perfect all day.  But, though her ramble through a fairy woodland would be a noisy and excited one, I can proclaim with confidence that every sprite would come out to meet her.  There is nothing at all fearful in childhood’s unbridled joy, even if that joy causes them to love too strongly for gentleness.
Of course, sadly, not every child’s exuberance can be attributed to a passionate nature.  If a boy or girl came crushing through the forest with a truly malignant air, stomping on bugs and pounding trees, I’m afraid no elf would emerge.  Every one would weep and pray for the child, but none would greet it.
It was when children like these did not grow out of their bad tendencies that the trouble for fairies began.  An obviously malicious person is dangerous only when a fairy accidentally falls out of hiding and into his path.  The wholly wicked person is the one who disguises his wickedness.  He walks subtly, and sings happy songs to himself, all while his evil heart devises schemes of greatest cruelty.  These are the most dangerous people for anyone, fairy or otherwise, to encounter.  People like this continually venture near our homes and coax us with their lies (a less-than-difficult task, for every fairy wishes for friendship), and as time goes on our population decreases, and we who are left become more timid.  Thus it is that many humans never see us.  Things are to the point now where many do not even believe in our existence!
In the time that I have known my friend I have become well acquainted with human images of fairies.  Though I must say that the works of Miss Barker are supreme in their portrayal, most other images are pure fiction, and with a fictional image comes a fictional history.  My friend once read someone’s account of what exactly a fairy is, and it surprised both of us most utterly.  I can easily connect certain drawn images of fairies (which I would describe as somewhere between embarrassing and insulting) with this singular history.  In reality, though we are a diverse lot, we are nothing more than small beings who spend our existence in search of delight.  An ambiguous definition, but if a human were to attempt a definition of humanity, he would find his undertaking at least as difficult as my own!  
We fairies all have a bit of magic in us, but it seldom becomes apparent (if it becomes apparent) except when it is desperately needed.  I for one have never spotted any bit of magic in my doings, but my friend claims to see some, and perhaps my story will reveal to you what is invisible to me.
And now I come, at last, to my story.                     

We spent a portion of this evening decorating our Christmas tree.  I have an ornament of a little fairy, and as I hung her up I thought of a new idea.  Fairies live in trees, right?  What if one lived in a tree, and that tree was cut down for a Christmas tree?  Then she'd wind up hiding in the branches while bright lights and colorful ornaments were hung all about her, and she'd be so grateful for the popcorn strands because she'd get terribly hungry keeping still and quiet.  And of course someone would eventually discover her.  Quite an adventure for a little fairy, I'd say.

Lots of fairy stories, huh?  I always wished for them when I was little!

And there are a couple others!  I have so many going in my head right now that I would write constantly if I could.  But what am I doing tomorrow?  Studying statistics.  It's disgusting.

Caleb Mithun

I just fell in love with my own character.  Notice he has a last name, as I intend this story to be longer than my others and...wait for it...not specifically for children!  I actually dreamed some of it the night I spent in Nana's room (Mo slept over), and in the morning Nana handed me a notepad and pen with instructions to write it down.  Thus, a story temporarily titled "Dream Story."  Catchy, right?  Here's some of it I was just working on.  It's still rather rough.


Chinatown is very loud and very stressful place.  Without a friend it is hardly enjoyable, and every time I visit I end up wondering why.  Everyone pushes.  Everyone yells.  Venders shove all their breakables into the street so that children will break and parents will buy.  For eight years a ceramic black lab without a tail sat upon my dresser, keeping memories of my mother’s scolding voice and squeezing hand.  A two-inch layer of stickiness covers the buildings and streets like plastic on a sofa.  Shop after shop sells the same gaudy merchandise: popsicle stick-and-tissue fans, shimmery tops in cracking and yellowed covers, ostentatious paper lanterns.  A small, greenish-white statue of a woman nursing her baby.  Beside it one of the same woman, this time her mouth open in fright as a Gollum like infant winds over her shoulder and bites for more than just milk.  Something for everyone, I guess.

But this day Caleb was my companion.  I’d forgotten how different of a person he was now.  He used to have days where he couldn't look in my eyes.  Often I’d have to beg before he would go anywhere.  As much as he despised the familiar he seemed to dread the strange even more.  Now he wanted to spend the day in Chinatown.     

And what a Chinatown it was.  Still loud, still sticky, still garish; but grand and wonderful and exciting.  The fans turned fit for the hold of gloved fingers, the tops into humbly cased princess gowns, the lanterns whimsical hints of present joy and joy to come.  We assumed every person warm and happy, and those clearly neither melted away into our warmth and our happiness.  Caleb vanished into a toy shop and returned with a pair of kazoos, which, though in no sense Chinese, are the dearest possessions of two friends on holiday.  Being infinitely more musical than I my friend took reign of a core melody, leaving me to harmonize and embellish as my inner composer insisted.  Our opus rather annoyed the more solemn passersby, so we ducked into an alcove between storefronts and soon had a fixed semicircle of audience.  When happy Caleb lit the world like Libertas’s torch.  People flocked and clapped around this young man about to burst with all that is right and true and excellent, all the good the world has and some that it does not.  A girl with the waistless figure and splotched face of one between child and womanhood stood nearer to us than the others, her dark eyes glossy with suppressed delight at my friend’s emancipated and full delight.  Grinning around his instrument he skipped toward her with steps Buster Keaton would be proud of, and between flushed cheeks her little mouth dropped open to the sweet notes of silly gladness dancing before her.  He danced and danced for his shy lady, at last dropping on his knees a mere breath from her face, playing out one long final tone before pulling the kazoo from his lips and placing it at her feet.  Then he closed his eyes and laughed like Christmas.

Petite hands took his face, and the girl kissed him on the mouth.  He looked in the eyes just as surprised as his own, bowed his head with a smile, and collapsed to the ground as if fainted.  The girl picked up the kazoo and scampered away.

The happiness around us rang closer, and Caleb looked up just in time to see a swarm of squealing girls closing over him.  He fell trying to stand, but I grasped his wrist and we flew.  Minutes later we arrived at the entrance of a sit-down restaurant, laughing uncontrollably.           

Essay Contest -- Fourth Place

                                                                   In the Midst

It is more customary to isolate and analyze a specific period in one’s life after the period has passed. But there is something to say for what one thinks and feels during the period. We cannot misjudge our feelings in the midst of feeling them.

“But I won’t rot, I won’t rot. Not this mind and not this heart, I won’t rot.” This line, from Mumford and Sons’ “After the Storm” (from the album Sigh no More) is my prayer for my father. He won’t rot. Not his mind, not his heart. He cannot rot.

A therapist, after learning of my father’s duel diagnoses of mental illnesses, told my mother that a brain tumor has a better prognosis. He would be better cold on his deathbed than going through life blinded and burned.

“And I will die alone, and be left there. Well I guess I’ll just go home, or God knows where. Because death is just so full, and man so small. I’m scared of what’s behind, and what’s before.”

What’s behind is twenty years. Twenty years of my father and mother more in love with each other than seems possible outside of fiction. Twenty years of my father writing love songs far past the realm of love songs. Twenty years of my mother running outside to greet him and twenty years of him carrying her back.

But twenty years of turmoil. Twenty years of my father recoiling from his wife’s affections. Twenty years of not knowing if a word will incite laughter or wrath or ice. Twenty years of begging God that this is the last time: that tonight Daddy will come home.

Before is a double diagnosis: bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. This helps. At least it makes sense. But it will never go away. Medicine and therapy can help, but the disorders will always be there.

No one understands. My mother should be her own woman. She doesn’t have to take this. They say they understand, but they don’t. They hate seeing her hurt. So do I. Fervently, fervently I hate it.

But she sees my father. She sees the strong arm beyond the crippled stub. She sees the deep, rich eye beneath the cloudy haze. “I saw exactly what was true, but oh no more. That’s why I hold. That’s why I hold with all I have. That’s why I hold.”

Not his mind. Not his heart. “And I look up. On my knees and out of luck, I look up.” Please bring him home. Please make us his home. Death is empty. Death is nothing. And though we are small You, Dear God, are great. And that’s why we hold. That’s why we hold with all we have. 

“But there will come a time you’ll see, with no more tears. And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears. Get over your hill and see, what you’ll find there. With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.”

Nameless Children's Chapter Novel: Chapter 1

Chapter 1



Any good story needs a good setting, and a good setting is a very specific thing. A good setting is one with purple-tiered mountains and black-walled caverns; sunrises of rosy grey and sunsets of fire-licked orange; forests of most striking green and seas of most intense blue. Of course the absolute best of stories is set in the absolute best of places -- that place where the air glows with fairy wings, and earth flowers to elfin kisses, and hidden places shimmer by virtue of dwarfish hands. Oh to look up, and see a dragon embrace the clouds! It is a place to seek, for only eager fingers can reach out and take this beautiful, magnificent world.

But what if one cannot see the purple, or the orange, or the blue? What if for one the air does not glow, and earth does not flower, and hidden places do not shimmer? No fairy, elf, or dwarf does he see. Yet above the dragon still flies. If not a soul sees or hears or feels him, he flies just the same. Such is our story: a story of childish mystery and delight and splendor, but a story where color and form mean naught. But have no fear. The mountains tower, and the caverns wind. The fairy sings, and the elf dances.

And of course the dragon flies. Heaven, how he flies.

So our story begins. From frozen peaks the snow glides downward, and downward, and downward, melting into icy water, which flows into a stream. This stream flows through a cave. A jagged, rocky, and in all ways inhospitable cave. At least it seems so. Some have reported a strange scent and a strange warmth, rising from cracks in the floor. After emerging from the cave the stream meets a sea. This sea plunges unfathomably, and chills cruelly. Its wind beats like a lash, and few leave it. On the other side of this sea the stream thrusts back out on its own, as pure and clean as ever, into a rich forest. What can be trusted in a forest? Its wanderers may twist about in search of escape a thousand years. But those whose home is not home, who yearn for relief from what most cling to with desperation, the forest soothes and helps. At the center of this forest is a town.

The town coughs and wheezes with its own stench. Its people breath deeply of this stench, and their lungs relish it, and they push and shove to save more foulness for themselves. Only a few despise the air, and these few are hated. The wicked people easily spot them, because they cannot thrive in the town. Even before birth they are damaged, in some way, because their good spirits need more than what can be supplied in wombs of evil. Something must die, for a good spirit to live. Limbs must shrivel, or ears deaden, or eyes go black.

And so begins our story.