Year of the Cyclone

This year is like the first wooden roller coaster I ever rode at Six Flags in Atlanta, GA on a hot summer afternoon around the year 2003.

The old wooden beast's white paint had long since chipped and it was rumored for being especially creaky and rickety, as thought it would break at any moment. Perhaps it's named the "Georgia Cyclone", I seem to remember that.

The coaster was the first one inside the gates to the right after ticketing. We were brazen, a group of young teenagers daring each other to jump on it first thing, although for many of us it was our first experience. I joined the group exhilerated, scared. And we rode.

I felt the usual emotions one might expect: fear, awe, and aderenaline. The Cyclone was true to its name; full of spins and divets and drops. Of course every motion also had a low, wooden rumble beneath it that kept me wondering if the entire coaster was liable to just fall apart on us. Specifically, I was terrified of the eery "click, click, click" at the ride's onslaught as we climbed high for the first big drop.

After the ride we giggled at one another wide-eyed and gulping in the air around us, thankful to be on solid ground again. We went on our way, weaving deeper into the park and leaving the Cyclone behind. For the rest of the day I was queasy. It was the first time I discovered I'm prone to motion sickness but it did not stop the pursuit of more rides.

We probably ate turkey on sticks and drank sugary soda. We probably stood in line as many hours as we spent actually riding the rides. And we likely did a lot of joking around. But I don't remember the rest of the day as vividly.

117th Ave

What is it about the nostaglia of a place that has the power to grip a heart so heavily? Is it because I was just a litte girl when my world was uprooted, when life asked me to refind footing, to adapt?

I was so scared in those days. We arrive to our new home down South on August 3, 2000. Barrington Avenue. The world shifted incredibly for all of us, my parents bold in their attempt to show us life outside of the only kind we had ever known. My parents, some of the first in our family to move so far away from the home and land our great-grandparents imigrated to settle.

They were ready to fly and took us along. For that I am grateful. Because despite the difficulty in going back now as an adult, despite how those raw emotions so easily flow, I cannot imagine what would have been had we remained had we stayed. And isn't that the cliche. Isn't that how it is for all of the decisions we make; "I cannot imagine if..."

Last Thursday morning I went back to the home I spent the first 13 years of my life. I walked the land, saw the garden my mom tended to the night her water broke when pregnant with me, the garden we harvested for years. I revisited the fort James and I built. Of course it is cleared out now, a small space of a grove amidst the elms. Standing along the line of lilac bushes I observed the Pederson's farmland. The emotions were there, but it was reaching out and holding the crab apple tree branches that brought the tears. Of all things! And I keep asking myself, "Why is this so emotional? Why is it so hard?"

It is multidimensional, but maybe it is mostly because of how distant childhood is from me now, and how easily I feel small again when I stand in that tract of land off the Kathryn Road in Valley City. Because memories stand frozen there and so is the ideal of the state of my heart, so pure in its innocence, so trusting that the world would give me my greatest dreams. How I long to return to that blind faith full of joy and contentment. And perhaps that is why I cry. Perhaps that is why I return.

To Valley

Back home.

I was embarassed to tell my childhood friend Shautay that when the sun shone on my face as I sat in the airplane on its decent, I wept. It is a difficult emotional response to dissect because the emotions within me were so convuluted. It was contentment I felt; happiness, relief to be back, despair at the life I do not have there, incredulity that it has really been so long. These emotions stirred themselves violently within me as I looked at the patchwork prairie fields from above and the sun still shone, steadfast. And I leaned my forehead on the dirty plane window, accepted the moment, and wept.

She giggled when I told it, her own incredulity asking why anyone would be so happy to be back in North Dakota. That's when I faultered with a lack of response because in that moment I was lazy at explaining how different the cultures are, how impactful the land is, and perhaps mostly, how a part of me only truly comes alive when I return. It seemed so wispy and trite in that moment, so I laughed too.

We got into her car, oooed and ahhed at her puppy, and began the short trek to Valley City as the sun set over I-94. The semis buzzed by and cut the red blaze of the sun in two parts, disrupting the flat horizon. And we talked about the last several years of our lives as we sped 75 mph toward a home I should no longer claim as my own.

Fly to the highest place

This Wednesday I travel back to where I spent the first half of my life.

North Dakota seems like a different country, what with the travel to get there, what with the culture of the people within it. It is a place that once fit my like a glove. How much has that changed, I wonder?

My childhood best friend will pick me up at the airport and we travel from Fargo to Valley City, where a large part of my heart still beats, for so much of who I am is rooted in that small town of 7,000.

Shautay even organized it to where we can go visit the house I grew up in. I realize, it perhaps seems materialistic. But when I stand in the parlor, if it is quiet enough I will close my eyes and see Dad decorating the tree late November while Celtic music plays throughout the house. I can remember evenings spent eating and cleaning together in the kitchen before dishwashers. The bathroom, brushing our teeth in over-sized adult shirts given to us by Aunt Deb after each marathon she ran.

Those foundations of what shaped me.

I want to embrace them again, and being in that house, albeit alone without the rest of my family, can give a tangible remembrance from the past.

We lived it well.

Lyrical tithes

We used to sing "Peace Like a River" in the church I grew up attending. Dressed in skirts, nice pants, and our best shoes and standing in rows altogether with our voices lifted in unison. This part might not be true, but we sang it during the tithing portion of the service, or at least right after. 

"I've got peace like a river/I've got peace like a river/I've got peace like a river in my soul."

I would stand and read the words projected onto the wall above the alter, dutifully raising my voice alongside Mom, Dad's, and everyone else. It is a thoughtful song, a somewhat slow song that asks you to draw out its notes against the backdrop of a lighthearted piano accompaniment.

Whether you sing in a church or under your breath during work, or while cooking with wine in one hand, the lyrical mantras we express are soothing. Song offers its sense of peace to us whether or not that word is even in the lyrics.

Our mantras. 

This morning the pregnancy test I thought would be positive came back negative, again. It's been six months without succeeding and the deficit I feel stings deeply. 

And so I make myself a cup of coffee and hold it between my hands. The dogs play together. My husbands awakes from his sleep. And I keep reminding myself, "I've got peace like a river."

Because I must. 

The start of a Tuesday

A college professor visited the coffeeshop with his wife yesterday. He ordered a mocha, she a macchiato. I was not sure if it was okay to hug them or not, and so I decided against it. But perhaps they could read my eyes and see it resting there.

Professor Lott told me that one year from now the College of Charleston will offer an MFA program in writing. My heart soars at the idea, but I wonder if it is worth the expense of more student loans. More debt, and for how long?

My father said to me recently, "I have seen you live others' dreams for a long time, Laura. I want to see you pursue your own."

I needn't ask myself what it is that makes my heart glad; it is refining the way I explain to you the experience of interacting with a child, how it feels to pour a latte correctly for a stranger or a friend, details about what it means to travel through this life. It is explaining the human experience in a way that becomes tactile enough that what I present to you from my heart can be easily grasped and if you like, you can carry it, too.

Leeks and leaks

Here. This is the life that was given to you. And now is the only moment you are promised.

To hear these dogs growl and spurn at one another as they nip the air with their teeth and tilted jowls, this is to be me in this moment now. To have watery eyes from cutting leeks with a dull knife, to walk away from the chopping board thankful yet again I did not maim my fingers with my poor slicing habits.

In ninteen days I will board a plane from Charleston to Chicago and onwards to Fargo. It has been four full years since I have been back to visit. It has been fourteen years since my family has gone together to the place where our lives began.

All I am promised is this moment I have before me, a velvet candle lit and effects from an Atlantic hurricane angrily thundering above. Sneezes from those leeks and another surge of thankfulness for use of my fingers.

The more I learn the less I know. But in this most difficult year of loss without recoupe, I've begun to embrace how much more similar than dissimilar are our collective human spirits. Perhaps this is most oft discovered through sharing pain and loss, for our hearts feel deeply and find compassion for each other when met with these stories we share. And once we realize that is so much the same, then we realize the lighter parts of us are not entirely different, either.

At any rate; here. Now.