Strand 2: The Move

When my mother turned fifty in 2006, she had what is known in urban legends as the midlife crisis. She packed us up and moved us to Maine. I was not at all pleased with this decision but had no choice. At first I was hopeful that a family member would let me live with them, at least until I graduated high school, but I don't think I was brave enough to voice this opinion except to my friends at school. The next thing I know my parents are receiving emails from realtors and going to Maine on weekends to look at houses. If I had a long weekend from school I would go with them and walk around cold, crumbling brick capes on top of windy hills, and run down white farm houses. When my parents asked my opinion I would simply say "there's no free water" or "there's too much wind". I never voiced the hurtful opinion "we have no money. Why would you buy a house you can't fix?" and "why do I have to move?"

Finally we found a house. Mom and I went to see it with the realtor and we were surprised. It was a newer house, about eight years old then, an "A" frame with antlers and sticks for door handles. The metal roof allowed even the softest snowflakes to be heard when falling. Six acres sloped down in a narrow rectangle to a fresh water marsh where moose were a guaranteed sighting, and a workshop where the previous owner made boats would be perfect for Dad's puttering. The price was right and the residents would be moved out in eight weeks. Mom and Dad put an offer in and bought it.

The bedrooms were small, a little girl having used one and a baby boy in the other. I chose the little girl's room with the teal walls and plastic flower border. Every night I sat in that room and cried. I had a picture of Josh and Gunner tacked to the wall next to my bed. Why me? I cried and screamed in my head. Why me? The tradition lasted for about two years easily. I learned to cry with no sound, letting the tears run down my face my nose stuff up. Before dinner I would check in the mirror above my dresser, making sure my face was presentable; I allowed no red rimmed eyes or sticky lashes.

After the two year mark, I took down the picture and put it in a photo album on a shelf above my bed. I painted the room in pink earth tones and began to tack up magazine clippings of animals and guns. I met a young man at our new church and we began dating, I even made some new friends from the church and gained some of his. I graduated from the State of Maine in 2008, alone in a class of five strangers while my friends in CT graduated together. Soon I was accepted at Unity College, while my boyfriend joined the Navy and went to boot camp two weeks before I left for school.

I managed to go back to CT during camp meeting week in 2009 to work as a dishwasher in the dining hall. As I drove through the gate and saw the speed limit sign "slow caution children" I was attacked with memories as if those moments were being relived. Tears began to roll down my cheeks again. Tears that hadn't been there since I took the picture down from my wall three hundred miles away in a gray, sunless prison about the size of a walk in closet. I drove down the same dirt road I had ridden a purple bicycle on with no hands. The same road I walked Gunner on in the evenings with my parents. I parked in front of the same cottage my grandparents have always stayed in for two weeks of the summer. I dried my eyes checking for the evil red rims and the sticky lashes. I found no sign of them. I gave myself a mental slap on the back, oddly proud for retaining my secret crying skills. I greeted my grandparents and carried my bags upstairs. I sat on the bed and began to unpack. Leaving ten days later I cried again. This time I had six hours to recover before I needed to be composed. The tears were different this time. Loud, soaking my face, spit flying out of my mouth as I tried to stay on the highway.

Strand 1: The Choice

I sucked in huge gulps of air, trying to stall the flow of tears and to make my breathing normal. My hands were sweating as they gripped the steering wheel of my friend’s car. My body shivered with goose bumps as it was attacked by waves of heat and cold. The earpiece emitted a ringing from the other end of the line. “Hello?” My friend answered. “I need your help,” I said as calmly as I could.

I explained the situation, that I was supposed to be washing dishes in roughly 12 hours, and that in six hours I was going to be someplace I didn’t want to be. I told my friend that in January I had promised my boss I would be there for him during the ten day camp meeting that happens annually; ten days when family and friends came together to visit and learn about God with bible studies and church services. We talked for a while; he managed to calm me for the moment and told me "If you don't want to do it. Don't."

It was Friday, July 30, 2010 and I was driving to Connecticut on I95. The next day I was supposed to be washing dishes in a dining hall at a Christian Advent campground called Camp Bethel. It sits on the bank of the Connecticut River, and as you cross the swing bridge from Moodus, you can see the brightly painted cottages smiling down on the water. Rows of cottages line the dirt road that creates one giant loop, a loop that encompasses family and friends. The way camp works, everybody watches everybody else grow up. For example, the founding fathers of camp were the first generation, and now I am the fifth generation of "Bethelites" in my family.

The next call was to my grandmother. I told her I was having car troubles and that I needed my boss to call me as soon as possible because I didn’t have his number. She told me she would go find him and give him the message and my cell phone number. I then called my mother. She was not happy. I told her my dilemma: that I just didn’t want to do it. I already knew that it wasn’t professional or responsible to give such short notice, to back out last minute on a promise I had made months before. My mother reminded me of all this in her patronizing tone. She treated me like a spoiled ten year old and tears spilled down my cheeks. I told her that maybe I was having car problems. She was stubborn, offering to meet me someplace on the highway and give me her car for the trip. I said no I would be fine and told her I would call her from Connecticut.

After we hung up, my phone rang. “Hello?” It was my boss. I told him I was having car troubles and asked if he would be able to find somebody else to wash dishes. He assured me that he could find someone and that if I could not make it that was fine. I apologized profusely and we said goodbye. As soon as I hung up the phone I realized that I had burned a bridge in one of my work relationships. That was ok though. I never wanted to go back to camp to work again.

I got off the next exit and pulled into a commuter parking lot in Kennebunkport. I called my fiancé, telling him I was coming home. I got back on the highway heading north and cried loud, wet tears that soaked my face, spit flying out of my mouth as I tried to stay on the road. However, they had different meaning; it seemed as if a dull throb went away, leaving my head lighter, and quite literally, I felt something heavy leave my shoulders. I was able to sit up straighter and felt no physical weight.

Ten minutes later my phone rang again. I looked at the caller I.D. “Home”. Mom must have found out already. “Your grandfather just called me. He is not pleased with your actions.” I told her I already knew that. But I hadn’t. I had completely forgotten about my grandfather and his feelings. I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone or cut any ties with family and friends, I was simply making a decision that should have happened long ago.

Presentation

My presentation to the class is on Wednesday. I will be teaching them the basics of a braided essay with the help of a power point and then will give them the rest of the class time to put three or four strands together to make one coherent paper. I will have them count off in fives, which should make four groups. Little do they know that they are putting together my paper, and I will be taking into account their different variations as I piece the rough draft together over break.The strands I will post are the ones I am going to give the class separately to piece together. They are rough and will need transitions between paragraphs.

Religious Dance

"To acknowledge that which we can not see, to give definition to that which we do not know, to create divine order out of chaos, is the religious dance."

~Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

Buddhism Research

Its very ironic to me that I am writing about an Advent Christian campground, but am using Buddhism as a way to make my salient point. This is what I have discovered:

The term Buddhism comes from the word "Budhi", which means to wake up. "Buddha" means the enlightened one which makes sense because the goals of Buddhism are to teach purity, enlightenment and proper thoughts and viewpoints.

In Buddhism there are Four Noble Truths. These truths are the foundation of Buddhism and are what Buddha aimed to teach his followers.

1. The truth [importance] of suffering
2. The truth of the cause of suffering
3. The truth of the end of suffering, also known as the cessation of suffering
4. The truth of the path that frees us from suffering
   

The Sanskrit word for suffering is "dukkha". It also refers to incompleteness, imperfection, discontent, dissatisfaction and pain. Suffering can be categorized in two ways, mental and physical. Birth, aging, sickness and death are the physical sufferings.

The mental sufferings are as follows:

1. Suffering of separation of lived ones
2. Suffering of contact with hated ones
3. Suffering of frustrated and non-practical desire
4. Suffering of the illness of Five Skandhas

Taking what I have learned above, I have concluded that what I am experiencing is the truth of the cause of suffering (second Noble Truth) in the mental sense of suffering of frustrated and non-practical desire. By knowing what causes the suffering I can end or solve the problem of suffering. Buddha says that people crave pleasant experinces, material things, and eternal life or death. The desire to acquire the material things has three major sufferings:

1. The problem of getting it
2. The problem of protecting it
3. The problem or suffering of losing it

The problem or suffering I am having is the loss of camp (#3 above). Now that I know that I can overcome it by putting an end to my suffering, which will lead the ever curious researcher to the last two of the Four Noble Truths and what they are about.

Fact from Kate: the word suffering comes from the French word "ferre" which means "to bear". Go old time dictionaries!! Woot!

In Memory

Gunner was getting old. He was fifteen now, stiff with a white muzzle. His stubby tail still wagged eagerly when he was excited, but there was something in his eyes that could throw you off. They were eyes that had seen a lot and had lived a long time for a dog his size. He now had diabetes, needing to be fed three times a day, and it was getting harder for him to go up the stairs at night.

I remember the last days Gunner spent with us. How it eventually came to be that he was stuck under the kitchen table because he could not stand. Our pastor Dave came over and helped my father lift Gunner onto a blanket and carry him out to the car. The same car I drive today, a green Ford Mercury Sable. I watched them drive away as I ran to the stairs that led to the river. I made it to the forty third stair out of eighty-six before the shock wore off and tears began to stream down my face.

I knew they were taking him to the vet to put him down. To put an end to his uncomfortable body and suffering eyes. As I walked along the beach, the stench of low tide filled my nose. I remembered how I would bring Gunner to swim with me; he didn't swim all that well and never left the shallow water. His version of swimming was to slap his paws on the surface of the water, splashing it everywhere as he clumsily tried to gulp all the water out of the air. His goal was to drink the river dry; we had to leave him tied to the deck of the house he had to pee so often.

I realized that there would be no one to talk to, or cry with, being able to bury my face in his furry neck. I knew that there would be no one to save my life if I was walking alone in the woods like he had done before, giving me nightmares. That was when the panic attacks started. When those big, brown, knowing eyes had stared me down and brought me back from the edge of an easily broken neck.

There would be no one to wear my crazy costumes or to wrestle with over a tennis ball stuffed in a sock on my bedroom floor. My parents and I would have to walk around the grounds in the evenings alone, but it wouldn't be the same. There would be no snuffling of leaves or long pauses to sit and look at the stars. Who would chase me on my sled in the winter as I sped down the hill behind the dining hall?

I wish I knew where Gunner's ashes are. We had him cremated and in the move to Maine he was transferred to a box. I don't know where he is now. I wish I could have him with me but it would be unfair to all those who knew him. Everyone who knew Gunner misses him terribly. He was the best dog we ever had. It might have been because he was the best trained or the sweetest. But I think it is because of those eyes of his. They seemed able to see straight through you, down to your soul. And he accepted you for who and what you were. He didn't try to change you, he just loved you.

Spectral Light by Amy Irving

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Spectral Light