Wattage

I sit in the glow. My vision, straight out to its most peripheral points, inherits the glow. The glow is all around me. My face wears a smile that betrays me.

I brush off the sandy crumbs. They hit the floor and meld into the once-white rug. The sweetness that moments ago crept down my throat has now tangled my stomach. The sweet turned suddenly sickly. I am all at once wired and exhausted. I lie down on the couch and fall asleep with my eyes open. That's enough to scare even the truest friend.

I wake up at nothing o'clock. The glow is still there. I forgot to turn off the glow. I am still flat.

I trip my way to the white bathroom. Light. Bright. I wish I may, I wish I might.

I make my way to the bed. I close my eyes and see dreams smeared across the sky. Projectiles of the mind.  Fragments of a lifetime before or one yet to come.

Graffiti XO

My soles join the pavement, each click of contact connecting us further. The atmosphere envelopes me and invites me in. The city takes me by the hand and guides me through its rugged streets. It swoops me up, loosens my shoulders and takes me where I need to go.

The view is raw. The pavement is patched and broken but beautiful. The walls have been decorated and dressed up in technicolour in the dark hours of the night. When the morning light arrives, it reveals the art left behind by the beautiful minds.

The inhabitants are inspiring. Each face tells a different story. Clothes are not simply worn, but draped and adorned. This city has serious style. Even the grit is beautiful.

The furniture on the sidewalks is worn. Paint chips show lives lived before this one. Edges have been roughened up by weary backs. There is an appreciation for the past. Creativity flows through the streets. It seeps out of the soles that touch them and spreads like a fantastical virus up and through and into the atmosphere. I breathe deeply. I want to be part of it. The smiling faces welcome me in. They fulfill my yearning.

Is it better here? Not necessarily, but it's a city that tries. This city juts out its hips and forms an inner circle. It walks circles around the others that don't quite try as hard.

I am spoiled here. I have the luxury of time to sit in a roughened cafe at ten-thirty on a Tuesday morning. I am bathed is the scent of freshly baked croissants, sipping a foamy cappucino. I have the time to write a love note to a new favourite place filled with delectable spaces and faces.

I sit at an old wooden table on a chair with a crooked leg. Beside me sits my familiar black bag. Inside this bag is my passport. I am a million miles from home...

Feed Me

My hand has formed a blister. The tool handle has rubbed it so many times, it’s raw. My shoulders feel strong and warm from the heat of the sun that’s beating down on them right now. I am sitting - well, more like squatting – over a plot of dirt in my garden. This pathway is overgrown with thick weeds. They are all bright, lush and green, but tough now to get out. I rake through the earth with my hands and grab out great chunks of these weeds. I chuck a patch, which looks rather bizarrely like a toupee. I feel as though I am hurling a large, green scalp through the air. I get up and grab my hoe. I whack at another patch of ground. I am thinking about everything and nothing while I am in the garden. It is the Great Void.

I think about the muscles in my back and shoulders. I think about the blister. I think about The Past. The Future. The Present. I think about people I know and don’t know. I think about books. I think about patience and impatience. I think about the intensity of the colours that surround me. I think about travel and architecture. I think about love. I think about weeds. I think about flowers. I think about Important Things. I think about fashion. I think about money. I think about Life. I think about what all of these vegetables are going to taste like once every inch of the garden bed has been tended to and weeded and loved.

I am fascinated by the work my husband puts into charting the plot each year. While the ground still lays frozen, royal blue pen lines are set out like a maze on dirty pieces of graph paper. The garden is huge and was dug entirely by hand. There was hard work and love and sweat turned over and spread into that soil. I love how over the course of a few short months, this giant brown square slowly turns abundant and green. Like a stop-motion camera, some days you swear you can actually see the plants growing before your very eyes.

I walk through the rows and pull the weeds by hand. My toes find their way into the warm earth. There are streaks on my cheek that map exactly where a wayward hair has fallen. The sun continues to beat down on me and my sundress dips into the dirt at my feet. This garden brings me peace and makes me feel useful. I appreciate it just as much for feeding my heart as it does my belly.

It starts out slowly and requires some degree of patience, a lifelong skill that I still struggle with but am working on. You turn the soil and prepare the land and drop tiny seed specks into that ground and then...you wait. And you wait some more. You wait so long, you wonder if anything's ever going to actually pop out of the ground. You start to think all of that hard digging and work might have been futile. But then, one day, you wander over to the patch of brown and you see something green! A tiny emerald green sprout or tendril or stalk has found its way to the surface, and you realize that all of that hard work was worth something after all.

That one tiny speck of emerald green sets off a chain reaction. Suddenly, there is more green sprouting out of the brown and then more and more and then the whole thing takes on a life of its own and starts to grow upwards. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, the sleepy plot of land comes to life. The plants are suddenly an inch tall, then a foot, then as tall as a three-year-old. The green bits sprout white or yellow or pink flowers. The flowers sprout food. And there you have it - the abundance of what feels like an entire farmers' market is just outside your back door.

My garden reminds me of the importance of patience. I walk through the rows and mentally measure and note the differences since last time. I rub the dark green leaves of the tomato plants as I walk by and inhale that lovely smell. I see the tiny tomatoes sprouting and know it’s only a matter of time until they will be on every plate I eat off from morning until night. I swear I can taste the hard work which makes each taste that much sweeter. There are neighbourhoods of peas and beans and broccoli, onions and garlic, turnip, lettuce, carrots, basil, tomatoes, corn, watermelon.

The apple trees in the orchard beside currently have mini versions of what will soon be their adults selves. These too have been planted with love and plotted on a chart from the person who lived on this land before we came along. There are apples that are best for pies and apples that are best for sauce. Some are perfect for cooking while others are best crunched into practically straight off the branch. There are crabapples for cousins with a particular penchant for the tart. There are now two yellow plum trees and a cherry tree to add to our chart.

Summer will sadly eventually come to an end, and this garden will soon be just another nostalgic memory of summertime love. There will be crops that produce so much food I couldn't possibly stuff another one into me. These will be picked and cleaned and chopped and mingled and stuffed into Mason jars, ready to eat at a later date when both the temperature and the sun have dropped. My husband will pore over recipes and produce meals with these provisions worthy of a five-star restaurant. The vibrant hues. The earthy taste. The juicy flavours. None of it compares. We are spoiled.

My garden has become one of my favourite things since I moved out to this often foreign-seeming place. It's made me see a different side of myself: a side that can live off and respect the land. It requires a lot of work and a lot of patience, but it's worth it. I will have to make it through another long, cold winter before I can feel the warm dirt under my feet and the first taste of sweet peas on my tongue again. But I know it will be worth the long wait.

Someone told me once about a bug. It’s not the kind of bug you can catch and keep in a jar like I sometimes like to do. And it’s not like a flu kind of bug that sits in your tummy and makes you feel sick. I don’t know exactly what it looks like, but I imagine that it’s all the colours of the rainbow all put together and it’s beautiful and exotic. It doesn’t have one home; it’s all over the world. I’m told that people either catch it or they don’t, but if they do, it holds on tight and can stay with you forever.

I am eight years old. Mummy and Daddy just told me today that I will be going on a plane in two weeks. This is so super fantastic! The best news I have ever heard in forever and ever. I can’t sleep. I try real real hard, as hard as I can hard, but my head is buzzing around and around and it just won’t stop. I have never been on a real airplane before. Some of my friends have but only the really lucky ones. I get to fly all the way to England which is on the other side of the world. We have had visitors from England come and see us before but it’s never been the other way around. This is my first real time doing real traveling. I get to miss two whole weeks of school and I have to do a huge report in front of my whole class about my trip and what I learned when I’m back to make up for it, but I don’t care one bit because I get to fly on a plane! Through the sky! To the other side of the world! Up up and away…

Finally it’s two weeks later and the day is here that I never ever thought would actually come. We drive to the airport and wait for three long hours because Daddy is very prompt and pays attention to travelling rules and travelling rules say to arrive at the airport three hours before an international flight. Finally the electronic board flashes the right combination and the garbled voices over the PA system tell us that it’s our turn to go on the plane. This is it! The moment I’ve been waiting for! We walk through a weird tunnel that makes me feel as though I’m a little elf walking through a giant accordion and we’re greeted at the end of the giant accordion by a group of smiling people saying Welcome! and Straight ahead, Ma’am and Have a wonderful flight! Then we’re finally inside the plane and it’s gigantic. It’s not anything like what I pictured in my head. It’s so long that when I get on I can’t see the back and there are little numbers for all of the seats and smiling people and tired people and little cubbies for our belongings above our heads. A pretty lady wearing a uniform and bright red lipstick brings over a basket full of candies for us to chew so our ears don’t hurt and we eat food at a funny time and I’m still so super excited.

I’ve been excited for two whole weeks straight and I can’t believe that I’m really up in the air shooting through the sky right now. It doesn’t feel like we’re going as quickly as we really are, but in real life we’re really zooming. We’re going so far away that it will take hours and hours even though we’re zooming. There’s no other way of even getting there other than by boat but that would take days and days instead of hours and hours. I look out the window and we’re so high up in the sky that everything looks miniature down below and not very real. I wonder if the people down below are looking up at the sky when they hear our plane going over their backyard or their school or their work like I do when I’m down below and I hear a plane up above me. You can’t help but look, can you? I wave out the tiny window just in case anyone can see me. I hope they’re jealous that I am on a plane getting to have this adventure while they’re down there on the street doing their everyday things. And then we’re so high up that we can’t even see anything down below anymore.

We get to go and visit the pilots in the cockpit and see all of the bright lights and buttons they get to play with while we’re sitting in our seats eating peanuts and doing crosswords. Wow! I have no idea how they keep everything straight and know which button does what thing even though they explain a lot of it to us. There are clouds outside the windows with the little personal shutters and funny smells and lots and lots of different kinds of people all around. There are movies to watch and two floors but we can’t go in half of the plane because that’s where the people go that paid for privacy. I drink tomato juice and ginger ale and walk down the long aisles where I’m allowed to go to stretch my legs and I pee in the doll-sized metal bathrooms with the funny loud sounds. I wonder where my pee goes after I flush. I hope that’s not what really falls on my head when I’m down below on the ground and I think that it’s raining.

After a while, the lights get dim and Mummy tells me to close my eyes and go to sleep and rest because it’s a long journey and we have lots of things to do and people to see when we get there and I won’t want to be tired. I curl up tight like a shrimp and I’m so small I have made my body into a tiny circle on the airplane seat. Mummy says she wishes she was small enough to do that too and I try and try to sleep but I’ve never been very good at sleeping so while everyone else on the plane is fast asleep, I’m wide awake the whole time we’re in the sky. How can everyone else sleep through all of this excitement?!

After forever, we finally land with a giant thud when the wheels touch the ground. I forgot that the plane had wheels and it seems funny that when it’s on the ground it drives just like a really huge car and parks in a monster-sized parking space. We wait in a long line to get off the plane and then we wait in another huge line to speak to a very serious man behind a pane of glass who we have been warned not to make any jokes around and then we wait in another huge line and then our bags come around and around with everyone else’s on a giant conveyor belt and we have to check the tags to make sure we’re not walking off with someone else’s bag that just looks like our own. We see our relatives that I don’t really know very well because they’ve come to meet us from the plane because we never get to see them and so it’s a big deal. We all hug and tell them about our plane ride and we walk out the big sliding doors and get in Grandpa’s car.

The minute the engine starts I’m fast asleep, dreaming of my big adventure…

I didn’t feel it bite or anything, but I know I caught the bug. Oh yes, that’s its name: the Travel Bug.  I caught it for sure. I climb on its back and it spreads its beautiful multicoloured wings. It takes me on many adventures. It carries me to places that once lived only in my dreams. To the vineyards of Champagne, the streets of Vancouver, the canals of Amsterdam. To the edge of Germany, to family trips in Vermont, to the bars of Calgary. It takes me to gritty Manchester, to the shops of London, and to farms in Massachusetts. It takes me to dip my toes in the Maritime waters, the top of the Eiffel Tower, to the candy playground of Las Vegas. We sail through the bright lights and the deep countryside. There is so much more to see…

Reflection

Who invited you in? You're a master of melancholy with your unflinching gaze and your black, black eyes. Your eyeballs roll like marbles over my pale white skin as you size me up and down. I feel your harsh words twisting up through my hair, reaching deep into my ears where no one else can hear but me. Your looping speech knows just where to pinch and sear me like vinegar to a cut. Sometimes you draw tears, other times I fight. Most days I lose, and you stand victorious over me as I lay broken on the ground, your foot wrenched deep in my gut where you know I feel it the most.

Who opened the door? It was me and I've regretted it ever since. I heard you knock one day, but I ignored your call. Then curiosity got the better of me, so I ran back quickly to the door and opened it just a sliver and you seeped right in.

You were not welcome. I just wanted to take a small peek.

You descended on me and clouded my colours with greys. You hushed my voice to a monotone. Slowly but surely your footprints stood strong upon my toes, and you pushed me deep below the surface. Some days I sank like quicksand, treading water for my life, the grey lines moving up and down and all around, swirling in a terrific haze. You chased me and I was caught. You spun your vicious web around my arms. You held them tight in your black embrace, digging straight into my ribs as you left me lying hostage in futile disbelief wondering how you caught me so off guard...

You promised me nothing, but I hung on to every word as though it were the truth. You were a politician of lies. You masterminded every strategic move. You kept your whispers light like smoke, so as quickly as they drifted in, all traces of you were gone. You reflected back on me like shards of mirror, tossed to the ground yielding nothing but bad luck and a bloody mess. You cut straight to the chase leaving behind no fingerprints or sign of your existence besides your indelible imprint on my impressionable mind.

Why did I ever believe you, this stranger, this thief of my own self?

Because I paused for a moment and I went back and I myself let you in.

I slammed the door hard and ran back into the empty room, alone and desperate to exhume you from my life. I picked up every tiny shard of mirror that you left behind. And as I assembled them all in the middle of the floor, I looked hard into each and every jagged piece.

I dropped to the floor as though every bone in my body had been stolen when I saw that the shattered stranger staring back was me.

Happily Ever After?

Why do you choose to fill your cup with hate? Love leaves a much sweeter taste. You were thirsting for something so you took a swig, eager for relief. You tilted your head back and drank it all in. The words swirled around on your tongue for a brief moment, but rather than swallow them, you spewed them out, each drop leaving behind an impenetrable stain.

Your words sliced through the once-calm air. They gained strength as they traveled and then sprayed out with a vicious fury heading straight towards your target. You thought only she would hear them, as your speech was intended for her alone, but you were wrong. Some of the residue landed on all of us and we would be forever watermarked as well.

She put her hand to her face in disbelief. The mirror showed each one of your words cascading like teardrops down her wrinkled cheeks. The words seeped deep into her veins, traveling quickly through her system, heading straight for the heart. They found a small tear and let themselves in. You hurt her in the most in the most demeaning way: by spitting words of hatred into her heart. They will remain in there forever, your words.

The heart is both good and bad in that it stretches far beyond its capacity for love, yet it can never truly forget when it’s been broken. Each time it gets broken, it’s harder to fix. There is simply no glue that works.

Where did all of this come from? Who gave you the right to step on a human soul? One day the same may happen to you and then where will you turn? Maybe one day a different synapse will pop. Maybe someday you will realize that the path you have chosen is full of wolves.

If you could take it all back, would you?

Maybe you forgot just how powerful a string of words can be. They look only like lines and loops and they fill the air with noise, and in a certain moment, one can forget that they, in fact, beat with life. They reach far beyond rhyme and reason. They pulsate and conjure and capture. When strung together, they can wrap around a heart and complete it or they can go straight to the epicenter where it’s raw and tender and it hurts the most.

Maybe you knew exactly what you were saying and chose each word carefully from your book of thorns. It's impossible to take back your words once they’ve emerged. They pick up speed and gain momentum the moment they pass the lips. They hold so much weight for something so invisible.

Your words will never be forgotten. You can’t just ask for them back and drink them back down your neck. You can’t pretend that they never came out. Things will never be the same. I hope you remember from now on that your words have power. Someday you may need to eat them and they will leave behind a bitter aftertaste. I hope one day new words will re-write some of the old and that at least part of the hurt can be erased. There is only one word now that can break the spell and change the end of this story.

Are you brave enough to say it?

Siren Song

When I'm in the city, I walk really fast. My stance is as follows: shoulders back/eyes up/ear to the ground. A fusion of scents wakes my senses as well as any good jolt of caffeine as I wind my way through the mazes of pavement. Italian, Greek, Japanese, Lebanese, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Korean. Raw and cooked and barbecued and braised and stewed and skewered. Meats and chickpeas and yogurt and coconut and garlic and coriander and chiles and cumin infuse the air. Vivid colours and smells and flavours and goodness all marinating together in a single city block.

Book stores. Market stalls. Fountains. Tattoo parlours. Traffic lights. Gastropubs. City buses. Coffee shops. Apothecaries. Shoe stores. Delis. Corner stores. Gas stations. Street lights. Subway stops. Buskers. Luxury hotels. Bakeries. Hair salons. Record stores.

The people that pass by me are diverse. Languages, accents, fashion, gait, stupors, struts and shuffles are as varied as the faces I look into. As I walk, I ponder this way of life that consists of brushing past people and spending just a second or two in the same place at the same time. We are all on our way somewhere to gether and then in an instant, we pass each other and are gone.

The shadows that jut out from the feet of giant structures hold me in their protective grasp. I look longingly at the architectural details of old apartment buildings with their fourteen foot ceilings and original hardwood floors and views of a parking lot. Grafitti catches my eye, beautiful as a rainbow as it cuts through the grey. I fall asleep to the siren song lullabies of the streets that surround me as the city embraces me and lulls me off to sleep.

You can walk down the street where I live now and some days not a single person will pass you by. There's the familiar grey barn to the left, the invisible animals who find their hiding spots nestled among leaves and hollowed out trees, and drunken beer cans resting on the sides of the road folded inwards on themselves in the dusty gravel. In theory, you could run down the street stark naked for a short moment hooting like a banshee and chances are fair to good that no one would be even the wiser. You might see the odd car, receive the odd nod of the head or the two-finger dashboard salute, but in general, this place is pretty quiet.

Bullrushes. Ducks. Fresh air. Horses. Manure. Regulars. Mailboxes. Empty roads. Sunshine. Frogs. Tractors. Clouds. Treetops. Open spaces. Squirrels. Vegetables. Woods. Quiet.

Too much quiet.

I sit in my backyard and it's just the forests that surround me on either side, the crackling grass under my feet, the gigantic garden plot in front of me, the sun on my face. The birds flitting to and from the feeder are more or less my main vein of visual stimulation.

To some people, this country life would be paradise, but to me all of the quiet makes me too instrospective, too aware of my own thoughts. It's all too much contrast to the noise in my head. It makes me yearn for a taste of my heart's true influence: the city.

Sometimes I walk for miles out here. I'm haven't quite figured out if I'm trying to find myself or if I'm running away. I was on my way somewhere with everyone, and then in an instant everyone was gone. Maybe I went too far.

Brazen Chickadee Sucker Punch

I am crouched in the middle of an overgrown lilac bush, rusty secateurs in hand, and I am conversing with a brazen chickadee. The small, round bird is perched on a crooked branch only a couple of short feet away. It’s looking me straight in the eye as we shoot the shit. The sun is out and doing its best to cut through the interspersed shadows that envelop us both. This chickadee and me are through with the introductions and small talk and heading into a truly friendly tête-à-tête.

While we’re talking, I absentmindedly reach out and grab out for a sucker to prune back, but instead, I am punched back in numbness. The stabbing pain bolts me back into reality and I am suddenly aware that I haven't really been talking to a chickadee at all, but rather echoing the tiny bird’s chirps. I have been engaging in actual birdspeak for approximately fifteen more minutes than any human respectably should. I look down and see what look like half a dozen tiny cat claws lodged in my fingers and the palm of my left hand. A wave of nausea strikes through my body as I gingerly extract each thorn from its tenuous grip. 

I stop speaking to the bird and look away. It gives up on me and flies away.

I focus back on my pruning. I start by just cutting off tiny dead branches, but really I have no idea what I'm doing. I progressively move to larger branches but end up cutting of some new buds along with the old, dried-out pods. I wonder, do you cut off some healthy to destroy the truly dead? Am I cutting off too much all at once? Will I send the plant into some sort of shock? Some version of foliage arrest?

I keep at it for some time. My hands begin to blister. The secateurs are rusty and hard to use because I haven't taken care of them. I haven't taken the time to put them back in their proper place after each use. Instead, they've sat out in rainstorms, gotten lost in the grass, turned from sharp and helpful to rusty and difficult. I feel bad, so instead of replacing them with new ones, I suffer through the harder grip needed to make them work. To do the work I'm not quite sure how to do.

I step back from the giant shrub to survey my efforts. There is a giant bald patch on one side of the plant where I have been pruning. My mind wandered and I wasn't careful. I tried what I thought might work, but I kept cutting and hacking and weeding and suddenly there is nothing left. My hands are throbbing from overexertion and my work is not good. I should have figured things out before I started.

I throw the rusty shears to the ground and go inside.

It was the best of times...

I am fifteen. It's the end of August. I just moved halfway around this gigantic world and I am sitting on my aunt's bed in a tiny village in England bawling my eyes out. I am staying here for an entire year. I am calling my parents for the third tenth oh-who-the-hell-can-keep-track-anymore^th time and I am gasping out words between heavy sobs begging for a return ticket home. Home to my own warm, safe bed 3,559 long miles away. But my parents, although sympathetic, are not biting. They are telling me to give it a chance and to try to stick it out until December and to re-evaluate things then. December is three long months away. December might as well be three years away, but I am spent. The last drop of energy I had just got wept out and seeped into my aunt's queen-sized duvet cover...

This was supposed to be my own special adventure. This was supposed to be fun. This was my own freaking idea to begin with. What the hell was I thinking?

I am fifteen. I have not yet learned about culture shock, but it's suddenly on me like a ton of bricks.

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I start at my new school tomorrow. It's been about two weeks since my parents did not buy me a ticket home. I am living with my aunt and two cousins who are close to my age - E is about a year younger than me and T a year older. E suggests we go into the city get pre-first-day-of-school makeovers. I’ve been growing my hair and I'm not really sure if I want a haircut, but the idea sounds fun so, full of excitement, we hop on the train and go to a hair salon in Cambridge.

I sit down in the chair beside E and ask the stylist for a non-adventurous "just a trim" as my hair is (finally!) down past my shoulders. I have already learned the hard lesson that if you ask for celebrity so-and-so's haircut, unfortunately you do not stride out of the salon moments later actually resembling a fully cloned version of celebrity so-and-so. This time, I am actually being smart and erring on the side of caution. Just a trim.

Within seconds, three-quarters of my hair is splayed out in a crime scene on the cold tiled floor beneath my feet. I am baffled that I didn't catch the switcheroo the Houdini who I thought was trimming my hair pulled when he deftly replaced himself with Edward Scissorhands.

This cannot be happening.

I experience only three of the five stages of grief: denial, anger and depression. Bargaining and acceptance are curiously nowhere to be found. This is not at all what I asked for. There is no turning back. I do not look like a pixie. I do not look cute like Winona Ryder. I look like a poodle who's owner does not quite like them. My hair is a fucking Chia pet mocking me atop my head. Not knowing what to do and determined not to cry - yet again - I actually pay for my stupid ugly haircut. The stupid ugly haircut that I didn't even necessarily want in the first place. I am starting at a new school tomorrow knowing no one but my two cousins who I've really only met twice before in my life.

I am fifteen. I have hideous hair and I hate my stupid life.

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My older cousin T has an extensive music collection. He endlessly mocks the fact that I used to like the New Kids on the Block. He's got long hair and interesting friends and an endless supply of band t-shirts and I find myself going into his room and borrowing his cassette tapes. They're heavier and edgier than the pop music I'm accustomed to and I instantly like them all. I copy them onto my own blank tapes and listen to them on repeat. The Levellers. Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Wonderstuff. The Pixies. L7. Nirvana. Jane's Addiction. This music becomes the soundtrack of my year.

T is the older brother I always wanted and he treats me like a younger sister. He steals my belongings and dangles them precariously out of my second-story bedroom window threatening to drop them out at any moment. He sneaks around and writes silly messages on my mirror using my makeup. He roughhouses and teases and laughs at me, but secretly I love it. Not-quite-brotherly love.

My younger cousin E is very unlike me. She is far more conservative and takes piano lessons and her studies very seriously, but she takes me under her wing and lets me into her circle of friends and we too become like siblings. We have long chats and pillow fights and real fights. One night, we sit on her bed and laugh so hard we both have tears rushing down our cheeks and E falls right down behind the bed she's so hysterical.

We watch Neighbours and Quantum Leap and Top of the Pops together. Most days after school we stop by her dad's house where she keeps two of the most enormous rabbits I have ever seen in my entire life. We drink orange squash and biscuits and hang out with her dad and her stepmother who treat me like I've been there all along. We also go to my grandparents' house all the time because they live just one street up from my aunt's house. I love this because I only have one grandmother back home and we only get to see her a few times a year.

One day as we're walking home from their house, E tells me she believes that my grandparents think the sun shines out of my ass. She says it in the joking kind of way that feels as though it's masking just the slightest hint of jealousy which I am not accustomed to. I do my best to blow her comment off, reassuring her that they're still just getting to know me and that if they knew me half as well as T and her I am sure they would think differently. But much as I try to protest, inside I'm beaming my own little ray of sunshine.

I am sixteen. I'm glad I'm getting the opportunity to get to know this side of my family, different as they are to my own.

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The end of the year comes and rolls over into the next. I have never had this many close friends in my life. If asked, I could not choose a favourite. S is super indie and has wicked clothes and cool, hippie laid-back parents. A is mature and wise beyond her years and I've never met a more sincere or trustworthy person. L teaches me how to smoke and she's super sporty and has a cool accent. J is the clown of the group and laughs at herself almost as much as she makes all of us laugh. The other A is a vegetarian and we both get our first jobs together at the new grocery store in town, although neither of us stays there very long. R is studious and conservative, but she looks the oldest out of all of us and we have our first underage liquor store adventure together (we panic and choose Cinzano). The other S is beautiful, has long curly blonde hair and is quietly comfortable to be around.

The only time any of us seem to spend apart is when we're sitting in different classrooms. We run around the village streets barefoot and arm-in-arm. We get dizzy and fall off the merry-go-round onto the squishy tarmac in the park near the old stone church. We go to the Strawberry Fair and jump around the bouncy castle amongst the little kids and haggle our allowance for trinkets. We celebrate each others' birthdays and hope each others' wishes come true. We make cassette tapes of our conversations in my bedroom. We sneak disgusting homemade wine to sleepovers and laugh our heads off. We talk for hours about life and clothes and boys and teenage philosophy. We have it all figured out.

I am now sixteen. Sweet, sweet sixteen.

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

The highway of my year that started out as a neverending stretch to the horizon gradually picks up speed. I write in my diary every single night. I document what steadily turns out to be more highs than lows. I get a part (well, four parts actually) in the school play. I get asked out by a guy, get stood up for the first time by another, and make out with a few more. I go on holiday and reconnect with old friends and make some new memories. I go to my first-ever concert and see the lead singer up close after the show. I get a part-time job and get paid and write and receive an endless stream of letters. I keep myself busy with aerobics classes and youth groups and everything but studying for exams. I go to the heath and The Pit and the high streets of my own town and nearby ones as well. I stroll through markets and escape into books I pick up at the library. I develop a sense of style, a sense of self and a bit of an accent. I drive a car for the first time and even though everything's opposite to what it will be at home and I'm only allowed to drive in empty parking lots, I still feel the thrill. I attend school and dances and sleepovers and parties. My head is constantly spinning from liquor or hormones or excitement or fear or sometimes all of these things at the same time. I hang every single card I receive in my bedroom and pretty soon one wall is all but hidden.

I am sixteen. I've finally got the hang of this whole thing.

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

June floats in on a warm breeze. The change on my yearlong meter has all but run out and before I can reload, all of a sudden it is time for me to leave. It's the night before the day that I will be shooting through the sky towards home. My other home. My close circle of friends and I get all dolled up in our fanciest clothes and way too much makeup. We have reservations at the small Italian restaurant on the high street. We sit shoulder-to-shoulder around the dark wooden table and share stories and memories and laugh as we always do and (of course) try to impress the cute waiter. I am nostalgic before I am even gone.

I am having that weird kind of moment where I am actually in two different places at the exact same time. To anyone looking at me, I am talking and laughing having a fun night out on the town with my friends. But on the inside, I am looking around at each person in this group and wondering how I will feel tomorrow in a few hours when they are suddenly not there. I am taking a moment outside of the very one I am currently in and reflecting on the past year. I am thinking back to the day long ago last August when I was crying on my aunt's bed and I wish I could have seen just a glimpse of this moment then. I am glad for the first time in probably forever that my parents are older and wiser and actually really do sometimes know what's best for me. I am grateful that my parents didn't buy me the return ticket I so desperately wanted or I never would have got to meet or know these amazing people and have these crazy fun experiences and stepped outside of what was comfortable and everyday and familiar to me. If I allow myself to acknowledge the truth, I would have simply returned home with my tail between my legs feeling like a failure.

We finish our dinner and settle our bills and skip arm-in-arm down the dusky streets to A's house where we're spending the night. We braid each others' hair and drink whatever bottles anyone's managed to sneak out and make way too much noise way too late into the early hours out in the giant orange tent we've set up in the backyard. I don't sleep partly because I've always thought the "sleep" part of sleepovers is lame and partly because I am half-insomniac anyway but mostly because I don't ever want this night to end. But before I know it and before I can stop it, the sun is up in near-full force and the bodies that actually managed a few hours of rest are slowly emerging into the light, pushing sleep and braided hair out of their bleary eyes.

The day's events are a bit of a blur (as hard ones tend to become), but there is much hugging and promising to stay in touch forever and ever and everyone comes to the bus station at the grocery store where a giant bus with tinted windows is about to take me to the airport. We all pose for a picture in front of the bus stop. And then before I know it, I'm sitting on the giant bus with the tinted windows and then I'm sitting in the plane that's rocketing me high up into the clouds towards my real home that's 3,559 miles away from these amazing friends and this family that I've discovered and this brief parallel life I've come to know. This temporary life that I created for myself. This moment in time that will forever be remembered as what turned out to be one of the best years of my life.

I am sixteen. I know so much more than I did a year ago. If only I'd have known how it would all turn out...

Break on through to the other side

Whenever I hear the song White Flag by Dido I think of R. In my head, this working man's gravelly, slightly off-key voice wafts over her soothing melodic one as he sings along to the radio that sits outside on the grass as we work side by side, paint-spattered and full of tea...

I'd known R for years, though there were long gaps throughout many of them where we had no contact at all for no particular reason other than age and distance. And for the past few years we have returned to exactly that: no contact at all, just memories, since R passed on to wherever it is we go when we pass on and reached the end of whichever path held his own personal destiny.

He was a simple but engaging man, and his eyes held not only a twinkle but an element of depth. There was some weight to the steely grey of his irises and the strands of his hair that clearly illustrated a life intertwined with challenge. Just as powerful to me, though, was that he appeared to be a perpetual victim of the wrong kind of love.

R taught me how to paint. Not the artistic kind of painting but rather house painting where our canvases were composed of plaster and compounds and domestic memories. He would hang wallpaper with me in the day and oftentimes his head at night. He taught me how to fix cracks in walls while attempting to repair the seams of his own fragile life. We would pore over colours and notebooks and supplies while pouring endless cups of tea and sympathy.

He would balance over stairwells on milk crates perched high up on beams too small really to be meant for such feats which, if you can picture it, was a perfect representation of my vision of him if I were to sum him up in a single snapshot. He always appeared to be hanging in the balance.

R would confide in me and ask my opinion on all sorts of things, and we developed the most unlikely of friendships. He was flattered that I'd crossed an ocean to become his apprentice, to learn his trade, to soak in some of his skill and knowledge. We would often go to the supply store to pick up materials, and he'd announce to anyone who would listen that I had travelled so far to learn just from him. I was happy to give him his moment of pride. I was happy to bring out the twinkle.

My temporary role as his apprentice lasted for just a few weeks. Our first job involved fixing up a tiny one-bedroom student house, but we moved on to progressively bigger jobs and by the end of my time with him, we had painted the entire exterior of The White Cottage, a sprawling house which featured a giant pool, a private tennis court and a lady of the house whose boozy lunch parties we would glimpse at like urchins through the large windows at the back of the house. We would bring our old tennis rackets and escape to the courts over lunch into this other world so different from our own.

It was while we painted that R would sing along to the radio and lose himself in his work and the music around him. His voice would float along through the air and he'd be lost in the moment, a smile on his face, his steel-grey eyes looking skyward, the melodic breeze sifting through the strands of his hair.

R has been gone from this earth for about six years now, but I still think of him often and wonder if he ever found true happiness or love anywhere outside of a tennis score. I will always remember this generous complicated man and the elusive twinkle in his eye. R, my most unlikely of friends...

And when we meet
Which I'm sure we will
All that was there
Will be there still

Here we go...

I am superwoman. I can fly. I’ve performed at the Grammy’s. I’ve been a spy. I am an angel. I am a rebel. I hang out with rock stars and do rock star things. I write for a living in my Parisian pied-a-terre. I do good things in the world. I am ambitious. I am smart. And beautiful. I have traveled the world and seen all that it has to offer. I can do anything. I am never afraid. I am confident. I never worry about what others think. When I speak, people listen. I have great posture. I have amazing friends. I never complain. (I have nothing to complain about). I have it all. I do whatever I want. Anytime I want to do it. And I sure as hell do it well.

Sometimes I float down from my daydreams as gently as a feather drifts to the ground. The warm halo of light around me quietly fades while the real world softly comes back into focus in front of me. I am aware. I am calm. I breathe. I smile.

Other times, reality smacks me hard across the cheek and then shoves me harshly back into my unsuspecting body. I manage to scowl back as the real world flips me the bird. I land hard on my ass and dab protectively at my smudged dreams with a crumbling tissue.

I am a dreamer. The world where I choose to spend most of my time is right up in my head.

The reality? I am average. I sing mainly in the shower and/or the car. I am a daughter, a sibling, a wife and a mother. I am often tired. I am self-deprecating. I worry. I am forgiving. I am sarcastic. I am impatient. I try not to judge people based on the contents of their grocery carts. I am thirty-five. I am open-minded. I am a paradox. I talk too much/I don’t talk enough. I am a middle-ground of awkward. I like to make things with my hands. I see two sides to a story. I like texture and layers in both people and things. I love libraries and bookstores and the smell of books. I swear too much. I get cranky when I need to eat. I am shorter than I’d like to be. I want to travel more. I am loyal. I prefer city sidewalks to nature trails. I’ve let a lot of dreams burn out. I proposed. I have too many freckles. I am good at spelling. I interrupt too much. I am pear-shaped. I think money was a horrible invention. I wonder what the future holds. My eyes are green. I like impractical shoes. I really like houses. And modern design. And food. Oh, and wine. I am unnaturally obsessed with NYC. I can’t do math. I like to knit. I learn things best when someone shows me. I wish on stars. I wonder why weekends are only two days long. I wish I could trust as easily as I used to. I am a really bad liar. I am stubborn. I am hard on myself. I am tolerant. I am indecisive. I am all of these things and more.

I am a dreamer.

And I have stories to tell…