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.

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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.

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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…