I'm Not a Girl!

On that first afternoon at family reunion, I took one look at the girls my age and decided to save myself the boredom and utter humiliation of playing tea-party and dolls with that lot of prissy little clean-freaks.  My mom said I should play with the other girls my age, but there was a grander scheme to things in my seven-year-old mind.  I remembered the words to a song just then—a song my dad used to sing occasionally at bedtime: “I’m a boy, I’m a boy, but my mamma won’t admit it.  I’m a boy, I’m a boy, but if I say I am, I get it!”  My dad singing those words always made me laugh.  Even though I knew I’d come out of my mom’s tummy as a girl, I was sure there must have been some mistake in heaven.  I was a tom-boy to the most extreme sense of the term, but every time I told my mom I was a boy, I about got my ear pulled off.

Now, in my opinion, we were at family reunion to camp out, play in the dirt, go swimming in the lake, burn things up in the camp fire, and go exploring--not sit around and stay out of trouble.  That would be so nose-pickingly boring!  I shuddered at the thought.  So, I went in search of the boys.

When I found my cousins Steven and Kevin, they said I couldn’t play with them because I was a girl.  Insulted at being called the G-word, I showed them just how tough I was by beating Steven in a race and wrestling Kevin to the ground.  After the three of us got over the initial G-I-R-L issue, we got alone just swell.

That evening, Kevin, Steven, and I begged our parents to let us go swimming in the lake, but they put us off, saying we’d all go swimming tomorrow morning before lunch.  With much disappointment, the three of us decided to just walk around the lake, and LOOK at it, since we weren’t allowed to get in it yet.  (We were smart enough to realize that the evidence would be painfully clear if we did in fact disobey our parents and take even a quick hop into the lake.)

On our walk, we bragged about how good each one of us could swim.  "I can swim faster than a shark!” Kevin boasted.

“Well I swim faster than the monkeys in Monkey Land,” came Steven's rebuttal.  Since I had never heard of Monkey Land, I pretended to be astonished and amazed, especially when Kevin’s reaction was awe-struck and reverenced at the mention of Monkey Land.

I had to do better than the monkeys though, especially since I didn’t want either one of my cousins to find out that I couldn’t really swim at all.  That would be un-tough and un-cool, and they might think I was a girl again.  “I can hold my breath for a hundred minutes!”

“Psh!  No way!  There’s no such think as holding your breath for a hundred minutes!” Steven said to me.  I silently cursed Steven’s logic.

Just then, we came up to a fisherman.  He probably wasn’t more than 17 or 18, but to us seven-year-olds, he was a grownup.  We started grilling him with questions, such as, “How many fish have you caught?” and “Where do you come from?” and “What are all those red bumps on your face?”

The young man was kind enough to answer our questions with a happy grin.  As we stood there watching him fish, he actually caught one.  When he reeled it in he let us hold the fish and stroke it a bit.  I looked at Mr. Fish, seeing his slightly glazed, glossy eye looking up at me.  The fisherman carefully unlaced the hook from the fish’s mouth and threw Mr. Fish back into the lake (I was really into explosives and blowing things up).

The next morning after eating a good breakfast of soggy French toast and charred bacon strips all smothered in syrup and I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter, Kevin, Steven, and I ganged up with Craig and Christopher to take hatchet-lessons from Michael, who was an Eagle Scout.  I had no idea what that meant, but it had to be something REALLY good if Michael knew how to use a hatchet.  I told Michael that I wanted to be an Eagle Scout, just like him, but he only laughed and said, “You can’t do that, you’re a girl!”  I pulled him aside after that and asked him not to say it so loudly (that I was a girl), just in case the other guys found out.

Right then, Craig said, “Hey!  All the ‘dolts are goin’ swimming!”  We all scrambled into our swimming suits and rushed to meet the parents by the lake side.  Anxious to get into the water, none of us really paid attention to the Swimming Safety Rules spiel.  The water lapped up against the rocks, beckoning me to come in for a while.

My father asked me if I wanted to wear a life jacket so that I could float and not have to worry about staying in the shallow parts.  Embarrassed beyond my seven-year-old comprehension, I told him that of course I didn’t want a life jacket.  I didn’t want Steven and Kevin to think I was a wimp or a pansy or a girl because I couldn’t swim.

We had fun playing games like Shark Attack, Marco Polo, and other such things.  At one point, the game-playing dissipated, and I was left on my own.  I’d had several close calls previously when my cousins had almost discovered the fact that in order for me to breathe, I had to stop and stand on the bottom of the lake and my head above water to get my air.  I couldn’t even tread water.  It was then I decided that I ought to spend my time practicing holding my breath and swimming back and forth so it wouldn’t be completely obvious that my style of swimming was more like doggy-paddling with standing-up-to-breathe breaks.

Deciding to see how far I could swim without taking a breath, I started at the edge of the lake and aimed for the opposite shore.  After swimming for what seemed like ages, I stood up and took a breather.  I looked back at my distance from the shore and I was embarrassed at the pathetic gap between me and my starting point.  I had to do better than that.  Taking in as much air as my little lungs could hold, I set off for the other side once more.

This is far enough, I told myself, still trying to paddle further on my quest to cross the lake.  I needed air.  I tried to stand up, but I suddenly realized there was nothing beneath my feet but water.  I struggled to keep my head up, gasping for oxygen.  Crying for help, I quickly realized my efforts were futile.  I was choking on water before any sound could escape.  I tried again and again to keep myself above the surface, but soon, not even my outstretched hands were breaking the surface.

Nobody can see me, I told myself.  No one is even going to know that I’m drowning.  My fighting became weaker and weaker against the force that was pulling me down.  Inward thoughts drew my attention away from what was going on around me, what was happening, the algae floating across my vision in the murky water.

Why didn’t Dad see me before I went under the water?  He could have saved me, but he’s not paying attention.  Death isn’t so bad.  When I die, my parents will be sorry for all the mean things they ever did and said to me.  My big brother Danny will probably get all my toys, and little Jared will want some of them, too.  I’ll never get to know what baby Jana will be like.  Maybe she and I would have been good friends if I had lived.  I hope Mr. Fish will recognize me.  Mr. Fish and I are a lot alike.  I don’t know why.  We just are.  He can be my friend now.

Completely submerged and no idea how to survive, my seven years of life didn't flash before my eyes. It's what was yet to come.
I pictured my parents dragging my sodden little body out of the water, crying and weeping over me being dead when I was just barely seven years old.  I saw my body, laying there, half in and half out of the water—totally limp.  But my face was not quite right for the scene.  I was almost smiling, with my eye muscles totally relaxed and my eyelids shut gently.  Corpses used to scare me a lot because they always looked so disgusting.  Their faces were blown off by some shot-gun, or they’d been picked apart by piranhas or aliens from a different solar system (I was also into watching horror-thriller movies with my dad ... more because it was something I could do with dad and prove how tough I was, not because I enjoyed the movies).  But when I saw my own dead body, I wasn’t scared anymore.  I was a friendly, non-disgusting dead person, and that made me feel a little bit better about dying.

Then I was suddenly floating in the air over my funeral.  From my distant view, I shook my head at the people who came to see my body and say goodbye to me.  If only they knew me.

Everything went completely dark.  There were no more bits of algae floating across my vision in the mucked-up water.  Thoughts of Mr. Fish disappeared.  It was so dark, and I hated the dark.  I was afraid because I didn’t know what was going to happen next.  Exploration had always been my specialty, but I knew Death was something I wouldn’t be able to come back from.  The fear was too much, and I imagined someone laughing at me because I was scared of Death.  Well, I was a tough kid, and I wasn’t going to let someone laugh because I wouldn’t  face Death.  So I gave up.  There was nothing left to live for, after all.  Even if there was, I decided that I wouldn’t be able to stop Death anyway.  I’d seen The Twilight Zone (several episodes), and when the people were supposed to die, they always died no matter what they tried to do, so there was no use fighting it.

I closed my eyes then, held them shut, encouraging Death to do his job.  But I noticed my lungs burning again.  I must have opened my eyes, because suddenly, it wasn’t dark anymore.  Without even thinking, I heard this voice in my mind say, You can’t die.  You haven’t done what you came here to do.

That was it.  Those words hit home for me in my young mind.  They broke through the darkness.  I made up my mind that death was no longer an option for me.  Ignoring Death, my struggle began anew.  Somehow, I found the strength to get myself just a little bit closer to shore—close enough that I could barely touch the bottom by standing on tip-toe, my mouth and nose just breaking the surface.  Gasping in huge breaths of air, my starving lungs were bursting, urging me to get closer to shore so I could have more.

Finally taking the last step out of the lake, I glanced around me.  Nobody was looking at me.  No one had noticed my struggle.  I was upset that I had almost died, and still no one had recognized how close to death I had been.  Actually, I was more upset with myself that I had actually decided to die, and I had almost let myself do just that.

Determining to never go back into that horrible lake, I dried off and went to change into my clothes, setting off on a solitary walk through the woods to think about things far too deep and serious for a seven-year-old.  Once I was away from everyone else, I decided to not talk about almost drowning—not to my parents, my brothers, my cousins… I wasn’t going to tell anyone.  Tough kids don’t almost drown.  Being tough meant you had to suck it up and never show weakness.  I didn’t want my parents to find out either, since they’d probably tell everyone and embarrass me by making me wear a life jacket, even though I swore I was never going back in that lake.  I didn’t want my parents to notice me that much anyway.   Not anymore.  It was rare when I need their help or when I wanted their attention.  But one of those times that I really hoped my parents would be there for me, to save me, had been that morning in the lake.  I realized that sometimes, you have to save yourself.  You can't always count on someone else being there to save you.

I truly believe that you will find the strength if that day ever comes for you and you find yourself all but lost and totally alone in your struggles.  Don't give up, keep holding on.  You have a very important purpose in life, and there is a very specific reason why you are here.  You have this gift of life, and a reason to live for.  Find that reason to live and keep moving forward.

Victory is Hard to Accept

The two brothers had been lucky to serve in the same regiment.  When they reached the front, both young men were eager to help their country in any way they could.  However, William, the younger of the two, lost his enthusiasm during the first battle.  He continued his service, but with reluctance.  He had been a talkative, immature smart-aleck, but life in the trenches had changed all that.  The blood and slaughter of combat was not the glorious war he’d envisioned before joining the army.  John had always been the brave one.  It seemed that he had known exactly what he was getting himself into.  He came alive with the presence of danger.  In the heat of the fight, he wasn’t still for a moment.  Fear was not an option for him.

In one particular battle, John was stationed at a .50-caliber machine gun.  William was nearby with his Springfield riffle.  Another man stood below John, constantly feeding belts of bullets into the gun.  As the spent rasps came streaming out the other side of his gun, John shouted “Victory before Death!” over the pounding bang of the weapon.  He said it again and again as he sent out thousands of bullets in hopes of penetrating the advancing lines of the enemy.  He cursed loudly as an enemy bullet grazed across the top of his shoulder.  Jumping down from the gun, he hauled another belt out of a box and yelled to his gunman, “Greg, we’ve got to push these devils back!  Don’t let me down!”  He roughly shoved the belt at the man and resumed his gunning stance, grunting at the inconvenience of the fresh bullet wound.  He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and spit on the ground with another curse.  His jaw was set in a firm line as he continued his attack.

One night, John and William sat drinking together.  Resting his forehead on the back of his hand, John looked over at his brother and reflected aloud in a quiet voice.  “You know, it seems that for every friend I make, another is killed.  It’s hard on lasting relationships when the guy you met and shared a cigarette with ends up dead in some foxhole the next day.”

William looked up from his bottle.  He’d had a bit more to drink than his older brother, and responded with an irreverent giggle.  “Death is the only friend a soldier needs.”

“Don’t you get it?” John asked firmly as he smacked William on the side of his head.  “Maybe you’re too drunk to understand,” he finished, settling back down with his own bottle.

“No, I get it,” William said, a little flushed.  “You’re the one that’s stupid enough to think that we’re actually fighting for a cause.  What’s really going on is they shipped us out here to die in a ‘civilized manner,’” he spat.  “Those cowards in Washington sit around a table all day and think up reasons to go to war.  They wouldn’t be so anxious to ship us all out here if they had to join the army.”  His speech was slurred.

“At least you’re still here,” John commented, repressing his fury, hoping to distract William from his morbid theorizing.  “We can’t let this war get the better of us.”

“John, it already has.  Take a look around you!  Hell!  Our one purpose for being here is to kill them before they kill us.  You’re the one that doesn’t get it.  I’m sick of this old-fashioned patriotism you seem to be so fond of.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”  Turning back to his drink, John ended the conversation.

Two weeks later during a fierce battle, William was reloading his rifle when he heard a sharp crunch as a chunk of flying shrapnel crushed his brother’s pelvis nearby.  William stood frozen at the sight, his brother lying on his back, blood welling form the jagged hole in his hip.  He fell to his knees at John’s side just in time to hear him gasp out, “Victory!” between short, wheezing gulps of air.  He ground his teeth together, trying to ignore the pain.  William clasped John’s hand and winced at the forceful grip.  John cried out once more.

“… ‘s only pain…” were the barely audible words uttered from his brother’s lips through clenched teeth.  The corners of his eyes drew into tight, hard lines.  He barred his teeth and gasped trying to repress a scream that threatened to escape into the thick, hot air of the battle.  Then, just as though the shrapnel had never struck him, John opened his eyes and focused on a point above William’s head, opening his mouth as if to speak, but he let out a long, shuddering breath of air instead.  His spirit seemed to go with that sigh.  His eyes clouded over with death.  William just stared, unable to tear his gaze away from his brother’s face.  The muscles beneath John’s skin had finally relaxed.  Despite the dirt that covered his features, it seemed that the corners of his mouth were turned up in a slight smile.  John seemed to embrace dying in the war like he had embraced fighting it.  William couldn’t understand why.

He recalled a conversation he had once had with his brother about death—before these hostilities even began.  John’s words came back; I want to live to be ninety-five and die in my sleep.  And now he was dead—only twenty-two.  John’s dream was to get married and have four kids.  William didn’t even know where he was going in life.  He hadn’t thought beyond the war.  Fate plays roulette with the mortality of men, and John lost the game.

Though John was dead, blood still oozed from the hole made by the shrapnel.  His entrails hung out of his lower stomach in an undignified manner.  For a brief moment, William thought that he should put the intestines back where they belonged out of respect for his brother.  Shaking away that thought, he suddenly couldn’t figure out why he was so concerned with dignity in the middle of an attack.  With intense anger and sudden hatred rising in his chest, William stood and yelled, “Go to Hell you bastards!” toward the enemy.  He was answered by an onslaught of bullets and was forced to throw himself flat on the muddy ground on top of his brother’s blood-soaked, sodden body.

William managed to live through that battle, though it was all a blur.  He had automatically loaded his gun, aimed at the enemy lines, and fired until there was no more ammunition.  He reached over every now and then to take some bullets from the pocket of the dead man lying next to him and mechanically fired over and over again.  When it was finished and the enemy was running away defeated, he merely sank into the mud next to his brother’s corpse.  His tears mixed with the dirty residue on his face.  Another soldier finally convinced William that there was nothing he could do or change by sitting around, crying for his dead brother.  Remorsefully, William removed one of John’s bloodied tags and placed it in his pocket.  Pressing his hand against John’s forehead, he said a silent prayer, wishing his brother a safe journey to wherever he went in the afterworld.  IN a final farewell, he bent and kissed his brother’s cold cheek, and left him.

*****

William couldn’t remember what the sun looked like.  He couldn’t even remember looking at it since the war began.  He coughed when he inhaled a big of smoke and hoped it wasn’t tainted with poisonous gas or some other lethal substance.  The sky hung like a black fog ready to envelop the rotting corpses that dotted the barren wasteland beneath it.  Each time an explosion sounded in  the distance, the thick clouds seemed to roll in protest.  He watched as they blended from one hideous image to another.  A cloud contorted into a form that reminded William of a man dying in a tangle of barbed wire, a bullet ventilating his lung.

His attention was distracted as one of his commanders hobbled down the trench towards him, trying to muffle his cough.

“William,” the officer said in greeting.

“Smith,” he responded informally, clamping his teeth down, trying to keep them from chattering together.

Smith joined him on the hard ground, and winced as the frost cut through the seat of his pants.  AT least they didn’t have to slog through the mud.  William almost subconsciously wiggled his toes inside his boots and rolled his angles to keep his feet from falling asleep.  He’d heard about the effects of frostbite and didn’t cherish the thought of losing his extremities.  He looked down the trench and saw a younger man shaking his canteen upside down and cursing quietly.  “It’ll be frozen solid, boy,” William commented, causing the new recruit to stop his antics abruptly.  Turning to look the boy in the face, William advised, “Keep your canteen inside your shirt so it won’t freeze.”

“Uh… thanks,” the young man responded.

William turned away from the boy and focused on the sky above the trench once more.  Orders were to wait.  The heat of battle was to the north, but borders still needed to be protected.  There was no telling what schemes and diversions those devils were coming up with.  “It sounds like they’re attacking in the north again,” he commented tensely, feeling the muscles in his neck convulse involuntarily.  He had lived with an unstoppable anxiety since he entered the war.

“Yeah,” Smith acknowledged.  “We’d better get some rest before it comes our way.”  But both men knew there was no way to sleep.  Insomnia caused by fear, pain, the stench, nightmares, or worse, was their constant companion.

“When do you think the war will end?” William asked.

“You’ve asked me that before,” Smith said as he pulled a stale biscuit out of his pack.

“I know, but you’ve never given me a straight answer.”

He sighed.  “I don’t know.”

William let his head fall back against the dirt wall.  “It’s been two years since I’ve seen my family.”

“Three for me.  My wife must think I’m dead.  Mail hasn’t been coming or going from here for three months.”

“I bet our families are writing to us all the time.  The only problem is we’re too damn close to the front for any mail to make it through,” William stated with contempt.  “I wonder if my parents even know what happened to John,” he said grimly.

William went on coldly.  “My mother thought the war would make me a man.  Sometimes I wonder if she’ll ever get to see what I’ve become as a result of this war.  If I’ve got to watch my friends die, and kill a bunch of those bastards out there to be a man, I want none of it.”  He paused.  “I’m glad she didn’t know I’d end up in this Hell-hole,” he spat bitterly.

“You’ll get home alright.  Your mother will be proud of the man you’ve become,” Smith said in a fatherly tone.  He shifted his position slightly, uncomfortable at the turn of conversation.  “I’ve got three boys at home,” Smith said slightly changing the subject.  “One of ‘em is seventeen.  I suppose he’ll be joining up pretty soon.”  He wearily drew a worn photograph from his goat pocket and gazed at it in silence.

“May I?”

Smith nodded, and handed him the picture.

William looked down at the family.  Smith’s wife had long golden hair, and wore a bright spring dress.  Smith’s arm was around her shoulders, and she had reached up to clasp his hand with hers.  His other hand was buried in the mass of hair on his youngest son’s head.  The young boy had one finger laced through his father’s belt-loop, while the other hand was hidden behind him.  The boy had his head cocked slightly downward, but he looked up through his shaggy mop of hair with bright blue eyes.  The two older boys had the same blond mops and they made an exuberant display of muscles that weren’t quite there yet.

William looked over and examined Smith now.  Lines creased his forehead, and his mouth hung in a perpetual frown.  His shoulders slumped with the weight of command and his eyes were dulled with the fierce reality of war.  There was nothing left of the pride William had seen in the picture.  Returning Smith’s photograph, William withdrew one of his own.  He removed the small picture from a little tin box.  He softly fingered the dirty, tattered corners while he moved his eyes over the features of his loved ones: his parents, his older brother John, and his little sister Emma.

Smith was looking over his shoulder, so he handed him the picture.

William let his head fall back again and started at the dark, clouded sky.  A multitude of memories came flooding through his mind.  A queasy faintness came over him when the image of his own brother’s grisly remains appeared in his mind’s eye.  He didn’t want to remember John’s death, but the memory surfaced anyway.  He closed his eyes, willing the images to be gone, but it only intensified them.  Bodies were blown to bits, corpses lay in grotesquely contorted shapes, and vultures picked at the dead and the dying.

He remembered battlefields littered with the bodies of his friends and foes alike.  It didn’t matter who was lying next to who when you were dead.  Each bloody corpse was a man who used to be alive.  The loss of so many young men at the beginning of their productive lives was brutally unchecked.  He recalled seeing peasants, and even other solders robbing clothes, possessions, and money from the dead.  Bodies could be seen lying completely naked with no way to identify who they were or even which side they had been fighting for.  Some of the dead soldiers were lying on their backs.  It sent a chill up William’s spine to have seen their lifeless eyes open, appearing to stare up at the sky, water collecting in their eye sockets.

In one battle, William had been standing next to a man named Brad when he saw the lower half of his body blown away.  As he cradled what was left of his comrade, William cursed his helplessness.  He knew Brad would die but there was nothing he could do but tell the man that everything would be okay.  The thought teased his mind to just kill Brad and put him out of his misery, but he shocked himself back to reality and pushed the idea aside.  William tried to stop the convulsions that wracked Brad’s remains, but it was no use.  All he could say was, “It doesn’t look so bad, you’ll make it.  The doctor will be here any minute.”  Brad tried to respond, but it came out in a splutter as blood filled his mouth.  It poured down the sides of his face, soaking William’s hands as he held Brad’s head in his lap.  Brad let out one last gurgle before he screamed, coughing blood onto William’s face and clothes, and died.  William fought desperately against the countless scenes that assailed his thoughts, sparking from the memory of his brother’s death.  There was always blood—always.

“Nice family,” Smith said, snapping William out of his nightmare, though he had only said something to break up the far distant sounds of bombing and weapon fire.

“It won’t be much of a family when this war is over,” William said, staring at nothing, trying to shake away the indelible memories of his brother laying in a pool of blood mixed with filth and machine gun shells.  But no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t drive away the memory of John’s wide-open eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“My brother died two months ago and I will probably die with the rest of these puppets.”

Smith handed back the photograph.  William replaced it in his tin box without even glancing at it a second time.  He had spent countless hours just looking at that picture, memorizing the faces of his parents and siblings.  “This is the kind of war where only your body or what’s left of it returns home,” William stated in a comfortless, uncaring manner.

“Nah,” Smith said, trying to sound hopeful, but failing miserably.  “We’ve made it this far, we’ll make it home.”

“Sure,” he commented, his voice suffused with sarcasm.

Smith didn’t know what else to say, so he continued eating his biscuit.

John’s last words played across William’s mind.  “…’s only pain…”

“That’s right…” William muttered to himself.

“What’s that?” Smith asked curiously.

“It’s only pain,” he repeated.

“What is?”

“This whole damn war.  But now I know what John meant when he said that to me just before he died.  My father used to tell us that enduring pain only makes you stronger,” William explained.

“Yeah, that’s true, isn’t it.”

“Damn right it is,” William said resolutely.

*****

The war continued, but William found courage in his brother’s words, “It’s only pain.”  The thought of death was not as daunting to him now.  After all he’d seen, William was resolved to fight this war with the passion his brother had possessed.

He kept a precise record of everything he did and saw.  He wrote letters home, even though he knew they might not get to his family until the war was over.  He wrote poetry in an attempt to escape his surroundings—anything to keep his mind occupied.

*****

Dear Mother,

The war goes on, but I am well.  We won a battle two days ago, but there will be another battle soon.  I can feel it.  The days merge into weeks, weeks slur into months, and the months converge into years.  There is no telling when the war will be over—it will just end one day.  There will be no more fighting, and we’ll all be sent home.

When I left to join the war, I wanted to get away from home and escape the life I felt trapped in.  It took the war to turn me around.  Every night I go to sleep thinking of home, but the nightmares always follow, never giving me rest.  I realized that you don’t always know what you have until you lose it.

I try not to think about the present.  Tomorrow I may have to murder other young men, merely to keep myself from being killed.  I’d almost rather die than to continue killing, but one thought holds me back from giving up, and that is John.  It’s too dark to write anymore.

Your son,

William

“Are you writing again, William?” a soldier asked, looking up from the nearby poker game he and several other men were playing, huddled close to the cards in the growing dusk.

“Yes,” he responded as he shut his journal.  The man shrugged and went back to his game.  William knew that most of the men gave up writing to their families long ago when the mail stopped coming and going.  It didn’t matter to him though.  He hoped that someday, his family could read all the letters he wrote to them.  Anyway, writing calmed his thoughts and lessened the ever-present nightmares that assailed his mind.

*****

In the months before the war ended, William earned several medals and was labeled a hero for his feats of bravery in action.  He was wounded once and he dragged his injured companion, Lieutenant Smith Richardson, three miles to the field hospital, saving Smith’s life.  But William didn’t feel like a hero.  The victory had been hard and bitter.  His medals hung heavily on the breast of his uniform as his train pulled into the station, a platform full of people ready and waiting to welcome him home.

Life Was Long Enough For Me

I want to be able to say these things when my life here is over:

The life I led was good, and long enough for me.  Even if I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do in this life, I left my name in the world, even if it is just a memory now.  I lived long enough to see my family succeed.  I paid all my debts and dues to the people in my life who helped me through the toughest of times I couldn’t have survived alone.  I lived long enough to learn to love and be loved--and I understand that I'll find the people I love again in some other life beyond this existence.  I spent my life observing everything I saw, listening to those around me and hearing their stories because each and every one of them is important, and they will go with me on my journey, keeping the memory of them close to my heart until we meet again.  My life was not dulled long by pointless hate and scorn.  Many people came into my life, but few left from it.  I lived my life to the fullest, and forgave everyone who made any trespass against me or those I love, including forgiving myself for my own sins.  I did what I came here to do, and I learned a lifetime’s worth of lessons from my experiences, so I don’t regret a moment of this life I’ve had the privilege of living.  Life was long enough for me.

Fire!!! A True Short Story

My dad would always have us kids gather together the weeds and scrap wood lying around our five-acre property in south Provo every spring and fall, and we’d light a huge bonfire in the middle of the garden (which was often quite a heap—piled over my head and in a stack about 10 feet or more in diameter). My older brother Danny and I loved lighting sticks on fire and running around the garden like little yahoos. It was always a sad moment when my dad announced it was time to hose down our flaming pile of sticks and weeds.

I remember on one occasion, after my dad was done with his work of murdering our bonfire, he went inside. When we were sure he was gone, Danny and I started picking through the ashes in hopes of finding some live coals. My face brightened when I found some live ones deep within the pile, still burning bright and hot. Danny helped me transport them to a spot behind the chicken coup because we didn’t want my dad to see that we’d decided to resurrect the fire. We determined we were going to play “Hobos” with our very own campfire for real authentic effect--we didn't have to imagine our fire this time.

Much to our dismay, the wet grass and freshly picked willow branches weren’t burning very well. I suddenly remembered something I had learned in primary the week before and told my brother the story about the pioneers burning cow pies in their fires since they didn’t have a lot of wood to burn while crossing the plains. So… my brother sent me to go find some dried cow pies—“… Since you’d be better at finding them anyway,” he explained to me.

I climbed over the barbed wire fence into the pasture, pleased that my brother had admitted I was better at something than he was. I found plenty of dry ones, but I found my fair share of wet ones and semi-wet pies too. Danny called me to come back quickly before the coals died out, so I hurried back from my scavenging in the pasture.

By the time I got back to my brother, it was starting to rain. We had to find shelter, and fast, if we wanted our fire to survive. We decided the chicken coup wouldn’t be a very good idea because the chickens would get scared if we lit up a fire in their little enclosure. We opted for the hay-covered floor of the lean-to shed in the pasture. It would provide a roof over our heads so the fire wouldn’t get put out by the rain, and it provided lots of soft places to sit down and lay by our fire (ahem, hay-covered floor).

Danny was in charge of taking the coals over the barbed wire fence, and I climbed over after him. I got into trouble for forgetting to bring the cow pies with me though, and I was promptly sent back over the fence to retrieve our fuel for the fire. On my way over the barbed wire fence for the thousandth time in my young little life, the outside edge of my left knee caught on the barbed wire as I swung my leg over the top edge. I felt it rip and I looked down in panic. Wearing shorts, it didn’t take much to see the damage the barbed wire had done to the side of my knee. I saw the deep gash in my soft pink skin, but it wasn’t bleeding. “Oh, good, it’s not bleeding, I’m okay,” I thought to myself… but that thought only lasted for a split second. Just then, I saw the blood pool up in the bottom of the gash and it filled quickly. I panicked again, and screamed my brother’s name this time. Perturbed, he called, “Wha-at?” Like, “What’s taking you so gosh-darn long to get over here with those cow pies?” but I had already jumped down from the fence and started running towards the house as fast as my little eight year old legs could carry me.

When I got back to the house, I dashed through the back door and found my dad looking up suddenly at me from his seat at the dinner table, a puzzled look on his face. Through my huffing and puffing and panting for air, I managed to say, “I cut me knee on the barbed wire fence…”

With that, I looked down at my knee and saw the blood running down my leg by this point—bad idea to look. I started crying instantly because I guess seeing the blood was worse than whatever pain I might have been feeling at that moment. My dad sat there and stared at me for a moment, probably in shock. After he recovered from his temporary silent stare in shock or horror or confusion or whatever it was, he gave me an expert examination and determined that I MIGHT need stitches for the cut.

“NO! I don’t want stitches!” I launched immediately into every excuse I could think of that would convince my dad that I did NOT need stitches. My clever little excuses included things such as, “I haven’t had dinner yet,” and “Stitches sound expensive,” and “It will hurt and take a long time and this cut isn’t so bad…” and so on.

Finally, my dad gave in and decided he would butterfly-bandage it and try to pull the edges of the cut together. (I guess I was a persuasive little eight-year-old. It helped that I was a Daddy’s Girl too.) However, there was ONE CONDITION that I had to meet if my dad promised to not make me get stitches. I HAD to have the liquid anti-biotic put on the cut. *Psycho screeching music playing suddenly in the background in Jen's mind at hearing this condition*

You see, most anti-biotic gels don’t sting at all… they’re actually quite soothing to a cut or scrape… but this liquid stuff my dad had was some kind of chemical nasty smelling stuff that BURNED LIKE H-E-DOUBLE TOOTHPICKS whenever it touched an open wound. He may as well have taken pure rubbing alcohol, mixed it in a little hand-sanitizer and bleach, and thrown in a little lemon juice on top of it all for how awesome this stuff felt when it came in contact with your open wound.  In all reality, putting on that liquid anti-biotic ALWAYS hurt more than the actual acquiring of whatever wound of the day I had. And it held true to form in this situation too with my barbed wire gash in my knee. From my position sitting on my dad’s bathroom countertop, I reached for anything to grab a hold of and clenched my jaws together… ready for the burn.

After some screaming and crying, it was finally over and I was all bandaged up. I had to favor my leg for a couple weeks after that—not bending it any more than necessary, elevating it whenever I could, not participate in gym (my favorite school class), etc. It healed up into a wide scar, but at least I didn’t have to get stitches! *crazy kid grin*

I guess in conclusion to my story… I think it was probably for the best that I cut my knee on the fence, thus ending our fascination (for that night anyways) with starting a fire on a hay-covered floor in an old wooden lean-to that happened to be connected to an old barn and a string of other old wooden out-buildings. Got a sense of humor, don’t ya, H.F.? =)