Posts Tagged ‘fear’

party girl

I did my best to participate in the debauchery and depravity that is college life. In all honesty, I went to college to…you’ll never guess…get an education! Really. No one forced me to be there. There were no parental units guilt-tripping me into attending. The cocaine-toting, binge-drinking party-goers sort of swirled around my book-reading, homework-doing college self.

I am definitely not trying to paint some picture of a good girl. That, I was not. But, I was studious. And, I took college seriously because I was genuinely interested in learning. I had always loved school. As an escape from home but also as a place to learn about the big, wide world outside of my small-town life. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to experience everything.

I spent much of my high school career focused on extracurricular activities — college was the place for learning, I decided. College was the place to finally get a sense of the world around me. The history, the culture, the literature. I was a product of shitty, small-town schools, with the occasional incredible teacher but mostly a sea of small-minded, right-leaning, mostly white, mostly christian people. I was caught in the middle of the conservative reality of the town I called home and the liberal, commune ideology I’d grown up around.

College was, for me and for many others, a place where I could finally be myself. Or, rather, be the self I always wanted to be. I could shed the reputation I had earned/inherited, get labeled with all new adjectives, stick myself into the categories and groups I felt best defined me or supported me, and make all new friends. Friends who knew nothing about my background. People with whom I could start fresh.

It was exhilarating for me. Moving 3,000 miles away from where anyone knew my name was the most important gift I could have given my adolescent self. The gift of anonymity–where I could feel safe and free and normal.

first date // past

“Where are we going?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.

“It’s a surprise,” he said in that growly sexy voice. He was 18 and out of high school, I was 16 and in the thick of teenage drama with its extreme highs and gut-wrenching lows–up for anything, experimental, reckless and naive.

At a party, his hand had brushed up against mine when reaching for his beer. It was as if time had stood still. I closed my eyes and everything went in slow motion. The long stroke of his dark finger across the back of my wrist, the way his head cocked, his eyes meeting mine just for a moment.

We’d only ever hung out in groups. We’d stare at each other from across the room–his gaze intense with those dark, sunken eyes. Then he’d look away, engaged in conversation, sipping a beer, nodding in agreement. His dark jeans and motorcycle boots, that simple white shirt with the black leather jacket hanging loosely off his muscular arms. The thighs of his pants greasy from working on his bike, his jacket dusty from walking the trails. His clothes smelled like 40 ounces of Olde English. His breath, a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes.

The inside of his car filled my nostrils–musty, sweaty, the smell of a man, I thought. “How much farther?” I asked innocently. We were screeching down the windy back roads of McCourtney. I knew this road well–my parents lived way down at the end–past where anyone had ever been. Except Adam. Who also lived past the point where any towny would go. We were boondock folks. The real rural. I felt safe knowing exactly where we were. Next, we’d pass the animal shelter, then the horse ranch. Then, we’d make our way up to the highest point of the mountain–the dump on our left and the most magnificent sunsets to our right.

The road was pitch black at the darkest hour of the night. It was treacherous even in the brightest part of the afternoon on account of the truckers illegally driving these back roads to avoid tolls–big pickups with trash spewing out from under their loose-fitting tarps. Deer, rabbits, snakes, critters of all sort roamed these woods and were known for darting out into the gray abyss of pavement just as cars were coming round one of the many bends in the road.

Tonight there was a full moon and a mountain lion warning (there was was always a mountain lion warning.) “What are you doing?” I screeched with excitement and fear.

“It’s fine. I can see everything” he said, as his rough hand touched my bare knee. I felt warm between my legs. “The moon is light enough,” he assured me as my eyes adjusted to where the beam of his lights had been. We turned off to the left. Where exactly had we turned? My eyes hadn’t quite acclimated and I’d somehow missed the placement of the road we’d gone down. Had we passed the dump? Had we passed the ranch?

“I’ve never been down here,” I said, searching the trees for something familiar. It was a dirt road, narrow and completely isolated–not one house, not a single driveway, just a road that kept ascending. The trees were thick, we couldn’t see anything but the glint of moonlight off the rocks just ahead of us.

“I thought I’d show you something new,” he said. He looked at me, a crooked half-smile, “Are you scared?”

“No,” I lied, feeling my knees shaking. I let my arm hang out the open window. The cool air whistled around my fingertips, my palm stretched out like a bat soaring through the dark night. The sound of the tires kicking up rocks against the tinny underbelly of his car, the dusty smell mixing with all of his smells and the pine needles and the spring flowers–my head was filled and confused, drunk on olfactory input.

“You..” I started, sounding drunk and confused, “…smell good,” I finished. He smiled and sort of looked down at the steering wheel.

“You’re a weird kid, you know that?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I’ve been told.” I tilted my head to the right, my ear filled with wind and my hair flapped against my bare shoulder.

“You cold?” he asked.

“Um, a little. Yeah,” I admitted, rubbing the goosebumps on my arms.

“Hang on,” he said as he guided my hand to the steering wheel, “hold this for a sec.”

“Adam, I can’t!” I screamed. “I don’t have a license…and, I can’t see anything!” He laughed. I’d never heard his laugh before. It was real. It was big and low and genuine. The kind of laugh that makes everyone around you giggle. And, so I did.

He yanked his jacket sleeves off each arm, leaned over and put it around my shoulders. “Kinda cheesy, don’t you think?” I asked. “I mean, the whole, ‘give a girl your coat’ thing. It’s very John Hughes of you.” We’d bonded over our love of eighties movies, Portishead and our parallel upbringing.

“Yeah, well, sometimes a girl just needs your jacket.” He looked at me through those heavy lids. His eyes a deep brown, his thick black rockabilly hair wind-blown and askew. He’d grown up on a commune too. He was the first kid I’d met who was like me–weird and too grown for his age–reflective, sensitive and unable to fit in anywhere.

“This is it,” he said. There were two other parked cars. He brought me to a lookout? I thought.

“It’s a little ways from here.”

“This isn’t really my thing. Where are we?” I asked anxiously.

“Come on, I’ll show you,” he whispered.

We walked, and tripped, up a rocky path for what felt like miles into a clearing. I could make out a structure–a stone building, a rounded arena or stage or…I couldn’t quite make it out. It was falling apart, there were huge chunks of rock everywhere. As we got closer I could see melted wax on some of the outer walls, red and black graffiti and movement inside.

“I don’t like it here. I don’t like it here at all, Adam. Let’s go.” I said turning fast, catching my bare leg on a blackberry bramble. I pulled at the long vine, scraping the thorns all the way down my calf.

“Hey, wait a minute..” I heard him yell.

I did my best to retrace the path we’d climbed–losing my footing every now and again. He caught up, started to say something and stopped short.

We walked in silence.

“What was that?” I asked, slamming the car door.

“I don’t know it’s just kind of a hangout. People go there to drink and chill. There’s all these weird, creepy stories about like seances and devil worshippers who like, do their magic up there or whatever. But, it’s just kids trying to freak you out.”

“It gave me the heebie jeebies and it’s weird and freaky,” I said breathlessly. I could feel the droplets of blood on my calf. I better not have stepped in poison oak, I thought. “And, keep your fucking lights on. I’m not trying to die tonight.”

He shifted nervously in his seat, gripped the steering wheel too tight and cleared his throat, “I thought you’d be into it. There’s a really great view up there. And, it’s spooky but in a cool way.”

“I get it, I’m not pissed. I just felt weird up there, that’s all. Thanks for taking off with me.”

The sound of the wind took on a different tone in the quiet of his car–eerie, cold, lonely. Adam seemed to be breathing his cigarettes, not so much smoking them. His inhalations were deep, reflective almost, and he didn’t bother to blow the smoke out so much as simply exhale it naturally.

Adam turned onto the long, dirt road. “I can walk from here,” I said.

“It’s far, it’s dark out, let me drive you.”

“No, really it’s cool,” I countered, in need of the fresh air and the moonlight and the stars and the solitary walk. He leaned over to kiss me–I let him. His breath was hot and smoky and he pushed his tongue too far down my throat. I pulled back, attempted a half-smile and said goodnight.

I stood still, in the light of the moon, at the end of my road and watched him reverse his car back onto pavement. Dust rose up where his wheels had momentarily spun out on the gravel. I watched as the red of his tail lights faded behind the second hill of our shared road.

what does it mean to be 35? let me elucidate:

  • Finding hairs on your nipples.
  • Finding hairs on your chin.
  • Finding hairs on your cheeks.
  • Just in general, lots of hair-finding–it’s like puberty all over again.
  • Re-figuring out your skin–I tamed you years ago, monster zits! Damn hormonal changes.
  • Rolls in new places. What’s that strange feeling on my back? Oh, it’s part of my body, hello new friend.
  • Realizing you don’t move the way you used to–“No, I’m not limping!” Wait, am I limping?
  • The way food begins to just stay put. Like, right smack in that mid-section, so you start to get that muffin-top roll over your mom-jeans. Feeling a little sheepish about all my judgy eye rolls at the calorie-counting women in the teachers lounge. I think my Dorito-binging days are over.
  • Having dear friends who you cherish and who love and support you through your trickiest times.
  • Not having any friends who you actually, secretly (or, not-so-secretly) dislike.
  • Being in a stable and mutually respectful relationship.
  • Making life-changing decisions that are scary and intense but knowing that, ultimately, they are the right decisions–and, therefore, not being fearful of change.
  • Eating well but allowing yourself to indulge every now and again.
  • Living frugally but allowing yourself to splurge every now and again–can you say, Book of Mormon! (Sidenote, how are those tickets still so expensive?!)
  • Being productive most days but allowing yourself some lazy, couch-potato, netflix-binging days too.
  • Reading good books and not-so-great ones without judgment.
  • Saying goodbye to the bands you thought were cool because it was so much work to listen to them. It’s all easy-listening these days. Give me a band I can hum to while I cook and I’m happy.
  • Being able to set boundaries. I love you and I will be there for you but I also have to take care of myself. Turns out you are no good to anyone if you aren’t being good to yourself.
  • Being able to say “no” guilt-free. “I can, but I don’t want to” is a perfectly fine excuse.
  • Acknowledging that you are not always right. Damn, it hurts even writing it.
  • Acknowledging that you still have so much to learn.
  • Knowing that even if you are not the smartest, the most beautiful, the most charming, the wittiest person in the room you still have a lot to offer.
  • Not being intimidated because someone has more information about a topic than you. Even when they’re super douche-y. Now, shall we talk about education? I’d love to reference fifteen acronyms that are totally meaningless to you and look at you like you should absolutely know what they mean. No? Dummy.
  • Starting with kindness but being capable of switching to intense bitchiness if the situation warrants it.
  • Being a legit adult. Teenagers look like babies to me. Seriously, how are they driving?! It’s difficult to admit, but I think I am a true-blue grownup.

packing is like…

  • Being in school–there’s always more homework, even after you think you’re done.
  • Starving yourself to death–slow and painful.
  • Eating a wretched 12-course meal–it just keeps coming and it’s all terrible.
  • Planning a wedding–with the invites and the rentals and the in-laws and the dress…
  • The worst thing ever.

 

processing

It’s amazing to me how much bitching is required in order to process crap situations or encounters. Conversation after conversation retelling the same slight, emphasizing your side in the way only you can, which is to say: without any understanding of the other persons (possibly totally legitimate) perspective. In my head, I am like, so evolved–a skillful communicator, problem-solver, capable of being unemotional, objective and compassionate all at once. But, really, I’m mostly just wading in a pool of toxic emotions–a place where envy and self-doubt reign supreme–where judgments, misunderstandings, inconsistencies and pure acrimony live amongst dread and apathy. This is an image of myself that just doesn’t fit with the one I have in my head. It’s discouraging to upset the portrait of this joyful, optimistic, driven and contented person. The thing that is even more difficult to grasp is the fact that in reality, I am both. Perhaps not all at once. But, certainly I am one thing in one moment and another under contrasting circumstances.

Upon playfully teasing my hubby about his snoring it came out that the reason he gets so defensive when I report the behavior is because being “someone who snores” just doesn’t fit with his own self-image. I laughed at first but then it made complete sense to me. There are all of these things–the way we look, the way we respond to situations, where we work, what we wear, how we speak–that define the version of ourselves we have in our heads. When someone on the outside challenges one of those things–however small the detail may seem to them–it completely breaks down that self-image. “But, I’m quirky, eccentric, unpredictable! It’s a good thing, right? Right?” I found myself saying during an argument where my husband scolded me for something or other I had said–something that seemed lighthearted and funny and joke-y and me. There are things about myself that I believe. I believe them wholeheartedly and any attempt to undermine the me-ness of me is an attack on who I am at my core. In my head these things are unchangeable and factual and permanent. But, they’re not. We grow, we change–slowly sometimes, more quickly other times–sometimes without even realizing it. Our “higher selves” exist as an idea, a goal–as someone who would have, should have, could have said something more intelligent, less reactionary, more eloquent.

I’d really like to meet this idealized version of me. The version of me who always knows the right thing to say, who always looks put-together, who is kind but strong, intelligent and funny, self-assured and self-aware. This is the version I could use right now. Because if life is a mountain–with highs and lows and everything in between–then I am in the river basin looking up, paddling against the current in a starless sky. And, she’d sure as shit know what to do.

oh, boy

so, i’m having one of those days. you know the kind. maybe i’m having one of those weeks, even. where punctuation just seems superfluous and getting dressed feels like an overwhelming task. forget showers. and, who needs makeup these days? i don’t know exactly why. moving stress. pressure to see people and do things. keeping track of way too many things in my brain: moving van, packing materials, medical records, refilling prescriptions, selling this dresser, giving this shelf away, bringing these four bags to the thrift store, bringing this box to the used book store, scheduling dental appointments, finishing up work tasks, doing all those last-minute new york city must-do things! it’s just too much. and, we’re trying to be all on top of shit by packing early but really we just keep spending time with our friends because…when will we see them again?! and, you know, we’re not cooking enough and we may have gotten rid of our plates a tad too early and we can’t replace the grapeseed oil because how can we go through a bottle in 3 weeks but also HOW WILL I MAKE POPCORN?!

so, i think it’s safe to say that the stress has officially gotten to me.

i’m not sleeping, i’m eating a lot of chocolate and my belly has that constant butterfly feeling like i’m about to get onstage and perform.

we got a tree. i thought it would make me feel all, in-the-spirit and festive. i just keep looking at that thing with total animosity. it’s got a real attitude problem, let me tell you. it’s just sitting in the corner of our livingroom being all beautiful and put together, staring into our chaos and judging. it’s a judgy little fucker, i mean it. tall, perfectly “tree”-shaped (some might say a bit too perfect, really. i mean, come on. show off), it’s all sparkly and calm and it just stands around. doesn’t offer to help out or pick up. it’s not doing any of the cooking and that bitch can drink! i mean, we are filling her bucket up at least once a day.

so between my judgy tree and the million tasks i’m attempting to stay on top of and still working full-time and a toddler who is becoming less and less comfortable with her dwindling book collection…things are about to get real. like, life is changing in a huge way ‘real’. like, everything you have known and everything you thought you wanted is about to be in your past ‘real’. like, the place you ran from, the place you thought you would never return to is about to be your future ‘real.’ and, truthfully it all sounds a bit terrifying. wonderful and filled with potential. exciting and exhilarating. and also gut-wrenchingly terrifying.

the shadow

It comes out of nowhere, oozing edges from the depths of my insides and just sticks–to the underside of my skull and the inner membrane of my ears. To the back of my throat and the tips of my lungs. It stays, takes up residence for a while–turning blue skies into deep seas. Stretched out, creeping into all that lies ahead and consuming all that is left behind. And then it’s gone. I hardly even remember how it got there–how long it stayed or exactly how I felt being in the dark for so long. Then the cloud comes briefly overhead, blocking out the sun, just for a moment. Long enough to remind me that I cannot control the weather–not the direction of the wind, the depth of the snow or the fullness of the moon. That in fact, I am helpless to shadows. And so, I welcome them back like an old friend. Come on in, I say. Won’t you stay for tea?

hell is a hospital bed in brooklyn // present

“Grampa, Grampa!” the woman next to me screamed. “Can I come to your bed, Grampa? I can’t sleep.” Silence. Maybe it’s over, I think. “Grampa, please! Can I sleep in your bed tonight, Grampa?”

Her thin frame lay mostly exposed above the white sheet, her wispy grey hair like a halo. A frail arm reaching toward the wall, a bony finger catching for a moment on the ruffle of her diaper.  A wild-eyed look of terror and confusion, not to me or the nurse, but just to the world. I knew it well. I recognized it immediately.

“Please,” I pleaded. “I don’t think I can stay in this room.”

“Miss, we don’t exactly have extra rooms lying around,” My nurse quipped. “This ain’t the Four Seasons. You’re lucky you got a bed. Ever since LICH closed, this is how it is. How long you was in the ER, huh? Exactly.” She paused for effect. To let me know I was being a pest. I was ungrateful and probably not empathetic enough. “You lucky you in here. We gonna take good care of you. Now, just relax.” Her tone shifted, perhaps because she remembered I too was suffering. Maybe she could see the look of fear in my eyes, genuine, real, huge. She knew how the hospital functioned. Blood work took half a day, CT scans ordered ‘immediately’ took 14 hours, iv fluids–for a a thirty-something woman exhibiting symptoms consistent with dehydration–8 hours. “You’re gonna be just fine. Just lay back. Call me if you need anything, sweetie.”

She threw in the ‘sweetie’ as a trick, I thought. So I’d let my guard down and so I’d think she was my friend. I pressed the call button immediately.

“Yes?!” a very annoyed voice from a loudspeaker asked insistently.

“Hi, um, yeah. Is there, can I, am I allowed to eat?” I stumbled.

“I don’t know.” The line went silent. “Looks like…no. No eating.”

“I, okay, I”m just…” she was gone.

I lay there, alone, numb from the knees down, my bottom lip still curled and contorted. The stiff, white sheet scratchy against my bare thighs. The neon light humming above my bed. A blue-white glare, hard and intrusive. It’s high-pitched buzzing like a zombie-mosquito, incapable of death, so it drones on, attacking, sucking, blood-letting through the night.

Hospitals are supposed to be places to rest and recuperate, I think. This is hell. This is where people come to be tortured. To humble themselves, to be lowered so far down into the depths of self-pity and shame and fury that they will submit simply because they lose the will to go on. What’s the point? you find yourself thinking. And the next minute you are crying and screaming that you need to get out. One breath of fresh air, the feeling of sun on your skin for just one moment. But, they ask you to wait. To be patient. So you try to breathe and you try to stay calm but every moment in that room–that room with it’s incessant beeps, its flashing lights, its filthy thin curtain, a veil, an illusion of privacy–feels like an eternity. Doctors unannounced, waking you just when you’ve finally drifted off to sleep to deliver, nonchalantly, some upsetting news. To announce a diagnosis, to provide no context, no explanation of process. They give you a card, walk out and in comes another one. With a different title and a crisp new card. Another theory, another acronym. Scrubs come in and poke your belly with needles, they draw vial after vial of your blood with no explanation. Where is all this blood going? you wonder.  Voices drift in, stories of other patients with attitude, with too many requests, with some sob story. This is their workplace, you remind yourself. It’s only fair that they should be so casual. It’s natural. Except that people are dying here. And being born. And doing all of the business in between. And, it’s too hard to be reminded that life, outside of your own experience, is continuing without you. Rivers will continue to flow, trains will stay on schedule, emails will be answered, books will be written. And the exact placement of your body–growing or dying– in space has little to do with the order of the world.

 

truth // past

“Where is she, where is she?” I wondered silently. She was always doing this. “Why can’t anything in my life be normal?” I murmured inaudibly.

It was half past six. Volleyball practice ended at five. Courtney’s mom had offered to wait with me until my mom arrived. This was a reoccurring predicament. I’d stay after school for something — volleyball, cheerleading, theater, track and field, chorus — anything to not be at home, and then I’d wait for two hours to get picked up. “This is what I get for not taking the bus,” I thought.

“Oh, there she is. There’s my mom,” I said, relieved. This was how it happened. Either someone would wait with me until she arrived or I would lie and tell them that she would be there in a few minutes and I’d wait alone. Ducking behind the payphone whenever a set of headlights came by. I could never decide what was worse — waiting there, terrified and alone in the dark, or having an adult wait with me asking too many questions.

“Oh, good,” she said. I recognized her tone — it reeked of disdain and irritation. “And, who’s the lady with her?” she continued, as though she were asking whether I wanted chocolate or caramel on my ice-cream. Sweet. Innocent-like.

“No one. I mean, that’s just a friend. Of my moms,” I lied.

“Right. And…where’s your dad? Does he ever pick you up? I’ve never seen him. What’s his name?”

“Um, he’s…his name is…I mean, he isn’t here.”

“Oh. I see,” she continued. “And, don’t you have sisters?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Brothers too? How many? Courtney said something about you having a lot of siblings.”

“Um, I don’t know. I mean, sort of.  I gotta go. Bye! Thanks for waiting with me!”

///////

The caravan door slid open, making a high-pitched squeak as it halted half way. I squeezed in, breathless. “Courtney’s mom asked me,” I paused to catch my breath. “about my sisters and brothers again.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I just said I didn’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? What kind of an answer is that?”

“I don’t know. I just said, like, ‘no’, but then I said, like, ‘sort of.'”

“You can’t say that! You can’t say anything! What are you thinking, goshdangit.”

“I told you she shouldn’t be allowed to do after-school activities,” my mom’s “friend” chimed in. I glared at her.

“Mom, I, I , no one knows anything. She just said she knew I had brothers. It’s okay. She doesn’t…”

“Gosh darn-it-all. You can’t say that stuff. You can’t,” my mom yelled. She was starting to tap her foot. She always tapped her foot, a little three-part pattern, when she was nervous.

“This is why we homeschool. Public schools are trouble. Too many eyes. Too many ears. He says it could be our downfall. Just because your children want to go to school and play sports shouldn’t mean the rest of us have to suffer. Are you listening?” My mom was listening. But, she knew I needed to be in school. She knew I couldn’t stay home like my brothers and sisters. I couldn’t stand to be there for one night, let alone day after day. I joined everything. Anything. I spent weekends at friends houses. Weeknights even. Lord knows what they thought was going on. “You won’t be the favorite forever,” she murmured under her breath. “Then there’ll be hell to pay.”

“No, please. I didn’t…Mom. I just…I don’t know what to…I’m trying to do what you told me to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Please. Please let me stay in school. Please. I won’t say anything.”

“If they found out we would all be in big trouble. Do you want that? Your dad would go to jail and we would have nowhere to live. Do you want that to happen?” my mom asked.

“No.”

“Okay, then. So, you’ll tell her you were confused. Tell her that you have one sister and two brothers and that’s it. The rest of the kids just live with us. We took them in. Single mothers and their children.”

“Ha!” my mom’s friend interjected.

“We run a church. A non-profit” my mother continued.

“A nompromfi? What’s that?” I asked.

“A NON-profit. A non-profit. Say it out loud.”

“A NON-profit.”

“Good. Okay. So, you’ll tell her that when you see her tomorrow. And, Courtney too. Just tell everyone that. Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay,” I whispered. “Okay, mom. I’ll tell them tomorrow.”

actions and reactions // past

If we wanted to go to school we had to catch the bus from the end of our dirt road. Half a mile in each direction. Northern California gets hot. Dry and hot. The grasses are brown before easter and the water holes dry up before it’s warm enough to swim. Ranches are sparse. Lots of open land for livestock. There are huge, beautiful, aging oak trees dripping with mistletoe to provide the occasional respite but the earth is parched and the air is dry.

It was the beginning of June and the last week of school. The end of fourth grade for me and the end of third grade for my brother. The bus skittered across the gravel and came to a stop.

“Bye,” I shouted to my friends. My brother was running up the aisle.

“Don’t jump, goddamnit. I am sick of warning you,” The driver yelled after my brother, who had taken all three steps in one fell swoop and was already out of earshot.

“Stop it-uhhhhh!” I said upon catching up to him. Because that’s what you say to your little brother when you’re tired and cranky and older than him and he is creating a cloud of dust all around you.

“You stop,” he countered.

“I’m not even doing anything. Gawwwwwd,” I said.

With one particularly well-aimed kick, he overturned a large stone. Curled underneath was a baby sharp-tailed snake. Not more than six inches. Red, thin, fast but harmless.

“Watch out,” I screamed, pushing my little brother aside. I stomped once. It was quick and well aimed. The snake was sliced in half, both sections writhing helplessly. The red blood oozed slowly out of it’s body, creating two thick, dark muddy patches in the white dust.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Devastated and embarrassed. I loved snakes. We spent every summer hunting gophers, racers and garters.

He was quiet. We stood there, staring at the dying reptile as tears streamed down my face.

When the snake stopped moving, my brother silently retrieved the round, grey stone and placed it over its still body.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

We walked silently the rest of the way home. No more kicking of rocks, or rolling of eyes.

“It’s okay,” he said when we were finally home. “you didn’t mean to. You were just scared.”