Nicole Throckmorton
Summer 2009
There are more momentous roads to write about-
Springsteen's is made of thunder;
Dylan's #61 goes nearly the whole length
of the Mississippi; Frost, held up
the choice of two from memory.
Add in Kerouac and his "the road is life"
business and I fear my planned road ode is toast,
stale, bond dry, and much too done, outclassed
by poets and troubadours. No competing with
the Roads Scholars, specialists in the
portentous premises and promises
of The Road.
###
When I was little, we burned it up
on summer days;
we three in that green, vinyl-topped LTD,
voluntary exiles from our home
leaving to preserve
Daddy's 3rd shift recovery sleep.
We'd pack for the day, climb in, take off,
headed somewhere. Anywhere
took at least twenty minutes. Twenty minutes
of big brother/little sister bickering, mom refereeing, and
radio sing-alongs before pool, park, Little League.
The way home, moments filled rehashing
feats and piffling failures between mouthfuls of Slurpee
or milkshake, open windows offering our
melodies to that road between
home and town, both connection and escape
no matter which destination we faced.
When I was older, in school,
Mom was working, driving
it without us, until pick-up from
piano lessons (me)
football practice (him)
and the day's debriefing:
"Nothing." His teen-aged
answer to her open-ended,
"What did you do today?"
Mine, more report, itemized by
morning, snack time, late morning, lunch,
recess, afternoon. Brother, image of cool,
offering commentary of sighs
and boredom-induced head slump
'til home.
When I was older, it was just me
in the car, promoted to the front seat
by way of my brother's entry
into marriage, fatherhood, then graduation
(in that order).
After school practices, late night
bus returns from away games,
all needing collection, transportation.
Mom was there, almost every time,
unless Grandma stepped in to help.
But the late night trips were all Mom's
traveling the dark road home from
ball games, talking, listening,
quiet conversations like those she'd had
with my brother after his near-midnight retrievals.
Later, I over hear her confess to a friend
who complained about the time spent
in transit: "I know my kids because
of those trips. Wouldn't trade them."
Now I'm grown, in a home at least
twenty minutes away from anywhere.
After my day is done, I climb in, take off
down the road, heading home.
I call Mom. She's on her way too.
We're not traveling the same route, but
we're still going the same way.
It's still our road, our time to share.
###
So the Boss can claim dominion of
The Road, his by way of a dozen-plus
tributes. And the others who've made it
symbol of Frontier, Freedom, Life.
They can keep The Road
and we'll keep Ours.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Willow Tree
Jan Healy
EVWP Summer 2009
“Dalton, please don’t do this.” I frantically scramble after my son as he hurriedly tosses his life’s worth in the back of his Tahoe: clothes, backpack, guitar, dog. Roughly, he chides me as if the roles are reversed-he the parent and me, the child.
“You know I have to. I can’t stay in this house,” he tells me sternly, too sternly for even an angry 18 year-old.
Guilt and despair flood me as I grab his arm, “Stop! I have not finished raising you yet.”
He turns to me, his face awash with emotions and looks me straight in the eye, “If you cared about raising me, you would have left him long ago.”
Mutely, I nod and let him go. Watching him drive away, I deal with the guilt and frustration: guilt for his unhappiness and frustration because I thought staying for the kids was the answer. The question quietly forms in my head, “So now do I leave?”
Against the counsel of the voice in my head, I blurt out the recurring thought that had been percolating like coffee. “I’m leaving.” Stunned, I wonder if the words were really out loud or just in my mind.
Stonily, taking a drag off his cigarette, he mutters, “Yes, you said it and you don’t know what you want. You aren’t going anywhere.”
Smoke hovers around my head as he shrugs away the idea. My words have no meaning. Before, I would have raged against the not-so silent accusations and the demeaning dismissal. This time, though, I knew. Leaving would happen.
The time between making the decision and the actual leaving is almost inconsequential. The argument is complete. Pleas, bribes, threats are ignored, and resignation sets in. The important decision has been made and the others are easy: new job, new house, and new state. Children, pets, and furniture are fought for and divided. Papers are signed and the process of packing up the remnants of a life begins. What to take and what to leave behind?
The wrenching part of the journey is the leaving behind of everything familiar…friends, my garden, the lake. Anna, Dalton’s girlfriend, gives me a parting gift. It is a wooden doll from the Willow Tree series. The young woman has her face upturned to the sky as her arms stretch wide to her sides. Bluebirds perch on those arms. Even though her features are not carved, I immediately channel her openness to the world. I imagine that this is me. Happy. Joyful. Free.
EVWP Summer 2009
“Dalton, please don’t do this.” I frantically scramble after my son as he hurriedly tosses his life’s worth in the back of his Tahoe: clothes, backpack, guitar, dog. Roughly, he chides me as if the roles are reversed-he the parent and me, the child.
“You know I have to. I can’t stay in this house,” he tells me sternly, too sternly for even an angry 18 year-old.
Guilt and despair flood me as I grab his arm, “Stop! I have not finished raising you yet.”
He turns to me, his face awash with emotions and looks me straight in the eye, “If you cared about raising me, you would have left him long ago.”
Mutely, I nod and let him go. Watching him drive away, I deal with the guilt and frustration: guilt for his unhappiness and frustration because I thought staying for the kids was the answer. The question quietly forms in my head, “So now do I leave?”
Against the counsel of the voice in my head, I blurt out the recurring thought that had been percolating like coffee. “I’m leaving.” Stunned, I wonder if the words were really out loud or just in my mind.
Stonily, taking a drag off his cigarette, he mutters, “Yes, you said it and you don’t know what you want. You aren’t going anywhere.”
Smoke hovers around my head as he shrugs away the idea. My words have no meaning. Before, I would have raged against the not-so silent accusations and the demeaning dismissal. This time, though, I knew. Leaving would happen.
The time between making the decision and the actual leaving is almost inconsequential. The argument is complete. Pleas, bribes, threats are ignored, and resignation sets in. The important decision has been made and the others are easy: new job, new house, and new state. Children, pets, and furniture are fought for and divided. Papers are signed and the process of packing up the remnants of a life begins. What to take and what to leave behind?
The wrenching part of the journey is the leaving behind of everything familiar…friends, my garden, the lake. Anna, Dalton’s girlfriend, gives me a parting gift. It is a wooden doll from the Willow Tree series. The young woman has her face upturned to the sky as her arms stretch wide to her sides. Bluebirds perch on those arms. Even though her features are not carved, I immediately channel her openness to the world. I imagine that this is me. Happy. Joyful. Free.
Freedom
Melissa Daniels
EVWP Summer 2009
After a year at home,
I anticipate freedom.
Parents away.
Empty house.
A newfound sliver of introversion,
Desiring to recharge alone.
Sleep in.
Relax.
Watch a movie.
Write.
Read.
Swim.
Don’t talk.
Holler. Catch up?
Text. Lunch date?
Reminder. Pick up book?
Plea. See my family?
Call. Attend picnic?
Invite. Visit me?
Inside.
No, no, no,
No, no, no.
But I say,
“Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes.”
EVWP Summer 2009
After a year at home,
I anticipate freedom.
Parents away.
Empty house.
A newfound sliver of introversion,
Desiring to recharge alone.
Sleep in.
Relax.
Watch a movie.
Write.
Read.
Swim.
Don’t talk.
Holler. Catch up?
Text. Lunch date?
Reminder. Pick up book?
Plea. See my family?
Call. Attend picnic?
Invite. Visit me?
Inside.
No, no, no,
No, no, no.
But I say,
“Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, yes, yes.”
Taking a Ride
Sandra Hayward-Jones
EVWP Summer 2009
We did not own a car until I was in the fourth grade. Actually, my mom didn’t learn to drive until then, which would have been around 1965, and she would have been about 36 years old. Although she taught school in the neighboring parish about 15 miles away, she and other co-workers who did not own cars took a bus to the intersection of Tulane and Carrollton, where another teacher picked up the carpoolers. In the 1960s, I don’t think the term “carpooling” had been coined, nor was it done with concerns for the local environment.
I’m not sure what finally convinced my mom to buy a car, but she finally got a 1965 or 1966 Mercury Comet. It was gray in shade, and believe it or not, air conditioning was considered an option! And my mother, on a budget obviously, chose to forego that option! In Louisiana humidity and heat, no less! But interestingly enough, I don’t recall the heat, just the fact that we now had transportation for the limited trips we took.
Limited, as in local. Neither my mom nor my grandmother ventured beyond the borders of the Greater New Orleans area. My mom at that time worked in Kenner, a stone’s throw from the airport. She often bragged about her driving prowess and declared her excuse for needing r&r: “I just bucked aside those diesel trucks on the highway!” As an adult 20-plus years later traversing Airline Highway, I could not figure out what the big deal was. The Airline is a two-lane on each side stretch of road with a neutral ground separating the road (I learned later from a USAToday article about an upcoming Super Bowl that Louisiana is the only place that refers to median strips as neutral grounds, but that’s another story for another day). It was hardly a drag strip nor did it come close to a California freeway. But my mom needed a valid reason for crashing once she got home from teaching third graders five days a week, teaching piano lessons on Saturday, and her off-and-on position as a church organist on Sundays.
My grandmother left the southwest Louisiana community of Franklin in 1925, never to return. I could not understand how anyone could leave their hometown and never go back. From time to time a cousin would come to New Orleans and visit us, but my grandmother, Tottie, as I always called her, had no desire to go back. Distance was not an issue: Franklin is probably 110 miles away to the west. Greyhound buses go past daily. But in my adult reflection, I suspect there were childhood memories and events that were best left alone.
When she did refer to her childhood, Tottie spoke of hard times, working in the fields, living with various aunts and cousins as her mother abandoned her and her two brothers, remarried and “had a good time”. I know that Tottie resented not having the opportunities of higher education. She bragged about the eighth grade education she had, that she felt was equivalent to much higher education in the 1960s. People she went to school with learned to cook and sew and you knew your time tables by a certain age.
Although Tottie had only an eighth grade education, she was hardly illiterate. I credit my passion for newspaper reading to her: we always had the daily paper delivered to us, and Tottie read it cover to cover. She could tell you not only about President Nixon and Watergate, for instance, but who had a baby, who bought a marriage license, who lost their homes, who’d recently mortgaged their homes. Tottie may have been a homebody, but she was neither isolated or lonely. When she was not doing her daily household chores, you would find her on the telephone giving legal advice to women ranging in ages from their 20s to those of her age. People sought advice from Tottie on protecting their property, or seeking assistance for their children when the parents were not married. She knew a lot about a lot of things, but was never quite comfortable in the presence of what she considered “educated people”.
She’d educated my mother on a paltry income. Somehow she managed to have long-standing jobs through the years that were unusual, given the social climate of the time. In the 1930s and 1940s, she worked for an Italian portrait artist whose studio was on Royal Street in the French Quarter. I’d just always heard she’d “worked” for him, and that he taught her to paint in oils. To this day her scenes of French Quarter courtyards grace the walls of my relatives coast to coast. But a conversation I had with her in the 1990s revealed to me she had been his cook/maid. She’d never called herself that, but just assumed I knew what her role had been.
When I was in the fourth grade, about the same time my mom bought her first car, Tottie decided to go back to work after being “retired” for about 10 years. At this time she was in her 60s, and she worked three days a week in the office of Dr. Stewart. She had no formal training as a dental assistant, but had worked previously in the 1950s for another dentist, who recommended her services to Dr. Stewart.
My mom and I would drive to Dr. Stewart’s office in the afternoons to pick Tottie up. We’d go a little early and parked in front the office. The office was located on St. Claude Avenue, about five blocks from the Industrial Canal, the body of water that links the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain. It also separates the Ninth Ward; we were on the opposite end of the Lower Ninth Ward so much heard about after Hurricane Katrina. As I reflect back on the neighborhood of the 1960s, obviously not too much, if any, changes from the civil rights movement had occurred. The nearby high school, Francis T. Nicholls, was named for a Confederate hero. Twenty-some years later the Orleans Parish School Board renamed all schools named after Confederate heroes and replaced them with names of black heroes. Nicholls is now Frederick Douglass High School. But circa 1965, Nicholls High School stood a few blocks away. I recall us driving past businesses, in particular a laundromat on St. Claude Avenue, with a “whites only” sign in the window.
It was not this outward sign of segregation that perturbed me, but the covert ones, recognizable to me in spite of my young age of nine or ten. Dr. Stewart, highly regarded in local societal circles, who lived in the tony Garden District section of the city (think Windsor Farms in Richmond), was king of a local Carnival parade organization (only the elite wealthy are afforded this distinction), owner of a Bonanza Steakhouse franchise, hired my grandmother as his dental assistant, a black woman, but on general principle did not accept black people as patients. I recognized this as highly irregular, to say the least, but I understood even then that one could not easily change the status quo. As Tottie made dental appointments, one of her duties was to ascertain if the caller was black or white. I’m not sure exactly what she said to the caller if she thought they were black. I’m not even sure what happened if a black person showed up at the office for an appointment. But Dr. Stewart, bless his heart, worked on my mom’s and my teeth once as a courtesy. Now as I think about it, maybe it was his day off or something, because I don’t think there were any patients in the office that particular day.
That Mercury Comet drove my family around intact only as long as Tottie worked. Otherwise, we could not get Tottie into the car. As feisty a person as she was, she never learned to drive, but traversed the streets by bus, either to go shopping downtown on Canal Street or to Gentilly to a supermarket aptly named the Economical.
My mom and I, on the other hand, spent time together in the Comet, replaced later by a 1970-something forest green Ford Granada. Every Saturday was spent at church for Youth Choir rehearsal, which my mom directed. We may have stopped for lunch at the newly built Burger King, Church’s or Popeye’s (and my mom later would go into any McDonald’s and proceed to order a Whopper). On Sundays she and I would take a ride, which meant cruising along the lakefront and on to New Orleans East, where we admired new construction homes and oohed and aahed. These homes were a stark contrast to our five-room shotgun house.
Fast forward to 1995. I was summoned to New Orleans. You have to do something. My mom had suffered a stroke in 1981, which affected her short-term memory but not her ability to play classical piano, and Tottie was her caretaker. Tottie, now in her 80s, was beginning to show signs of senility. I went to New Orleans with my nephew to help me so I could literally kidnap them and bring them to Richmond. My mom was not the problem; she’d go along with anything. But how to distract Tottie, the homebody, so I could make arrangements for their absence, pack up their clothes, and bring them to Virginia?
Somehow I was able to take Tottie and my mom in my rental car to my aunt’s house for a visit. That was easy; the day of the flight was not as simple. I finally used Shoney’s as the carrot to get them out the house, insisting we needed to go somewhere together for breakfast. However, Tottie did rant and rave before we left, threatening to call the police and her lawyer. We eventually, with my nephew’s calm demeanor and ability to pick up a less than 5 feet tall, 90 pound lady and put her in the car, got to Shoney’s, and later to the airport.
My mom and grandma sat in the waiting area, discussing what bus they needed to take to get back home. They thought they were simply seeing me off. When our flight was called, I said, Come on. My mom was like, I’m going with you? Yes! She was excited. I held my breath, hoping Tottie would not embarrass me by cussing everybody out.
So that’s how I got them to Virginia. There were adjustments to be made on all fronts. I had to arrange for them to live in an assisted-living facility. My children loved having their grandmother and great-grandmother here. My mom drove me crazy with noting only fast-food restaurants as we drove down the street (“McDonald’s…Hardees…Wendy’s”), which prompted Tottie to shout “Shut up Audrey, all you think about is eating”. Tottie’s reaction whenever we drove through the modern, suburban neighborhood I lived in, was to ask, “Colored people live here?” which she always asked in disbelief. Tottie resented no longer being in charge (“I was the boss, now here you are the boss”), to which I replied “Trust me, I would not be the boss if I had the choice”.
Riding alone now as I drive through Richmond, I can’t help but remember life with the VIPs (my nickname for them). Tottie lived to the ripe age of 95, passing away the week before 9/11. My mom suffered a mini-stroke that December of 2001, from which she never recovered, and she was laid to rest the next April. Both were returned to their beloved New Orleans.
EVWP Summer 2009
We did not own a car until I was in the fourth grade. Actually, my mom didn’t learn to drive until then, which would have been around 1965, and she would have been about 36 years old. Although she taught school in the neighboring parish about 15 miles away, she and other co-workers who did not own cars took a bus to the intersection of Tulane and Carrollton, where another teacher picked up the carpoolers. In the 1960s, I don’t think the term “carpooling” had been coined, nor was it done with concerns for the local environment.
I’m not sure what finally convinced my mom to buy a car, but she finally got a 1965 or 1966 Mercury Comet. It was gray in shade, and believe it or not, air conditioning was considered an option! And my mother, on a budget obviously, chose to forego that option! In Louisiana humidity and heat, no less! But interestingly enough, I don’t recall the heat, just the fact that we now had transportation for the limited trips we took.
Limited, as in local. Neither my mom nor my grandmother ventured beyond the borders of the Greater New Orleans area. My mom at that time worked in Kenner, a stone’s throw from the airport. She often bragged about her driving prowess and declared her excuse for needing r&r: “I just bucked aside those diesel trucks on the highway!” As an adult 20-plus years later traversing Airline Highway, I could not figure out what the big deal was. The Airline is a two-lane on each side stretch of road with a neutral ground separating the road (I learned later from a USAToday article about an upcoming Super Bowl that Louisiana is the only place that refers to median strips as neutral grounds, but that’s another story for another day). It was hardly a drag strip nor did it come close to a California freeway. But my mom needed a valid reason for crashing once she got home from teaching third graders five days a week, teaching piano lessons on Saturday, and her off-and-on position as a church organist on Sundays.
My grandmother left the southwest Louisiana community of Franklin in 1925, never to return. I could not understand how anyone could leave their hometown and never go back. From time to time a cousin would come to New Orleans and visit us, but my grandmother, Tottie, as I always called her, had no desire to go back. Distance was not an issue: Franklin is probably 110 miles away to the west. Greyhound buses go past daily. But in my adult reflection, I suspect there were childhood memories and events that were best left alone.
When she did refer to her childhood, Tottie spoke of hard times, working in the fields, living with various aunts and cousins as her mother abandoned her and her two brothers, remarried and “had a good time”. I know that Tottie resented not having the opportunities of higher education. She bragged about the eighth grade education she had, that she felt was equivalent to much higher education in the 1960s. People she went to school with learned to cook and sew and you knew your time tables by a certain age.
Although Tottie had only an eighth grade education, she was hardly illiterate. I credit my passion for newspaper reading to her: we always had the daily paper delivered to us, and Tottie read it cover to cover. She could tell you not only about President Nixon and Watergate, for instance, but who had a baby, who bought a marriage license, who lost their homes, who’d recently mortgaged their homes. Tottie may have been a homebody, but she was neither isolated or lonely. When she was not doing her daily household chores, you would find her on the telephone giving legal advice to women ranging in ages from their 20s to those of her age. People sought advice from Tottie on protecting their property, or seeking assistance for their children when the parents were not married. She knew a lot about a lot of things, but was never quite comfortable in the presence of what she considered “educated people”.
She’d educated my mother on a paltry income. Somehow she managed to have long-standing jobs through the years that were unusual, given the social climate of the time. In the 1930s and 1940s, she worked for an Italian portrait artist whose studio was on Royal Street in the French Quarter. I’d just always heard she’d “worked” for him, and that he taught her to paint in oils. To this day her scenes of French Quarter courtyards grace the walls of my relatives coast to coast. But a conversation I had with her in the 1990s revealed to me she had been his cook/maid. She’d never called herself that, but just assumed I knew what her role had been.
When I was in the fourth grade, about the same time my mom bought her first car, Tottie decided to go back to work after being “retired” for about 10 years. At this time she was in her 60s, and she worked three days a week in the office of Dr. Stewart. She had no formal training as a dental assistant, but had worked previously in the 1950s for another dentist, who recommended her services to Dr. Stewart.
My mom and I would drive to Dr. Stewart’s office in the afternoons to pick Tottie up. We’d go a little early and parked in front the office. The office was located on St. Claude Avenue, about five blocks from the Industrial Canal, the body of water that links the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain. It also separates the Ninth Ward; we were on the opposite end of the Lower Ninth Ward so much heard about after Hurricane Katrina. As I reflect back on the neighborhood of the 1960s, obviously not too much, if any, changes from the civil rights movement had occurred. The nearby high school, Francis T. Nicholls, was named for a Confederate hero. Twenty-some years later the Orleans Parish School Board renamed all schools named after Confederate heroes and replaced them with names of black heroes. Nicholls is now Frederick Douglass High School. But circa 1965, Nicholls High School stood a few blocks away. I recall us driving past businesses, in particular a laundromat on St. Claude Avenue, with a “whites only” sign in the window.
It was not this outward sign of segregation that perturbed me, but the covert ones, recognizable to me in spite of my young age of nine or ten. Dr. Stewart, highly regarded in local societal circles, who lived in the tony Garden District section of the city (think Windsor Farms in Richmond), was king of a local Carnival parade organization (only the elite wealthy are afforded this distinction), owner of a Bonanza Steakhouse franchise, hired my grandmother as his dental assistant, a black woman, but on general principle did not accept black people as patients. I recognized this as highly irregular, to say the least, but I understood even then that one could not easily change the status quo. As Tottie made dental appointments, one of her duties was to ascertain if the caller was black or white. I’m not sure exactly what she said to the caller if she thought they were black. I’m not even sure what happened if a black person showed up at the office for an appointment. But Dr. Stewart, bless his heart, worked on my mom’s and my teeth once as a courtesy. Now as I think about it, maybe it was his day off or something, because I don’t think there were any patients in the office that particular day.
That Mercury Comet drove my family around intact only as long as Tottie worked. Otherwise, we could not get Tottie into the car. As feisty a person as she was, she never learned to drive, but traversed the streets by bus, either to go shopping downtown on Canal Street or to Gentilly to a supermarket aptly named the Economical.
My mom and I, on the other hand, spent time together in the Comet, replaced later by a 1970-something forest green Ford Granada. Every Saturday was spent at church for Youth Choir rehearsal, which my mom directed. We may have stopped for lunch at the newly built Burger King, Church’s or Popeye’s (and my mom later would go into any McDonald’s and proceed to order a Whopper). On Sundays she and I would take a ride, which meant cruising along the lakefront and on to New Orleans East, where we admired new construction homes and oohed and aahed. These homes were a stark contrast to our five-room shotgun house.
Fast forward to 1995. I was summoned to New Orleans. You have to do something. My mom had suffered a stroke in 1981, which affected her short-term memory but not her ability to play classical piano, and Tottie was her caretaker. Tottie, now in her 80s, was beginning to show signs of senility. I went to New Orleans with my nephew to help me so I could literally kidnap them and bring them to Richmond. My mom was not the problem; she’d go along with anything. But how to distract Tottie, the homebody, so I could make arrangements for their absence, pack up their clothes, and bring them to Virginia?
Somehow I was able to take Tottie and my mom in my rental car to my aunt’s house for a visit. That was easy; the day of the flight was not as simple. I finally used Shoney’s as the carrot to get them out the house, insisting we needed to go somewhere together for breakfast. However, Tottie did rant and rave before we left, threatening to call the police and her lawyer. We eventually, with my nephew’s calm demeanor and ability to pick up a less than 5 feet tall, 90 pound lady and put her in the car, got to Shoney’s, and later to the airport.
My mom and grandma sat in the waiting area, discussing what bus they needed to take to get back home. They thought they were simply seeing me off. When our flight was called, I said, Come on. My mom was like, I’m going with you? Yes! She was excited. I held my breath, hoping Tottie would not embarrass me by cussing everybody out.
So that’s how I got them to Virginia. There were adjustments to be made on all fronts. I had to arrange for them to live in an assisted-living facility. My children loved having their grandmother and great-grandmother here. My mom drove me crazy with noting only fast-food restaurants as we drove down the street (“McDonald’s…Hardees…Wendy’s”), which prompted Tottie to shout “Shut up Audrey, all you think about is eating”. Tottie’s reaction whenever we drove through the modern, suburban neighborhood I lived in, was to ask, “Colored people live here?” which she always asked in disbelief. Tottie resented no longer being in charge (“I was the boss, now here you are the boss”), to which I replied “Trust me, I would not be the boss if I had the choice”.
Riding alone now as I drive through Richmond, I can’t help but remember life with the VIPs (my nickname for them). Tottie lived to the ripe age of 95, passing away the week before 9/11. My mom suffered a mini-stroke that December of 2001, from which she never recovered, and she was laid to rest the next April. Both were returned to their beloved New Orleans.
Racing the Moon
Katherine Warner
EVWP Summer 2009
The sun had already sunk below the horizon. The sky’s blue grew deeper and darker. It caught my eye, the orange sphere over my father’s shoulder as he drove. My father made a left turn that placed the illuminated ball directly before us. As he began to pause for a stop sign the moon came to life. It got low in the sky, scarcely touching the trees, playfully about to pounce. My eyes watched with wonder. Then the moon whispered to me, “Do you want to race?” Unable to break my gaze I nodded my head. Its auburn color seemed to intensify. Delighted I accepted the challenge.
As my father turned left down the road the orb moved to my side of the car and rustled in the trees rushing to keep up. My heart began to pump quickly. “Go Dad!” my heart called out. The bubble of joy was honorable and fair. Each time my father paused for a stoplight it paused and waited too. When the light turned green it would dash off gleefully. I beamed watching it sprint through the trees. Blissful and happy the moon began to win. “Oh no!” my heart cried. The glowing sphere was so far ahead we might never catch it. My father turned down our street and pulled into the drive way. Unbuckling myself I jumped out of the car searching the sky for a sign of the luminous globe. It was gone.
EVWP Summer 2009
The sun had already sunk below the horizon. The sky’s blue grew deeper and darker. It caught my eye, the orange sphere over my father’s shoulder as he drove. My father made a left turn that placed the illuminated ball directly before us. As he began to pause for a stop sign the moon came to life. It got low in the sky, scarcely touching the trees, playfully about to pounce. My eyes watched with wonder. Then the moon whispered to me, “Do you want to race?” Unable to break my gaze I nodded my head. Its auburn color seemed to intensify. Delighted I accepted the challenge.
As my father turned left down the road the orb moved to my side of the car and rustled in the trees rushing to keep up. My heart began to pump quickly. “Go Dad!” my heart called out. The bubble of joy was honorable and fair. Each time my father paused for a stoplight it paused and waited too. When the light turned green it would dash off gleefully. I beamed watching it sprint through the trees. Blissful and happy the moon began to win. “Oh no!” my heart cried. The glowing sphere was so far ahead we might never catch it. My father turned down our street and pulled into the drive way. Unbuckling myself I jumped out of the car searching the sky for a sign of the luminous globe. It was gone.
Lost Shoes
Cece Wheeler
Summer 2009
I saw a shoe on the side of the ramp
leading to the interstate
and it made me cry.
I hoped it belonged to some carefree young man
who rode with his feet stuck out the window
and the shoe just fell away.
It would make me cry harder to think it
was left from the scene of the accident
fallen from his foot as he was placed
on the stretcher.
I’m sure his mother would want it.
It’s not the first shoe I’ve seen
on that ramp.
I’ve seen a gray one and a blue one
and even a red one.
I’m not sure what happens at that
point in the road.
Perhaps the turn is too much force
when taken quickly and loose shoes
fly out car windows
to find new homes on the side of the road.
Do people miss their shoes?
Have any of them begged the driver to stop
So they can go back and pick it up?
Or are they meant to be road markers,
traces of lives lived and lost
reminders of our tenuous experience
on our commute.
Summer 2009
I saw a shoe on the side of the ramp
leading to the interstate
and it made me cry.
I hoped it belonged to some carefree young man
who rode with his feet stuck out the window
and the shoe just fell away.
It would make me cry harder to think it
was left from the scene of the accident
fallen from his foot as he was placed
on the stretcher.
I’m sure his mother would want it.
It’s not the first shoe I’ve seen
on that ramp.
I’ve seen a gray one and a blue one
and even a red one.
I’m not sure what happens at that
point in the road.
Perhaps the turn is too much force
when taken quickly and loose shoes
fly out car windows
to find new homes on the side of the road.
Do people miss their shoes?
Have any of them begged the driver to stop
So they can go back and pick it up?
Or are they meant to be road markers,
traces of lives lived and lost
reminders of our tenuous experience
on our commute.
Someone Else
Kevin Schoolfield
EVWP Summer 2009
April 2003
When I called my father to ask how he was doing, I expected that it would go exactly like all of the weekly check-ins during my college years. I thought we would chat about how work and class had been going. I figured I would hear some funny anecdote about the hazards of getting older; he had his first colonoscopy that morning. I had the picture of the conversation drawn neatly in my head.
“Hey Dad.”
“Hey Kev.” Something is wrong. His voice is shaking. Panic creeps into the edge of mine.
“How did everything go?”
“Well, not very well. I don’t know how to tell you this son.” Short breath. “I have cancer.”
Detachment.
If you have ever heard the sound of a record scratching just before it skips and stops, this is what happens in the brain of a 19 year old boy when he hears that his father might die. How quickly a human brain can spin when sufficient emotional trauma occurs. The mind enters into a smoking tire-like peel out, like when the roadrunner gets ready to run away from the coyote and his feet spin in those crazy circles. Then thought finds traction and your mind takes off on a staggering burst of questions, fears, and concerns. Cancer is something that you see on statistical breakdowns and CNN tickers. It doesn’t happen to you. It is always happening to someone else. Amidst all of that, your mouth stammers, “What?”
Reality returns.
“Yeah. The doctor found a six centimeter mass in my colon. I have cancer.”
“Oh my gosh! Dad. What does that mean? What happens next?”
I am frozen to my dorm room desk chair. I no longer see the web page on my computer screen. My roommate Eric is startled and turns as he notices my shock. I am suddenly aware of the time, only a half-hour before I am supposed to leave for my tutoring session in downtown Lynchburg. I am thunderstruck by how little all of this matters at that moment. Dad is answering.
“Well, I have to go in for surgery in two weeks. We won’t know how bad things are until then. When the surgeon gets in there, he will see if it has perforated my colon and gotten into my lymph nodes. If that has happened, I could be in real trouble.”
Detachment.
When the father of the 19 year old boy speaks the word, “cancer,” death swarms rapidly into place hanging like a dark cloud inches above the boy’s head. Life becomes a shadow of what it formerly felt like. Everything is extreme, while at the same time everything is dulled. The boy’s emotional immune system breaks down in a split second, as he reaches critical mass. Death has not yet taken place, but it looms in the very near and possible future.
Reality returns.
“Dad, I’m so sorry. I love you. Is there anything I can do?” I am painfully cognizant of how silly that question sounds.
“Thanks son. I love you too. Just pray.”
I hang up the phone and fall sideways out of my rolling chair face first on to the cheap red area rug taped to my dorm room floor. I begin to shake, pray, and cry. Death changes everything, and it has not even arrived. I am repeatedly jolted by the realizations of what life after my Dad’s possible death would be. I see my future wedding that would not have him performing the ceremony as I had always planned. I see the lives of my future children, filled only by the stories of the grandfather they would have loved so much. I see the family holidays missing his prayers before meals, and room filling chuckles as we share stories and play games. These events pass through my mind in a long storyboard, with a hole cut out of each picture in the perfect shape of my Dad.
“What’s going on man? Are you okay?” Eric asks, scared to death.
“My dad has cancer.” Shock.
Ten days later.
I am sitting in the living room of Eric’s Charlottesville home. The clock reads 11:30 in the evening and everyone has left for the return to school except Eric and Jolie, two of my closest friends. I am falling toward the tail end of the worst two weeks of my life. I have done my best to remain stoic and jovial in front of the people with whom I spend each day at school. Those who know me best know that I am barely hanging on. They are scared. I turn to Eric and Jolie from the end of the soft wraparound couch in an effort to close the distance between us.
“Guys, I’m really not doing very well. I am trying, but I just don’t know what to do. Could you please pray for me?” I barely finish the sentence. The agony of being 200 miles away from the rest of my family has become too much. As they pray aloud into the stillness of the late night, my body is racked with sobs. I sob in release of the emotional torment I am living. I sob, bathed in the love and support of close friends. It is the hardest I have ever cried in front of people who are not my family.
July 2009
In the year and a half of intense chemotherapy following my Dad’s successful cancer surgery, he would come within moments of death two more times. The first was an allergic reaction to anti-nausea medicine. I watched alone; his face swelled, and throat closed as we waited for the ambulance to arrive at our house in Maryland. The second was a blood infection that was found when he came down with a fever that would not break. Each event added to the legacy of agonizing memory left by cancer.
My Dad has been cancer free for six years, but my family will forever live with the knowledge that our names can be found on the list of families who know cancer personally. For the first time in our lives, death was not something happening to someone else.
EVWP Summer 2009
April 2003
When I called my father to ask how he was doing, I expected that it would go exactly like all of the weekly check-ins during my college years. I thought we would chat about how work and class had been going. I figured I would hear some funny anecdote about the hazards of getting older; he had his first colonoscopy that morning. I had the picture of the conversation drawn neatly in my head.
“Hey Dad.”
“Hey Kev.” Something is wrong. His voice is shaking. Panic creeps into the edge of mine.
“How did everything go?”
“Well, not very well. I don’t know how to tell you this son.” Short breath. “I have cancer.”
Detachment.
If you have ever heard the sound of a record scratching just before it skips and stops, this is what happens in the brain of a 19 year old boy when he hears that his father might die. How quickly a human brain can spin when sufficient emotional trauma occurs. The mind enters into a smoking tire-like peel out, like when the roadrunner gets ready to run away from the coyote and his feet spin in those crazy circles. Then thought finds traction and your mind takes off on a staggering burst of questions, fears, and concerns. Cancer is something that you see on statistical breakdowns and CNN tickers. It doesn’t happen to you. It is always happening to someone else. Amidst all of that, your mouth stammers, “What?”
Reality returns.
“Yeah. The doctor found a six centimeter mass in my colon. I have cancer.”
“Oh my gosh! Dad. What does that mean? What happens next?”
I am frozen to my dorm room desk chair. I no longer see the web page on my computer screen. My roommate Eric is startled and turns as he notices my shock. I am suddenly aware of the time, only a half-hour before I am supposed to leave for my tutoring session in downtown Lynchburg. I am thunderstruck by how little all of this matters at that moment. Dad is answering.
“Well, I have to go in for surgery in two weeks. We won’t know how bad things are until then. When the surgeon gets in there, he will see if it has perforated my colon and gotten into my lymph nodes. If that has happened, I could be in real trouble.”
Detachment.
When the father of the 19 year old boy speaks the word, “cancer,” death swarms rapidly into place hanging like a dark cloud inches above the boy’s head. Life becomes a shadow of what it formerly felt like. Everything is extreme, while at the same time everything is dulled. The boy’s emotional immune system breaks down in a split second, as he reaches critical mass. Death has not yet taken place, but it looms in the very near and possible future.
Reality returns.
“Dad, I’m so sorry. I love you. Is there anything I can do?” I am painfully cognizant of how silly that question sounds.
“Thanks son. I love you too. Just pray.”
I hang up the phone and fall sideways out of my rolling chair face first on to the cheap red area rug taped to my dorm room floor. I begin to shake, pray, and cry. Death changes everything, and it has not even arrived. I am repeatedly jolted by the realizations of what life after my Dad’s possible death would be. I see my future wedding that would not have him performing the ceremony as I had always planned. I see the lives of my future children, filled only by the stories of the grandfather they would have loved so much. I see the family holidays missing his prayers before meals, and room filling chuckles as we share stories and play games. These events pass through my mind in a long storyboard, with a hole cut out of each picture in the perfect shape of my Dad.
“What’s going on man? Are you okay?” Eric asks, scared to death.
“My dad has cancer.” Shock.
Ten days later.
I am sitting in the living room of Eric’s Charlottesville home. The clock reads 11:30 in the evening and everyone has left for the return to school except Eric and Jolie, two of my closest friends. I am falling toward the tail end of the worst two weeks of my life. I have done my best to remain stoic and jovial in front of the people with whom I spend each day at school. Those who know me best know that I am barely hanging on. They are scared. I turn to Eric and Jolie from the end of the soft wraparound couch in an effort to close the distance between us.
“Guys, I’m really not doing very well. I am trying, but I just don’t know what to do. Could you please pray for me?” I barely finish the sentence. The agony of being 200 miles away from the rest of my family has become too much. As they pray aloud into the stillness of the late night, my body is racked with sobs. I sob in release of the emotional torment I am living. I sob, bathed in the love and support of close friends. It is the hardest I have ever cried in front of people who are not my family.
July 2009
In the year and a half of intense chemotherapy following my Dad’s successful cancer surgery, he would come within moments of death two more times. The first was an allergic reaction to anti-nausea medicine. I watched alone; his face swelled, and throat closed as we waited for the ambulance to arrive at our house in Maryland. The second was a blood infection that was found when he came down with a fever that would not break. Each event added to the legacy of agonizing memory left by cancer.
My Dad has been cancer free for six years, but my family will forever live with the knowledge that our names can be found on the list of families who know cancer personally. For the first time in our lives, death was not something happening to someone else.
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