Speculative Essay, rewritten/touched-up

            College Composition

             For the most formative of my years, I lived in a house in Bangor with two connected apartments.  During most of that time, our downstairs tenant was my great-grandmother, Nana.  Every single day I would walk over to her apartment to watch a “program” with her.  It was usually either Little House on the Prairie or Bonanza, and after a few years of this routine, I’m pretty sure we saw every single episode. 

Our hour together was more than a TV show though, she told me stories.  At the time, I was a little annoyed that she would tell stories while I was trying to follow a plot.  But by now, all of those shows have faded from my memory and her stories remained.  She told me about when she saw the actual house they used to film Bonanza, and how it was disappointingly small.  She loved the story about her escapades at a nudist camp she accidentally wandered into.  These were just a sample of her many stories. 

Not many of her stories centralized around her husband though.  Papa was an Irishman, and he worked on the railroads.  His father died when he was young, they brought what was left of him home in a bag.  There had been a railroad accident, and his father’s life-blood was on the tracks.  Perhaps it was because of this that Papa grew up to be such an angry man.  He spent a lot of time at the race tracks, I wonder if he was trying to forget.

Nana’s apartment always smelled the same.  I cleaned it once a week, and though the cleaning products might win for an hour or so, the scent always returned.  I called the smell “old lady perfume” then.  Now I call it Nana’s smell. 

Every day she would offer me a chocolate, and I would always sneak two thinking that I was fooling her.  I wasn’t though; she was a smart woman even in her 80s. 

Towards the end, I fixed her oatmeal every evening at 5pm.  She would tell me every day where the measuring cups were, even though she had just told me the night before and I had memorized their place.  She slowly began to act her age, and the stories she told were retold again and again.  I slowly lost her, and then one day she moved out for good.

Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if I had never met Nana.  Lots of people never meet their great-grandparents, but would I be any different if I had never met her?  Did I take advantage of the time I had? 

If I had never known Nana then I wouldn't have learned to love those who are much older than me.  I hear my peers talk about the elderly as though they will never grow old themselves.  But I grew up with Nana as my best friend.  If I had never known her then I would never have learned how to live in light of the depression, reusing everything and eating red-flannel hash.  Most importantly, if I had never known my Nana, then I would never have been exposed to her reminiscing and her stories.  I would be much smaller without my heritage. 

Prompt #34

Jeremy James…

Oh Jesse, what would I ever say if we meet again?  You bought me my first box of chocolates, but all we ever seemed to do was fight.  Our last fight was over the ring, don’t you remember?  You had burdens you never trusted me with, I knew.  On that last day you told me that you would find me, and that you would remember me.  The last comment convinced me that the first was a lie.

Jack Bently…

I trusted you Jack, but that’s just part of who you are, isn’t it?  So trustworthy.  Well you never claimed to be a hero, so why did I expect it of you?  Perhaps it was because of the nights around the campfire.  We spoke of higher things than others might.  We challenged our intellects debating questions that we agreed on, then we pondered humanity together.  We were old and wise together, but then you left.  Is that where knowledge without understanding leads? 

Mandy Trevon…

My heart was behind very high walls when I met you, but you slipped over them with ease.  You taught me to wonder and to love, how can I ever thank you for that?  I can still see you dancing in the rain, mud was better than makeup that night.  And when my waking nightmares kept me from the blessing of sleep… that was when you opened your bed to me as your sister.  Sisters not in blood, but in spirit.  You woke long enough to tuck me in like a mother hen, and then you would drift away again.  Please don’t drift away for good.  Find us again.

Gwen Moores…

I have a picture of us together, we both smiled.  But it was only for the camera, wasn’t it?  You threw my things out, you laughed at me in front of the one you knew I longed for.  I tried to bear it, but my inward hate was a vice just as intolerable as the hate you wore on your sleeves.  We both could’ve died those days, but we had each other’s backs.  It’s funny how necessity does not always lead to friendship.  Would you forgive me for my part?

Hugh Williams…

Did you know that I had never danced with anyone else before I danced with you?  You were always so serious, and that night I did not try to change you.  As we spun around the room you made me feel lighter than a feather, so unreal.  You were more graceful than I, but you didn't seem to notice.  I told you that I didn’t believe in humanity like you did, and that people weren’t all that bad.  You only looked at me with your dreadful sad eyes, and dipped me into oblivion.  Would you give me the chance to prove the words I spoke?  Is there redemption for me?

Prompt #28

I see endless corridors that were musty from the day they were made.  How did anyone find refuge in a place so desolate and so cold?  Fort Knox is famous enough to be glorified on the front of postcards, but the postcards don’t give credit where credit is due.  If the tourist chose a chilly autumn evening, he would see what I see.

The tall and thin windows on the ground level are too small to escape out of, and he would feel the tightening grasp of claustrophobia.  It would sit like a weight on his chest, and close its icy fingers around his neck.  A few deep breaths would help him move on, but the trapped feeling is never far behind.

He might seek comfort from the walls that seem so strong, and lean against one.  But he would jump away in a moment, somehow the cold stones are always wet.  Wet makes cold infectious, and the feeling of uneasiness rises. 

He finds a staircase and climbs it two steps at a time, to the roof of the fort.  He is going up to catch a breath of fresh air, but the roof only exposes him to the strong winds.  Looking down at the ever changing river, a sense of dizziness forces its way up his throat.  Back down the steps he would hurry, missing the ground floor and going much farther down.

Beneath the earth he is buried under stones, dirt, and the work of men’s hands.  Caves are dark, and the lowest level of this structure is little different.  How do you explain a darkness that causes utter blindness to someone who has never experienced it?  After leaving the bottom of the stairway he would go looking for an exit, but the father he goes, the more complete the darkness is.  People came down here to live, but any life down here would only have been surviving.  He would stumble with one hand in front of him, trying to find his way back to the stairs, back to light.  He would crash into stone walls that appear out of nowhere, indiscernible in the consummate shadow. 

Finally, a stairway would be found, and he would rush up towards air that is not dark and stale.  He would break out and find himself outside the walls of the fort, he had wandered far while underground.  It’s dark by now, with a chill wind picking up.  He would tighten his jacket and walk back to his car.  The visit is over, and the postcard lied.  

Prompt #27, rewritten

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other; she hadn’t meant to start a debate, and especially not in church.  We’ve all been there.  At one point or another, our opinions once voiced have caused problems.  They can be minor problems, like a dirty look from a stranger, or they can be more major problems, like being shot for treason.  

Once I responded casually to a comment that a visitor made at my church.  His comment sounded as innocent as his handlebar mustache, but he was really probing for a debate.  He wasn’t the first either.  “Predestination” is a hot topic for debates, and since I’m not a Calvinist I seem to be automatically a target for those who are.  I couldn’t count his fallacies on two hands, yet he persisted.  A wise man once said that stubbornness is sticking with your opinion because you know you’re right, but obstinacy is sticking with your opinion even when you suspect you’re wrong.  Want another to add to the list?  Insecurity is tearing down other people’s opinions because you aren’t sure that you’re right.  

Lots of people are able to avoid conflicts by knowing when to keep their mouth shut.  It’s dangerous to talk.  Isn’t it dangerous to stick up for something everyone else disagrees with?  How about disagreeing even when you’re the obvious minority?  What about speaking in the silences that people expect to stay empty?  

In the end, being who we are will always offend or madden somebody.  So how do we stay true to who we are, and yet stay safe?  We pretend that we agree, or we stay silent, or we use the anonymous setting on our computer.  In the end, nobody really wears their heart on their sleeves.  So you want to know the safest place in the world?  

It's behind our masks.

Prompt #26

I spent the first seven years of my life in an apartment in northern New Hampshire.  I hadn’t been there since we moved, but for the first time, I was coming home.

We had the upstairs apartment, and in my head it was a long ways up.  The stairs surprised me at first, but of course I was little then, so it would seem higher.  After climbing the rickety stairway, I came to the door.  The key fit and I was inside.

The place smelled terribly like cigarette smoke.  I remember my mother complaining that if the downstairs neighbors didn’t leave or quit smoking then soon the whole building would wreak.  She was right.  The kitchen that also served as our dining room was so small.  How did we fit in here?  In my head I saw the little table where I spent my first few birthdays, and for a moment the room was warm and happy again.  I saw the candles, and my mother’s smile, and my sisters and I gathered around the cake.  But the vision died and the room was stark, and small, and bare again. 

Remembering the many Christmas’ spent in our living room, I hurried from the cold kitchen.  The blue carpeting was still there, but now it was stained and worn.  The fireplace was cold, and the room felt so different.  I walked to the window, but the familiar house across the street had been torn down.  That funny tree whose leaves always turned bright colors in the summer instead of fall was reduced to a stump. 

I peeked into my old bedroom, where I occupied the bottom bunk.  I slid my hand across the walls that had been painted a pale shade of pink when I was there.  Now they were white.  My hand caught in a hole in the wall, and I was sad to see that this room had not stayed the peaceful place I remembered.  My father cultivated my music taste during these years, making endless cd’s of lullabies for my sister and I.  I have never abandoned my fondness for a soft tune.  The room was cold though, and the last thing I wanted to hear was the music that made the room mine.  Not now, not the way it was.

I walked back out onto the rickety staircase and locked the door behind me.  The thought flashed across my mind that I would like to see the old place burn.  But I knew that such thoughts were useless.  The house in my mind had already burned.

Childhood Memoir, Rewrite!

College Composition                                                                          

           Roaring water could be heard in the distance, but not everyone picked up on it.  Not yet anyways.  My Pastor said that as long as he lived, even if he made it to a hundred, he would never forget that day.

            It was the end of summer and my church’s youth group went to Holeb for a vacation.  Not every group decides to go halfway between unused logging roads and Canada for a vacation, but that’s where we went.  We had a group of about a dozen kids, plus our pastor and youth leader.  On our last full day, we decided to go on a hike. 

After crashing through the woods on deer-forsaken trails for about ten minutes, I heard the dull, faraway sound of roaring water.

            What I heard was The River.  When we came out of the forest, we stood on a rocky river bank.  The river was fifteen feet wide and swollen from the recent rain.  Further down the river it funneled into a small pool, then poured out into a raging, twenty-foot waterfall.  

            Most of the youth group carefully picked their way down the embankment around the waterfall to follow the river downstream, but I had other plans.  If I could get to the other side of the river then I could climb onto a giant, beautiful rock that overlooked the river below.  My plan seemed infallible, so I asked permission to cross.  My youth leader rubbed his chin.  He sized up the gap that I wanted to cross, and finally gave me his permission.

He was only 18, probably too young to be making judgment calls like that, but I gave it no second thought.  The river funneled into a three-foot-wide space of roaring white water, and it was there that I jumped across.  I landed on the other side with clammy fists and heart pounding.  Without glancing back, I made my way to the view. 

It was to die for.

When I had drunk my fill of landscapes, I went back to my crossing.  There I found Hannah waiting for me.  Hannah and I were good friends, and bunk mates for the trip.  She was asking if she could come across with me.  If my youth leader was under-qualified in choosing this kind of decision, I was much worse.  For a moment, I hesitated.  She was a little bit timid, and I was surprised that she wanted to cross at all.  But my resolve was broken by her hopeful eyes, and I told her that she could come over.  

There we stood, facing each other and only separated by a few feet of white water.  A mentor of mine told me just this year to be careful.  “Be careful, Danielle,” he said. “You are apt to project your strengths on other people.”  But that piece of life-saving advice wouldn’t be imparted to me for years to come, and in my head on that day I was sure that nothing would go wrong.  This is real life, and bad things like that don’t happen.  Things would be fine.  She would make the jump.  

Then she didn’t.   

Before either of us could scream, she disappeared into the angry, foaming water.  After a few moments, they lasted so long in my mind, she popped up in the pool above the waterfall.  She immediately grabbed onto a log that had fallen across the pool, and she hung on for all she was worth.  She was a small girl though, and the current fought her grasp.  With every second it gained on her.  She wouldn’t last long.  

By now the scene had attracted some attention from those on the shore.  Quickly, our pastor made his way to where the pool poured out into the waterfall.  Our youth leader, on whose face was written every ounce of his distress, had kicked off his shoes and was trying to inch his way out onto the fragile log that Hannah was holding onto.  I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that if I was to be of any help, I would have to be on the other side.  Without giving it another thought, I jumped.

I didn’t make it.  Blinded by the raging water, I had no idea which way was up.  Luckily, the buoyancy of my body was enough to bring me to the surface and before I could think, I was beside Hannah, hugging the log for dear life.  

I felt like I was in a dream, and though I am sure people were shouting, I didn’t hear a thing.  I noticed that my shirt had risen with the water and I was immediately self-conscious.  I couldn’t think of a way to fix it without letting go of my hold though.  Then I began thinking about the lesson we had that last night.  It was about Heaven.  I thought to myself that this wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, provided that it ended quickly at the bottom.  Would there be jagged rocks waiting to skewer us?  Would the force of the water keep us under 'till we drowned?

Somehow, I came to my senses and realized where I was.  This wasn't over yet, and I didn’t want it to be.  So I began looking for a way out.  To my right the log was resting on a boulder that served as the far side of the little pool.    I shouted over the din of the water to Hannah, and we began sliding over to the boulder.  It was hard work and our nerves were shot, but we both dragged our bodies out of the water and up onto the boulder.  

We sat still for a moment, panting from the exertion.  Then we both stood up and made our way to the bank.  We passed our crossing without even a second glance, and kept walking upriver.  We walked a long ways until the river was shallow enough for us to cross.  We grasped each others hands as we dipped our feet back in the water, and crossed on unsteady feet.

            There was a whole posse of people waiting for us by the time we made it back to the group.  People said I was so brave to jump in after her like that.  I quickly corrected them, but somehow everyone still thought I saved her.  Conversation rose about the incident.  Questions of “Where were you when they went in?”  and “Do you think they would’ve died if they had gone over the falls?” were swapped back and forth.  

            I was silent through it all.  After a few minutes, their flippant response to the situation overwhelmed me, and I walked a little ways off so that I wouldn't hear them.  I couldn’t blame them, they weren’t in that water.  It wasn’t their life they were talking about.  I sat down next to my pastor and youth leader on a rock that overlooked the river, and set about wringing out my hair and shirt.  

            My youth leader had his arms folded over his chest, with a more tired look than I had ever seen him wear.  My pastor was standing, facing the river.  When I first broke out onto the bank, I would’ve called the sound of the river comforting, maybe even lulling.  We all knew better now.  My Pastor sighed and commented, “For as long as I live, even if live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget this day.”

            I just quietly nodded, and watched as the river rushed away.