Night Visitor

 

    I felt a weight on my chest and woke in the dark, gasping for air. Two glowing golden eyes stared calmly into mine. It was my cat, Stormie.
  Stormie was a solitary creature, sort of a "feed me and leave me alone" feline, the antithesis of her name. For her to climb on me and wake me in the middle of the night was odd.
  I tried to nudge her off, but she dug her claws into the quilt and wouldn't budge. Her eyes peered into mine, never blinking. She wasn't purring, just gagging me with her fishy breath in my unprotected nostrils.
  I determined to move out from under her. I didn't care about cat communication, but I did want to get back to sleep. Maybe she needed water or the basement door was shut so she couldn't get to the litter box. What was Stormie trying to tell me?
  Then I heard a floorboard creak on the stairs.  I stopped breathing, listening for the sound to repeat itself.

Trends

  I wanted to fit in so badly in middle school and high school, but there was never money for the trendy clothes the 'cool' kids were wearing. I saved my babysitting money to buy a pair of white canvas Nikes with the trademark light blue swoops on the sides. I assumed these overpriced shoes would announce to my cynical peers that I had arrived.
  No one looked at my feet. They had no reason to because they wore the same brand of shoes.
  I still felt an overwhelming need to be accepted by the cool crowd. White canvas is hard to keep clean. Every weekend I scrubbed the Nikes with bleach and an old toothbrush so they always looked new.
  Still, no one looked at my feet. I hadn't arrived. I had sacrificed my uniqueness on the cold, impersonal altar of conformity.
  I outgrew the shoes around the same time I started to feel less concerned about fitting in. I realized I didn't need special shoes to impress the elitists who didn't accept me even when I met their dress standards.
  My first pair of tennis shoes in college came from Kmart and cost a whopping $5.00. I painted multicolor polka dots on them and wore them with pride.
  People looked at my feet and smiled.
  I didn't care if the smiles were from admiration or scorn because I wasn't trying to impress anyone. I wasn't trying to fit in or be accepted by those who assumed to set the dress standards. I became a trend-setter simply by standing on my own two polka-dotted feet.

Ode to an OCD Gardener

  The garden was my grandmother's pride and joy, more so than her own grandchildren. She took exceptional care of it: weeding, watering, fertilizing, and fussing. To this day I have no idea why she never planted anything edible, since she complained to no end about the cost of groceries.
  Grandma would proudly point out the different types of flowers to me. "Those are snapdragons, those are daylillies, stay on the path, don't pull leaves off the mint." (She never used the mint for tea or anything useful--she just liked the way it smelled.)
  It's ironic that the backyard flower garden she kept vigil over at number 12 Briarwood Road for 50 years was her whole life because the garden killed her, literally.
  Grandma didn't drive if she could walk because she complained to no end about the cost of gasoline, so she often walked to the hardware store to buy goodies for her flower children. One morning she walked there to buy fertilizer for her precious shepherd's purses. The smallest bag the store had in stock was 50 pounds.
  "We'll deliver it to your house, Mrs. Lang, for $5.00."
  Did I mention Grandma was a tightwad? She didn't even walk home to get the car, but carried the 50 pound bag home in her arms, which gave her a heart attack.
  From which she never recovered.

Vigil

  Anna wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. She was eager to hear about the prophet Joseph Smith and this gold Bible she had heard so much about down in the village of Palmyra.
  "Pa said they're sending the men out two and two on missions, to preach the word of God," she told her mother.
  "Come away from the window, Anna!" Ma said with feigned patience. "No one ever comes up this way to visit, especially no Mormon missionaries!"
  Anna would discreetly watch for them when she went out to feed the chickens, gather the eggs, and slop the hogs. When she walked down the hill to school in the village, she kept her ears open, absorbing gossip about the new church as she passed townsfolk going about their business. Most people didn't have anything nice to say about Joseph Smith and the shocking new religion he founded, but Anna was eager to know more. She hated Ma and Pa's austere Presbyterian church she was forced to attend every Sunday in nearby Manchester, NY.
  She thought there must be more to know about Jesus than what was in the Bible. "What about the other apostles, like Andrew?" she once asked Pa. "Why doesn't he have a book in the New Testament?"
  "Hush your mouth and don't talk nonsense!" Pa snapped. "Preacher says there ain't no other scripture 'cept the Bible!"
  Anna didn't dare utter what she was longing to ask: "What if Preacher's wrong? What if Jesus did restore his church to the earth? What if he did give Joseph Smith a golden Bible? What did they call it? The Book of Mormon, named for a prophet who lived here in America before Columbus?"
  The rumors fired Anna's imagination. She watched every day, hoping the missionaries--maybe even Joseph Smith himself--would come to call.

Belly Dreams

  I used to dream about waking up on my 45th birthday and discovering I'm pregnant. Maybe it's a subliminal fear based on what I see when I look at myself sideways in a full-length mirror. That, and the fact that my daughter often pats my belly and asks if I've got a baby sister in there for her.
  I've been pregnant eight times--four miscarriages, four babies--so pregnancy is a major part of my past. After my first baby, I even decided to teach childbirth classes. I guess I had a pregnancy fetish, like some women have shoe fetishes (although I have that, too).
  Anyway, the recurring dream: I'm old and gray and my youngest kid is in middle school. I'm running around the house, frantically searching for my maternity clothes and a crib--which, of course, went to Goodwill a decade ago. Usually I wake up hyperventilating and avoid my confused husband for a few days.
  Once I dreamed that my 70 year-old mother-in-law was pregnant. Talk about weird. But then the next time I saw her, I checked out her belly and realized it doesn't get any better with age. Thank God for elastic waistbands.

Something's Fishy

  I love to shop in Korean Korner and look at the different types of fish on display in the back of the store. My kids hate going to KK. Between the fresh fish and the kimchee, the place is not for those with sensitive noses.
  "Just a minute, I want to get some shrimp," I told my restless brood yesterday afternoon as they gawked in horror at the glassy eyes of the flounder staring up at the ceiling from its final resting place--a bucket of dirty ice.
  "Gross, Mom." My seven-year-old held his nose as we walked by the carp in all their rigor mortis glory.
  "Just a minute, we need rice noodles," I said.
  We headed down the daunting noodle aisle with its thousands of colorful packages, each stamped with Asian characters we can't read. I go for the package that looks familiar. The fishy smell isn't much better near the front of the store. The whole place smells like low tide.
  "But I don't want shrimp for dinner," my youngest complained. He didn't relax the pincher grip on his nose the entire time we were in the store. "Why do we have to come here?"
  "This place has the best prices on fish," I explained, feigning patience.
  "I think she comes here to torture us," my oldest opined.
  "No, I just like to look at the fish." I smiled at the Chinese cashier who rang up our items.
  "Then why don't we just visit an aquarium, Mom?"

Springtime Surprise

  "It's just weeds," Julie said.
  "It's too pretty to mow down," Anna whined.
  Julie drove the John Deere lawn tractor into position at the edge of the field. "You know we have to cut it down. We have to find it before they sell the land."
  Anna turned pale. Julie knew she remembered. She put the tractor into gear and drove forward slowly. The waist-high weeds vanished beneath the blades and shot out the side in a cloud of wet green fluff.
  "Be careful!" Julie shouted to Anna as her younger sister walked in the tractor's wake. She held back a comment about watching for snakes. The word alone would send Anna into hysterics.
  Julie steered the mower toward the far edge of the clearing, all the while keeping her eyes peeled for something that didn't belong in an overgrown meadow. Something she and Anna had left in a snowstorm ten years ago.
  Anna's simple mind assumed it would have melted away with the snow, but Julie knew better.
  The mower blades clogged with the damp vegetation after she had cut down half an acre. Julie cut the mower and raised the chute to kick the debris free.
  Anna walked over to help her. She saw it first and started to scream.
  A human skull was lying face-up on the ground, the mouth and eye sockets encrusted with dirt.
  "We found it," Julie said.