Moving Prompt from "Juicy Pens and Thirsty Paper"

When I was two and a half years old we moved into a new house. Norwood Avenue would belong to someone else with its pear tree in the yard that fed us succulent fruit and its porch swing that rocked me to sleep in the cradle of my mother’s arms and voice singing “you are my sunshine.” The moving men came in their large truck. The men lumbered like rhinos, their tanned skin taut across their bodies – it looked as though it would tear if they strained too much lifting our furniture. I thought they were stealing my belongings. My clown lamp with balloons for light bulbs in red, blue, yellow and green and my rocking chair with purple flowers parenthetically around my name on the dark wood. They loaded my crib into the rumbling and angry truck as it chugged down the street I sank inside with loss. My identity was in my bedroom, the room that now was only four empty walls with a crumpled piece of paper in one corner and dust in the other. I clung to my Nana’s shoulder – her soft paper-thin skin comforted my cheek and her arm wrapped around me like a seat belt.

My mother and her mother took the car to the new house. On the street with trees like a forest top, reaching together and creating a canopy, a harbor of home. When I get on my first bus ride to school, coming down the street and seeing the safety of the trees ahead, it feels more like home than my clown lamp did when I was two. The pair raced home before Nana and I and even the movers, they all set my room together like it was on Norwood. When I walked into the bedroom it looked just like my room but instead of one window I had two and my rocking chair was next to the closet. I found a magical door in the wall and there was a radiator emanating heat in winter. I had a lamp on the ceiling.

When I was six I thought the magical door could never be opened, it was sealed shut. I thought if it ever could be opened it would lead to a magical world outside my bedroom. That year my father opened it and the excitement ate my vocal chords while I stood there anticipating the other side. He cut the seal with a knife and used a crow bar to pry the door off. There were no hinges, only a wooden plank. He opened the door because the bathtub had stopped working. I didn’t understand how the magic door could help until I saw, there was no world inside the door. There were no magical people or new friends. There were pipes and dripping water. Disappointed and angry at my father for showing me reality, I began to loathe my room. It once was a mystical place and turned into a harsh cold room with pipes and bright lamps just like every other room.

I turned fourteen and decided to give my room a second chance. I reclaimed the mystery for myself. Instead of having a stark white ceiling and pink walls I wanted colors and statements. Dad refused to allow me to paint on the walls. Instead I plastered magazine clippings to the ceiling around the bright lamp in the center. It took weeks to find clippings worthy of my bedroom. I stood on my bed and moved it steadily throughout the room to give me height.


Before we moved into the house the people who lived there were named the Claytons. There is a toyshop in Williamsville, the village next to the town where my house is in. I don’t think they owned it though. The girl who lived in my room was the oldest just like me and she had Scarlet O’Hara wallpaper on her walls. It wasn’t on the walls when I moved in, the wallpaper when I moved in was flowery with blue and brown and pink flowers on a white background. I know she had Scarlet O’Hara wallpaper because her brother came to see the house when he was in Buffalo one winter. He walked around the house telling us stories about when they lived there, like they used to play elevator in the pantry under the stairs that we use to store pots and pans that we don’t use every day. He also told us about the wallpaper in my bedroom and showed us how there is some in the wood ceiling of the attic. On our attic door are flowers painted in neon green and yellow and orange. It says “attics are fun” and the man said that his family didn’t put that there, but that it was there when they moved in. We liked it and so we kept it too. Ever since that time he writes us a Christmas card updating us on his family and their lives and tells us he misses the house and neighborhood. Other people’s houses are not gross like that woman from the Real Housewives of New Jersey says they are, they are in fact rich with history and stories similar to our own and give us glimpses into the house’s life before us. I love living in someone else’s house, it becomes our own home and is my house but still has the life of another family inside it.

Denison Fashion

Are high-waisted skirts in, or are they IN!? Everywhere I look there is a plain white thick-strap tank top tucked into a knee-length high-waisted skirt. Sometimes belted, sometimes left alone. Some have pockets, some have none. But most girls on this Midwest campus are keeping kids in China sewing overtime with their (fashionable?) choices.

What I am most confused about is the level of conformity. Why is it much cooler to be wearing the same exact thing as all of your friends than to be doing something different and more daring. It's just clothing, after all. What really fries my bananas is that at Denison one cannot simply go to class in sweatpants or even jeans and a regular t-shirt without being considered sloppy. God-forbid one hadn't showered before class - "are you sick?" That would be the response. Because only the ill don't shower and wear sweatpants to class.

The only time sweatpants are allowed is if you have just come from the gym. And no, it is unacceptable to be sweaty, flushed, or showing any signs of said trip to the gym. One must have impeccably matching sweatpants and tee-shirt (preferably sports tank) in order to be considered worthy of normal conversation.

Lastly, there is such an enormous pressure here to look a certain way, act a certain way and to produce academics above and beyond the majority of American campuses. The stressors that my peers place on me alone are enough to make me burst. I feel so overwhelmed with pressure to be a certain way while excelling academically. I would bet that at least 75% of women on this campus feel pressure to weigh less, and/or have eating disorders. In Burlington, I felt so free to be who I am, no pressure to act, look, be a certain way. There was acceptance of difference and celebration of differences. Here, difference feels scorned and frowned upon. It's hard to escape and hard to stick to your guns in such a high-anxiety situation. I don't want to lose the person I have become and I can already feel her slipping away a little. It's not "cool" to eat healthy. Here, "healthy" is a RedBull and a poptart. I don't want to eat chemicals. I don't want my vegetables to be frozen or my fruit come from flavored filling. I loved cooking and making good-for you meals in VT. I miss the great city that was a block away, that I was in the middle of. People drink too much here because there's not much more to do and because we're trapped on campus.

I know I'm full of bad things to say about Denison. There are good things. Beautiful campus, alumni support, great friends, big and pretty library with comfy chairs. But I miss the acceptance. I miss the celebration of different people. I miss dance parties in the kitchen every morning.

I've just been down recently (since moving in) it will get better. I hope.

exercise

I feel like I am constantly trying to decide between caring about what I look like and just accepting me how I am. I can never decide which to choose. I don't know how to get to that middle ground of accepting how I am and trying to better myself for me instead of making it about superficial aspects of me.

List-writing season is now upon us again. Thank you, Denison, for making me stress like crazy. The thing that inhibits my writing here is the general smell of snobbery among most people. Not everyone is that way, but it sits heavily in the hallways of the writing building. Things must be done a certain way and there's minimal room for freedom which seems contradictory to me since it is Creative Writing. That's how it is though. I need to write more stories, and more of my one story. It's due tomorrow. I have to fill out a blue paper that I think I lost somewhere which requires I choose a title now instead of at the end of my project, can you say IMPOSSIBLE!? seriously, it's ridiculous. So, now I have to choose a title for a project that could completely change and not be pertinent to the title anymore in the end. And I don't think my title of "Everything Sucks Sometimes" will go over so well with my instructor. Maybe I'll call it "Humanity and Tragedy" just for now. That's broad enough I think.

I need a cookbook, if anyone feels like mailing me one. That would be wonderful.

Off to make more lists! Woohoo!

An old passage in Stream of Consciousness

The snow fell coating the ground, freezing rain freezing pain freezing time, I don’t really want to rhyme. But the way it fell everywhere, tiny marbles of water getting everywhere, inside my skin, grains of sand, rain sand, finding their way into my body. Inside my veins, just like you. There was snow like this when you looked at me the way the hail falls into my clothing. In a parked car, where so many good things happened to us it seems, outside of your house, next to a streetlamp’s flooding light so no one could see inside, no one could see the way your voice touched me. It’s always slow, slow slow slow, words, words words words, in normal voices and then whispers quiet conversation and as it gets quieter you get closer to my mouth, watching rosy lips move with a voice coated in want. Closer, until you can smell my hair and see the tips of my lashes, and a hand on my face, on my neck, smoothing out the edges, until your eyes lock onto mine and draw me closer, fingers pressing into my skin making prints, so I know you mean it, lips pressing into mine until the words dissolve. You kiss me until my voice dissolves. I like being voiceless. I like losing my voice to your kiss.

Morning Breath

I heard a mother say once that the sweetest smell she could think of was her baby's breath when she just woke up. Morning breath is disgusting though, isn't it totally repulsive?

I didn't get what the mother said until I lived with my boyfriend. I've kissed him before right after waking up, still thinking "yuck," but I love him so it's a small sacrifice. Waking up next to him in our own house in our own bedroom though, I wanted to take every moment we had and put it in a jar to keep with me.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed. His just-woke-up stupor was slowly lifting away into the air with each deep breath and slight yawn. I curved my still-sleepy body around his. He stretched, arms up and reaching, muscles straining and tensing only to release and sometimes getting caught in the tensing and pinching for a moment. And he fell back onto me. He likes to put his head on my chest right near my neck to hear me breathing. I like to brush his black curls back with my fingers. For a few seconds like that, it feels like the world has completely stopped and the only motion on Earth comes from our lungs breathing and my fingers grazing his forehead.

His lips were on the skin between neck and chest and his breath hit that place in small puffs. If I moved my head the wrong way I could smell his morning breath, and yet it was still so sweet. Because we were in our room, because he is my person and was wrapped up in my arms, beautiful and full of contentment, the smell was bearable and cherished in a way. It was a moment shared only between us in a way that I know no one else will be capable of contending with.

We lingered in the moment a little longer than normal. We watched the sunlight sift through the yellow curtain, against our plant's thick green leaves and over my crystal on the sill which created a rainbow across the wall. The stillness within us was a forever kind of stillness. It was irrevocably our moment.

Breakfast

The potatoes in the pan were slick with oil and crusty on one side, worm-like onions laid on top of each thick slice. I picked one out of the searing hot pan and watched as my fingers turned pink at the touch of the potato slab. I blew on it fiercely, hoping to cool it off because entrance to my mouth was imminent and approaching quickly. The roof of my mouth burned slightly upon the potato's entrance but the crisp outside matched with the fibrous mushy inside turned into a pulp on my tongue with barely any chewing.

The first time I burned the roof of my mouth I was four years old. Dad used to pick me up from pre-school to go on "dates" with me. We'd go home or to McDonald's for lunch and then to a movie or the Science Museum. I forget sometimes the effort my father invested in me and the time he spent to ensure I felt loved and supported. I burned my tongue on one of our "dates" eating homemade macaroni and cheese at the same kitchen table we eat at every night. It was an uncomfortable and foreign feeling that I never wanted repeated. Much to my dismay, it happens about once a month, more frequently when I purchase coffee from a coffee shop. The brown syrupy liquid is always so enticing, steam snaking off the top and the promise of a sugary bottom, but also extremely hot. Heated to a temperature beyond that of a normal household coffee maker, coffee shop coffee almost always burns my mouth and it is always my fault for impressing eagerness on the cup pressed to my mouth.

Oil ran down between my fingers, onto the webbing of skin that earlier today had pressed down hard on a mat to keep me from slipping during "down-dog." My tongue reached out to lick the orange-ish oil and it made me think of sweat, collecting on my upper lip. The salty, oily liquid infused with paprika had a similar taste to sweat that beads down to my lips on particularly hot days.

My feet padded across the carpet in our kitchen to the green and blue granite counter top. I pressed the red button which turned on the T.V. and searched for "Law and Order." I have recently become a "Law and Order" addict, thanks to my sisters. There is something carnal and completely luring about watching a show that includes surprise, wits, and crime-solving. It becomes rote after a while, but it still feels engaging rather than mind-numbing. In a milky-white bowl there are strawberries perched on top of one another, a small pile of green heads and seedy red faces. I pluck one from the top of the pile, a medium-sized one. The large ones intimidate me with their promise of juice running down my chin and the small berries always seem to be a bit tart for my liking. It's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I found one that was "just right" and pulled off the green leaves and popped it into my mouth. I felt it burst between my teeth, the seeds falling off their skin and the flesh turning to juice.

Eating, especially when starved, is an intimate, romantic act with ones-self. It can be private and luxurious, like taking a bubble bath with candles. Just a few tastes is all it takes for satisfaction.

Road Trips

iPods changed my family's car trips forever.

I was ten years old when we rented a car in Arizona and drove around the Grand Canyon. Travelling through the look out points and desert, my sisters and I smushed in the back seat. We giggled, made up games, told stories and explored our relationship more than we had time to during the school year. I secretly looked forward to car trips because of those opportunities. The radio on was our background music. We let it slip our minds that Mom and Dad were in the seats in front of us and that they could easily hear us, allowing our games and stories to go to private places where only sisters are allowed. Places that are for sibling-ears only, we told secrets and showed our true emotions, said things we wouldn't usually say in front of our parents.

Travelling to my Grandparent's or Aunt's house had the same affect. The stories and games and talking with each other. It was as though there was a secret bubble inside the car that only we could enter and everyone outside the bubble didn't exist. It helped me become a better person and sister in my most formative years.

My sisters only had a few years of car rides like that before the iPod was created. I was sixteen and still looked forward to car rides together. That Christmas my sisters and I all received our first iPods, small nano iPods, we were far from the first in our friend circles to receive them though. Later that day we drove to our Grandparent's house for a gift exchange and I was looking forward to the hillarious joking that could take place, my sisters have seriously wry humors and side-splitting sarcasm. We got into the car, I left my iPod in the house anticipating the conversation but my sisters had their's in hand. I sat next to the window behind my father driving and my sisters put their ear buds in, listened to their music the entire car ride. There was no laughing, no conversation except small quips between my parents and I. I felt tears beginning at what I knew as the end of our car ride bonding.

Age fourteen, we went to Sanibel with a couple other families for spring break. My CDs and I were inseperable, I begged for a CD binder before vacation so I could bring all 250 CDs with me. Along with that blue vinyl binder came my walkman, adorned with stickers I had received from the doctor and larger headphones that covered my ears. We rode bikes on vacation and I kept my walkman with me, figuring out how to ride and hold it at the same time. It was only possible to listen to one CD at a time and I listened to it straight through - the way the artist intended it - so far from how music is listened to now. If I wanted to listen to another CD, I had to figure out how to bring it with me. My walkman didn't fit in my pocket, it occupied one hand or a tight shorts pocket.

It still disappoints me when, in the car or taking a walk, my sisters bring their iPods and I refuse to do the same. So two of us have a soundtrack and I listen to the sounds around me, hoping they will catch on some day that all I want to hear are their jokes and laughter.