I USED TO BE.....NOW I'M ........ (prompt)

I used to be....now I'm...


I used to be afraid of having fun. Now I'm not (as much.)

There were four of us riding down the smooth, newly honned dirt road, one behind the other in a dark blue baby buggy with white stitching and white wall tires. All chrome. Very sweet. Riding down the road. Squealing with delight. "Faster! Faster!" we hollered to our 9 year old sister, our pilot. Tacoma held fast onto to the shiny chrome handles. We perched inside, arms spilling out as we flew. Meesha was three and in front, I was four and a half, Jemi was almost six. Asa was eight.

Sunny afternoon, mid July. Blue sky. Puffy white clouds. Perfect.

Until we hit the rock, the soft sand on the side, veered off into the double barbed wire fence. Electric. And it was on. Meesha flew out and into the field, Asa over our heads after her. Jemi and I were trapped under the pram.

I must have grabbed the fence because I have always had scars  on my hands. I definitely struggled. I remember shouting NO! shaking my head back and forth, ripping open my face.

Tacoma tried to make it right. The worst part was that because the buggy was mostly chrome, it was electrified. Every time Tacoma touched it, she got another jolt.  OW OW!
GET IT OFF HER! GET IF OFF THE FENCE! someone cried.

Finally I must have crawled out of it or Asa may have snagged it off....I don't know because all I could see was red. Blood in my eyes, coming from the top of my head, my forehead, cheek. My face had essentially been ripped off. The skin of my left cheek was flapping.

Screaming and screaming and crying and terrified, Jemi grabbed my hand and ran me down the road to the house. Our feet barely hitting the ground. In blood and shock.

By the time we got to the house, only 30 yards away, my little girl white T shirt was drenched in little girl blood. I remember blinking and seeing the blood running down my left arm and off my fingers.

We got to the old gray (at the time) farmhouse and to Mother and Dad. Later Daddy said he knew something was really wrong when he heard "you girls screaming like that." Mother washed me up and wrapped me in a white bed sheet fresh from the line, taped my face back on, rocked me back and forth. Stayed up all night to make sure my wounds didn't re-open. Let me sleep in my parents bed for nights thereafter. She never looked at me the same after that. Nobody did. When you're a little girl, about to start first grade and you have a scar across your face as big and red as that one was? Nobody looks at you the same as they look at other pretty little girls in your family.

I am fortunate, really, because a few inches lower and that fence would have gotten me in the neck---the corotid. Jugular. Blood would have squirted out with every beat of my little girl heart. A heart that earlier pounded with glee, replaced by adrenalin, kicked into survival mode....a heart that knew where home was. Even when she couldn't see.

It took years to get over the feeling that if I let myself go, really let go the way most people do on ferris wheels, even tree swings, on bicycles...something tragic would happen. Something horrible and bloody would come and spoil everything. Scar me for life. I used to be afraid to have fun. Now? Not as much...

Getting Organized--under a Blood Moon

It's not as if I am incapable of cleaning a room or moving through boxes of paperwork, dragging furniture around rearranging art work, storing things, throwing stuff out. It's just that I can always find better ways to spend my time. So I decided, during a conversation with my dear friend Patricia, that SHE was the person who could help me actually clean house. I have several sisters, one of whom would throw too much stuff out if I could ever get her to slow down long enough to come over and help me out, one who (and I mean this with love) is a hoarder, but who can tidy a room like nobody I have ever seen---when it's not her own...and another who means well, is really good at doing any size project, no matter how disgusting (more on that later) in record time, with zest and zeal and a "we are going to get this done today" attitude. Of course, one wouldn't, one couldn't and one really shouldn't since she has her own messes to clean up before the snow flies, including trying to fix up and sell two houses that were left to her by our dead brother.

So along comes Patricia, spends the night at my house in my (yes, clean) guest room-- unbeknowst to PJ, I had spent several "pre-organizer" hours cleaning up the house...you know, like when the maid is coming and everybody has to make their bed and pick up the toys? 

We decide to "go to town" after a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs, English muffins, carrots and celery, veggie sausage, coffee and juice. Heavy on the coffee, light on the carrots and celery. We talked about what could be done (there is a LOT of that in reorganizing, as well as a tiny bit of lecturing, many explanations, and much acquiescence)..it's a real education. Patricia (I will henceforth refer to her as PJ, because a/ I'm lazy and b/ok, there is no b==I'm just lazy) had arrived the night before, which meant she hadn't surveyed the property. So after talking about all the possibilities ad nauseum, we cleaned up breakfast and ventured outside into the cool, autumn air and across the heavy dew of the lawn.

In a sentence I would call my house and property an "end of the street raised ranch built into an ant hill surrounded by woods, bushes and brush and a cedar hedge." The lawn is nice, large, and part of it is almost flat enough to pitch a tent, features a thrown-together field stone fire pit (in which I burn papers, cardboard and your occasional woolen blanket or pair of painter's pants.) We sat on a makeshift tent platform high on the hill surveying the scene. PJ started in. "You can pitch tents on this lawn! You could sell it as a place to have weddings! You could...." and so on...she is a woman full of ideas, many creative ones, many overly ambitious ones. (More on the actual organizing of the house here....)
alter, Japanese sake 
family pics

So, it was back inside for us to tackle the job before the blood moon showed up, and we had to stop. I live near a country club, a golf course. And although we could really have scrambled up there, dodging the hoards of skunks reported to frequent the 7th hole, we decided to use the brains our parents gave us and drive up there. In the heat of my car, peering out through the moon roof, we saw it. There that moon was, smiling down on us and there we were, Japanese sake in hand, two gray handle-less mugs flung from a potter's wheel already warmed up. Rearing to go. 

 PJ is a photographer, so she was having none of this, in-the-car stuff. She fled the vehicle as if her ass was afire. She was about to sit her carcass on the ground, when I got out and hauled a blanket I keep in my car for JUST these kinds of occasions, which come to find out, happen exactly every 18 years! We sat there under that moon, chilly and excited, a bit tipsy and poised to get wowed and get some award-winning shots of that crazy, magical lunar eclipse that was about to happen.

NOTHING IS BETTER

• winter sunsets
• the ocean at sunrise
• trees covered in snow
• spring flowers
• Friday afternoon commute
• Sunday morning brunch
• moss covered rocks
• paper birch trees
• maple sugaring time
• mountains in the distance
• Vermont foliage
• you

Life Savers--OCT 27, 2015

LIFE SAVERS

It isn't just people who save lives--there are the obvious people/occupations like EMTS, fire fighters, police officers, soldiers...and there are nurses, physicians, operating room staff. Teachers save lives, counselors, friends...everyday people who are brave and dare run into fires, run into traffic, dive into icy waters and onto railroad and subway tracks.

But places, organizations, institutions can also save lives...giving people hope to go on one more day, take one more step into the future. Right here in Burlington there is such a place called Hope House--it is a respite home for those undergoing cancer treatments at the nearby hospital. Their doors are open to even spouses, children, loved ones of the patients so they can stay close, not have the expenses of a hotel stay, the dread of an empty, stark room.

So why some idiots (and I'm guessing frat boys) would sneak up to the Ronald McDonald statue that was sitting peacefully on a park bench outside Hope House in the middle of the night? Saw his legs off, decapitate him and leave him there for the horror of children and the disgust of staff volunteers, wives, mothers of cancer patients? Is more than I can fathom.

I know that many of us fear clowns and some folks are even terrified of them with all the drama makeup and big red lips, baggy pants, surprise flower that sprays water, floppy shoes...and many of us even refuse to frequent McDonald's restaurants--a place that joyfully brags that they "serve billions daily" the greasy salty fries, hamburgers that came from god only knows what beef cows, and Coke, a product that is known to clean the gunk off your car battery better than anything...

But to mangle a mascot? The sign of joy and hope and love and light and symbol of the Hope House itself, seems unconsciencable. I hope those vandals are caught and I hope they learn a lesson about who and what not to eff with.

Emily Dickenson once wrote "hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all..."

Hope House perches on that college hill singing a tune without words, never stopping at all. Saving lives. One song at a time.


Yvette Mason,
MORY Writers' Group

Second thought for the day

Why do people, caught in lies, lie even more?

Please Stop Saying That?

List of what I can NOT STAND to hear one more time:

• Long time No see! (This is the worst, so I listed it first)
• No worries
• You'll have that
• Been there. Done that.
• No problem
• Yup, you'll have that
• Seen that 
• Same
• Ain't that something?
• Whassup?
• No Problem! No Worries, Mate!
• Where yuh been?
• What yuh been up tuh?
• Told you so
• Yup, I told you so
• Didn't I tell you so?
• I warned you (or any variation of this)
• It's been a while
• Yer shittin' me!
• Nope
• Yup
• Don't think so
• Hell no!

This list is by no means finished. Nope. Hell no. It ain't.

Sweater Weather--COME ON!

Summer is not some girl I don't like or some woman I've had a spat with. Summer is a season I spat with. A hot, humid, skin burning, cancer causing season...

No good comes of summer other than spending time IN cold water, not near it. And you can do that in your tub. And the only reason one would want to spend ANY time in a cold tub would be to cool off because of summer! Well, that's not entirely true. You can swim in a brook. Stay there all day, though, don't go home til way after dark.

HOT CHORES:  I hate mowing my lawn. It is always too hot to do it on weekends, for some odd reason, and it rains in Vermont almost every single week day evening! Every single one. We get that "lake effect" coming from Champlain, it blasts over the Greens and drops hard, cold rain on us in the Lamoille Valley. Almost every  after-noon or evening. Then when one tries to mow the lawn on the weekend? It's all mossy and thick with moisture, making it a nightmare to mow. And forget vacuuming. Just forget it. It's a sweaty, heart thumping job in the WINTER, say nothing about in 90% humidity.

Length of days mean nothing to me. I hate the long days and nights that go on forever. My sleep rhythms get all out of wack and I can't fall asleep until way after dark and oh yes, low and behold (BONUS) it's LIGHT OUT early too! 

And don't even get me started with the mosquitoes! Every single night you try. You try to go out on the porch. Maybe there's a full moon. Maybe even shooting stars. And seconds go by and Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Yup there they are. Coming for you. Coming to suck the life out of you.

I hate sticky clothes, having to wear clothes at ALL, when men (most of whom have no business doing so) parade around topless. I dread getting into a hot car and having to use the air conditioning. Keying into a locked (humid) house and having to use more air conditioning. Not ever being able to sleep without a fan. 

And it's damn bright out too! I hate having to wear sunglasses, squinting all the while because the only truly good sunglasses? Are ones that you end up smearing with SPF 500.  And I hate friends of mine who actually LOVE summer. Who are these people and why the Hell am I friends with them? I ask myself. 

Yup. Summer sucks and I am glad when it is almost over. 

My absolute favorite day of the year is the day (and it does happen one day every year) that it is about 7 degrees colder under any shade tree than in the sun around it. That day? Signals cool, calm breezes, the colors of autumn leaves, smoke curling out of chimneys, wood piles stacked high and dry. Yes, that day? Came four days ago and now we are sliding and gliding in fall. 

Summer be damned! We are now on our way to sweater weather!