Trade

Today's Write on Edge prompt is memoir. And the assignment is to conjure an image, a person, a season. Or a moment.

Here's my attempt. In *approximately* 100 words. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.

The tremor was worse. It had given way to shaking. Terrifying, unnatural shaking. At the traffic light, I halted, waiting for the green. The light changed, but I held my breath, not exhaling until I was through the intersection. The car lurched. "Please," I begged. "Just a little more." With another shudder, we crested the hill, rolled into a turn at the next street, and steered into a parking lot. She waited for me. Pale blue and sparkling in the morning light. An hour later, I took her with me. My heart was heavy as I drove away from 100,000 miles of memories. And it was full of anticipation for a new adventure.

I Pledge Allegiance...

You really want to know my most embarrassing moment?

Well, too bad. I'm not sharing that one. But here's one I don't mind telling you about:

The first time I went through customs, I traveled alone. I was twenty years old and far less confident than I pretended to be, but I managed to navigate the labyrinth that is the Toronto International Airport and locate my Canadian hosts on the other side of the International Arrivals gate. 

The American had arrived.

I was there on Official Business. 

Official business as the California representative to Ontario, Canada for an international youth organization.

This was an important trip and a lot of people were excited to meet the blond girl from California. 

So excited were they that a big meeting was scheduled to invite all the local chapters and all of their members to attend. 

It was a whirlwind of meeting new people, mostly teenage girls, and I was unused to being the center of attention. Though I won't pretend I didn't love every minute of it.

The meeting began and I put on my best Serious Face. I was, after all, expected to be a good example to the fine young ladies in attendance and to represent California with pride and dignity.

The Canadian flag was presented and I joined in a rousing chorus of O Canada, an anthem I am proud to know by heart.

And then, out of respect for their visiting foreign dignitary, the American flag was presented and those Canadians rang out an impressive rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. 

Followed by my own national anthem, the young lady conducting the meeting followed our custom and invited me to Pledge Allegiance to my flag. I stood there in that room full of Canadians. The only American. I smiled wide with my hand firmly over my heart and began.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America."

I stopped. 

What's the next line? How does it go? Oh my gosh I'm butchering the pledge in front of a whole bunch of foreigners! I'm embarrassing my country! I'm a national disgrace! What comes next?? I can't believe I don't remember!

A woman near me whispered, "And to the republic..."

I gasped.

"And to the Republic forwhichitstands, 

one nation under God, 

indivisible, withlibertyandjusticeforall."

My cheeks burned with humiliation. I'd forgotten the very pledge I'd been reciting since the age of 5. I'd had to be prompted. And, even worse, I'd had to be prompted by a Canadian.

It doesn't get much more embarrassing than that.

Well, except for this one time. At the beach...

A Day Long Awaited

I'm back!

For short periods of time, anyway.

I broke my arm two months ago and have been trying to keep it sort of easy just maintaining my regular blog. Anyway, I'm back today with my entry for The Red Dress Club's memoir topic: Graduation. Here goes.

It was time.

I hadn't been nervous until now. Even thinking about all the things that could go wrong...

falling down the stairs

tripping across the stage

the cap falling off

getting my gown caught

None of that made me nervous. If any of those things had happened, I would have shrugged it off, laughed about it, and remembered it was graduation and no one would be around to think of that girl who face planted at the feet of the Dean. 

I marched the recessional in step behind a stranger. My cheeks burned as I moved ever closer to the door. To them.

I didn't know the last time my parents had been in a room together. Years.

The divorce had been friendly enough. As friendly as divorces can go, anyway. But somewhere along the way, that all changed. Maybe it was when Dad remarried. Or when Mom let us change religions without asking him about it first. Over the years, the friendliness turned ugly until they finally stopped speaking altogether.

And now they were reunited for my college graduation, which came about five years later than it should have. 

My parents are both reasonable adults, civil and diplomatic when the situation calls for it. I learned that from both of them. It's a trait that has served me well in many occasions. Mom even said it would be good to get it out of the way before my brother's wedding a few months later.

Still, I was nervous. 

At the door I said good bye to a few of the classmates who had become friends over the past two years. We hugged and promised to email and were quickly swamped by a sea of crying mothers and proud grandparents and kids that whined about being hungry.

I scanned the crowd as best I could from my 5 feet and 4 inches, but my family was nowhere to be found. My cheeks burned as I imagined my parents going off in opposite directions, refusing to speak or to be seen together. 

Would that really happen?

I stopped and took a deep breath and there was a tap on my shoulder.

It was my mother.

"Congratulations!" she practically screamed, pride radiating from her pores as she threw her arms around me. 

My dad hung back just a bit with my step-mom, my brother and his fiancée, letting us have our moment. When I let go of my mom, Dad stepped forward and offered his own congratulations. 

I watched them. Looking for signs of something. Of bitterness or friendliness. Anything that would reveal how the rest of the weekend would go.

Things seemed a little awkward. Or was that just me?

"We were talking about dinner," my mom said, shifting a meaningful look in my father's direction. "But we realized we don't know what's around here. Suggestions?"

I laughed. And threw out of couple of ideas. And then I went to dinner with my parents.

A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts

I'm back!

I know. I haven't written anything here on this blog in, like, two weeks. But I have a good excuse, really.

You see, I've FINALLY gotten back on track with finishing my novel. Finally. And I'm going to finish this draft by March 31st if it means going a week without sleep.

But anyway, that's not why you're here. You came by for this:

The vinyl kitchen chair stuck to the backs of my legs in the sticky summer heat. I gulped Kool-Aid, staining my upper lip a brilliant shade of fuschia and continued the search through a pile of cardboard pieces, finally locating the last corner of the puzzle that started to take shape on the table.

"Here, try this." Grandpa held a bowl to my level. It was filled with white chunks of something I had never seen before. Not in that form, anyway.

"What is it?" I sniffed at the contents.

"Just try it."

My younger brother Marc left his seat with a loud snap as vinyl peeled away from his skin. He grabbed a piece from the bowl without waiting to find out what it was. With a full mouth he pronounced it "delithuth."

Still, I hesitated. The kid ate Play-doh, after all. His palate wasn't exactly picky.

"You'll like it, I promise. And if you don't, there's a whole box of fudge-sicles in the freezer."

The promise of fudge-sicles was enough to convince me to do just about anything. I reached out and found the smallest bit, turning it over in my fingers, inspecting it carefully before committing my suspicious taste buds. Marc was reaching for his third by now and I shoved the piece in my mouth before I could talk myself out of it.

A strange combination of crispy and creamy mingled with sweet. I smiled. "What is it?"

"Fresh coconut," Grandpa said, as if the answer should have been obvious.

I was puzzled. Coconut came in shapes besides shredded? And shredded coconut had never tasted as delicious as this treat. I snagged another before Grandpa could take the bowl away.

Three weeks later, my third grade teacher began a unit about Hawaii. She pulled out a bowl filled with chunks of something white. "Who can tell me what this is?"

I raised my hand with pride and hope of another taste.

Snow Day

It's time for another writing prompt from The Red Dress Club. Only this one isn't fiction. Tuesday is all about memoir. Which means, this is a true story.

The sun was bright in that deceptive way that makes it look much warmer outside than it really is.

A yellow scarf was wound carefully around my neck. I tugged at it with a mittened hand, unaccustomed to such trappings. The matching wool cap made my forehead itch, but pulling it off made my unprotected ears too cold. I kept it on.

We left the truck parked beside the road and hiked up a small hill, my six-year-old feet sinking into the several inches of fresh snow that had fallen the night before. Dad proclaimed it the perfect place and gently lobbed a snowball in my direction. It landed on my shoulder and I giggled as I tried to match his ability in the craft and toss of a perfect snowball.

My mother and little brother were supposed to be there, but they were home with the flu. So it was just me and my dad. All day in the mountains, playing and laughing and freezing.

I had to go to the bathroom. Immediately. We found a restaurant that had a bathroom out back. There was a sign on the Women's Room door and though I could read "Out of Order" I didn't know what that meant. Dad told me I'd have to use the boys' bathroom and I panicked.

"That's not allowed!" I said. "Won't I go to jail?"

He grinned at my childish fear and assured me that I would not, in fact, go to jail if I used the boys' bathroom. He also cautioned me not to make a habit of it. It was an unnecessary warning. I've never used the men's room again.

There was lunch and sledding and a lot of stumbling, but mostly laughter.

Over the years, my relationship with my father grew distant. Strained. There was less laughter and more fighting. And every time I started to believe that he'd never really loved me, I thought back to that day in the snow. A day when it was just me and him. A perfect day when I was the only one that mattered.

Things between us are better now. I've grown up and so has he. It isn't perfect, but there are moments now when I remember what it felt like to be that giggling little girl.