Oh cruel fate, that dared to schedule the Portland Marathon for the same weekend as the annual Tennessean National Storytelling Festival. Cruel fate, with your cruel, yellowed scheduling book and your cruel, uneraseable scheduling pencil. I bite my thumb at thee. Alas, I will be absent from this year's festivities of storytelling in the great state of Tennessee. And so, I give you a taste of last year's trip to what I call, Camp Moonshine. Truthfully, it's more than a taste. It's more like an enormous gulp that burns your belly and pickles your brain.

Camp Moonshine

In early October in the year of 2002, I went to summer camp. I was 25 years old and it wasn't summer. But this wasn't the camp you remember from grade school. This was camp with moonshine. This wasn't sappy swaying to the cute counselor's guitar-accompanied warbling of "One Tin Soldier Rides away...." This was stomping of feet and slapping of knees to bluegrass music sung by a grandfather and his grandson. This wasn't catty fights and teary make-ups across bunk beds. This was good-natured drunken screaming across the bonfire "Are you sleeping? There's no sleeping at the party!" This wasn't getting up at 7 AM to file into the cafeteria and stare at slopping piles of food. This was getting up at 10 AM to find cinnamon rolls baking and coffee brewing, even if the poor puckered belly wasn't quite ready for it. This wasn't butt-numbed Brady Bunch lip syncing skits, where the loudest laughter came from seeing a boy dressed up as Alice. This was hours upon hours of quality storytelling from a diversity of cultures and ages. This wasn't summer camp of old. This was summer camp with moonshine. And where there were many differences there was one similarity. At the end of this camp trip we were left with the same adolescent, impatient conviction that no one at home would truly understand the adventure we had just experienced.

Our camp wasn't exactly a camp. It was more like a house. A big old brick house sitting back on the green hills of Gray, Tennessee. Although I have to say, I never did see the town of Gray. For all I know the town was our camp/house, its population consisting entirely of the hoards of transient visitors that wandered in and out of the house the nights and days of that weekend. My campmates were stuffed into every nook, cranny, hammock, porch, loft, hay bale, piece of floor and bed in the house. Our “Camp Director” was the great flash of light that is Mary J. Mary has a seemingly endless amount of energy. She catered to every need of the 30 people that were staying in her house, be it food, a ticket to the festival, a place to sleep, or even my mumbled, pained request later that weekend, “do you...um...know where I could maybe find some Pepto Bismol?” I had received my “camp invitation” via email from my old friend Whitney, daughter of Mary. Brave, blond, belching Whitney, my traveling companion of Dublin, Ireland and Austin, Texas fame. I accepted the invitation partly because past meetings with Whitney often proved to be adventure verging on the edge of danger. I have a feeling many of us had arrived with that same anticipation. We were all there for the National Story Telling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. And we were all there to drink moonshine. We were not to be disappointed.

I arrived at the Knoxville airport late that Thursday night. My camp bus was waiting for me, with Whitney, as my bus driver and soon to be new friends and campmates, Michael and Shannon. “Welcome to Tennessee.” said Michael in his Irish accent as he handed me an open beer from the back seat. So my weekend began.

I awoke early the next morning and decided to go for a run. It proved to be a good idea, for this was the only time in the duration of my stay that I was physically able to run further than across a busy street to avoid being hit by a car. It was beautiful. It was green. It was lush farm country. I started out over rolling hills. I muttered shy hellos to the cows (shy because I wasn’t convinced by my ability to tell the difference between bulls and cows) and sharp admonishments to the old dogs that crossed the street to bark at me. I returned refreshed to see all in the household had risen. New strange people sat around drinking tea, eating breakfast and chatting. They were just the first few to arrive, more campmates would be coming.

Later that day, the “buses” dropped us off at the Story Telling Festival. The 3-day annual festival takes place in downtown Jonesborough, a historical town divided in two by a quaint main street lined with shops selling hand-stitched quilts and lollipops. The side streets were dotted with large white tents that morning. Crowds of people milled around and through the open tent flaps. It looked like the circus had come to town. A circus strangely absent of animals. Instead of giraffes and elephants, storytellers from across the world must have tumbled off the back of the circus train. Through the opening of the tents, I could hear the lilting voices of lone storytellers, punctuated by the rising laughter and falling sympathetic sighs of the audience. I entered one of the tents and sat among the spectators beside great silver poles pushing up into white bellies of canvas.

As I took my seat among the flapping, church-revival hand fans, questions ran through my mind. The same questions that are probably running through yours, and were made apparent by a conversation I had with my dad prior to the festival. "What the hell is a storytelling festival?" he asked me, "What, you just sit around and listen to a bunch of stories? People pay for this?" Meet my dad, the economist. Yes, you sit and listen to stories. But they are told by people recognized for their ability to weave colorful tales out of thin air. Some of them are well-known, published writers, others are famous simply for their ability to capture an audience's attention and bring them to the edge of their seats. And honestly, is there anything better than hearing a really good story told by a really good storyteller? "So, do you tell stories too?" my dad asked, "Hey, you should tell that one you wrote when you were six, the one about Wilbur the Flying Christmas Tree!" No, Dad. I am an audience member. I am there to listen. Nobody wants to hear my story about the Christmas tree. Although Wilbur was pretty cool. You see, he was a Christmas tree and he could FLY.

That day, I sat among the hushed crowd and watched the storytellers, one after another, jump up on stage and whisk us off to the lands in their heads. There was Bobby Norfolk, the African-American Emmy Award winning storyteller. There was Johnny Moses, a small, soft-spoken Native American, who had been sent out to by his people to share his tribe's tales with the world. And finally there was Don Davis, my favorite, a grey-haired, bespectacled and bow tied Tennessean who charmed the crowd with memories of his childhood in rural Tennessee.

We returned to camp a little dazed that evening and the post-storytelling festivities began. Our heads were filled with stories, and our bellies were soon to be filled with moonshine. Every year, Mary gives a post-storytelling party. The bonfire is lit, the hay bales are set out, and the moonshine jars are popped open. The moonshine jars made their way around the circle that night and when one came to me...I must have had a moments thought. Me a triathlete, drinking corn liquor brewed by the local deputy? Me, a runner, cycler, swimmer, electrolyte popper, whey protein drinker, vitamin swallower, gu sucker, gell-butted cycling shorts wearer, 5AM swimmer was thinking of putting this in my body? But you have to understand, this was good moonshine. This was a delicate blend of home brewed liquor and the juice of peaches and blackberries. And while it burned the eyes, and numbed the palate, it was an intoxicating elixir I was unable to refuse. And anyways, I was at camp. And camp has its own rules.

That night we stayed up until 4:30 AM chatting, joking, and yelling. I got to know my campmates in that intimate way you do when everyone’s a little tipsy and willing to share details probably better left unsaid. Shannon and I discovered we had both “disinvited” our boyfriends, not because we didn’t love them, but because the combination of moonshine and Whitney was too great a gauntlet not to pick up on one’s own. Darren videotaped us all and unfortunately most of my drunken ramblings. Tyler and I matched shots of moonshine. I do not recommend matching moonshine shots with a boy born and bred in Tennessee. You will not be able to keep up. There was a local farming couple who told me about waking up to an exquisite sunrise that morning on their farm. There was a boy named Pietrie and his sweet giggly girlfriend. Pietries’ stories of Whitney and drunken college adventures were remarkably similar to my Whitney and post-college drunken adventures.. There was Michael who stood up and sang Irish songs loudly, but thankfully in tune. There was Lindsey’s and my talk of getting up and running the next morning. And then there was Boo. Boo was a local from Gray who had arrived late that evening. He could be described as “a little rough around the edges”. He had somehow managed to surpass our level of drunkenness to higher levels of alcoholic mania. He was a small, slightly stooped man with not an entire set of teeth. His speech was garbled and raspy. The one conversation I did have with him regarding the native peoples of Tennessee, or was it the blue-skinned families of Kentucky, left me as confused as he seemed. Boo’s low point came when he fell over a hay bale and almost directly into the fire. I believe at one point there was talk of a fight between Boo and someone else. But nothing came of it. All in all it was a grand night.

The next morning was a different story. I woke dry-mouthed, wearing clothes from the night before, in a room and bed I didn't remember stumbling into. And I lay there in great screaming pain. I soon found out if I didn't move at all, and took only shallow breaths, the pain did not entirely subside, but it did draw in upon itself. It pooled in towards the middle of my spine and left me with a slight throbbing pressure. Shannon walked by at the moment of my awakening, and angel that she is, came back quickly with Advil and water to hush my whimpering.

As I lay there, the events of the night came back to me, much like they did to a hung over Homer in a Simpsons episode. In Homer's case he recalled the early hours of the night, where in a suit and a monocle, he sipped wine and dispensed witty humor worthy of Oscar Wilde. Yes, I remembered that part. I remembered being witty. At least I remembered people laughing and pointing in my direction. Oh no. In the Simpsons episode, the Oscar Wilde scene began to spin nauseatingly, until it stopped on a drunk, bleary-eyed, disheveled Homer Simpson, drooling into the punchbowl, and ogling neighbor Maude's breasts. Aside from the ogling of the breasts, I feared that had been me. Embarrassing memories began to surface. Had I really yelled at Darren and Kevin because they kept falling asleep? Had I really yelled at that man who was playing guitar because he wouldn’t play "Blackbird" one more time? Had I really been yelling? It didn’t matter that at one point I had been yelling about novelist Barbara Kingsolver and the Poisonwood Bible. I had been yelling. Had anyone else been yelling? I could not recall. Then I realized what I had become. I had become a smaller, female, and possibly more attractive version of Boo. I had not fallen into the fire, but was that my last shred of dignity I had to hang onto?

I never wanted to get out of bed. I never wanted to face my campmates again. But after a few hours of stiffness and fear of bedsores, I pushed myself to a standing position and made my way downstairs. Everyone was up and everyone was cheery. Those who had had just as much moonshine as I, those who had been dancing around the fire, were unaffected by the poison I now felt in my bowels. And I cursed them. As I entered the kitchen, they seemed to light upon my shoulders like little, caffeinated birds and chirp in my poor, hung over ears. "Oh, you look a little tired, Megan." and "What's for breakfast?" and "Who's ready to go to storytelling?" Who's ready to go to storytelling? It was barely the crack of 10AM and these people were ready to get in the claustrophobic, swerving confines of a car? I waved them aside, and lurched, groaning, like the Elephant Man, to collapse at the kitchen table. In my moment of despair, Tyler was driven by some cruel intention to take a picture of me. If you should ever come across this Polaroid, you will see a shrunken 80 year old woman at a table, bony little fingers clutching at a coffee cup. It is reminiscent of photos from the Depression, or the sketches from the Potato Famine in Ireland.

Across the kitchen sitting on a stool and clutching a coffee cup much like mine, I saw a kindred spirit. It was Lindsey, sister of Whitney. Like me she was in the clothes she had slept in. Like me she wore a grey, pained expression. Like me she seemed to move at a dinosaur-like pace, while others fluttered and flew around us. And because of our mutual pain, my spirits rose a little. But not too much, because on that day, even my spirits were nauseous.

Somehow Lindsey and I ended up in the same car going out to the festival. This may be because it was the absolute last car to leave that morning. We had both taken showers, but the showers hadn't taken to us. A greasy, unwashable sheen coated our insides and outsides. We sat queasily side by side, Lindsey driving, and me staring pleadingly out to the horizon, looking for some sign that I would not vomit. Lindsey's eyes were shrunken pinpricks, through which she peered out onto the road. The silence was broken only by moans of, "Oh, the bumps." and "Sweet baby Jesus, help me." Our backseat car mates must have regretted their choice of vehicles, for they kept a wary silence.

The sight of Jonesborough over the next hill was the sweetest thing I had ever seen. No longer would I be in the rolling, weaving car, but on solid ground, where multitudes of places to throw-up were now offered up to me. I was tearfully grateful. We made our way to one of the tents, surprisingly without incident, just in time to see the great Carmen Deedy speak. Actually my friends saw her; I was on the ground, curled fetus-like around one of the steel poles, straining my ears to hear her. Carmen is a little fireball of a storyteller. She told a funny and touching story of leaving her native land of Cuba as a child for the strange, drawling land of Decatur, Georgia. I struggled to follow her tale, but my little, pickled brain muffled her words. At the end of the story, she walked off the stage and then turned back to retrieve her shoes. And with a little shrug she threw the shoes into the audience, not unlike a rock star throwing his guitar pick into the crowd after a particularly good set. We loved it.

After lunch, my head began to clear and my stomach stopped punching at my bruised liver. We saw more storytellers including eighty-year old Kathryn Windham from the Appalachian Mountains. She recounted the superstitions of her family and gave advice on how to keep ghosts from stealing your shoes. Our last story teller was again Donald Davis. The tent was packed to beyond capacity and we had to sit on the grass outside. I never did see Donald Davis that day, but it didn’t matter. I heard his voice and I heard his story “Listening for the Crack of Dawn”. If you would like to be transported to Donald Davis’ childhood the way I was that day, go buy the book, I will not attempt to retell it.

We returned again to our camp/house again that evening for another celebration. I, of course, would be needing a nap. I awoke refreshed a number of hours later to darkness, food, and laughter. Tonight we would have a bonfire AND a bluegrass band. I was determined to start the night out slowly. Tammy and I sat quietly on a haystack and nursed our beers as the accursed jars of moonshine passed us by. Then the band began to play. This was foot-stomping bluegrass music. There was a guitar player, a mandolin player and a talented fiddler who shares my first name. The lead singer was an older man and later that night he sang with his grandson. It was a grand night, and it was a saner night than before. My newly found confidence was broken only by comments of “Oh, Megan you seem so much calmer tonight!” said by people I did not recall speaking to the night before. I did have a sip or two of the poison I had sworn off that morning. But I had learned the importance of moderation. Do not attempt to be an Oscar Wilde and you won’t end up as a Boo. The night again continued into the wee hours. Brandon and Kevin proudly took up their roles as the “Moonshine Dancers”. Whitney and Mary played lovely hosts to the growing crowd of people. Shannon kept an eagle eye out for trouble and drunken belligerence and when she found it, quickly went to bed. Tammy and Lindsey gleefully recounted make-out stories with nameless boys from the night before, while keeping an eye out for tonight’s nameless boys. Michael, surprisingly showed up with the great Carmen Deedy on his arm. They sat cozily together on a hay bale and whispered into each other's ears. There was a man whose mother had dated Elvis, and there was much talk of his physical resemblance to the king. But there was no Boo. His presence was strangely absent. I was in a much more sober state this evening and was curious to see Boo in action with a clearer head. But he never appeared. And no one ever spoke of him. And then the horrible realization came over me. Maybe there had never been a Boo. Boo had only appeared late the night before when I was in the depths of my drunken frenzy. Had I imagined Boo? Had I somehow created him? Maybe by popping that third jar of moonshine I had invoked the genie of drunken belligerence named Boo. Perhaps my moonshine breath had breathed life into the Spirit of Excessive Alcohol. Perhaps I had been hallucinating.

But I had talked to him, we had had a conversation. Surely my friends would have tugged at my sleeve if I had been standing staring off into the darkness and talking to myself! Surely. It was something to give much thought. It is true that out of all of the photos I had taken Friday night, there is only one of Boo. He is standing behind those smiling into the camera, a shadowy figure, devoid of features except for the dark flash of a missing tooth. Was Boo real? Was he my own personal Snuffalufagus? I know now, if one night, I find myself in an Austin honkytonk too far gone to safely walk home, and out of the corner of my eye I see a small Boo-like figure, my suspicions will have been confirmed. If I hear a raspy, gargled voice behind me, and turn to find no one there, I will know that in my moonshine state I may bring the wrath of Boo to those around me.

I awoke the next morning in a much better state. No more screaming pain in the bowels. It was my last day of storytelling and my last day of camp. I would fly out late that evening. I was a confident veteran of this festival and wandered from tent to tent. I heard the last of Carmen Deedy and an unfortunate story of Vienna Sausage told by a man who very much resembled a Vienna Sausage. As I browsed the shops in Jonesborough, Tyler found me. "Our friends are going to the airport, you should catch a ride with them." Now? They're leaving now? Well, of course I should, I thought. I wouldn't want Whitney driving multiple 3-hour trips to the Knoxville airport for all of her visitors. But I was sad. For you see, my camp bus had come early, and I was not ready to go. My two campmates were kind bus drivers. They cheered me up on our ride back to the house, with musings on the illustrative qualities of chicken catalogues. At the house, I gathered up my things and walked back through the empty rooms and out into the back field, the site of our evening festivities. The quietness gave me a chance to say goodbye to my camp. Goodbye little log cabin. Goodbye peaceful beach ball floating in the pool. Goodbye swinging hammock and smoking bonfire remnants. Goodbye empty moonshine jars and ghosts of my dancing, drunken campmates. Goodbye house. Goodbye Camp Moonshine. I'll see you next summer!




- posted by Megan Stevenson @ 6:57 AM

 
Hmmm..perhaps Wednesday will now become the day of new posts.

A Fiery Giant

The clouds have split. After a grey, wet weekend, the sun has taken its rightful place in our wide Texas sky. We who live in this large, flat state have a love-hate relationship with Mr. Sun. In the summer, we fear him. We open our front doors to a slap in the face with a fiery breath. We crawl to our cars, muttering pleading curses. "But why am I sweating at 7AM, damnit?" We pick at burns on our palms caused from brief contact with baking steering wheels . We wear light cotton clothing, in the vain hope that we will not arrive at work with dark sweat rings underneath our arms. During those months, Mr. Sun is an enormous, tireless stalker who waits outside our houses, our places of work, even the grocery store. He stands there, hands hanging heavily at his sides, one yellow eye fixed on us and waits. No matter how we try to ignore him, or how long we dawdle in front of the soup can aisle, he will wait. He has nothing better to do. We must gasp the last frigid breathes of air conditioning before we step out and are enveloped in his sweating cupped hands. When he does retire for the night, he leaves behind a sizzling trail across the town.

But, oh you should see Mr. Sun in the fall. He is shrunken, he is tamed. He is a small neighborhood child who taps at your window. "Come out. Look at me, I am soft and dappled. Come and play. This is the time of cool grass and cartwheels." I feel it difficult not to answer Mr. Sun's calls, even when I am at work. But you must still be wary of Mr. Sun in the fall. If you turn your back, if you run in for a second to fetch a frisbee, he may grow and transform from the gentle child to the fiery giant who laughs big blazing guffaws at your whimpering, and sends you with a slap on the bum, scurrying back inside. Back to the siren call of the air conditioning.

We hearty, wizened Austinites hate the fiery giant, but are secretly proud of our ability to survive his abuse. Austin thrives in the heat. She bubbles and bakes in the 110 degrees like a good lasagna. Life continues in defiance. Live music pours out of open windows of honky-tonks. City-wide chili cookoffs are planned for the heat of midday. We stomp through the scorching streets like soldiers. Our heads are down as we push our way through the fire. We dive into the frozen water of Barton Springs and come up gasping, lungs squeezed of all air. We float down the river in big rubber tubes and dehydrate ourselves with multiple beers. We work, we play, we train for marathons. We thumb our noses at the fiery giant. Our flaking sunburns, our squinted red eyes, our pouring, endless sweat are badges of honor. We wear our badges with pride.

But when our sun leaves completely, we are lost. When he hides in a blanket of grey clouds that hangs over our skyline, we despair. We forget quickly how cruel he could be. We think only of the good times we had with him. The bike ride at sunset, the bright, crisp morning run on Town Lake, that glorious, breezy afternoon atop Mount Bonnel. Austin does not wear grey weather well. There are some cities that do. Portland is a jewel in the rain. She shimmers through the droplets like an underwater kingdom. Austin, in contrast, looks drab yet gaudy. The charm of the town does not translate into grey. The peeling paint, the slamming screen doors, the statues of monkeys and dragons over toy stores, all of the things I love about Austin look sad and decrepit. The people of Austin do not wear grey weather well either. We are paralyzed and depressed, head hanging over the edge of the couch as our knuckles drag on the floor. We cannot remember what it was we had to do. All those errands and plans we had when the sun was out, they all fall flat on the floor. We are nauseous, we are angry. We cannot imagine getting out of bed.

And then, he returns. And we leap from the covers and throw back the curtains. Aha! Yes, I was planning on going shopping. That's what it was! I was planning on calling my mom! Aha! I was going swimming! We open our doors, eyes blinking at the brightness, and start our days. We do cartwheels in the grass and grab with both hands, the tiny warm palms of little Mr. Sun. He smiles at us kindly. For now.


- posted by Megan Stevenson @ 8:58 AM

 
Diving into the New

I am late with this week's entry. I give you no excuse, other than to say this has been a week of preparation for change. I and people in my life seem to be perched precariously on the edge of some large event or experience. We are all in a row on blocks, in the last few seconds before a swim race with toes curled over the side, bodies bent towards the water, waiting for the buzzer to go. Hurry, let us dive. Let us go, but quickly before we lose our nerve. We fear the cold and the wet, and the splashing and the lost breath. We are afraid and we are exhilarated. These last few seconds are painful. We are diving into the new.

My sister Missy's last few seconds before diving into the new, are the hours before a flight. She is leaving for Spain today. She will be on a study-abroad program for four months. When I talk to her, she sounds anxious and doubtful. She is unable to see herself in Spain, unable to believe she is actually going. She has packed as much as she can, she's prepared as much as she can, and the last couple of hours, she must sit, thumbs a-twiddling and try to picture that other Missy confident and jaunty, arms swinging through sunny streets as she speaks rapid Spanish to friends hanging out of windows. She is unable to picture this Missy. I tell her this is normal, that in Mexico or Ireland, I had a hard time picturing myself in the country even when I was there. After a few weeks, I felt so overloaded by the surreal foreignness of everything, that my brain finally stopped racing, stopped gulping in every bright new foreign object. Only then things began to feel normal. She responds to this advice the way she usually responds to anything I say. "You sound just like Mom." she taunts, "You're turning into her you know that? And Mom's crazy! You even talk like her." This is Missy's favorite insult, because it's so effective. No woman wants to be like their mom. Don't pretend like you do.

My last few seconds before diving into the new, are these weeks before my marathon. I have never run a marathon. I feel myself mentally curling in on myself, looking within to see if there is the strength and endurance I need. Is it there? I hope so, I hope it's not disguised bravado. I ran my last long run on Saturday, 3 and 1/2 hours of struggle and pain. I finished with bones dry and creaky in their joints, a toe ballooned up into a translucent blister and skin chafed into raw, red welts from my heart rate moniter and sports bra lining. But it wasn't as bad as I thought. Really. I thought the last twenty minutes would be me weeping, vomiting, and arguing loudly with imaginary shuffling companions. I thought I would be holding out my limp arms to passersby while calling to them in a raspy, aged voice, "Please help meeee. Tell me to stop running. Just tell me it's OK to stop running." But instead I finished the run in a sprint. I know now I will be able to run the Portland marathon. I pressed up against the membrane of impossibility and I didn't break through, I didn't tumble down towards injury or heat-induced insanity. We'll see how I do during the actual race.

Ponyboy's sister Heather's last few seconds before diving into the new, are the weeks before her wedding. We attended a shower for her and her groom-to-be, Channing, this last Saturday. The shower was thankfully non-traditional and non-girly. Men and women were invited. Heather wasn't forced to wear a crown of ribbons and we weren't forced to endure any those childish, yet sexual shower games. There was a pinata, but pinatas are fun and decidedly not girly. It proved entertaining to watch Channing beat the living crap out of the downed and wounded pinata as bubblegum and prophylactics leaked out of its sides, until we pulled him back, flailing, and lifted his blindfold. "It's dead, Channing. The pinata is dead." The next morning, Heather tells me she is ready for this time of preparation to be over, that this last month could be completely erased so they could get to the meat of the meal, to the actual wedding. I sympathize with her impatience, and am a little envious, as I still have seven months until my own wedding.

But seeing someone else in their last few seconds, gives me the chance to reflect on what brought each one of us here. What put each of us up on this block where we must wait for it all to begin.

Who knew years ago, when Ponyboy introduced me to Heather, shaking hands across a wooden table at a Dallas bar and later whispering approval of each other in Ponyboy's ear, that someday she and I would become family. Or that she would soon meet the man who she will choose to spend the rest of her life with. Who knew that now, we would sit in her backyard, watching her daughter, little wild-haired Maggie chase my canine daughter, large wagging Sayla across the grass, as we compared and complained about our individual wedding plan decisions. And not far beneath the superficial comments on wedding ceremony musicians, was the whisper of something stronger, the realization of the new life-long connection to each other.

And how did little apple-cheeked, hands-on-hips, eight-year old Little Missy turn into a mature and independent twenty-one year old about to launch herself into another country and another language? Our family will always see my sister as a child just learned to walk. We are overly impressed at the smallest form of independent achievement, much to Missy's annoyance. "You mean you did that all by yourself? Nobody helped you make that?" That's what you get for being the youngest.

And how did I, the laziest, slug of a girl seemingly allergic to exercise turn into a half-Ironwoman and future Marathon woman? I'm still not entirely sure. I think I just got bored. I think someone told me I couldn't do it.

So here we all are, crouched on our blocks, goggles on and heads bent towards the water. We are all sisters and we are just itching to go. Our individual buzzers will go off and we will dive into the new.
- posted by Megan Stevenson @ 2:37 PM

 
With Jaws that Lock

We are a pack. The six of us, Ponyboy, Mahllett, Ryan, Baby Birdie, Sayla and Ruby, some of us on four legs, others on two, we are a yapping, yelping, snapping pack. We gather together on weekends, to snarl and nip at each other, to insult and call each other names. Any sign of weakness is reason enough to leap and tear into hides of self esteem. The beaten member is fully expected to either back down, head hung submissively, or roar back with a better insult. We gather to drink Shiner until the early morning on the porch of one our homes. Our laughter echoes like hyenas down darkened streets. As a pack we run together, down the cement path, at the drunken hour of midnight to dive into the calm, deserted water of the apartment complex pool. To hang there for a few blue muted moments, paws and feet in a slow-motion suspension, and then come up panting, with slick pelts and closed eyes, to howl and screech at the moon.

We are tight, impenetrable as a family of wolves. Our loyalty to each other tested and cemented over years of friendships, relationships, even daily feedings and walks, as criss-crossed as a cat's cradle. Ryan is Ponyboy's best friend, Mahlett is my best friend. Sayla is our dog, Ruby is Ryan's dog. Mahlett is the surrogate mother of both dogs and because of her patience for hours of stick-throwing, we suspect is also the dog's favorite human. Mahlett and Ryan were once together, a long, involved relationship that left them with the certainty that they were better as friends. Our connections are looped and braided around each member, through and back again, until we are bound together by snarled knot none of us are interested in undoing.

Only two in our pack are actual canines, but they are kind enough not to bring it up. We repay this respect by treating them almost as equals. Sayla is a lanky, golden pit bull with sly eyes and a wrinkled forehead. Ruby is a squat, dollop of a dog, a solid muscle-bound brick covered with loose skin. Our years together have blurred the differences between our species, and I feel we are close to breakthrough on man/dog communication. I would not be surprised if one day, Sayla would stand on two legs, look me directly in the eye, and say in a crisp British accent, "I find it exceedingly difficult to communicate with you. It may be best from now on, to speak in the language you call English. Let's give it a go. I want what you're eating. Is that clear?" I also doubt Sayla and Ruby would find it surprising if we finally gave up this awkward balance on our hind legs and fell in next to them in their sniffing search of the front yard. Or if we started licking them back, instead of those squeaking purse-lipped human kisses. It's not difficult to imagine any of us as some breed of dog. Ryan, of course, would be a happy and somewhat dim, energetic golden retriever. Ponyboy and I would both be small, strong, yapping, irritable and irritating terriers. Merritt would be a sleepy, grumpy pure-bred of some sort, one who tired quickly of chasing balls or sticks and would prefer to lay belly up in the sun.

We are a pack, but you need not fear us. We will not hurt you. We're a friendly lot. If you invite one us to your house and make the mistake of telling us to bring friends, all four of us will show up at the door. But we will bring Shiner. If you make the mistake of saying you like dogs, all six of us will show up at your door, bright-eyed and panting. But we will thoroughly entertain you and try not to destroy too much of your stuff.

But if you mess with one of us, we will all turn on you. Don't make some disparaging comment about pit bulls and the fools that own them, unless you want to endure a long, foaming lecture from Ponyboy, who points at a sweet, pleading Sayla resting her head on your knees. He will convince you that kind owners raise kind dogs and mean owners raise mean dogs and you are a hopelessly ignorant person. Don't make fun of Ryan or his love of stupid romantic comedies. That is our job. We won't be mad, but we will think less of you for awhile. We will talk behind your back. Or worse, we won't talk about you at all. We may remind you that he is the only one who is actually pursuing a graduate degree. In a number of years we will all be calling him, "Dr. Ryan Stupidhead". Don't play with the heart of Merritt. Don't send her flirtatious emails and then disappear for weeks at a time. We won't beat you up, but we might if we ever meet you. Don't cut Ponyboy off in traffic. He'll probably kill you, and then we would all have to help him hide the body, because we would never turn a member of the pack in to the police. Never. Oh, and don't be a cat. Because Ruby will eat you. Don't mess with any member of our pack. Our pack has history together. Our pack is family. Our pack has jaws that lock.


- posted by Megan Stevenson @ 11:26 AM

 
Snapshots of a Birdie Wedding
This past weekend marked an important event to those close to me. My parents, John and Kathy, celebrated 30 years of marriage. It is surprising to me that they even remembered to celebrate their anniversary. They never could when I was little. "Wait. What day is it? Johnny, is today our anniversary?" This could be because of the day's close proximity to a grander, flashier event. The one we were never allowed to forget. My mom's birthday. It would be impossible to forget this day, because she reminds us all every day starting a month beforehand. "28 more shopping days until my b-day!"

But this year was different. This year even my mom's birthday couldn't overshadow the day marking 30 years together. This year they stayed at the romantic Columbia Gorge hotel in Portland, Oregon. This year my dad shed his usual bratty, cynical self and became a true romantic. He took my mom to dinner, he took her dancing. But he's still my dad. He's still a little silly, a little laughable. The anniversary card he gave her was folded and creased from sitting in his pocket for too long. He was unable to describe to me the gold diamond necklace he was planning on giving her, because in his words, "You know I can't tell the difference between all that womansy stuff." Maybe because of my parents' rare attention to this important day, I have decided to pay homage in my own way. I celebrate my parents' time together now by retelling the story of the day that started it all, my parents' wedding day.

Of course, I have no real memories of my parents' wedding. I wasn't there. It would be years before I would slip into this world, a good, quiet baby, save for a few squawks. My "memories" are pieced together from the yellowed pages of the 1970's flowered photo album in the bookcase of my parents' family room. When I was little, I would flip through the pages of this album over and over again. The photos fascinated me. They were a peek into a time before me. A time I had difficulty believing really happened. These pictures directly contradicted my 2nd-grade, 8-year-old logic that told me my parents didn't really exist before Missy and me. Did they? Could they? "What did you DO before I was born? When were you not Mom and Dad?" As if, at the time of my birth, Mom and Dad also came into being, fully formed and fully prepared for their roles as parents.

I was also fascinated by the photos because their wedding was different. It was special. It was...a hippy wedding. They had abstained from any form of tradition, because this was the 60's, man! Well, it was the early 70's, really, but, whatever, the free spiritedness was still there. We don't need no steenking traditions. The colorful tackiness, the radical innocence of the time seemed to leap out of these images. I had yet to become critical of my parents' generation as I stared at these photos. I had yet to become the teenager who screamed from her room, "I'm so SICK of you damn whiney baby boomers! Why don't you all go off and die somewhere! Nobody cares about your generation anymore!" I was still the little Baby Birdie, whose heart filled with pride while she pored through the snapshots of her young, beautiful, wild-looking parents.

There were a few photos in the album that would make me pause and look even closer. Every time I looked through the album I would always stop at these same photos. Here are my favorite snapshots of my parents' wedding.

Snapshot #1 - My parents stand next to each other in a carpeted, wood-paneled church basement. They look happy and maybe a little uncomfortable with everyone staring at them. The photo is taken in the middle of the wedding ceremony. My mom is in purple mini-skirt, my dad in a colorful shirt and jeans. My mom holds a bouquet of flowers, only because my more conventional uncle Greg had given them to her, had pleaded with her to have just this one tiny little form of tradition in her wedding. She tells me, years later, she is grateful for this, the dried flowers one of the few things she still has from the day she was married. In the photo, my mom is dark, like an Indian princess with long black shining hair. My Dad looks like his Irish roots, blue eyed, corkscrew hair combed up into a strange half-afro. They look like an alternate, fairy-tale ending to the romance between a reincarnated Clark and Sacagawea.

Snapshot #2 - The wedding guests sit cross-legged on the basement floor. Chairs must have been too conventional for the wedding. The photo catches them unaware, all eyes, all attention focused off camera, on the ceremony. They are all loose-limbed, deeply tanned, and unmistakably Californian. They are all so young. Some faces are familiar; I see my aunts and uncles in these young kids. My aunt Colleen is younger version of my mom, another Indian princess. My uncle Eddie still looks like a maniacally friendly terrorist. I see my grandparents in these smiling middle-aged couples. My dad's dad, my grandfather, looks the same, a little drunk. My mom tells me later, he urinated outside on the church wall, while guests came in through the door. My mom's parents look completely at peace in this hippy atmosphere. There is no sign of the tension between my liberal mom and her conservative dad. There is no sign of the heated political arguments that would plague our holiday dinners for years to come, or the rift that would widen between them over the years. Right now, there is only pride and love in my grandfather's eyes.

Snapshot #3 - The most sharply dressed of them all, the best man, sits on the floor next to my parents, looking idiotically up at them, tongue hanging out, tie askew. It is Blinker, our dog, an Oakland fighting street dog, so tamed by my parents' love, that by the time Missy and I came around, we could ride him, grey-muzzled around the backyard. Blinker is on his best behavior for the wedding. My dad had trained Blinker for weeks to walk down the aisle without a leash.

Snapshot #4 - A defiant little wedding cake sits on the reception table. It is made of two Twinkies placed side by side, and atop is placed a statue of a formally dressed bride and groom. This photo always disturbed me a little, not because it was made of twinkies, but because my concern that they were trying to feed all those people with only two Twinkies. Did they slice off little paper thin pieces of processed sweet bread and whipped cream for each guest? It seemed unfair.

Snapshot #5 - My parents run out the church door while the wedding guests soak them with water guns instead of throwing rice. Everyone is laughing and screeching. The only one who isn't enjoying the water gun antics is Blinker, who associates spraying water with being in trouble. He looks perturbed and confused by this punishment when he had just put on such a good show during the ceremony.

After closing the album, I would come back to the real world, where these kids had somehow transformed into Mom and Dad. But I still feel proud of them. Proud of them for doing something different, something unique, and most importantly making it work. Maybe if after such an unconventional wedding, they had turned into burnt out hippies, or drug addicts, you could point back at the wedding and say, "Aha! See, this is where it all started. They were weirdos from the beginning!" But because of they are so incredibly normal, Dad with his small crop of blueberries he guards from the neighborhood kids every summer, Mom with her nervous preparations for her monthly book group meeting, because of their love for each other, the "love trips" they plan for every vacation, the weekly schedule Dad writes up on the dry erase board, "Tonight is 'date night', tomorrow is 'mix and match'", because of this all, it proves that tradition need not define you or your happiness. It proves that you can create your own rules and still make it in life. And while these quirks of my parents make my sister and I groan with embarrassment, they are also signs of a healthy happy marriage.

My favorite photo of all is not from my parents' wedding but from years later. I do not know what year, or if I was even alive when it was taken. In the photo, my parents sit at a table. My smirking dad is in profile, his mouth curved around the end of some inappropriate little joke. My mom is next to him, facing the camera. Her mouth is open mid-laugh, head down, black hair in her face, a hint of apology in her eyes, "Oh, you know Johnny, always saying something embarassing." But her hand is on his arm. "He may be inappropriate, but he's my inappropriate Johnny." There is something so sweet in their separateness, in their connection, that the photo is more romantic than any Hollywood shot of a couple staring into each other's eyes. These are people meant for each other. These are my parents. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.
- posted by Megan Stevenson @ 11:46 AM