Oct 27

The Worst Valentine’s Day

It was Valentine’s Day 2013. Couples all over the country were celebrating the romantic holiday with each other. Words of love, flowers, chocolate, and other more intimate gifts were being given and accepted by lovers, spouses, and friends. In Michigan, Mother Nature had decided to bestow the gift of snowfall and the temperature was low enough to cause an icy concern for anyone who needed to brave navigating the roads. My brother and I were two such people.

I had been awake for close to 72 hours due to stress, anxiety, and sadness. We had each been stationed overseas at the time, my brother at an Air Force base in Italy and myself at a Marine Base on Okinawa, and it had taken us each roughly 24 hours to make it back to Michigan.

I can’t speak for Justin, but for me, it involved two layovers, a lot of waiting, and a brief scare with missing luggage. Fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with screaming, unruly children but there was one little girl who seemed to notice that I was traveling upset. She sat across the aisle from me and we spent most of the flight taking pictures of each other and playing games on my cellphone. It was very nice, if brief, distraction.

I had finally stopped crying, and after wiping away the tears and fixing my face, I was trying to get some much-needed sleep while my brother drove us the three hours up north to a very small community called Houghton Lake.

Houghton Lake is a small town in Northern Michigan with a population of roughly 4,000 people. It’s mostly forest with many places to hunt, fish, and take part in all kinds of outdoor activities. Houghton Lake is home to one of the state’s largest winter festivals, Tip Up Town USA (a town made completely out of ice and built on top of the lake). We would not be partaking in any of these activities.

We had a long few days ahead of us. Instead of spending a fun winter with friends and family we would soon have to deal with bank employees, landlords, and storage units. For now, however, we were on our way to the towns’ funeral home. We would suffer through a small accident with another driver (from which I now sport several small but very noticeable scars on my right foot and ankle) and spend several hours at the local police station clearing it up before we would finally make it to our destination.

Justin had been driving so that I could try to get some sleep. We were just arriving and while trying to make a turn onto the main street that would take us through town we hit a hidden patch of black ice and slid into a vehicle waiting to make a turn off of that same street. We dented his drivers side door enough that it wouldn’t open, but other than that the other driver was fine. When our car collided with his I had been laying down as much as a car will let you. And the impact had jerked me forward like a crash test dummy. I had been wearing my seatbelt, but my right foot had jerked and caught on something sharp underneath the dashboard which caused several cuts that bled just enough to make taking off socks difficult later on. Luckily February in Northern Michigan is insanely cold and I didn’t feel any pain until much later.

The funeral home was small. Our Aunt (who had picked us up from the police station while our car was towed to a shop) knew the funeral director from her church. It was the only funeral director in town and another family was scheduled to come in later that day. The first thing we did was sit down with the funeral home director and decided on whether or not we preferred burial or cremation. As much as either of us would have wanted a proper burial we didn’t have the money. Cremation it was. We picked out styles for a memorial service guest book, thank you cards, etc. and we decided on a poem that would be on the “program” for the service. We took care of all the small details first because we weren’t ready to do what we really needed to. We needed to see him.

At the time this was happening I was being treated in the military for Anxiety and Depression. I had my medication and my workbooks full of techniques from my doctors on how to manage and cope with my panic attacks and depressive episodes. None of it worked. None of it even helped. In that moment, that place, there was no coping.

I had heard that when you see a dead person they look like they are sleeping. Like they will get up at any moment and continue on with their lives. That wasn’t true at all. He didn’t look like he was sleeping. He didn’t look like he had ever been alive in the first place. What he looked like was one of those wax mannequins you see in museums. He didn’t look real.

My brother handled it much better than I did. He was calm and composed while I was a sobbing mess in front of everyone. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there, but at the same time, I couldn’t bear to leave.

Three days after each receiving a message from the Red Cross we ended what had become the worst Valentine’s Day of our lives saying our final goodbyes to our Dad.

He had been born and raised in the area and when the day of his memorial service came it seemed like everyone in town had shown up. I had forgotten just how many people he had known in his life. Some of them were old friends from high school. Most of them were friends and co-workers from his job in construction. My dad had built many of the houses in the Houghton Lake area.

The church was full and by the time the service was over and we had shaken everyone’s hands twice over I felt like I could sleep for a week and still be tired. It had been the worst Valentine’s Day ever which had lead into the worst February ever and was only the beginning of what would become the worst year ever. Three years later it still hurts, though it hurts a little less every day.

Oct 24

Ancestors are Family, Too

 2016-10-pic

 “It’s not fair!” Eileen shouted.

 “Don’t raise your voice to me, young lady,” her mother, Eleanor, responded. “I don’t care if all your friends are planning to stay out late on Halloween. You still have to be home by nine o’clock. That’s already an extra hour on a school night.”

 “But I’ll be the only witch-in-training who’s not able to stay out late. No one is going to want to interrupt their Halloween fun to bring me home early.”

 “The key point is you are in training,” Eleanor emphasized, “and you’re more likely to get into trouble with everyone thinking they can experiment with spells late into the night. Halloween is four days away. That gives you plenty of time to find someone that will bring you home. If you don’t find anyone, then I’ll pick you up. Now I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

 Eileen gave a huff in useless defiance and headed to her room. “I’m old enough to stay out late,” she thought. “After all, I just turned fifteen.” As the night wore on, she hatched a plan to prove she could take care of herself. She would execute a spell to raise the spirits of her ancestors and send them to scare her mother. “When she sees how good my abilities are, Mom will have no choice but to agree and let me stay out late.”

 The next day, just after dusk, Eileen stood in the middle of the graveyard laying out items she would need to cast a spell. “I’ll show her I’m old enough to stay out as late as I want to,” she thought to herself, as she remembered the argument with her mother.

 A cool breeze made Eileen shiver as she finished arranging things on the grass. The small fire she started on an iron plate did not give off enough light by which to read the spell, so she turned on a flashlight. Eileen had a moment of doubt as she picked up the book of spells. After taking a deep breath, she opened the book and started the incantation. After saying each stanza, she dropped a different talisman into the fire.

Worms devour without a sound,

that which is buried beneath the ground.

Spirits dwelling in peaceful slumber,

come together in frightful number.

As demons roar and angels quake,

rise my ancestors, awake!

 Smoke from the fire began swirling around and around, doubling in volume with each revolution, and rising in the air until it stood a good twenty feet above Eileen’s head. Fear began to make her nauseous, but the power of what she released kept her transfixed, watching the spectacle. Crackling sounds came from the cloud of smoke then lights flashed from within. The cloud began to swell then contract, then swelled one more time, until an explosive sound shook the headstones throughout the graveyard.

 Eileen screamed, dropped to the ground and covered her head. After a few moments, she realized there was no sound except for her heavy breathing, in and out. She jumped when a woman’s voice with a cockney accent invaded the silence. “Hallo. Who are you?”

 Cautiously rising and looking up, Eileen saw a gauzy apparition floating above her head. The spirit was an old woman dressed in Victorian clothes.

 “I . . . I’m Eileen. Who . . . who are you?”

 “My name’s Morna.”

 Recognition came to Eileen. “You’re my great-great-great Aunt Morna. I recognize you from the painting in our house.”

 “You’re my niece, you say. Well tell me why in the devil you woke me up.” The ghost flew down and put her face a few inches in front of Eileen.

 Jumping back, Eileen replied, “I wasn’t trying to raise just you. I meant to raise all my ancestors buried here.”

 “Well then, you must have done something wrong now haven’t you?” Aunt Morna put her hands on her hips and shook her head accusingly.

 “I . . . I didn’t have quite all the right objects for the spell so I made some substitutions.”

 “Substitutions? Blimey! It’s a stroke of luck you didn’t unleash the hounds of hell now, isn’t it?”

 Feeling embarrassed, Eileen turned her head away. Her big plan to show her mother she could handle herself was falling apart due to this miserable failure of a spell. Then she thought, “Maybe I don’t need a whole flock of ancestors.” Perhaps she could salvage the plan by getting Aunt Morna to scare her mom.

 Steeling herself up, Eileen turned back to the ghost and said, “Aunt Morna, I command you to fly to my house and give my mother a good fright.”

 Morna responded with a raucous, cackling laugh. “Command me, she says. Give her mother a good fright, she says.” Again with the cackling laugh. “Why should I do a daft thing like that?”

 “Um. Well. You see, my mother won’t let me stay out past nine o’clock on Halloween,” Eileen blurted. “And, um, you know, I wanted to show her I’m old enough to do what I want.”

 “Stay out past nine o’clock? On Halloween? I never heard such rubbish. Not a minute past five o’clock for my daughters on Halloween or any other night. And mind you, if boys are around there had better be a chaperone.”

 “A chaperone?” Eileen felt horrified at the thought of having to have an adult around whenever she was with a boy.

 “Now you hear me girl, you gather this stuff up and go on home to your mother. Make sure you mind her, and stop this nonsense about raising your ancestors, or casting any other spell by yourself till your training is done. Do you hear me?” Morna raised herself up high and pointed a crooked finger at Eileen.

 With her earlier sense of rebellion fading, Eileen responded “Yes ma’am.”

 “Good.” With that, Morna started twirling till she was nothing but a tornado of smoke. Lights grew bright in the middle, and the vortex snapped into the ground leaving not a trace behind.

 Eileen quickly gathered up her things and went straight home. She entered the house through the living room door and found her mother sitting on the sofa reading a book. Eileen thought about trying one more time to change her mother’s mind about the Halloween curfew, but she thought she saw a scowl come across the face of her Aunt Morna in the painting above the fireplace. So instead, she kissed her mother on the cheek and headed off to bed. “Goodnight Eileen,” said Eleanor as her daughter left the room. After finishing the chapter of her book, Eleanor rose to get ready for bed. Before she turned off the light, she whispered “Goodnight, Aunt Morna.”

Oct 21

OMG

Have you ever had “Writer’s Block”? I have it all the time and I hate it! I’m sitting in front of the computer getting ready to write. My fingers hover over the keys.

 

Ready! Set! Go!

 

Ugh?

 

What am I going to write about? What can I say that anyone, yes anyone, would want to read?

 

I gained inspiration the last time I went to the Deadwood Writers’ Group. My friend Barbara brought this picture:img_0155

 

“OMG! Where is that kid when I need him? The last time I had a problem with my computer, I phoned Apple. After waiting 18 minutes on hold, someone picked up.

 

“Let me connect you to the person who handles that,” he said.

 

I put the phone on speaker and started answering my email. 20 minutes later and still no one had picked up. I checked my phone. It was still on speaker.

 

I went back to answering my email. A few more minutes passed. I noticed something. What was it?

 

OMG! Silence.

 

I’d been disconnected. My phone said I’d been on hold 25 minutes just to be disconnected. No!

 

Where is that kid? He may be young but I bet he knows what to do!!!

Oct 18

Coffee Shop Chronicles: Playing with Toys

Starbucks

Bear, DE

April 2006

I expected one thing from this morning’s workshop hosted by the University of DE, entitled, “Reconnect with Your Creativity”, but took away something completely different.

I want toys, now!

That’s what the first workshop session was: toys. Slinky, Lego, twisty ties, magnetic 3D designs, balls, stretchy toys, flip frogs…all that stuff that we played with as kids. We were each given a secret task. It turned out that everyone had the same secret task: draw a flower. I thought of my college Roomie and her flowers and drew as she always did: one stem, two leaves, five petals and a cloud in the background.

There were only pink and green highlighters on the table. No other colors? I wondered. Well, these will do.

The instructor watched us a bit. “Why didn’t you ask for other colors?” she commented. “Why did everyone draw the stem green?”

“How often do we not ask for help at work? How often do we do things because ‘that’s the way they’ve always been done’?”

Woah. Deep thoughts. Why didn’t I ask? I thought about it, almost did. But didn’t. I was already being chatty. I want to be that energetic “Wow” person. What held me back?

That’s a rhetorical question. I think.

Ashley made me a thick, yummy Mocha Light Frappuccino just now. She gave me the leftovers in a separate cup. That’s on my left and a half-eaten slice of reduced-fat coffee cake is in front of me. I’m at the corner table with the sun full on my back. I’m so warm, so comfy.

I wonder as I look around how many people would benefit from this type of this. The playing, I mean, not the food. Or maybe both, the indulgence of it all.

“Why didn’t you play with the toys?” she asked us. “What held you back? Why are you or why are you not creative?”

How am I creative? I write. I journal. They’re the same things and yet they’re separate. I draw or sketch on my journal pages. I scrapbook, a little bit.

How can you coax creativity out of others? That’s a really good question. I write letters, so maybe my friends will write me letters back. There’s something personal and imaginative putting pen to paper, even if you just write about the weather like Dad always did. Playing board games, perhaps? I don’t have many local friends, but I do have my coworkers.

Everything relates back to my job. Do those same reasons hold you back at work? Why don’t you ask questions?

We explored office atmosphere. Imagine the office you want. How do you get there? Provide toys at staff meetings. Create “our” traditions or ways of doing things, not “mine” or “yours.”

I shared this with my boss. I was so hyped up over this!  He seemed to get it, some of what he has been saying all along. Think new aspects for what he has said in the past.

When is a good time to reinvent myself? Do I need to? I will be that bubbly person I see myself as, the same one my friend, Tina, sees in me. The chatty person Dad taught me to be. In my mind’s eye, I see me chatting at new scrapbook stores. I see mentioning at a crop, “Who wants to do lunch with me?”  I can invite other Penn State alums over the house for company. I see me being the fun person in the room. Maybe I’m not ‘The One’ everyone flocks to at a party, but still.

Do these people here see that? The baristas do. Natalie and I have a chat. “Give us your email,” she says, “so we can stay in touch.”  Yes!  They do emails with previous employees when they leave.

Liz beside him says, “Well, you’re like an employee.”

So…I imagine what I want to be and be it.

Could it be that simple?

Oct 16

Close Encounters of the Creepiest Kind

What scares you? Think beyond concrete things like losing a job, facing the death of a loved one, and worrying over an upcoming surgery. I want to know if you’re afraid of anything truly creepy. Have you ever seen a ghost? Are you haunted by something you can’t explain? Do you wake terrified from nightmares?

For some people, there’s a tendency to disregard strange phenomena as figments of the imagination. Other individuals seek greater understanding by examining evidence and drawing logical conclusions, if any can be made. And there are the many skeptics who conveniently point to dreams as the scapegoat that makes most sense of weird and mysterious events.

Before offering an alternative explanation for the bizarre things that happen in our world, I have a few peculiar stories to share. In the end, I’ll provide a solution for overcoming the dark forces that work their way into our lives.

An adolescent boy told me of a premonition that he had experienced while sleeping. He dreamt a family friend had died. When he woke, he was upset and immediately went to find his mother. He found her downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table, and crying. She had just finished a phone call in which she had been told that the woman in the boy’s dream actually had died in a tragic car accident.

I know a woman, too, who was plagued by disturbing events that began after she had fallen asleep. She would be very glad to blame the strange incidents on awful and vivid nightmares. But what she went through felt as real to her as the premonition was for the boy in the above story.

As a young, married mother, the woman heard a noise—outside her bedroom window—that caused her to wake from sleep. She called out to her husband, who was lying beside her, but he wouldn’t stir. The woman was paralyzed and helpless during the events that unfolded. Her experience was typical to that of other people who claim to have been kidnapped, taken aboard an alien spacecraft, and subjected to invasive experimentation. After being returned to her bedroom, the terrified woman was then able to wake her husband. He tried to console her and reasoned that she must have been dreaming. In the days that followed, however, his wife’s arms erupted in strange rashes that doctors couldn’t diagnose and adequately treat.

alien

What do you believe in?

The assault was the second time the woman had felt like she had lived through a close encounter. The first occurred when she was a child. She remembered waking to alien creatures peering at her. Frantic and scared, the girl ran to her parents for help, but they dismissed the sighting by saying “it was probably nothing more than a dream.”

Nothing more than a dream . . . reassuring words perhaps, and yet we don’t fully understand our dreams. They’re the focus of great speculation. What are their purpose? What do they mean?

If you’re like me and have woken to your own scream during an all-too-intense and seemingly real nightmare, you may agree that dreaming of an evil, unearthly presence leaves you feeling more powerless than if you had been confronted by a human villain. At least we have some ability to fight a delusional person, like a lunatic wielding an axe.  But how can we avoid ghosts that haunt us, combat aliens that control our bodies, and escape malevolent forces that take advantage of our minds when we’re supposed to be resting peacefully?

The first step is to examine what our beliefs are about nonhuman, intelligent, supernatural entities.

When people of faith talk about God and His angels, it’s easily accepted that these highly regarded spiritual entities exist and influence our lives for the better. The conversation doesn’t spur sideways glances and raised eyebrows from friends and relatives. They don’t flinch and wonder whether or not we’re losing our rationality. Instead, we collectively hold to endearing thoughts and feelings about our all-powerful God and His heavenly host. But by believing in these good and protective entities, we would be hard-pressed not to also believe in the sinister angels—Satan and his demonic brethren—who defy God.

According to the Bible, God created the angels to have freewill—the liberty to choose right from wrong, to love and obey God or not. One of God’s angels became selfish and rebellious. He convinced a third of the other angels to fight with him in an effort to dethrone God, but that devil and his evil bunch lost. They were cast out of heaven and roam throughout the earth.

Since the Bible doesn’t mention how to deal with extraterrestrial beings, and I’ve never seen one myself, I’m not sure that I believe they are what many people think they are: life forms from another planet or galaxy. I’m more inclined to think that they’re a trick of the devil. Sensational spectacles that Satan orchestrates in order to divert our attention away from God. While we’re reading the latest conspiracy theory and arguing amongst ourselves about whether aliens exist or not, the one thing we’re not doing is worshipping and glorifying our Lord and Savior.

The devil will get what’s coming to him. Don’t let him drag you down along his way.

Fortunately, ghosts have steered clear of me too. A sighting would absolutely freak me out, because I believe ghosts are manifestations of evil. Ephesians 6:11 (NIV) tells us “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

The spirit world is real, and it’s divided between good and evil. You may as well paint a bullseye on your chest and get ready to fight for your everlasting life. You are targeted by the devil. His arsenal is full of ways to tempt and deceive you. Sometimes he’s brazen enough to make a personal appearance. Often, he’s more subtle and fills your mind with negative thoughts. His goal is to steal you from God.

In this battle, let’s remember that God loves us most. We can defend ourselves against the tricks that the devil employs when he’s “looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Evil spirits, aliens, internalized whispers of self-doubt and hopelessness lose their power over us when we open the Bible and study the Word of God–when we learn for ourselves how to recognize truth and how to dispel lies.

Sweet dreams, my dear readers.