The Last Rain

I just finished taking a three day writing workshop (whoop whoop!) and learned A TON. This was a prompt that we did today. Choosing out of the proverbial hat, we chose character: a recent high school graduate, setting: the porch of an old farmhouse, time: after a recent thunderstorm, and plot: reminiscing about how things have changed. We also had to include a specific poem (two of my friends in the class wrote it, I did not write the poem). I feel as if this is one of the best pieces I have written so far.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Droplets from the recent storm fall from the eave and splatter on the already soaked edges of the porch. The wind gently whistles, bringing the scent of wet soil, hay and grass to my nose. It’s evening, and although the thunder is now distant and the rain has moved on, the sky is still overcast; promising that we will not see the sun until tomorrow morning.
The air feels cleaner, cooler, refreshed, and newly washed, giving welcome relief to the heat of summer.
I sit in the rocking chair on the porch; my cowboy boots kicked off, faded jeans stretched across my legs, and my blue plaid shirt unbuttoned and blowing in the breeze, exposing my plain white tee shirt underneath.
The huge wooden porch with its warped, dark wooden planks; low, overhanging ceiling; and walls: the bottom half plywood and ripped screen that now flutters in the draft above, hasn’t changed since I was a baby. And I have always thought that the old, beat up red door, that closes off the screened in porch, has looked useless, hanging all raggedy on its hinges.
The plain white rocking chair creaks as I sway back and forth, surveying the landscape. A narrow dirt road meanders away from the house, and practically goes out of sight over the horizon before it twists through a crumbling wall and enters the road. The hay fields surround us by acres. Tall, green, lush and swaying in the almost imperceptible breeze. Beyond our own fields are our neighbor’s fields, and beyond that is the prairie, or that’s how it all used to be anyways. Caddy corner to our old white farmhouse sits the dilapidated old barn, just out of sight from where I sit on the porch. Inside rests old machinery, and old, rotting hay.
I close my eyes as tears begin to stream down my cheeks.
For 18 years, this had been my home. For 12 years I had walked 2 miles down that drive to wait for the bus to pick me up and race the sun over the perimeter of the sky. For 6 years I had helped my father take care of the farm and cut and bale the hay. For 5 years I had watched each of my siblings leave, never to return. For 2 years, every morning, I had coaxed my mother into giving me the keys, so I could drive the truck to school. For 1 year, I had woken up every morning to my grieving mother. For 1 year, I had taken care of 20 acres by myself.

For 8 months I have stopped believing that I will go to college. I still can’t believe that I walked across that stage with a diploma. And for 2 months, I have sat in this empty house, wondering where to go.

High school is over. Homework every night. Feeding the dog. Helping my mother clean the house; is all over. That was the last thunderstorm I will ever see from the porch again.

I think about my 5 siblings, all living their own lives, and my parents now lying peacefully side by side.

I think of my mother: smiling, hair pulled back into a braid, frilly white apron, singing, and telling me that our history is the most important part of us.

I think about my father’s thin, solemn face and how his laugh would boom out and fill the whole yard.

Under my breath I whisper the poem that had hung in our living room under a glass pane, bordered by little blue flowers, encased in a wooden frame for generations:

I see the aqua flow,

Purplish puddles glow.

Shaded periwinkle forms,

Down the everglades they go.

I hear the choir birds booming,

Their singing voices linger,

I stare as I listen to the lead singer.

Telling us their past choices,

I find myself roaming.

Past and future together I am sewing.

I sigh heavily and pull my boots back on. Yanking the keys out of my pocket, I lumber down the steps. 7 of them, concrete, 6 each with of us kids’ hand prints, forever petrified in stone, and the top step with my parents’ hands held pressed together into the concrete, forming a heart. I open the rusty door to the old blue Ford, and swing myself up onto the stained seat.

Tonight I will deposit a check; enough money to pay for myself to go to college. And tomorrow some bigwig at some huge company will come stamp out this imperfection in the middle of their land, plowing down our history to make more room for their corporate crops.

The radio blares, and I refuse to look in the mirror that is mocking me above my head. I refuse to take a last glance at the sad, old house, just sitting there. Waiting. Ready to keep its appointment with the hangman.

Class Gift Dedication

My mom texted me at 11 o'clock on one of the days of the last week of school, saying "please give dedication presentation of class gift to the school at 1 o'clock." I first had to text her back, asking, what is a class gift? what was my class giving? who was I presenting to? It turned out that the class gift was three daphne bushes and an engraved stone to the school. This is what I presented in front of the whole school that afternoon:

Each year, as a tradition, the eighth grade class gives an enduring gift to the school. This year we chose to give 3 Daphne bushes. We chose these because they are symbols of growth, blossoming and renewal. As sixth graders, we come into this school, stressed from the transplant. But as we advanced through the school we blossomed into the teenagers we are now. These bushes are peaked from recently being planted, but through the years, with care, they will grow and thrive and every spring they will bloom with fragrant, pink blossoms.  As each sixth grade class walks through these doors, the will look at these bushes, at the promise that they too will grow into something beautiful. And as each eighth grade class walks out of these doors, they will look at these bushes and reflect on what they started off as, and grew into. Thank you MSMS, for helping us grow.

 Copyright 2011 Abigail Chapman

My Promotion Speech

5 kids out of 120 in my class were chosen to give a speech or address at our 8th grade promotion. I was one of these and this is my speech. (I feel as though a little bit was lost in translation both in the fact that you (the reader) cannot actually hear me give it, and if you haven't gone to this school, a lot of these experiences are not easily related too)

Manitou is special. And weird. And random. But mostly just...great. When I find myself talking to a student from another district, I pity them for not experiencing what we have here at Manitou. Walking through our memories of this middle school one might see the following:

• Crazy masks, creative, original, amusing love songs, and boys awkwardly smoothing their skirts as a sixth grade class attempted to recreate, in hilarious uproar, Italian Renaissance skits.
• A group of not-so-fearless eighth graders attempting to light their Bunson burners...from two arms length away.
• One might hear a book club arguing in vain with their teacher to PLEASE give them more homework.
• That same book club making ridiculous hats out of Capri Sun boxes (actually, maybe that was just me).
• A class debating the fairness of negative labels about our generation, and some people arguing that, no (in fact), we really are terrible people...
• People walking into walls, falling out of chairs, and knocking trash cans over....
• Turning around in band class to see the baritone player chillin’ out in his chair...with both feet behind his head.
• The sound of a math class belting out some random jingle, and listening to their teacher attempt to imitate a fog horn on a piece of PVC.
• Or shouts of “Flying popcorn!” coming from an open science lab door.
• One might walk in on an impromptu bout of patty cake or a ninja fight. (especially if you’re around me)
• A French class learning about food...and asking how to say “small children.”
• Looking around the classroom during the writing section of the CSAP’s and seeing people alternating between giving their booklet a death stare and glancing blankly off into space, practically drooling in boredom.

This is all randomly relevant because we live in Manitou...and also because these memories illustrate how much the happenings between these walls have taught us tolerance and love and our teachers showed us passion for learning. We didn’t just slide though those crowded hallways and get dumped at the steps of the high school. We learned and grew. We didn’t just learn math, no, we also lived parallel lives in personal economics complete with dud relationships, kids, bucket lists, and attempting to fill out our own tax forms (ugh).. We didn’t just learn about WWII, no, we invited a dozen people who lived through it to come talk to us.We didn’t just learn about the chemistry of fireworks, no, we lit things on fire. We didn’t just learn about the ancient Egyptians, no, we became them and invited our parents to come watch our acting struggles. Along the way, we learned to laugh at ourselves and not to take ourselves too seriously; after all, no one gets out of life alive.

When I first sat down to outline this speech, at 10 PM the night before the outline check, I jotted down a few incoherent thoughts, and started complaining about how every stage of our lives is just practice for the next. We having been preparing for high school. And then we will be in college (gasp!) and then there’s real life. And if that’s so, then we aren’t even real yet. And and utter confusion. My dad then offered up a rare piece wisdom, “Life is a balance of living in the present, while preparing for the next chapter of our life.” As I started to thank him, he characteristically continued his monologue. “It’s not the getting there.....it’s the getting there.” He promptly jumped up and began the hokey pokey, “That’s what it’s all about!” By this time I had sorta spaced out and come up with my own characteristically unrelated metaphor: life is like a timed writing prompt.....

Of course, none of my classmates can relate to this and this comparison had NOTHING to do with 8th grade language arts class. As I was schlepping through one of these assignments, I found myself planning the next paragraph before I finished the current one, setting up for a transition. But then I remembered that each paragraph is its own entity, and should be written as such. I see life in much the same way. We must balance each paragraph of our lives in the time given for that section. Thinking of what could have made that moment in our lives afterwards is like coming up with the word you were looking for in that essay after you’ve already turned it in.  At the moment, we are sitting on this stage, about to enter high school. Middle school was preparing us for this, but was definitely a stage in its own right. We must treasure each rich sentence in the paragraph that has been middle school. These weird, random, and great  memories have been the really cool sentences that don’t belong in our persuasive essays, but we include them anyways, because it makes our writing more colorful and enriches our lives.

Copyright 2011 Abigail Chapman

longing.

This was an assignment that my math teacher gave us as a philosophical final. Other then this, I don't believe this requires much more explanation.

Rosebud. A sled. Simply a wooden sled, but representing what was lost. Citizen Kane’s childhood freedom. Being loved by his mother for who he was. Playful days in the snow. The day he left his younger self, was the day he began to yearn for it. As he grew into an adult, he could no longer remember the simplicity of this happiness; he only remembered that he wanted it. He tried to buy it back. But he couldn’t. A sled... A yearning...

Rosebud. A dandelion. My “Rosebud” is a dandelion.

As small children, everything we see is new to us. Fresh. Beautiful. As children we can stand in a backyard for hours and marvel at the beautiful grass, and flowers, and bugs. And blow dandelion seeds. As children we watch the perfect little seeds spiral off into the unseen. And simply savor watching. And doing it again and again.

As children we can gaze at the stars, at a penny falling, sparkling into a fountain, or dandelion seed disappearing, and make a wish. And believe it. There is endless hope. Anything is possible.

Dandelions are the childhood safety we have. The perfect comfort. The fearlessness. The beauty. The love. The wonder. The wasted hours that were not really wasted at all. Wading through the yard with our friends. Weaving chains out of the flowers.

I love dandelions. More specifically, I love the seeds. They are so delicate. Without imperfection. I also love all of the memories I have swathed around dandelions. As I grow into an adult, their beauty will not be lost to me, but I won’t have the time to stand in a yard and make empty wishes and blow seeds that will just cause more work later.

Children don’t worry that they are spreading more seeds, the weed seeds that adults try so hard to get rid of. They are caught in the moment. Children don’t see them as weeds. They don’t see them as a nuisance. It is only as people grow older that everything evolves into something more sinister. Adults cannot afford the luxury of carelessly letting the weed seeds fly back into their gardens with any aspect of their lives. They cannot stand and marvel at the beautiful dandelion seeds, they must worry about all of the weeds that will be born from it. The beauty is shrouded from them. One doesn’t see an adult still believing that the wish they planted will actually grow. One doesn’t see an adult standing in their backyard contentedly blowing dandelion seed for hours. But don’t all adults wish life could be that simple again? Let the responsibilities blow away with the wind.

I remember when I was little; my mom went on a dandelion extermination crusade. Every day without fail she would march through the yard with a plastic bag and scissors and cut the flowers and seed balls off of the dandelions to prevent them from spreading. This broke my heart, they were so pretty. I asked her if she thought they were pretty too. She said that yes they were, but we couldn’t just leave them. They were weeds. I begged her to leave them. They weren’t even hurting her plants. I was bewildered. Confused.

It is strange to think that as adults, they may see the beauty in something, but they don’t know the beauty of that something. They may love something, but in the face of their age, they destroy it.

I will grow into an adult. I will forget this paper. I will probably forget “Rosebud” in the wake of everything else. But every time I will look at a dandelion I will feel nostalgia. I will want that childhood. I am only 14, and yet I already miss my childhood. I am predicting that this feeling will intensify with time.

I don’t want to lose the beauty of dandelions. I don’t want to lose hope. I don’t want to lose my time. But I will. I will long for the dandelions.

Copyright 2011 Abigail Chapman

On the subject of personal narratives...My own...

An earlier assignment. Certainly not one of my best.:


It is my my earliest memory; a snapshot, rather than a story, really. I was not quite three. I sat on the floor in the dimly-lit living room in my grandparent’s house; captivated by a silhouette, illuminated by the roaring fire. It was my granddad, sitting in a wheelchair, just days from death. On the hearth was a cut-glass snifter of brandy that would never be consumed. I tasted the mood - a wearied resignation; the fight was over, all that remained was waiting. And with it came calmness.

My first day of school; scared about leaving the umbrella of safety that my parents brought, even for just a few hours. I felt infinitely smaller and vulnerable in the world that day. My parents and I trod across the worn pavement, towards the intimidating front steps. En-route we passed by an old, low-riding car. Standing next to it - Mr. Van, with his smiling, lined face and hunched, sturdy stance.
He was not only my “adopted Grandfather”, but also Ute Pass Elementary’s Grandpa. His wife would die a few years later, and yet, he would come to school every day. Telling kids to smile and bestowing bear hugs to under the weather elementary schoolers. An eternal second-grader.
He opened his trunk, revealing an abundance of stuffed animals. After selecting a sweet looking white teddy bear with a red-velvet bow, and handed her to me. She was christened Sweet Beary. Amazing how much courage can be given to a scared kindergartner in seconds
.
Excitement. Christmas time was finally here. Snow drifts and icy roads were abundant in the Connecticut woods. All of the family was there, plus a swarm of friends. A whirl-wind of activities leading up to Christmas Eve rushed around. Chaotic Solstice Party. Brightly burning Yule Log wrapped in ribbons, sending wishes for the new year curling into the sky. A thousand colorful pinpricks of light on the Christmas tree. Candles in paper bags lining the snowy driveway. Warm light spilling out of the windows. A hundred euphoric faces strewn throughout the house. Sparkling beverages in plastic cups. Blazing, crackling fires. Deep green garlands. Wrapped boxes under the tree. Melted snow puddling in the foyer. And around and around and around. I attached myself to my two cousins, my favorite people in the entire world. I thought that they were all anyone should ever aspire to be. Smart, funny, tolerant, artistic, pretty, and they were family.
At last I sat at the coffee table in front of a dying fire, writing Santa. I carefully arranged a plate of cookies, carrots for the hard-working reindeer, and set down a glass of milk. I went to bed that night full of happiness, love, expectation, and contented fatigue. The down covers welcomed me as I climbed into bed to stare at the white, peaked ceiling.

I was ten years old, standing stock still, staring at the patch of orange lilies on the slope. A madly racing train of thoughts rushed through my head. My grandfather died six years ago, why did they wait this long to have the memorial service? I hate it when people smile through their tears, it feels like a lie. I wish I had actually known him. Why lilies? Will I remember the words to the 23 Psalm when I am supposed to say it? I could feel the waves of sadness and eagerness to share stories roll in waves towards the small box set into the ground. How could an entire life be condensed into such a small cube of dust? My eyes lifted the words, “The tide may erase our footprints, but only for a moment, for having walked there once, we remain always.” off of the fancy paper. My mom stood grasping my shoulder tightly in her hand, as if somehow comforting me would erase her own pain.
Hours later I sat in my room while all the guests laughed through the drops sliding down their faces. I perched on the bed, my knees to my chest, fiddling with my skirt. I hated skirts. Studying a knot in the pine wall, I sobbed. I cried because I wished I had something to cry about. I was supposed to mourn like the rest of them, for what? I only had others’ memories. There in Lake Placid, in this house that he designed, surrounded by furniture he had created, observing the people that had loved him, I still did not know who he was.

The summer before sixth grade. I sat with Julia, nestled in the grass in her yard. Our parents seated on the deck, talking. We plucked dandelions, and watched the breeze tug at our wishes until they melted into the sky.  We braided grass, discussed philosophies - and laughed. Letting the world hear how carefree we are. The burdens they see forced upon us in their minds were not there in that fading, evening light. We see each others hearts, this is what family is.

The cold morning air burned my cheeks as tears ran down my face. My backpack felt as if the entire universe had been stuffed inside. Our beautiful husky, Greta, lay weakly on the lawn. A dog bed was spread invitingly on the grass, yet she lay on the frost - weary with cancer. I bent down and worked my fingers into the luxurious ruff at her neck and smiled through my tears at her glazed eyes. Whispering, “Catch a rabbit for me in heaven,” I finally forgave her for her misdeed many years ago.
When I was 5, I moved a piece of plywood away from the side of the house, exposing a bunny hidden within. Greta killed it in front of me. I had never let it dissolve out of my memory.
My backpack slid its weight onto my shoulders. Those deep pools of eyes said that she felt guilty, but knew that she wanted to leave. I kissed her on the nose and straighten up as my dad came outside, knowing that the next time I saw her, she would be only snowy ash.

The three of us stood together and watched the sunset wash over the prairie through our glistening lashes. Greta’s ashes drifted into the wind, dispersing into the landscape she loved like nothing else. Out of my horn drifted the notes growing from love that families have cultivated for an eternity. We listened as the petals of music whispered over the shadowy plains.

Copyright 2011 Abigail Chapman