I’ve felt like such a noisy little balloon deflating and flying around and going nuts inside of quiet rooms all day. It doesn’t make sense how dead everything has been lately. I need to go somewhere where people besides lunch ladies are alive. Or maybe I'll just be a lunch lady.

Today third grade was much better than usual. The halls were lined with construction paper christmas wreaths and santa clauses with cotton ball beards, and it was precious. The kids were all super happy because they have an early dismissal today. When I took them on their bathroom break, one girl said, “Tomorrow is my uncle’s birthday!” and that started a chain reaction. They were all lined up yelling their stories to me as quickly and loudly as possible. It went something like this:

“Tomorrow is my uncle’s birthday!”

“Tomorrow is MY birthday!”

“Tomorrow I’m going to the Smokey Mountains!”

“I knew someone who got Smokey Mountain Spotted Fever once!”

“I watched old Yeller yesterday. He got shot!”

“My uncle ate 6 pounds of dressing on thanksgiving!”

“I ate 7 pounds of cherry pie on thanksgiving!”

And so on!

And then we were reading about Johnny Appleseed, about how he lived with settlers while he was planting orchards because he didn’t have a home of his own and moved around a lot, and several of the kids were so puzzled over why he didn’t just buy an RV to stay in. I laughed quietly to myself for three minutes.

The very best part was during Social Studies. I was working with two boys who sometimes unintentionally disrupt class because of their inability to sit still and stay calm, and one of them said, “Ms. Martin, can you help me with this? You would be a really good teacher.”

And then he looked at the other boy and said, “Ms. Martin really would be a good teacher,” and the other boy agreed.

It completely made my day.

I had the scariest dream last night. When it began, I was at a playground,and a lady asked me to carry her baby. The baby was too heavy, but I ended up carrying her anyway. Later I somehow found myself at the mother's house and needed to use the phone to call my parents to get home, but I couldn't the phone to work. I went to their neighbor's house and the neighbors were all people I know in real life, only they were creepy in my dream. So I went back to the house with the baby. In the house was a family of all ladies, and even the babies were girls.

When I went back to the first house, the ladies are all in a van looking for a pair of gloves. It was very cold and dark in my dream. It felt like it does on most Halloween nights. The ladies told me to help look, and they say I can use the phone if I do. At one point, I saw my mother's car drive by, so I chased it and tried to flag it down. She didn't stop driving, though, so I had to go back to the van.

Later I looked up to see a different van stopping in the street. A soldier who is dressed like a sheriff got out, and he was wearing a very strange crown that was made of gold. There were random people walking on the street even though it was at night, and the soldier walked up to them and asked them a question. He was speaking in a different language so the people didn't understand him. So, he shot the people.

The next parts were all very vivid.

Next the soldier noticed us at the van. At first I just watched and didn't know what to do, and then I heard a gunshot. One lady yelled, "Oh god, there's a bunch of them!" and we all ducked. They all came after us. I remember the one with the golden hat standing over me and pointing his gun towards me, and all I thought about was how I was going to die. It was very strange to me that I didn't think about God or my parents or anything. I just thought about how I was going to die right then, and I covered my face with my hands.

I remember hearing gun shots and feeling bullets flying past me, but for some reason he didn't kill me. After he left a bunch of soldiers came up and stared at me.

I pretended to be dead, but I did a horrible job, but they still didn't notice I was alive, so they left.

That was where I was right before I woke up. I was on gravel with part of me under a van, thinking about how much better everything would be if I could have caught my mother when she drove by.

I don’t know why I’m so afraid to explain to my mama how much I love her, to tell her that she’s the very reason I even believe in love. she’s in the other room right now ordering my cat to become a better feline: “you need to make some damn changes in your life, cat!”

My cat scratches holes in the sofa if my mama doesn’t squirt cheese on the floor. Sometimes my mama makes special trips to the grocery store simply because she knows how cranky my cat gets without her easy-cheese. This special treatment isn't just for the cat, though.

She's always fed every stray dog in our neighborhood; she’s never impartial to any of them. She sits on the porch and yanks ticks from their flesh for hours, as if they were her own children. she always brings them a slice of cheese, too. no dog - no matter how smelly - leaves my mama’s porch without a slice of cheese.


She doesn’t reserve all of her love for the animals, though. She always goes out of her way to make sure I'm the happiest lady in all of pilot mountain. Sometimes she even gives up a bingo night for me, which means more than anything because everyone knows how much my mama loves bingo.


When William Wordsworth visited tintern abbey later in his life, the place meant so much more because he had been there once before with his sister. Everywhere I go with my mama already means so much more just because she has been there with me. My mama won’t be here forever, and that thought is so completely foreign and heartbreaking at this particular moment in time. I need her. I could spend every second of my life trying to tell my mama how much I love her, but my efforts would still be inadequate.

she is the reason for the cigarette burns in the sofas, blankets, and mattresses. She's the reason for the can of easy-cheese on my coffee table. She's the happiness of every stray; she's the happiness of every tracie.
She's also at bingo every tuesday, thursday, friday, and saturday.

I love my mama.

Today i rode the bus to school and laughed and listened to the lovely people in the seat behind me sing and play guitar, and tomorrow i’m bringing my harmonica. i got to school and saw my favorite lunch lady and laughed with her because i dropped my money all over the place. next, i went to english and laughed with tasha because she was so completely spastic and in the best mood ever and it was wonderful. after that, i went to psychology and blake refused to eat any of my caramel popcorn. he never likes the food i have. and then it was time for spanish, which i’m sure would’ve been funny as well, only it was canceled. so i got to spend all afternoon laughing with my best friend, and she is my very favorite person to laugh with. after school, i hung out with friends and ate at olive garden and went to the mall, and none of us could eat our breadsticks from laughing so hard. and then i didn’t have enough money so they bought my gloria jeans coffee for me and we rode in kiddy rides. daniel gave me his mint from olive garden. they are the best people in the whole world. and when my mom picked me up from victoria’s, she kept pretending to sing along to every song i played so i kept changing it until i found an instrumental one. and she still sang along. thus, we laughed the whole entire car ride home. it is impossible for me to ever be sad with so many wonderful people around me at all times. and plus hallie and i saw liz in her little yellow car and sang “you’re beautiful” while falling off the sidewalk. she completely made our day.

123 Yo Mama Lane

What I Learned From an Early Thanksgiving Dinner:

1. If your aunt Valerie starts smoking a joint in the front seat on the drive home from dinner at your grandmother's house, gulping all the air in the car will not really do anything to the contents of your brain at all. You will just feel silly for making yourself breathe harder than a flounder in an old bucket for so long, and whatever Ke$ha song happens to be playing on the radio will still sound entirely uninspiring.

2. Eleven year olds DO know how to spell "douche bag," so don't even ask them to prove their abilities to you.

3. Sitting at a table full of grown ups will not make you like turkey, cranberry sauce, peas, corn, stuffing, gravy, candied yams, or mashed potatoes any more than you did before. Especially not mashed potatoes. Please just never even try to eat mashed potatoes no matter where you are or who you are with. They are just no good.*

5. If you are like me and realize you still do not like thanksgiving food even as an adult, planning an elaborate scheme to take your tray into the kitchen, throw it away, and swap it out with a new tray -- a tray with better food on it -- will not work.

Your aunt will ask, "what happened to my candied yams, tracie?," and you won't have a clue what to say, and then your whole family will notice your tray has changed, and everything is questioned.

You will ultimately get in trouble for throwing your food away instead of saving it for the old strays back at home on the front porch. After all, every real adult understands the importance of saving candied yams for hungry dogs.

4. The best way to play basketball while wearing pantyhose -- the only way, in my opinion -- is sitting in front of a computer, using the space bar to shoot. Any other way simply does not work.

5. Do not accidentally search for something in google images when you mean to search google maps. Today my dad and two nephews decided to look for their homes on the map section, and Justin, my little nephew, asked my older nephew what their address was. Ashton, being the thug he is, said "123 Yo Mama lane." Of course my little nephew actually googled that, with the safe search off and everything, and he did not see very pleasant images.

I was sitting at the kitchen table - the adult table - when I heard my nephews slam the screen of their computer down as quickly as possible, while my dad awkwardly laughed and said "that is not the yo mama lane you were looking for." And it certainly wasn't.

6. Everything.... everything is worth it for the cake.

*Here is what I don't understand about mashed potatoes, if you were curious: I like spaghetti, pears, macaroni salad, roast beef sandwiches, and cake. I also like potatoes. However, I would not like mashed spaghetti, pears, macaroni salad, roast beef sandwiches, or cake. What makes potatoes so special? Absolutely nothing.

My Sadie

The only time I can recall ever being fond of dogs is during my childhood. Age seems to have turned me into a very neglectful dog owner, even though I've only ever actually considered one dog, Sadie, to be mine.

When I first met Sadie, I was four years old and had recently moved into a double-wide in the middle of the woods. The patch of trees behind my house seemed to be the size of a national forest, and I remember roaming through those ten acres like a Meriwether Lewis-William Clark hybrid on a sugar rush. I was determined to prove that my woods were full of treasures: old deer stands for climbing in, a little cottage made of candy, arrowheads left behind by native Americans. You might be surprised to know that a little red dog was my only worthwhile finding.

I thought she was a wild animal at first. I remember running from the depths of the woods as fast as I could to find my father who was innocently fixing his pickup-truck in our gravel driveway. It was most likely a Sunday afternoon.
"DADDY," I yelled, probably jumping up and down with tears of fear and excitement in my eyes, "DADDY, DADDY, DADDY! There is a fox in our yard! I think it's a fox!"

My father was not amused.

I remember him laying his manly DeWalt gadget down on the toolbox of his truck and reluctantly allowing me to take him to where I supposed the fox was. I made him walk over briers and scrape his balding head against the branches of trees that happened to be a bit shorter than him, but what are daddies for, right?

We eventually found my "fox."

She was red, skinny, quick, and short; who wouldn't make the same mistake as me? She was friendly, too, and a fan of Kraft American cheese. In spite of my father's disapproval, I was able to lure her to my front porch without many difficulties.

I knew keeping her would be impossible without the persuasion of my mother, so I closed the gate on my porch and waited for her as if it were Christmas eve and she was Santa Claus himself. Occasionally I slipped a slice of cheese out to my Sadie.

My father has been pointlessly fighting a battle for as long as I can remember -- one that involves my mother, my front porch, me, and a bunch of old strays. Sadie was one of the first. You see, my mother absolutely adores every little critter she gets her hands on, and they always love her back just as much. My porch seems to be the shelter of every animal in our neighborhood. Birds eat from the hanging feeders; little squirrels sit outside our screen door every winter and find what the birds left behind; three dogs, as of right now, all have their very own blankets in the corner. Sadie is one of them.

My dad always throws a fit, but he knows once my mama has been around an animal for longer than five minutes there's no taking it away from her. My house is now home to five cats for that very reason. I don't know why he even argues anymore, why he doesn't just post a sign outside our house declaring it the official animal shelter of Pinnacle, North Carolina. It really might as well be.

The point I'm trying to make is this: my father and I both knew very well that as soon as my mother returned home from bingo, the little red dog would be a part of the very elastically-sized Martin family.


I named her Stacy at first. I had a skipper doll named Stacy, one with a pink bicycle, and my distaste for the name "Tracy" is not a recent development. I hated my name even as a child, and I hoped naming my dog Stacy would be a way for me to live vicariously through her much in the way a mother wants to give her child everything she never got to have. I wanted to give my dog the name I'd always longed for.

The similar sounding names quickly got confusing, though, as you probably guessed. Sadie and I were explorers: we were always in the woods looking for arrowheads and candy cottages. Only, unlike Lewis and Clark, we had separate dinner times.

My dad would yell Tracy or Stacy, and from the depths of a forest, even for the ears of a dog, the "ACY" part is most distinguishable. We would both run wildly at the thought of food, and of course, one explorer was always left disappointed and hungry. My parents instructed me to think of a new name for her, and Sadie seemed to be the next best thing.

For as long as I remember, just like any good dog, my Sadie was always waiting for me after school. When I was a child she was the best part about coming home. Just as soon as I had my play-clothes on, it was time for us to make our daily rounds visiting our favorite trees and streams and pine-cones. I always felt so much safer having Sadie there with me. She would always walk with me in the woods, even last year when Hallie and I adventured into the woods, Sadie stayed with us the whole time.

As I grew older, the time I spent with her grew shorter. Sadie seemed unphased, though. Even yesterday she greeted me as soon as I climbed out of my father's car after arriving home from taking the SAT. Up until today, Sadie has been there for nearly all of my arrivals home. I sincerely believe she is best dog I've ever known.

The pear trees outside of my house have grown so large they now need to be trimmed. When we first moved here, my mother planted a row of bushes along the walls of our house, and last week I watched my father cut them down because they had finally gotten too big as well.
Just like the greenery, I, too, feel as if I am stuck inside of an era that's meant for growing. My books no longer fit on my bookshelf, I can make an A on a math test, and I no longer need my parent's help in order to be awake in time for school.

Sadie was a major part of my childhood, and it only makes sense for it to be time to say goodbye. I know my dog is much happier now, as cliche as it is. She no longer has to worry with hot spots or tumors or dry dog food.
I love Sadie very much.



" So dig up your bone, exhume your pine cone, my Sadie."

Today was very unlucky. I checked the mail, and the mailbox was just as empty as it has ever been. Later, I slipped on my old shoes because I had big plans to check the mail again, only this time my mother said, we didn’t get anything today, Tracie. The mail lady came before you checked the first time. I didn’t believe her, but I should have. When I checked the mail the second time, my mailbox was even emptier than before. It should be against the law for a mail lady not to have mail for any particular mailbox. What am I supposed to do all summer if no mail, not even cigarette coupons, ever comes to our house?

Beauty

Today Hallie and I were talking over our chicken tenders, and I mentioned to her, again, how much I adore the book I'm currently reading: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I told her if anyone I knew decided to read it and discuss it with me, I would feel uncomfortable and vulnerable, as if the contents of my very soul were being explored and analyzed and judged.

But one particular passage from the book has stayed with me for far longer than any of the others, and for that reason I feel the need to share it:

"When Sabina was working in the student brigade, her soul poisoned by the cheerful marches issuing incessantly from the loudspeakers, she borrowed a motorcycle one Sunday and headed for the hills. She stopped at a tiny remote village she had never seen before, leaned the motorcycle against the church, and went in. A mass happened to be in progress. Religion was persecuted by the regime, and most people gave the church a wide berth. The only people in the pews were old men and old women, because they did not fear the regime. They feared only death.

The priest intoned words in a singsong voice, and the people repeated them after him in unison. It was a litany. The same words kept coming back, like a wanderer who cannot tear his eyes away from the countryside or a man who cannot take leave of life. She sat in one of the last pews, closing her eyes to hear the music of the words, opening them to stare up at the blue vault dotted with large gold stars. She was entranced.

What she had unexpectedly met there in the village church was not God; it was beauty."

When I read those words for the first time, I was in the passenger seat of my mother's car riding towards Winston-Salem on highway 52. For a small portion of the journey from Mount Airy to Winston, it appears as if Pilot Mountain has been placed right in front of the highway. It looks like a barrier, like if you were to keep driving, you would eventually drive right into the mountain. And when I read the line "it was beauty," for the first time, something inside of me clicked so intensely that Pilot Mountain really could have been blocking the road, and my mother really could have crashed our car into it, and I really would not have even noticed. My thoughts would still be consumed by those words.

I blame this on the religious conflictions I have struggled with for as long as I can remember.

My parents and I moved here from Florida when I was four years old, and one of my very first memories is spotting a huge white bus in the parking lot of our town's Lowes Foods store. Of course, I was intrigued by a vehicle so large, and my one true wish became to sit on its broken leather seats and look through its tinted windows.

Luckily for us, the people who were responsible for the bus noticed my fascination and explained that it was a church bus.

They offered to pick me up on Sundays, and of course my parents had no objections. I was thrilled.

I rode to church with those people every sunday for nearly twelve years.

My mind is filled with memories of the bus: memorizing Bible verses for one-dollar bills, crawling on its floors and coming home with my "pretty white tights" covered in black dirt, listening to various bus workers read Bible stories from a children's book, spilling my Sam's Choice soda all over the floor, getting in trouble for dipping peanut butter nabs into my Dr. Thunder. And at one point, I even remember "giving my life to God," and "getting saved," as my church called it.

I had tried many times before; I would ask God, beg him even, to take my soul away from me and use it for something better. I would sit uncomfortably in my pew and watch sobbing people of all ages get on their hands and knees and ask for forgiveness and permission into Heaven.

This had never happened for me, as much as I longed for it to, and for years I wondered what exactly I was missing spiritually.

Redemption eventually happened for me, too, though.

My salvation took place at a movie theatre on July 23rd, 2007. The preacher at this particular youth conference had just given a sermon that finally seemed to reach me deeply enough for me to actually give my whole entire life away to God.

I remember being pulled to the alter, which was really a stage, and praying to God like I never had before. I remember weeping and being overwhelmingly overjoyed and feeling so complete.

It wasn't long, though, before these feelings began to fade. Doubt haunted me, and I would always run from it, using my spiritual experiences as evidence for God's existence.

How could I have felt a spiritual stirring overpowering enough to make me literally cry without a supernatural being causing it? It simply didn't make sense.

And even now, even though I have considered myself agnostic for nearly a year, none of those spiritual experiences have made sense until today.

That was, until I read the line "it was beauty."

As my mom continued to drive down highway 52 towards the mountain, I put my book down and thought of all the songs that make me want to weep simply for how lovely they are. I thought of all the books and movies that have moved me because of their beautiful love stories. I thought of the trees in Autumn and how wonderful it is to get my feet soaked in puddles while running across a rainy campus under my best friend's umbrella. I thought of how she understood what I meant when I explained my feelings about the book. I thought of how Anne Frank was still able to believe people were good at heart after experiencing something as horrendous as the holocaust, after living hidden in an attic for so long. I thought of the boy who once said my face was something worth living for. I thought of how rare but beautiful my mother's laughter is.

It was as if all at once, all of the world's beauty had fallen right into my mom's Oldsmobile. I felt so enlightened, so complete, and so happy. Even more, these feelings were not unlike the ones I had experienced in that old movie theatre the night of my salvation. They were proof that perhaps a God does not have to be behind spiritual experiences. Maybe, like Sabina, what I experienced that night was merely beauty.

And really, what isn't beautiful about love that never changes, forgiveness, community, happiness, meaning, and goodness? And even more importantly, why can't these things exist even if God may not?

The lovely things in the world - best friends, Autumn, music, mountains, love - should always be something worth sharing and appreciating, whether a higher power asks us to or not.

Of course, I am still unsure about my beliefs in God, and I probably always will be, but life should be beautiful no matter who you are living it for.