Since my grandfather divorced and remarried before I was born and my grandmother never remarried (well, neither Nellie or Billie did - Nellie's husband died a long time before I was born), I've always had three grandmothers and one grandfather.

 My nanny, Nellie, was my only stereotypical grandmother. She gave me candy if I behaved in church, bought me new clothes from J.C. Penney's (even though she always called it "Belk-Tyler's"), played piano, and had chocolate hidden in her house for me. She wore floral dresses and sweatshirts with her church's logo on them, and the worst word I ever heard her say was "shoot," on a day she fell into our television set while trying to walk, again, without her walker.

She loved Jesus, but she never talked about it, even though she went to church twice a week. She always told me it was good to go to church, but never said much beyond that. Now that she's gone, I have her Bible in my bedroom, and when I flip through the pages, it's obvious how serious she was about her religion. On the very first page, in her cursive handwriting, is a note that says, "You never have an experience in life that doesn't draw you closer to God, or cause you to get further from God." Is this how she saw the world all those years?

 She lived, until her Alzheimer's took too much, in West Virginia, in a big white house that smelled like old carpet and popsicle sticks. A house that was filled with puns - a quarter next to a tiny wooden hammer with the words "quarter pounder" written in sharpie, a photo she kept in her wallet of her "pride and joy" - two bottles of house-cleaning products, and a plaque that says "I'm always high, I live in the mountains."

 Billie, another grandmother, is the one who smokes two packs a day - Tahoes - and never learned how to drive. She says "goddamn" more than any person I've ever met, decided she was going to raise a child when she was in her late 60s, writes poetry, loves Obama, and does homework with my little nephew every school day. She was the oldest of a bunch of siblings and the child of parents who died too young. Because of that, she became a mother before she became a high school graduate. She's the queen of "when I was your age" stories, and even though she was probably perpetually hungry growing up, she never makes us eat food we don't like or have room for. (Just save it for the dogs; you don't have to eat it.)

 She's my mother's mother and nearly every day, they sit in Billie's apartment and flip through medical books, talk about their symptoms, and diagnose each other with illnesses - all while chain-smoking.

She grew up in Washington DC and Maryland, and I can still hear the north in her voice when she talks. If I write the word "water" how she says it, it becomes Wort-er.

She is a poet, but she doesn't like poems that rhyme. And she often speaks like a good poem, pointing out the beauty in having your own jar of peanut butter no one will ever put a jelly knife in. 


My last grandmother is the one my grandfather married thirty years ago, Utku, who speaks with a Turkish accent. Utku loves books, and she loves to travel. She's been more places than anyone I know; she's been all over the world and all over America. She loves trying new food, and she identifies as Muslim, although she tells me to never worry too much about religion because it can be a bad thing. 

I used to stay with her and my grandfather for three weeks every summer when I was younger, but it was always more like bootcamp than vacation. If I spoke, it had to be in yes ma'ams and no thank yous. She assigned me a book to read every year and made me write in a journal - made me write about the book and my life- and then she'd read it to make sure I did it. I always had to help with dishes and cleaning and bringing in the nets full of flounder early in the morning. Every night I was required to fix the drinks and set the table, and everything had to be perfect: no forks or knives on the wrong side, no un-matching plates. If I spoke a grammatically incorrect sentence, she refused to acknowledge it until I fixed it. No ain'ts allowed, "they was?"

She also taught me how to paint and took me shopping at craft stores. We'd collect rocks and paint turtles on them to sell at the sea turtle hospital she still works at. We'd find shells at the ocean, only the kind with holes in the top of them, and we'd make our own wind chimes. We'd wake up early in the  morning, right at sunrise, and search the beach for nests of sea turtle eggs that were left there in the night, and then we'd rope them off, to keep them from being stepped on.

Whenever I go to the ocean, I always imagine a globe, and more than that, being ON the globe, at the place where the land meets the ocean and turns into blue. A place like that should be wild, almost holy, like the ocean itself.

It's not. The ocean is saltwater subdivision, divided up and heavily taxed properties, a prime location for gift shops.

Why can't we have just this one thing?

Wedding vowels

I always used to think wedding vows were wedding "vowels," like A, E, I, O, and U. It didn't make sense, but when you're a child, the things adults choose to do with their time never make a lot of sense, anyway.

 Since I love silly things and words and letters and poetry, though, I've decided to compose my own set of wedding vowels.

But don't worry, I'm still a cynic!



A
We will always do what's best for our marriage:
always sit beside each other on city busses,
always add the other's requests to our own grocery lists -
even on the day before thanksgiving,

when it's hard to push a cart without hitting an old man.
Or a shelf trembling from too many boxes of stuffing
being grabbed from it at once.

We'll always do what's best for our marriage,

until the day we need to do what's best for us, 
as whole people
who sometimes need to put a marriage second. For a 
sick sibling, for a trip for work, or for some time alone.

E

Beautiful people are everywhere.

Marriage is not a drain for the hormones
in our bodies,
the serotonin in our heads,
the devices between our legs.

Marriage is a sign that says stop!-
Just as Diana Ross used to sing-
in the name of love. 

Love the one you're with, 
love the one you're with, 
love the one you're with,
love the one you're with.



I

If one of us gets a stomach bug,
even if we're scared,
we'll never stay in a motel.

If we get into an argument,
we'll never be resentful; we'll try not to
yell; and we'll choose our battles wisely:

There are things more important than who
does more to clean the kitchen,
who does more to raise the baby,
and who said the right answer first while
watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

O

Bishop wrote One Art because she knew
losing is the one thing we do,
over and over again, until even our
own lives have been lost from our bodies,


and found in another, if you're buddhist. 
Or found in the sky, if you believe in heaven. 
Or scattered about the earth, in the energy of it all, 
if you're a scientist who knows nothing is 
created or destroyed. 


We'll lose things, too, eventually. 
Our vision, our hair, our memory - 
maybe the things that made us like 
one another - those could leave us, too.

If we know this, though, maybe we can
be prepared. To love through all the losses. 
Or to become a loss ourselves,
if we find that leaving is the better way to love.  

U

Until death do us part.

Or until we change in opposite directions,
and we start to find we're better off
as just ourselves,

not being one flesh anymore,
like the Bible said we'd become.

But flesh hurts to be torn, and even
Eng and Chang Bunker had to be surgically
removed from one another
(but Eng refused - for love), 

and there's no way to take back all the years
we'll spend - no memory-removing device,
except time - with its horse and carriage to pull it
sweetly along -
to make it so we never met.

In a way, this is permanent;
you are permanent,

until death do us part.

Documenting another happy moment!

"We watch and watch and watch these for so long, and when it's all over, all we remember is that they were fireworks." My grandmother said this tonight as we watched fireworks on her porch, and she's right. Now that they're over, all I remember are colors and styles. The golds and reds and greens, the ones that crumble into sparks and the ones that grow out into the night like noodles.

From the porch, it looked like the fireworks were going to fall onto the beach houses and boats that lined the ocean in front of us, but they never did. They always dissolved in the sky before the sparks ever reached a roof. Over and over again, though, I imagined a spark landing on a boat, somewhere near the gas tank, and in my head we'd hear an explosion, see a burning sail, and a fire would be floating on through the water, its owners away watching a better firework show somewhere else.

I'm so happy tonight. I don't know if it's because of the fireworks or because every time I hear them now, I think of my grandmother (who now wants me to call her anne, which is Turkish), or how they sound like the drums of a Bon Iver song. The ocean was so beautiful tonight, and my mom had the teeth that had been hurting her fixed today, and I've gotten so many new books lately, which always make me feel more whole and like myself somehow.

I used to be so happy all the time, like overflowing with happiness, and I want to get back to that.

keep your hand on the door because you know that it
might be a lesson in letting go, 
it might be a lesson in losing the best things,
it might be a lesson in never again 


Chris Pureka

"and you tried to change didn't you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that"
Warsan Shire

Despite my interest in medicine, I've always had my reservations about pursuing a medical career, although I've never known how to articulate those reservations. I think, "I should be a nurse - it's medical, I could work in a hospital, I could help people - what could go wrong?" But today I realized what exactly could and, probably would, go wrong.

I learned my first semester at Salem how vital creativity is to my well-being. If I'm not creative enough, especially because I don't have time to be, I get sad; I feel like part of me is left-behind. I need to do things I can put my whole entire soul into, things that make me forget about time and politics and anything negative. I feel like teaching would give me that more than any other career (that I'm capable of) would. It seems perfect for me - I could be constantly learning, constantly reading, constantly trying to find new ways to share. I just really feel like a teacher in my soul.

I've been having a hard time, but last night, for a whole hour, sitting next to someone I've come to dearly love, I couldn't stop smiling. Even when I tried to stop, I couldn't.  It was just four friends (mostly new), a gingham and Hank Williams themed barbeque restaurant, a small order of hush puppies, bluegrass music played by a quartet of older men, and me.

Being there, surrounded by banjo playing and happy people, I didn't feel eager to leave the south anymore. It was one of those small moments where I remember why I love the place I'm from and why I'll want it back one day if I ever live somewhere else. I'll always miss that automatic feeling of belonging that comes from walking into a room full of smiling people. But people who aren't getting paid to be nice, who are really smiling and happy to see you - a stranger.

One thing that has always scared me about getting older is the way life will become divided into chapters. Except most of the details of those chapters will be lost, and the only thing remaining will be old photograph books, whatever the mind manages to hold onto, and maybe a few journal entries here and there. I always wonder: if I won't remember these things one day, these things that are everything to me now, does that mean they might as well not even happen? Obviously every major event, no matter how many details I remember, will shape me in some fashion (although I may not be aware of it), but the thought of memory loss is still perpetual and scary, and the end result is sentimentality and an obsession with documentation.

I noticed last night that everyone there to hear music (besides us, of course) were around the same age. I realized then for the first time how beautiful it will be to grow old with the other members of my generation and have, at least on some large level, the same life chapters. Right now, milk is $2.99 a gallon (okay I am really cheap and buy the store brand). We have the Iraq and Afghanistan war. We had Nickelodeon as children, and we were young when internet became a part of every household. We're part of the gay marriage debates, the voter suppression legislation, the Obama administration. We also have Lady Gaga, Flo Rida, and Kenny Chesney. When we're old, our memories will all contain these things, among all the other things we still have to live through. Just like all the generations before us, we'll all have our own chunk of history to say we lived through together. We'll see the world change, and we'll change it ourselves.

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time. It makes me feel guilty to think that I could be so sad when my life has contained so little trauma thus far. But ever since last night, I've had the overwhelming feeling that everything will be okay. It was like a small, yellow light in a dull room.

To do:

• Study for the GRE 
• Take the GRE 
• Take the subject test 
• Write my senior paper 
• Pick out grad schools 
• Become brave enough to ask for teacher recommendations 
• Apply for grad schools 
• Apply to other schools as a back-up plan 
• Try not to worry 
• Try not to worry about money 
• Try not to worry about my parents' finances 
• Convince myself that not getting into grad school ≠ the end of the world 
• Convince myself that it will be okay and that I'm young and don't need to freak out about this 
• Try to develop an interest in getting older (I have been working on this but not much progress has been made) 
• Stop 
• Worrying 
• Be healthy 
• Watch lots of Grey's Anatomy 
• Sleep

I've imagined myself being in the medical profession my whole life. When I was little I wanted to be a brain surgeon. And then a paramedic. And then a pediatrician. And then a neonatal nurse. My favorite show was Trauma: Life in the ER, and the first time I visited Baptist Hospital, I never wanted to leave. I wanted to explore and find the trauma and surgeries and sickness and organs and blood. My parents thought they'd given birth to the most morbid child.

Not even my own minor illnesses kill my fascination. Diagnoses have always evoked fascination and curiosity - never fear. In second grade I was out of school for a week because I was sick with a mysterious stomach flu, and even though I felt completely horrible, the only thing I looked forward to was the doctor visit. I asked if I could take the x-rays of my stomach home, and they're still laying on top of my fridge in a yellow envelope, buried beneath a collection of x-rays kidnapped from my parents' various doctor visits.

Sometimes I feel as if I must be just like Harold from Harold and Maude. He was obsessed with death - with funerals, hurses, and pretending to die - until he experienced death for real, and then he symbolically let his hurse drive itself over a cliff. Now that I'm older, I'm an employee at a hospital, have sick family members coming out of my ears, have experienced my own fair share of sickness, and I still haven't had that Harold moment where I realize that maybe human anatomy and medicine aren't so thrilling after all.

Still, other things keep me from the medical world. I have no faith in my chemistry abilities, no time for pre-med in my undergraduate career, the worst phobia of puke, and seeing other people's blood makes me dizzy. And, at least for right now, I love other things more. I'd rather be learning poetry and how the brain works, not organic chemistry. I still feel too young for that - like I need to grow more.

Maybe this means I don't love medicine enough to actually pursue it, or maybe it means I don't have enough faith in myself, or maybe it means I just really really hate puke. But things can get confusing when I walk through the hospital on my lunch break, completely in love with everything, asking why am I not doing pre-med? over and over and over and over again.


I just always want a hospital to go to. Not to be sick (although hospitals come in handy for that, too), but to be a tiny part of a huge science-obsessed community that experiences human nature at its rawest on a daily basis. I love the structure of the hospital, the shuttles that go all over the city, how official  the signs and maps inside seem (as if to say, "these are all the ways in which science has succeeded"), and how seeing a surgeon or a doctor walking around makes me feel like I'm seeing the president or a celebrity or really anyone who is extremely important. (And who could be more important, at least in a hospital?) 


Emergencies and operating rooms and codes and drugs all seem so thrilling. And so does being a detective who uses charts and symptoms and tests to find answers. But still, being where I am now, I have no clue how to get there. Or if it's really what I want (right now, knowing the brain as best as I can is really what I want). 


I'm convinced loving too many things can be a curse, especially when time is limited and education is expensive and people think you should know what you want to do by the time you're a senior in college. 

Things my parents taught me

A
As are to be preferred. They earn $5.00 each at report card time, whereas Bs only earn $3.00, and anything less earns nothing - not even pocket change. Fs cancel out all the other grades, so one F means you get no money at all, even if every other grade is an A or a B.

B
Be careful with your money once you get it, even if you do get it for making As. Don't let it fall out of your pockets when you go to ball games and skating rinks; don't spend it all on candy and nail polish. You never know when you might need it for something more important, like a broken computer or a surprise concert where tickets cost two report cards full of As.

C
Cats are nothing but giant rats who have no business living inside of houses with people.
Cats are the third best animal in the world, just below dogs (first place) and humans (second place).

D
Dorals cost $30.00 a carton, so if you smoke two cartons a week, it costs $60.00 a week to pave your lungs black with tar. Don't let yourself become addicted to silly things, like nicotine and bingo-playing.

E
Eat before you go grocery shopping.

F
Fun doesn't necessarily mean amusement parks and trips to Toys 'R' Us. It can be yardsales early in the morning with bags of Barbie clothes for sale; it can be twenty-five cent doll clothing that used to belong to a real baby; it can be a homemade waterslide in the backyard, one made with old blue tarp and a snake-like water hose.

G
Gravely makes the best lawnmowers, followed by John Deere, and then Cub Cadet.

H
If there is a Heaven, only people who are never mean to animals will be there.

I
Icicles hanging from the roof of a porch can be broken off and eaten like a rain-flavored popsicle, and snowballs can be saved in the back of the freezer, just so long as there's room for them amongst all the frozen burgers and vegetables.


J
Jessica is a name that doesn't fit in with a family full of daughters with T names. Tina, Tanya, Tracy, and Jessica.

K
Kites aren't for those who are messy and often find themselves tangled up in enough trouble as it is. Some people just aren't kite people.

L
Love can be existent without being spoken of for years and years. Love is a thing some people don't like to talk about. And some people don't show it through hugs and kisses and presents. Instead, they show it through meals and working and building.

And some people show love by letting the extra stray dog stay on the porch instead of taking him to the pound or shooting him out in the woods.

M
Markings on the backs of plates and teacups and butter dishes can tell you how old they are, whether they're antiques or reproductions, and how much money one can sell them for in a little downtown antique shop. There are entire books about these markings, they're so important.

N
Never go to the circus; they're mean to animals there. Never leave messes behind; always clean up behind yourself. Never be a burden to anyone. Never let people buy you things. Never ask people for things. Never ask for help unless you absolutely need it. Never cause a scene in public. Never disrespect your father. Never say words like "lesbian" in front of your grandmother. Never disagree with your grandfather when he tries to talk about politics. Never refuse to let things go. Never forget to wear sunscreen, even when it's cloudy outside and you're under water. Never feel like you're too old for something you love; if you want to take your dolls with you to college, do it.

O
Oceans are not good places to leave a kid alone for three weeks.

P
Practice is most important - not genetics or intelligence or being gifted. Practice, practice, practice.

Q
Quiet is good: a quiet home in the woods where there's not much traffic, a quiet place to read, the quietness of the telephone when it isn't always ringing.

R
Make sure your children are ready to get rid of their Barbies before you donate them to Goodwill.

S
Sometimes it's okay to splurge and spend a little extra money on something, like guitars or hardwood floors or name-brand cheese, if you can afford it and it makes you happy. But only sometimes.

T
Televisions are for cartoons every Saturday morning: Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. They're for Wheel of Fortune in the evenings and for Lifetime movies late at night, after everyone else has gone to bed.

U
Unzipping your coats and jackets and leaving them by the front door for someone to trip over isn't a nice thing to do.

V
Violins are good. Violins and banjos and guitars and fiddles - all moving quickly enough for dancing.

W
Weekends are for renting scary movies and watching them together in the dark, in the living room.

X
XXX stores are bad, especially the one up on a hill in Bluefield, West Virginia. Never ask your father if you can go, even if you're five and the sign says "Adult Toy Store."

Y
"Yes" is a word children should hardly ever hear.
"Yes" is a word children should hear as often as possible.

Z
Zodiac signs are for real. Or, at the very least, fun.

my first year at Salem in scraps

Our rules, everyone who visited us was super bummed about #11

We sang this song (this is from my opening ceremony paper) at basically every school meeting and I still only knew the first two lines at the end of the year

Starr was our lovely hall-mate and Ethel was the soul of the gremlin who possessed my body at times  

There was quite a bit of drama in our hall at the beginning of the year, and I wanted to put these outside, and Hallie said no, so we hung them in our dorm instead

even though she did let me put a nicer one in the hall that said "SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" 

Sara singing The National to us on paper  

Hallie was obsessed with reading newspapers and cutting pictures out of them - like this picture of the love of my life, Ricky Rubio 

Lots and lots of plays and programs and poetry readings 

Having a messy dorm SOMETIMES (this is Hallie's beautiful artwork)

Most of the notes on our door were ones we wrote and signed various names to (but most of these are real notes!) 

Hallie's Galentines 

Some of us were 20 and some of us were not 20 

An artifact from a bio class in January that lasted for four hours a night 

Hallie and I became obsessed with finding these 

Letters and postcards and presents from West Virginia and Indiana and home :) 

And, finally, this beautiful picture of Hallie being a cosmogirl 

"Answers have too many anchors.
Let's grow up to be chain-cutters.
Let's keep telling each other stories
'til we know what's true.

This is true.
I was fourteen-years-old
at the Baptist church in Calais, Maine
serving Thanksgiving dinner
to people who had no homes.

A man came in so hungry
he started drinking the coffee creamers.
When he'd drank about a dozen
the preacher's wife ran up and
scolded him for his "terrible manners."

I served the man dinner,
wished him a peaceful holiday,
and left the church.

But I talked to Jesus, Kelsey,
the whole way home."

From "A Letter to Kelsey, Who Loves Jesus" by Andrea Gibson

Future Mrs. Jennings, seven years later

At my middle school each student had a one-word identity. Kelly, who wore Green Day shirts and bracelets to hide her wrists, was emo. Chris wore a different striped Abercrombie polo every day; he was preppy. Katelyn read a million words a year and made perfect scores in algebra - that made her a nerd. Ocer wore stained-up wife-beaters and loved calling us dykes and faggots. He was a redneck.

I've only ever been to one middle school, but judging by the literature, movies, and stereotyping made about this stage in adolescence, I'm sure my school wasn't the only one like this.

 If I could do it over - middle school, that is - I would become obsessed with country music, with all the classics. Especially the Jennings: Waylon and Shooter. This way my principal would believe me when I told him my shirt, custom ordered online to say Future Mrs. Jennings, was not indeed an attempt to sexually harass my old language arts teacher. Rather, it was a tribute to my love of country music, to my appreciation of good guitar playing and the only song I've ever known by Shooter, "Fourth of July."

Unfortunately, by the time I found myself in the Principal's office receiving my second, and not final, school suspension, my singular identity was well-established. I was the girl who barked at people, belted the Charmin Ultra jingle through crowded hallways, got sent out of classrooms for being disruptive, and made life for teachers "hell," as one poor teacher told me after I filled in a practice EOG bubble sheet with colored pencils in a charming pattern of pink, purple, blue.

 In short, I was the class clown. And more than that, I was the class clown who perpetually pretended to be in love with her language arts teacher. After I wore the shirt, my teachers received a much-needed three day break from me.

It puzzles me now that I was ever this way. My parents told me a few months ago that as a child I had always been bashful, introverted. Right after middle school I went back to this. It took months for me to make new friends at the Early College. Hallie was my first, and she had to drag me - on a daily basis, for awhile - out of the lonely Algebra One classroom at lunch time.

Like most of us, in the later years of elementary school and the early years of middle school, I was bullied. My glasses - huge, dirty, and nearly always crooked - were what did it for me. And one day after I forgot my glasses at home, my lazy eye was discovered.

"Look at me," I remember people saying in our school cafeteria. And no matter how straight I tried to keep my eyes, one always wandered off to look at other things when it should have been looking at the person speaking to me. "I can't tell what you're looking at," they'd say to me. And a whole group would gather around after they noticed what was happening - a big group of kids wanting to see me half look at them.

If I had my glasses, I was four-eyed. If I didn't, I was cock-eyed. And being socially awkward, closest to lunch ladies and custodians, and unable to buy clothing from Limited Too didn't help.

This, in my mind, is why I became class clown in middle school. Although it may seem like an excuse, I like to think of it as a theory. A theory of self-preservation that could explain, but not excuse, my getting kicked out of three different homerooms. Not just for an hour, but for good.

Before I always blamed it on my friend group. I was friends with Victoria and Julie, two people who acted just the same as me and constantly had to be separated from each other and me. But the years I got suspended - sixth and eighth grade - we weren't close. In fact, I never saw them. And I was still just as bad.

Comedy has always been a good way to try to hide vulnerability. People "laugh to keep from crying," as the saying goes. My theory is that in middle school, I protected myself from the unkindness of peers by padding myself with layers of obnoxiousness. If they wanted to get to me, they'd have to go through my barking and singing and shouting first.

In the end, my method mostly worked. Of course rejection is bothersome no matter what the reason, but at least being class clown I had control over my own rejection. People were mean - probably even meaner than before - but it mattered less because I chose what they attacked. It wasn't my eyes or my (real) personality or the smell of  my mom's cigarette smoke clinging to my clothes. It was all the fun I was having with my best friends; it was the bubble sheet; it was the singing.

Sara

When I was in kindergarten, I met a girl named Sara on the playground. She was in first grade, and I don’t remember how we became friends, but I do know we were close from that day on. She’s the first friend I ever remember making.

A few months after we met, my mom and I were driving home on a Thursday evening. This was when I saw Sara outside in her yard for the first time, even though I didn’t know it was her yard at first. I know it was a Thursday, though, because she was sitting clothes outside for a yardsale her family was having the next day, and the Hall family has always had yardsales on Fridays and Saturdays.

I remember seeing Sara and screaming as loudly as I could and begging my mom to pull into their driveway. Which, turned out, was less than half a mile from where I live. As the sun was setting, we stood outside of my mom’s blue Oldsmobile and talked. Our moms really liked each other. Sara and I really liked each other. We were walking distance apart. It was perfect.

We made plans to go over to each other’s houses, and I don’t remember the first time that happened, but I know we spent entire summers together. And weekends. And days after school - so many that our bus driver stopped requiring me to bring a note from my mom whenever I wanted to get off the bus at her house.

I have a paper journal from elementary school that we had to write in every day - one of those journals with dull paper and fat lines - and one of the entries says, “Today I waved at Peggy (Sara’s mom) from the bus window. Nicole waved at her too and that made me mad.” I don’t remember who Nicole is now, but I do remember feeling like Sara - and her mom and her house and her dogs - all belonged to me, too. I didn’t want to share.

We stayed best friends all through middle school. We went to skating rinks together, and she loved to embarrass me in front of boys. We did each other’s make-up and shared our clothes. We spent entire nights singing Dixie Chicks karaoke even though neither of us could sing. We had the same life plans: to graduate high school, find a husband, and have babies. We both loved babies. And we didn’t know there were any other options.

We ended up going to different high schools, though. I went to the Early College, and she went to the school I would’ve went to had I not decided against it. I still went over to her house for dinner quite a bit - it was always homegrown and never from a box or a can - but things were never quite the same, even though I can’t place how. It simply seemed as if we existed in different worlds. And in a lot of ways, going to such different schools, we did.

The one constant that held all our years together was her backyard. Her family lives on one-hundred acres of pure glory: of tobacco fields (they roll their own cigarettes, too), cherry trees, orange clay, wild strawberries, huckleberries, deer stands, old barns, and miles and miles of trees. In elementary school, we’d climb the trees and play hide and seek and track the orange clay into our houses. In middle school and high school we’d do the same - sometimes just because, and sometimes so Sara could smoke without anyone seeing.

Every summer we’d catch frogs and fireflies. And then we’d go back into our houses, covered in mosquito bites and briar scratches.

Tonight on my way home from college, I went over to their house for the first time in a few years, and almost nothing had changed. The house still smells the same, like smokey meat and wood stove, and Sara’s brother still picks up their old telephone every time it rings. He still answers it saying, “hello, Hall’s residence.” One would think time skipped over their little house the way nothing ever changes there, not even Days of Our Lives playing perpetually on the television set.

A few things have changed, though. Sara doesn’t live there anymore, for one. She’s now engaged, living with her fiance, and just visiting with her mother for the evening. And the biggest change, my personal favorite, is the addition of a human: a little red-headed girl named Dixie. Sara had grown Dixie inside of her belly for nine months, and she has now existed in the world, in our tiny town in North Carolina, for five months.

Sara’s dad didn’t even get mad when he found out about the baby, although Sara’s only one year older than me. “The worst thing about being a grandfather,” he apparently said, “is waking up next to a grandmother.”

As I was pulling into the driveway, I was thinking, “Please remember all those years in high school when I babysat regularly. Please remember that I know how to hold a baby, that I’ll know how to support her head if I need to, and that I won’t drop her.” I know some parents are picky about who they’ll let hold their children (I would be one of those parents), and I just wanted Sara to remember that she could trust me.

When I got inside, the baby was asleep on the couch. I was disappointed, as most baby-lovers would be, because usually this means no holding the baby until the baby wakes up. I was surprised when Peggy, Dixie’s grandmother, immediately asked if I wanted to hold her. They woke Dixie up and handed her right to me, not even lecturing me on the importance of not dropping her.

She was the happiest baby in the world, even after being woken up from a nap. She pulled my hair and laughed and reminded me so much of her mom. Even though it’s still weird to think of Sara as a mother, despite all the years we spent playing with dolls together.

After Dixie was napping again and we’d ran out of stories to tell, Sara asked if I wanted to go outside with her. She snuck a cigarette from her pocketbook and told her mom we’d be back soon. Outside she showed me where wild strawberries were growing and we ate them straight from the earth, without washing them, just as we’d always done as children.

“Watch out and don’t step on a snake,” she told me, noticing my sandals. I’d always been bad for dressing inappropriately for our walks through her woods. I had collected a drawer full of Sara’s old clothes at my house at one point, just because I never learned not to wear my good clothes when I knew we’d be outside.

“But then again,” she said, “I’ve never found any snakes on this property before.”

“Never?” I was surprised. All those acres and all that time spent outside, surely there had been a snake. But it turns out Sara doesn’t count black snakes, just the bad ones like copperheads and rattlesnakes.

And after we walked to the one-lane bridge and back to her porch, instead of calling my dad to tell him I was ready to go, Sara drove me home herself - with her own car and an empty Graco car seat in the back.

Teenage angst revisited

For the past few years I've been trying as hard as I can to keep religion out of my life. It stole my sanity for as long as I can remember - first as a christian perpetually overwhelmed with doubt, next as a skeptic fearing social rejection, and finally as an agnostic struggling through a year-long existential crisis in which I had to re-shape my life and learn to see the world through an irreligious lens. It wasn't easy finally being honest with myself and admitting I really don't believe this when so much of my identity was centered around my christianity.

Even now, my relationship with religion is strange and something I don't quite understand. I feel so drawn to it - or at least its imagery and romanticism, kind of like Nick Laird says in an essay comparing poetry and religion: "I like ritual and heightened states. I like mind-altering drugs. I believe in invisible forces - radioactivity, magnetism, sound waves - and I’m more than willing to sit for an hour listening to a church organist practice, which I did just last week. And I’ll let myself shiver along with the immense chord changes. I don’t like faith but I’m fond of its trappings- the kitschy icons, the candles, the paintings, the architecture and, especially, the poetry."

And I like all of these things, too - save the drugs. They bring back fond memories; they make me feel at home.

The problem is whenever someone describes a genuine religious experience to me, I can't handle it. I break down. I feel frustrated. I feel the way I always felt in church when others were having religious experiences around me -falling down on their knees and weeping - and wondering why I couldn't have those experiences, too.

Ever since I started going to church when I was little, I've had the feeling I'm missing something. Maybe a "religious experience" structure in my brain that's absent or microscopic. Either way, it never seemed fair. I never felt like my doubt and rationality were my fault, and I still don't. I don't even find it to be a fault at all on most days.

Sometimes, though, I get so angsty thinking that others believe in a God who made me and yet, made me in a way in which I can't believe. And I know I'm not alone in this; I know there are others who, try as they might, just can't have faith in any sort of god. The problem is to the majority of faith-havers, it seems us doubters just aren't trying hard enough.

If religious people are right and I'll have to answer to God in the end, I just hope he understands that I tried for years and years and years. I hope he understands that this brain he put me in is just too logical and skeptical. And most importantly, I hope he'll answer my questions as to why he'd make some brains wired in such a way that they can understand him better than others. I'd also like to ask him why he chose to be so damn mysterious.

Until then and after I finish this book, I suppose it's back to keeping my life religion-free. And that's okay, because I only long for religion when I think of other people's experiences. I'm perfectly happy without it, and I need to remember that. I need to remember that like Nick Laird, I don't need religion when poetry exists.

I want my mom to always be here to ask a
hundred times, "what do you want to eat?"

at the McDonalds drive thru, cigarette in
her mouth, refusing to complete the
order and file obediently to window #2.

She is always sure I must want something,
would like at least a burger, at least a drink,
and that I'll want some food once I smell it.

"Just get me a value fry,"
I always say in the end.

And after "a value fry!" has been
shouted at our poor order-taker,

her big silver car stops holding back
the impatient automobile parade

and pulls on up.

2010 Tracie was cheesy.

Just found the only love poem I've ever written on my computer!

On some days I love you. I love you

to the depth and breadth and yes, even

height my soul can reach,

which isn’t very far, mind you.

But I still feel a stirring as I pass a man selling

peaches on the highway, and sometimes when

I see your name written in a Holy Bible. 

Some days I see flowers and think

of how they might have fallen from a love poem

written years ago about our very souls.

And yet, some days, I love you with the

intensity of a mere fading star, and my love

feels like a fish, when it used to be the ocean.

But I love you,

not only for the affection I feel when hit

with the recollection of your favorite fruit,

but also for the stars that can't be seen when

the earth moves its body to face the sun

and wake the world.

I love you for the morning.  

A thank-you letter to the universe

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ''If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'" K.V.

• The other day when Aimee Nezhukumatathil came to my little poetry class, she described her book Lucky Fish as a thank-you letter to the universe,  an "eff you" to anyone who's told her she should be more negative in her writing.
• Spring is here and warming everything, and I finally got to leave my chemistry troubles behind for good.
•  Such a huge part of my spring semester has consisted of reading poetry, listening to others read poetry, writing poetry, and falling in love with poetry.
•  I saw Bradley Hathaway last night and experienced beauty in a way that I hadn't since 2009, beauty that made me feel like I could possibly have faith in a god again or at the very least, in the world.
• I know beautiful people. 
• My spring break will be nomadic, a lot of it spent outdoors with people who make me happy.

 The more I think about it, the more I think redemption!

Winter was awful, a mess of uncertainty - perpetual struggling to keep up my grades, to memorize five classes worth of psychological studies and vocabulary words and statistical rules. Wondering whether or not my mom's treatments will work, learning how anxiety medications or some other mysterious thing can hurt a relationship, wanting to be creative but not having time and because of that, simply being sad.

All that is over now - at least until Fall - and I just wanted to write a post acknowledging my happiness, as Kurt Vonnegut asked us all to do. If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

There's also a poem by Aimee Nezhukumatathil that makes me extra happy. It's called "Baked Goods," and it's the first love poem she wrote to her husband. At the time they lived in their first house together, a fixer-upper next door to cranky old people who had a meth lab in their basement. As someone with a dysfunctional life, it's nice to see dysfunction turned into something so charming:

Baked Goods

Flour on the floor makes my sandals

slip and I tumble into your arms.

Too hot to bake this morning but

blueberries begged me to fold them

into moist muffins. Sticks of rhubarb

plotted a whole pie. The windows

are blown open and a thickfruit tang

sneaks through the wire screen

and into the home of the scowly lady

Who lives next door. Yesterday, a man

in the city was rescued from his apartment

that was filled with a thousand rats

something about being angry because

his pet python refused to eat. He let the bloom

of fur rise, rise over the little gnarly blue rug,

over the coffee table, the kitchen countertops

and pip through each cabinet, snip

at the stumpy paper bags of sugar,

the cylinders of salt. Our kitchen is a hot mess—

a riot of pots, wooden spoons, melted butter.

So be it. Maybe all this baking will quiet

The angry voices next door, if only

For a brief whiff. I want our summers

to always be like this—a kitchen wrecked

with love, a table overflowing with baked goods
warming the already warm air. After all the pots

are stacked, the goodies cooked, and all the counters
wiped clean - let us never be rescued from this mess. 

The things middle schoolers say when
you show them brains,
the tissues turned to sponge in formaldehyde:
Is that what my brain smells like? I think 
I'm going to puke.
Please tell me
those aren't real brains. 
And in reference to honeybee brains
in a little tube:
Some people have too much time on their hands.

A silly variation of Donald Justice's variation.

I will die in the city on the street, downtown Charlotte,
on a day nobody’s there to say “watch out for that bus,

Tracy!” and pull me back to the curb. I’ll be writing

something in my head – a letter, perhaps – in cursive font,

letters that curve and loop like microscopic silly string;

and when I hit the pavement, the words will simmer

on the asphalt in all the blood and bits of brain.

I think it will be on an afternoon, when the sun is full and
draining sweat from construction workers and men in suits

wear shades. Most of the city will walk on, lunch plans
on their minds, but a man in the burrito place will see
and say, “oh shit, someone call 911!”
the way people do in movie medical emergencies

when an ambulance is already on the way.

Tracy Lynn Martin is dead. A city Humpty dumpty,
the hospital couldn’t put her together again.
Her skin, now painted and stuffed, is riding in a box in the
back of a car - slowing traffic - making people late for work.
On the asphalt in the city, across from the burrito place is
tiny bits of brain and a half-written letter. Occasionally

some get stuck to someone's tires and roll away. 

valentine's day

When I walked into the lab on Tuesday (Valentine's day), there was red everywhere, all over the white napkins my boss was working on. She wasn't trying to be festive, though; she was decapitating baby rats, little pink alien-looking creatures, with a pair of orange kitchen scissors. She dug the brains out of their heads, wrapped each one in foil, and put them all in the freezer. She called herself Dr. Death, and I could tell she hated doing it, especially when the rats' headless bodies wiggled all over the place spilling even more blood.

It was a gory scene, but more than disgusting it was beautiful. Scientists are often portrayed as cold and dispassionate in our culture - mad and evil at times, too - but the reality is the opposite. The scientists I've had the pleasure of working with lately are so passionate and caring in everything they do. As my boss cut each of their necks, she told me how much she hated doing it - how much she hated it for the rats - and her gloomy expression evidenced her sincerity. She knew she had to do it, though, so we could "get the real killers," as my old biology teacher says.

I'm 100% for the ethical treatment of animals in the lab, and I know none of those baby rats suffered as they were killed instantly. The good thing is the more advances made in the field of science, the less animals we need. This year, for example, chimps were declared unnecessary for for Hepatitis C research. I'm so thankful for the animals who do die and have died for the sake of research, who help us get the viruses and bacteria and diseases that eat away at the people we love and often times, take them away from us.

Later on that morning a procedure went wrong and we had to euthanize a full-grown rat. We put her in a clear box and turned the Co2 on and watched her run around until she finally just fell asleep, little pink paws up in the air. Today when my mom told me the Hepatitis C was currently undetectable in her blood, that image came back to me along with an overwhelming gratitude for scientists - and animals - who devote so much of themselves to helping others be healthy.

Really, the splatters of blood and frozen brains had nothing to do with Valentine's day. That is, until you think of all the people who might be better off because of that huge mess, until you consider all their loved ones waiting patiently and hopefully on science or God or both. Science isn't glorious to look at until you see the whole picture. Blood shed by animals in the lab is salvation for so many people, even if most don't realize it.

Tracy (the emptiness of names)

Right after the smack on the bottom comes the name. I remember
crying as they stuck mine on me: T-R-A-C-Y,
the letters spilling from mama’s lips like a can of alphabet
soup into sterile air. Tracy.

If you swish the letters around in your mouth, just
say the name as it sounds,
Tracy is one who seems sloppily jotted down: a girl traced
into existence through the projects of lazy students, but

a book of names will tell you Tracy means harvest,
the short form of Theresa,
a verb for the Greeks. Can you hear it? “We
must go Tracy the fields today, in search of beans,”
or something along those lines. And this raises

the question: what use are baby name
books in a world where star-crossed skeptics declared
the emptiness of names? “A rose is still a rose,”
they said. “Even if you call it a daisy.”

I learned the good in names, though, at age thirteen -
lost out in the woods at dinnertime
and Tracy was the sound of mama’s voice running through the trees,
grabbing my hand and leading me home
before dinner got cold.

something bright burning, still burning

One shot down, almost a year's worth of shots to go. My mom's skin is already looking gray. She says she's feeling gray, too: cold chills, headaches, weakness, pain all over. Hopefully these shots will work better than the last round - better than the shots that did nothing to keep the viruses from gnawing away at her liver. From making copies of themselves and putting their pieces together inside my mom's perfectly good cells.

For as long as I can remember, the centerpiece of my coffee table has been an outdated, 3000 page Harvard medical book. I still see that old thing lying around sometimes. The pages are swollen from being soaked and dried out so much, stained by both pepsi and water. The cover is full of cigarette burns, too, side-effects of my mom's sleeping disorders and eternally-burning Pall Malls.

 It used to by my mama's Bible- the words inside were in red and black ink. Each time she had a new symptom, she'd search the book to see what illness to diagnose herself with. Coughing, the flu, chronic bronchitis, pneumonia, discs crumbling away in her back. Red ink, in the book, meant you were having an emergency. For awhile we thought she was a bit loony, a hypochondriac at times, and maybe she should just quit smoking. But everything made sense when we learned that Hepatitis C doesn't go away like they thought it did back in the 70's.

Forty years is a long time to have living things* inside you, living things destroying you, making your immune system weak, making your liver ache. I'm sure these shots will weaken my mother as they did before, making her feel like a skin-made sack of viruses, interferon, and its side-effects; the shots will make her feel "like death," as she always says. Our messy house will depress her, make her long for a beautiful, clean log cabin with shiny wood floors.

When my mom first learned the intensity of her illness - stage 2 out of 4, I still went to church, and she told me to put her on the prayer request list every sunday. That's how I knew Hepatitis C would change our lives. And even though I didn't tell my mom this, I much prefer to place my faith in science, in these shots and potential cures and transplants, instead of the supernatural - an unreliable God who only helps some and "works in mysterious ways" for all the others.

But maybe it's true what they say, that prayer doesn't change God, but the people who pray. Or in this case, the person being prayed for. Even if my mom only believes in a God sometimes, it must help to know that strangers are out in the world requesting that God somehow make things different for her.

 I don't know about God or how prayers work anymore, but I still have my faith in science. I know that if anyone can heal the sick, it's the researchers who spend hours and hours in the lab recording the nature of the universe by looking through the lens of a microscope. This is going to be a long year, but I still have hope. My mom still has hope, too, and so do the researchers who are wondering how well this  treatment will work.

Thankfully,  I feel she's in good hands, and I take comfort in remembering that even when she feels like death, possibly even like dying, there will be "something bright burning, still burning" behind all the interferon and cirrhosis. There will be my mother and her strong, resilient spirit burning. And more than  likely, she will not be without her her eternally-burning cigarettes.






*Though some say they aren't living, that viruses straddle the definition of life.

"It does not suffice for you to say I am a sweet girl
Or to say you hate to see me sad because of you
It does not suffice to merely lie beside each other
As those who love each other do

I picture you rising up in the morning
Stretching out on your boundless bed
Beating a clear path to the shower
Scouring yourself red

The tap of hangers swaying in the closet
Unburdened hooks and empty drawers
And everywhere I tried to love you
Is yours again and only yours"

Joanna Newsom

love in the time of burping contests!

The other day a friend asked what my least favorite organ is and although I felt I was betraying myself to dislike any of my organs (they do a good job), the choice is easy. My least favorite organ is the stomach - no contest there, and I hate the whole digestive tract. I hate the sounds it makes, the run-to-the-restroom consequences when something inside goes wrong, the burps, the gulps, and the sound of people eating.

I know the digestive tract is necessary. I know that every person has one - though some digestive tracts are missing parts and some are noisier than others. I know food is good, and I love eating. But all the internal devices and chemicals involved with processing that food are just so repulsive to me. And this is all irrational, I know, but irrationality hardly matters when someone coughs near me and I immediately pray they aren't going to be sick.

With all that in mind - although it may be silly, I like to think my ability to tolerate the sounds of another person eating and digesting is positively correlated with how much I love them. There are exceptions to this theory, of course. Sometimes people are just quiet eaters and Hallie, my very best friend, has never burped before. But it's hard to deny that the situation is so much worse when someone you don't love is smacking their food, burping the alphabet, or telling you they might be sick.

It's strange how when you love someone, you learn to love everything about them - even the sounds their body makes as they eat food. You can share meals with that person, say "okay" without feeling strange when they say they're going to use the restroom, and know what to do when their belly acts funny. I know people often talk about the larger side-effects of love: the sacrifices, the weddings, the tears, the "based on a true story" Lifetime movies. But for me, although it may still be silly, the ability to be around a digestive system other than my own will always be a sure sign that - in the words of Don Williams, "it must be love, oh, it must be love."

The freedom to share food isn't all you become attached to, though. With time, you feel connected to their favorite songs, their t-shirt collection, the pictures of you together, all your memories with them. And you feel connected to the person you love as a whole - to them being greater than the sum of their parts. You learn how to know what they feel without them saying so. If they love you any less or more, you can tell from microscopic details in the way they look at you or speak to you.

And then sometimes something horrible happens. And whenever something horrible happens, it's hard to stop seeing love as terminal and useless. Once you get used to someone - their kisses, sneezes, hiccups, bellyaches, voices, laughter, eyes, smile and even their burps - once you love all those things about a person, it's hard to see the point in starting over new. You'd have to learn the meaning in another person's facial expressions, figure out how to know what they're feeling by the way they move. And what if you couldn't love another person so much? What if you couldn't bear the sound of a new person's hiccups, or what if you never guessed their feelings right?

Eventually, though, love will seem worthwhile. We'll all get lonely enough to want to worry with it again, and it's like Alvy Singer said in Annie Hall - we keep going through relationships despite their absurdity because most of us, uh, we need the eggs. I'm trying to keep this in mind right now. Even if something horrible happens, and even if I tell myself I'll never love again because love is plum stupid, I'm sure it'll happen. I'm sure I'll need the eggs, and the presence of another - digestive tract and all - again.




(Sorry for my incorrect usage of plural pronouns and perpetual switching from first to second person.)

"Even losing you (the joking voice,
a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster."

2011 meant

Graduating high school, being sad, moving on 

falling in love with the brain 

falling in love with science 

falling in love with the human body and all its organs and nerves and complicated machinery 

deciding at the last minute to be a psychology major instead of an english major 

watching Mary, Paul, and Arthur grow into adult cats  

applying to colleges, deciding on Salem, being happy with that decision 

living with my best friend

 failing at volunteering in the psych ward 

hours and hours and hours of studying for physiology 

celebrating christmas in the city and acting insane 

becoming ridiculously obsessed with politics 

Young Democrats

being better friends with Audry and Jake 

missing Shacana and Lolo and Liz every day 

barely surviving exam week 

walks downtown to coffee shops with new friends 

a lot of love and arguments and wondering why people I like are so far away 

late night flakey conversations with Hallie while she tries to avoid waking up our neighbors 

still finding the life of a truck driver appealing 

hating the world’s obsession with Angry Birds and James Patterson

having a big sister, Gabi, who I love dearly 

nearly getting my nose pierced way too many times 

always chickening out 

trips to my old school to reunite with people I still love 

finding people who love the brain as much as I do 

making dean’s list at Salem 

my mom’s new medicine finally being available 

learning how to wrap a towel around my head 

becoming a feminist 

kicking ass at arcade basketball games 

surviving hurricane Irene 

trips to Krankies with Sara, watching Twin Peaks with Sara 

spending a week in Indianapolis 

a lot of greyhound trips 

getting my first paying job in a biology lab 

getting an internship at the medical center 

a lot of cigarette smoke 

a lot of Taco Bell 

a lot of baking, door decorating, and ordering pizza 

still having that soda pop addiction 

reading 56 books 

carving the most wonderful pumpkin with Taylor 

taking a whole class on human memory 

trips to the library on days class was cancelled 

sleeping on the floor, taking down our bunk beds, sleeping in a bed again 

spending hours looking at graduate schools, realizing I have to start applying in less than a year, feeling terrified 

nearly making it through Eric Kandel’s autobiography 

bonding with my little nephews on a trip to the ocean, arguing with everyone else 

falling in love with hush puppies and pinto beans 

learning that honey bees have emotions and that I will always be horrible at math 

spending christmas with one of my very best friends 

buying way more books than I read 

having (what seemed like) buckets of blood drawn 

always being healthy in the end 

falling in love with more local music

falling more in love with NC 

missing West Virginia more than anything 

wishing it would snow 

thinking of my house as a happiness black hole 

watching Community, Parks and Rec, and Trauma: Life in the ER 

appreciating the holidays way more in college 

wanting to have 4 billion babies but thankfully refraining 

declaring Heat my favorite basketball team   

opening a bank account 

getting my permit  

wondering why people stay here, wondering why I stay here, realizing that I stay here because I like it here and people keep me here