Age-less

Elda Rawlings Juchau was one month shy of being one hundred and five years old when she passed away in 2008. She was a woman infamous for cheating at cards and cussing like a sailor. She remained in good health until the end, insisting on living independently in her home and doing everything herself, which sometimes got her into trouble. (My mother was once horrified to burst in on her balancing precariously on the top of her walker--the kind with two tiny wheels on the bottom--trying to reach something on a high shelf in the kitchen. She was "rescued" at once and promptly pouted, muttering darkly about how she had been fine all along.) I remember her sneaking the complimentary jars of jelly beans into her pockets at Thanksgiving, giving me a wink and telling me "you only live once!" She was kind, and she was generous, and she was beautiful.

She was a woman full of fire. And she was my great-grandmother.

Melody Porter is almost fifty, and on the outside a lovely middle-aged woman with a big smile. But on the inside is endless youth. She will always believe in magic. She will play dress up on Halloween and look forward to holidays with the same eagerness as the children that live with her. She loves to give hugs and she loves cartoons. Every time I've ever been around her, I have been amazed at her energy, her ability to take joy in all of the small things, and her innocent way of embracing anything and everyone.

She is a woman full of sunshine. And she is blessed.

Everyone knows that saying about only being as old as you feel. That you age less when you live ageless. I myself have been blessed/cursed to physically appear much younger than I am. Although I am nearly twenty one, most people assume upon meeting me that I am in my teens, usually somewhere between fourteen and seventeen. The kind will ask me where I'm planning to go to college after I graduate. The not-so-kind will ask me what Jr. High I go to. I know that in about twenty more years I will love these genes. I will praise my mother and her mother before her for giving me a youthful face. But for now, it is just irritating to always be judged as more immature than I am.

However, if someone has only ever talked to me over the phone, or only read the things I write, or has known me on any kind of terms of friendship for a while, I then stand accused of being old-fashioned. An Old Soul. Weathered. Cautious, even. Like an old lady piloting a fast freeway from over the steering wheel. I don't party or drink so I'm no fun. I insist on using full words instead of abbreviations in my texts. I used to also be called sheltered, but now people recognize that I have experienced perhaps a little too much, and I am asked the question "how are you handling everything?" more often than a simple "what's up?"

If we really did age based on our emotions and trials more than on a stiff time table, I would put myself at about thirty five now. Wise enough to know that I am not an island, and never have been, and that my mistakes leave a trail of consequences that last whole lifetimes; but also rash enough to still want to dive off the occasional cliff just to see what's on the bottom. I know that I'm no longer a child, but I don't want to call myself an adult just yet. That word carries a lot of weight with it, and a lot of debt. And quite frankly, sometimes I like to just turn on some Disney and eat Spongebob macaroni and play make-believe with my nieces and nephews. These things aren't aloud once you are dubbed: Adult.

My hope is that at my funeral, they can say I was like my great-grandmother. That I was on fire. That they'll say I was like Mel, full of sunshine. That I can live, truly live, with an open heart and mind and not be so cautious as I tend to be; and that I'll still know how to mend rather than break. I'd like to be remembered as selfless and warm. I'd like to be ageless.

I hope it's not too late to start.

Old Soul

Dandelion seeds twirl
in dust devils in and around her head. They are ghosts
that do not pass
away with time.
The gravity
of ten worlds rests roughly
on her thin bared shoulder blades
while her own planet continues to revolve.
Not around her,
as she sometimes feels in moments
of self-conscious reflection, but
around the mistakes she made before.

Wishes aren't enough for turning
back the world. She was never
a good fisherman, anyway.
Stalwart. Faithful. True. That fickle
fluttering thing which measures
all our lives in terms of science keeps counting
down what time there is left
to solve, to express, to do-over.

Sometimes there aren't any do-overs.

She has ten young fingers, long,
flexible,
piano hands
someone called them. Someone important. But just now
she can't remember who. She doesn't play piano
like she used to. Two young feet that hurt after
working.
Two jobs is too much. Too many hours
for too little. Two bright eyes, solemn and sad,
see past and present constantly arm in arm
but never sees a future where

this

isn't happening.

It's 12:34. Again.
But listless minds are not bound in ordinary
thoughts, instead they zap around in arcs, lightning
bolts of fears and longings and lost things, strung
together in a heavy band. She is too
solemn; She wants too much.

There are two beings in here. One is on
the Outside. One on the Inside. People mistake
her Outside for a young seventeen, or an old fifteen.
Always a teen.
They say
her hair is pretty and she has a nice face sometimes
and she can make them laugh.
They say
it's all over now and she should be fine and everything
should be like back then. They get upset or angry when she isn't
everything that she should be.

Or rather, when she isn't who she was.

Inside she is an Old Soul, ragged
with kinks and folds that have grown tough
with use. And reuse and abuse. Inside she
can be whatever she wants to be: Invisible. Invincible. Safe. Numb. Weightless. Free.

The only thing she can't be

is herself.

*Image by Google*

The Things I Learned From Food Service (Part One)

1) Don’t rip a dude’s steak in half with your bare hands.

No matter how perfectly cooked you know a steak is and how infuriatingly obnoxious the customer is about its perfection, try to keep your cool. My favorite incident from working at the Crazy Woman Café last summer was when our cook, Steve, infamously lost his temper over a couple of snooty tourists traveling through (snooty being defined as: they sipped wine and had a small poodle shivering under their chairs and complained about the heat and flies and dirt and general…country-ness of the country-side.) The man insisted that his medium rare was too medium and not enough rare, and then went so far as to insult Steve's pride further by insisting not to pay for any of the food. Steve answered this by picking up the man's steak, tearing it into two pieces with his hands, and daring him to tell him if that red interior was not in fact medium rare. The man's face was still on the pale side of pale when I returned with their change.

The customers left in a disheveled huff and headed to the bar right away to tell everyone what had happened, in what I imagine was an attempt to gather a group to come back to the Cafe and confront Steve. I was alarmed for Steve's safety, but he just laughed it off, reminding me that no one likes a snooty tourist who can't handle his own.

2) Get to know your support.

Without the cooks, bussers, dishwashers and maintenance the whole operation of a restaurant would fall apart. I hate the waitresses who consider themselves higher than their support staff, and who cannot sympathize with them when the dishes pile up and things fall behind. My very first job was as a dishwasher in a Thailand food joint, and ever since those Wasabi-perfumed days I have developed great respect for the men and women that run behind the scenes. Often they work the longest hours, and the only kind of positive feedback they will get in a day will have to come from you.

Plus, in my experience, the support staff are usually some of the funniest characters you will ever meet.

3) If you plan on eating food at the place you work, don't watch how it's prepared.

4) The customer is not always right.

Whether it's the racist woman at McDonald's who demanded a full refund because her daughter's Happy Meal toy was African American, or the jerks who come in five minutes before closing and leave a large mess after loitering for an hour, or the wasters who will order five tons of food before deciding they weren't so hungry after all...it is my firmest belief that customers are wrong as often as anyone else in the world, sometimes even more so.

Of course, if you want to keep your job for any length of time you must still treat the yellers, the abusers, the hot-heads and the racists with a shred of polite manners and try to rise above your own emotions to solve the situation. They will test your patience. They will make it very very tempting to dump a plate of leftovers over their cars. They will even occasionally cause you to have violent daydreams. But stay strong, because customers can also turn your day around with a compliment, a smile, or a big tip. The vast majority of people you will serve will be alright, maybe even great, and you will come to love the regulars with the big hearts, the big stomachs and yes, I'll admit (but what waitress wouldn't?) the big wallets.

If all else fails, let the manager deal with the bad ones and move on.

5) You are not just a number.

You clock in by punching in a number. Your schedule may list a number rather than a name. Your day will be made up of numbers: head count, tables, totals, tips, change and paychecks. But you are not a machine. You are not merely the means to an order of fries or a mop when things get messy. You are a human being who deserves to be looked in the eye. You deserve to have your name remembered. You deserve to be thanked when you put in that extra ten percent and you deserve to be recognized after a long, exhausting day. But most of the time, you won't be treated the way you deserve, because hungry people are cranky people and when the place gets slammed everyone is on pins and needles.

But don't sweat it. When you get off the clock, go have some "me" time, spend some tip money on something for you and keep the good days in your pocket to pull out and remember when things seem frustrating.

6) Know the menu.

Even if you're new and have never tasted a bite of what your restaurant serves, know at least three favorites that people often order so when someone asks "what's good here?" you will have an answer. Also, families love it when you know the kids menu, the cheapest deals, and the healthier meals.

7) Like any family, coworkers can either be your best friends or your bitterest pains in the you-know-where. Learn patience.

I have befriended coworkers, dated them, avoided them, hated them, and loved them. There are some people that you simply will not be able to stand and some people that you will remain close with for your entire life. It isn't always up to you whether you work with people you like, but you can control how you deal with them. Be patient, be polite, don't gossip about them with other coworkers to create more drama, and as much as possible, try to keep an open heart. Sometimes they will surprise you.

8) Try to make things into a game.

When confronting stacks of greasy dishes, lines of ravenous customers, or a bathroom that looks like it ought to be condemned, don't lose hope. I have been in all of these situations, and I know that on the days I was angry, bitter or upset these tasks seemed like mountains that I had to move alone. When I could bring myself to think of them in terms of games instead--how many dishes could I do in five minutes, how many customers could I get to laugh in a day, or considering that bathroom a dragon's lair that I had to clean before the dragon came back and devoured me--not only did the work go faster but I was a little less grumpy about having to do them.

This will not work every time. Nor will it always make you feel better. But it's worth the little sanity it will save you.

9) If you absolutely hate it, don't work there.

Don't ever force yourself to work somewhere that you hate for too long. Keep looking and applying for other places rather than settle where you know you can't be happy. I have four years of food service experience ranging from dish-washer, busser, soda jerk, waitress, drive-thru, fast-food, and service leader. And aside from the odd bad day, I have loved all my jobs. Food service is one of few jobs where people are completely raw and exposed, either at their best or their worst. It is my humble opinion that nowhere are people more fascinating, more challenging, more quirky and bizarre or more generous than in food service.

In Defense of Counseling

When people ask me what I want to be when I grow up I tell them I'm still in-between majors: Psychology and Creative Writing. Then I brace for the laughter, the witty catcalls and comebacks about how I will doubtless end up unemployed and living in the streets for the rest of my life. I have taken to simply saying I'm considering going into social work or counseling because those sound like more solid career choices...but the truth is that these are just jobs I admire and have actively been a part of in some form or another. Whether or not I end up in one of them is yet to be determined. Unfortunately those busy doubts inside my mind have convinced me that I am incapable of truly helping anyone the way counselors and social workers I know have helped dozens, and until I can fight through those doubts, I will probably stay on the sidelines.

But that's not to say I don't believe in counseling. There was a time, let's say about 80% of my life, when I just assumed like many people do that to go to a counselor or to seek some form of emotional or mental help was a major form of weakness. It meant that you were broken. Flawed. Crazy. Whack-job. I felt that way until I actually met with a counselor for the first time, and I had to analyze myself and see if I was any of those labels. Fortunately, I'm just depressed. And we depressed ones aren't too complicated a bunch.

The first time I walked into the counseling office at my dad's work I was scared. I was nervous that I would end up sitting on a couch with a box of tissues sobbing to a stranger, and that he would nod and smile for an hour before sending me away. What ended up happening changed my perspective on the profession forever, and I began to write. Really write. From the heart and soul. There is a post on this blog entitled "Rewriting Myself" from April of last year that describes that experience better. Rather than retelling it, I'll just let you go look if you're interested. All I will say here is that to me, counseling is not a Charlie Brown cartoon.

You know what I'm talking about. You can picture Lucy in her little cardboard stall giving terrible advice to poor Chuck, who is always told that he's too sad, too boring, and just too darn wishy-washy to really amount to anything. Lucy had all the bedside manner of a porcupine while Charlie tried to figure out why the things in his life never seemed to go right. Stepping out of those cartoon panels, there may be some counselors who don't have a love for their job, or have difficulty in connecting with their clients. I've never met one. From my experience, to be a counselor at all you have to begin with selflessness and empathy. You're not there to tell someone how to live or what to think. You're there just to listen.

My social welfare professor at the college explained counseling in a way that, as a lover of words, I couldn't help but connect with. "Counseling," he said, "is about story-telling. You are there to hear stories, to get others to tell them and write them and share them so that they are no longer locked away inside, where they are causing harm." I am a story teller. There is nothing I love more than to bring someone's story to life, especially if they are funny, or touching, or deep or thoughtful. The only stories I have trouble telling are my own.

I think this is true of most people. Whenever we feel embarrassed or hurt or begin to despair because of a mistake we made or an event in our lives that shook us to the core...the first response is not to shout that story to the world. It's to hold it in like holding in a breath of air, waiting for a time when the water seems calmer to come to the surface and let it out. There are some stories that simply never get told, and peace that is never found. And it is for this reason that I defend counseling so strongly. What more could you ask for than to find someone who is willing to listen to all of the burdens you carry in your heart without judging you or trying to fix you--someone that you have never met before who you may never talk to again. Someone who just wants to take that burden from you and leave you feeling lighter.

Now I know that thinking practically, sometimes it's hard to find access to a counselor. Or, if there aren't any volunteer positions at a school or business and they cost money, finding the money to pay for it. If this is the case then I would suggest finding a friend or family member who knows how to listen with an open mind, who wasn't a part of your past and can see you as you are; or starting a journal and writing in it.

I say from personal experience, the most painful stories are the ones we never let escape. Go share a story with somebody today--and breathe easier.

*Image by Google*

One Small Hop For Frog- Kind...

Two years ago destiny had an amphibious hand in my decision to adopt a trio of small African Dwarf water frogs. You know the saying about how the best things come in small packages--well this Christmas present became an instant source of entertainment.

It became very obvious to me early on that the frogs, whom I named Clarence, Harold, and Maude (after the unique 70s comedy) were not the brightest tadpoles in the pond. While they were fun to feed and fascinating to watch, they had a bizarre habit of launching themselves at their food pellets several times and missing their targets entirely, swallowing water or gravel or occasionally each other while the pellets bobbed happily untouched. When they actually managed to accidentally get food in their tiny mouths, they would immediately spit it out, then re-swallow it, and then repeat the process. It was a wonder to me that they matured to frog-hood at all, and a miracle when their tiny frog bellies began to swell over time into healthy tiny pot bellies. It took several months before I realized that along with their lack of frog marbles and gracefulness, the frogs also happened to be blessed with the ability to escape.

While it's pretty impossible to know for sure which frog was which, the one I believe to be Harold escaped early in their first year and proved to me that lurking behind those tiny beady eyes wheels were turning. He flung himself from my hands one day when I was scooping him out to clean the frog-tank, hitting the ground hopping he headed in a straight bee-line for the door. The thing about frogs is that they happen to be very slippery, particularly when the person holding them has soap on their hands, and he managed to get halfway down the hall before I got a good grip on him, the eyes of my amused hall-mates watching the whole show.

The frog I thought was Clarence got picked on by the others as he matured, and it wasn't long before he stopped eating entirely and had to take the porcelain express to frog heaven. Another year passed without too much excitement, and I settled back into my comfortable assumptions that my two frogs were nothing more or less than adorable little morons.

One day I noted that Harold had stopped eating. At least, I think it was Harold. Maude had grown rather fat at this point, and had slightly better aim when it came to feeding. It only took him half a dozen tries to catch a pellet, where it took Harold several dozen. In an attempt to give poor Harold a fighting chance I separated the two, putting Maude in a Tupperware container on my desk for the night. It occurred to me that Maude may actually jump out, so I loosely taped a piece of printer paper to the top of the Tupperware as a make-shift lid.

The next morning I knew something was wrong. There wasn't enough movement in the water. I peered down into the tank and saw Harold happily swimming away, but the Tupperware was empty. I stared for several seconds at the water, looking at it from every angle in hopes that Maude was simply hiding or had learned to be invisible. But there was still no frog. In a rising panic, I searched the desk-top but found nothing. No spilled water, no frog-sized puddles, not even a pebble of gravel. I began to search in earnest then, looking in and under everything that was frog level, combing my floor several times to no avail.

It occurred to me suddenly that my door had about an inch of space underneath it, a perfect frog-sized exit for a bite-sized desperado to crawl through. I felt a mixture of horror and, I'll admit, respect for the little monster. To have enough strength to propel himself out of the water, squeeze under the paper, fall off the desk (a fairly decent drop for an animal only a half-inch high) and be on the lamb in my hallway...it was obvious that Maude was on a mission. But to where?

I alerted my hall's RA to the situation and asked her to spread the word, and did the same in the boys' hall on the same floor. After asking the janitor to keep an eye out for Maude ("a WHAT?" she said, like she'd never heard of pocket-sized water frogs before) and being laughed out of the room I stopped asking people to aid in my search. Instead I made a "Missing" poster complete with a sketch of Maude and my name and phone number in case he was found. I was under no delusions at this point that Maude was still alive. Even if he had escaped moments before I woke up, unless he had found water and found it soon, he was a goner. And time had run out for my search.

I had to be on a bus heading home for the holidays soon, and after twenty more fruitless minutes of looking I left Caldwell, dark thoughts of a matchbox casket and tiny funeral services filling my mind. I had already imagined a thousand ill fates for Maude, and each one ended with a webbed pancake, dime-sized. Several days later I returned to college and found a note stapled underneath my "Missing" poster on the dormitory billboard: "Frog Found," it said, "ask Hillary."

I found Hillary and there learned of the last adventures of Maude. He had indeed escaped under my door and waddled into my next door neighbor's room, where he took refuge in her laundry basket. Not necessarily being used to watching out for miniature frogs in her clothing, my neighbor had dumped the load into the washer, where Maude had evidently had the ride of his little life. She found him an hour later after pulling everything out of the dryer, his crispy body mummified next to her socks.

Word spread like wildfire around the dorms until it became a common joke to warn people of frog attacks in the laundry room, and quite a few people came up to me to offer their condolences and to visit Harold, who seemed oblivious that his tank-mate had just kicked the bucket. After a few weeks of swimming solo he seemed to know that something was up, and with a broken heart he too--excuse the pun--croaked.

Now I suppose I should have grieved a little more for Maude who, true to the character for which he was named, longed for adventure beyond the confines of a small plastic box. But I can't begrudge him his last great escape; it's a story that might have been passed down from tadpole to tadpole for generations, (providing Maude had ever met a female,) and stands to me as a testament that he was smarter than I gave him credit for.

As Junior year looms I'm considering getting another pet...

...preferably one that's too big to fit in the laundry.

The Summer That Almost Did Me In

Guido fist pump! School is over! Grades are in! I SURVIVED!!!

I returned to Idaho Falls in the middle of May with the assumption that I was in for a long, relaxing, much-needed stress break…but alas…the whole first month of my summer break has done its best to kill me.

Within a few days of arriving home, I came down with a double ear infection and dust allergies from cleaning out all the old crap in my room to make room for my new crap from college. I awoke each morning with my throat and ears on fire, and went to sleep in the drugged out haze that rides on the back of allergic reactions. A large red rash began to spread along one side of my forehead, and assuming it was allergies or acne, I ignored it.

By the end of the week my room was clean and organized, but the unidentifiable rash had spread and developed an odd sensation similar to sandpaper rubbing along the nerves in my skin. That week was also painful in other ways: after a frightening night an old friend wound up in the hospital, my two only job interviews ended with a “thanks for trying, but we don’t want you,” I had to say goodbye to another friend—probably indefinitely, a couple of family feuds unfortunately heated up, and my insomnia came back.

I’m not sure if the soul has an immune system, but if it does it was just as shot as my physical one by week two. Even the weather seemed to be against me, raining every other day until flood warnings were being issued up and down the Snake River.

I finally went in to the doctor to check out the rash, which by then felt more like a sandblaster against my head and had the puckered, pot-holed appearance of severe sunburn. It took one glance for the doctor to identify my problem: Shingles, the adult version of chicken pox. The scientific name is Herpes Zostra, my medical-school brother Ryan told me with a laugh—is there anything more humiliating than having Herpes on your face???—and it could be “easily taken care of” with antibiotics. (Coupled with pain pills and my prescription for the ear infections, there were a couple of times I took upwards of nine pills daily!)

For two days I stayed home with a fever and slept, hiding my scarred face from the world until I couldn’t take it anymore and dragged myself out for more fruitless job-hunting. My other brother Jordan was getting married in a few days, and our whole family was in a tizzy trying to make the arrangements and organize the receptions. Except for my blemished face in all the photographs, the wedding was nothing short of a beautiful success, and by Monday all the time with family and friends had left me more confident to go back out and look for employment.

It was on just such a search that I hit another hitch in my perfectly-sane-and-normal-summer-plans. Or rather, it hit me. While pulling out into an intersection by a Common Cents gas station on my way to drop off applications, a large van that had been hidden by a turning truck seemingly came out of nowhere and smashed into my parent’s poor Ford Taurus—with me inside.

I closed my eyes and felt my heart stop as it hit me, and distantly I heard one part of my brain say “I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead” while another part of my brain laughed from the impossible irony of it all. The airbags were deployed and luckily I had my seatbelt on, and the people in the van were extremely kind and understanding. Somehow I walked away from that accident with no damage except for shock and a strong desire to never drive again. The Taurus faired a lot worse, and was declared “totaled” and towed away.

Two weeks later, the scar from my Shingles is all but faded away, my household has settled back to normal, and two restaurants have taken pity on me and hired me part time. But I can’t help thinking: “What next?? Pneumonia? Atomic bombs? Rabid squirrel attacks??”

While I’m finding out, I think I’ll turn to writing some fiction. Although as I’ve learned lately, life can definitely be stranger.

Word of the Day: Happy-Ever-After

Everywhere I turn it's staring me down; the poem "Wedding Gown" shouts to me from the pages of our poetry class textbook, my favorite characters on Hulu are all getting hitched: Michael Scott and Holly, Andy and April, Mayor West and Lois' Griffin's sister...Train's hit single "Marry Me" blares from every car radio. It's as if the cosmos are determined to celebrate the cliche Spring twitterpation with or without the sunshine Mother Nature has forgotten how to display. Even the rain seems to have a kind of romance to it--couples huddle together under umbrellas and walk around the parks with hands linked.

It seems to be the year for weddings. I'm attending three this summer: one as a bridesmaid, one as a cousin and one as a good friend. Engagement pictures, all smiles and tender moments that seem almost too personal and pure for the public eye, are filling my Facebook feed to the brim. Brief time capsules of a decision that will affect these young couples for the rest of their lives.

I look at these happy pairs and can't help but envy their "happy-ever-after." But what does it take to make a happy-ever-after? Do they even know themselves?

After this last season's LDS General Conference, family and marriage have taken a huge amount of my mind hostage. There have been small moments when I've longed to walk into a dress store and look for something ivory, or caught myself seeing a flower arrangement in the Coyote front office and thinking it would look nice at a reception.

But for me, the day I say "I Do" is still a distant dream. I'm the girl who has always joked with my friends that I'll be the Old Cat Spinster, the crazy neighborhood broad who never found true love. I'm the only one of my siblings who have yet to take the vows (my brother will in June) and, as the youngest, I can feel the eyes of my family turning to me, present, past, and future. I come from a long family history of little or none divorces, big families, and the community strength of Christian tradition...and at times, this can seem like a lot of pressure. As if my ancestors are pleading for me to continue their line, and my unborn children are waiting with their hands reached out for me to pick them up and swing them high into the air.

My Grandpa Juchau would always say that marriage was the most important decision, aside from building personal faith, that one could make in this lifetime. After he passed away this last fall his words resounded deeper with me. Marriage is serious. It's not something you can just jump into, eyes closed, and hope the parachute opens. I've lived long enough to see for myself the Disney happy-ever-after fade; to know that divorce is real and heart-breaking. And I've grown cautious.

In my mind's eye I am reminded of an experiment my science class did in Jr. High. We had to build contraptions that, when dropped from a height of thirty feet or more, would protect a small hen's egg inside from smashing upon impact. My friend and I came up with a small cardboard box lined with bubble wrap and those marshmallow Easter peeps, held together with about a pound of scotch tape. Our egg thrived.

So what does it take to make a happy-ever-after?

In the chick flick "Runaway Bride," Julia Roberts' quirky friend Peggy describes it with geese. A perfect V of geese flew overhead on her wedding day with Richard Gere--a wedding which ended abruptly with her climbing out a Sunday School window to take a FedEx van out of town. Peggy explains that the geese, half of a "W," (for Wedding) are representative of Julia's mental state. "You just gotta get the rest of your geese in a row," she declares, to which Julia's character is able to turn her life around and eventually find happiness by the time the credits scroll.

If marriage is that little egg, then I just have to get all my ducks, er, marshmallow peeps together before I launch it.

So for now, I'll sing along to Train, throw flowers for my friends, embrace my new sister-in-law, and celebrate the coming of Spring. My day will come. And I can wait.