Saterday Jan. 1, 1994
I lounged around today. Last night was fun. I had Rory my cousin age 13, Jenny 12, and Becca 12, come over last night. We played games, ate, ate, ate, and watched a movie. When the new year came I took pots and went outside and banged them. My sister went on a blind date today. He was a Mexican.
Monday Jan. 3, 1994
It was an ok day for my social life but when I got home I had so much homework I'm still doing it. I had a dream that a guy like a promoter told me I should be a model. I told my mom that I didn't want to be a model but I do. Mom says that a Mormon can't live that lifestyle.
Tuesday Jan. 11, 1994
Today was jammed packed! First of all Candi's not hanging out with me and Summer at lunch. Becca about kissed Kipp. He wanted to kiss her then he was too shy. Then Leslie told Becca and Becca told me that Dylan told Leslie he was going to dump Candi! I'm feeling bad for her but now Dylan is fair game!
Wednesday Jan. 12, 1994
Today was good for school. But Kipp (Becca's boyfriend) was run over by a horse and was in the hospital. I found out that Leslie is totally in love with Dylan. And so is Brooke and their twice as cute as me. But I'm not jealous. But Dylan still hasn't dumped Candi. I doubt he will.
Monday Jan. 7, 1994
Yesterday (name withheld) told me she got her period! (I already got mine and it's not fun!) I debated wether to wright this in here, cous I figured it's her business and this is my diary so why don't I let her wright in her diary and me in mine, but the common sense didn't come through.
Wednesday Jan. 9, 1994
Today was soooo boring. Becca came down. I talked to Summer on the phone. Dylan wants to go with Leslie. So we don't know if he's going with her AND CANDY. He said he was going to dump CANDY! Dylan is so hot. He had dark strait hair and big brown eyes! He's so cute. I wish he was mine.
(I can't decipher some of the dates on these pages. Who knows?)
Thursday Jan. 24, 1994
I can't believe I haven't written for a week! Well I said the opening prayer in church. I decided it wasn't so bad. There's this boy, his name is Bracon he's so cute and best of all his personality is super! He's so nice. Problem. He is 14. He probably just considers me his friends little sister. Rory is nuts for him, chhhh.
Tuesday May 10, 1994
Today went really good! Summer says Erik likes me. Cool huh! Tonight we went to mutual and learned country line dancing from Mrs. Hogan from high school. It was sooo fun, we learned slappin leather, toosh push, wild wild west, and roll the dice. It was really really fun!
It's funny and embarrassing the things I wrote about. I found this diary while cleaning out a few things yesterday. I think it's a study in why 12 year-old's shouldn't keep journals. I'm thinking this diary is not going to make it into the hands of posterity!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
My Sister-in-law is Talented with a capital T
I hope she doesn't kill me for snagging this sexy picture off of her blog. She really is one hot mama. Married to my brother, Darren she is outgoing, funny and very talented when it comes to interior design...among other things. We used to live one block away from each other on the island and I really miss that time when we were both pregnant with our first..well in my case only, child. Anyway I won't reminisce.
And transformed it into this cute cabinet for her kitchen. I would love to have a place to hang my bag up when I get home. I am always searching the door knobs to find it.
And this is just scratching the surface. Check out her design blog here . I also have it listed under my places to love sites on the sidebar.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Impressions of SLC Now
It's been six months since we moved here from what I refer to as the armpit of Utah AKA Tremonton. Although I did think the people in Tremonton were down to earth, I still can't bring myself to like that place. Dry, ugly with freeways running through it, it's just not my cup of tea I guess.
But what I've learned is neither is Salt Lake City. It's an alright place to day trip, but I can't say that living here is anything special. Like most cities the conveniences of a variety of places to eat and shop have been nice, I'll give it that.
I'll put it this way. Salt Lake City feels like a pair of jeans that you are five pounds too heavy to wear. They almost fit, but that button is just fixing to pop open at any second and your thighs have never felt bigger. There is no room to stretch out.
Honestly my chest feels tight and I can't relax until I drive north past Farr West. Too many people y'all. Y'all know I've been watching too much Paula Dean when y'all and fixing start popping up in my posts. I'm fixing to eat that butter laden cheese biscuit y'all. Her voice is like honey to my ears. Her and that Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. Confession: I think Ina Garten's freckles are the cutest things ever, is that weird? I just can't trust Giada though or that awful semi-homemade woman. Two skinny broads peddling food? Yeah, I don't think so.
I didn't get on here to critique the personalities of The Food Network though, for heaven's sake, I came on here to just say that I don't know what I am anymore. I didn't think I was a country girl, but I sure am not digging the city either. I want culture and diversity and people who are engaged in the broader outside world...and I want less people, less buildings cluttering the skyline, less snobbishness, less dogs, less traffic. Is that too much to ask for? Does such a place exist?
Sunday, February 7, 2010
A Story about Debbie
By now you have to know that the woman that is my mother is someone very special to me. What you may not know is that besides being sweet, kind, patient and able to hold a smile for hours on end, she is also...precocious and dare I say, a bit uproarious at times. On the whole she is a very in control person. Inhibited in groups and always polite. But there were times growing up that she would laugh louder and dance sillier than the rest of us. My dad has always said he would like to get a little alcohol in her...just to see all that pent up craziness let loose.
About a year ago my parents got back from California. My dad used to travel quite a bit for his job with ATK and my mom would sometimes go with him. Both Mom and Dad started chuckling as Dad began his narrative about an incidence that occurred while they were at a park one day in California. My Dad...Iron Man Dan...was getting in his run for the day and was running the length of a strip of sidewalk and then turning around and running back to my mother, who was walking. My dad is rather competitive. So naturally it started to miff him that every time he'd turn around to run back towards my mom she would be closer than he would have thought. He started to think he must be out of shape, or just getting older. Then it hit him.
Apparently, every time my dad would turn away from my mom and start running away from her she would also break into a run. When he got to the turn around she would stop running and pretend as if she had been walking the whole time. It still makes me giggle thinking about it. Thanks Debbie, for being you!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Excerpt...or Why I've been Absent
Besides the fact that January is the absolutely dullest month of the entire year I haven't been blogging because I've been writing. Over the years I've started several stories and never finished them because of one excuse or another. The idea for this story has been kicking around in my head for the past three years and I've outlined it several times but never did any serious writing on it. When we moved down here in July I started writing on it. Reading has always been a great escape from reality for me, and writing proves to be even more so because you can actively shape and mold the story and the characters to your will. It's wonderful and I love doing it. I don't know if the story I'm writing will ever be published but the experience of researching and writing and pouring my thoughts into a story I'm passionate about has been extremely therapeutic.
Set against the backdrop of WWII, the story begins in Northern Minnesota near the Canadian border. Mina, short for Wilhelmina is the main character. As America is called to war, Mina faces her own trials at home as her brother and her boyfriend are both sent to fight in the Pacific and the European theaters of the war. Essentially a love story about two people who leave such a deep impression on one another that their love endures through war, lies, terror and heartbreak. The story also touches on the worth of women, the valor of good men, they tyranny of bad men or in this case a bad man, loving God through hardships, and finding a way to live through tragedy.
I usually only share my writing with trusted members of my family because I feel that my writing is so personal and it reflects on myself. Seeing as the only people who read my blog are friends and family I do feel pretty safe and I know if I ever want to get published I will have to be willing to show my work to complete strangers. So if you have some time to kill I am posting a excerpt from my story below, tentatively titled Sky Colored Water.
November 20, 1943
A melancholy sadness swept down on the north wind, scouring Mina’s cheeks with icy claws. Mina kept her head up. The crunch of her snowshoes hardly registered in the late wintry afternoon. A sudden storm brewed overhead and the crying of the wind in the trees sounded alarmingly like a wailing child. It gathered milk from Mina’s swollen breasts and a steady stream of milk trickled into Mina’s bra. It created an uncomfortable mixture of sticky warmth and cooling milk. It soaked quickly through her shirt.
Faith would be hungry. She had lost track of time. The burning in her muscles had been a welcome affliction as she had walked up and over the ridge and wandered through the woods earlier that day. The woods had been unusually quiet, it suited Mina’s somber mood. A year before her brother had died on the beach at Tarawa, like thousands of other American boys far east in the Pacific.
Mina had let her mind drift darkly into morbid territory. How long had Johnny lay conscious on the beach as his lifeblood flowed out of him? Long enough to see friends and comrades fall, the beach a wasteland of dying young men? A sob had escaped her lips and she sat down in the snow directly as if her body were suddenly made of lead and a heavy grief that would not leave. She leaned her head against a pale Aspen in a bid for support. She screamed and railed until her voice gave out. She had stood slowly and glanced up at the naked branches of the tree as a sudden gust had torn through them. The tree having served its purpose as her confidante fell silent once more and she walked on through the rise and fall of woodland and stream feeling as drained as the empty vessel she was afraid she was becoming.
Flakes of snow descended like the feathers of a thousand angel’s wings being plucked out and scattered brutally on the breeze. They fell fast to earth quickly forming a soft blanket over the crust-laden snow. Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving. The refrain sounded in Mina’s mind. Her breath came in and out in ghostly expulsions. Mina kept her eyes on the ground beneath her, her eyes continually sweeping the snow for the slight depressions where her footprints had fallen earlier.
The conditions worsened and Mina became enveloped in an angry wall of white. She couldn’t be sure she was on the right course now. The snowflakes stuck to her fair lashes and blurred her vision. The trail covered over as if it had never been. A small dark sliver of her mind wished her entire being had never been. She stumbled and fell to her knees as her mind clouded over with memories of terror and blood.
Images flashed in her mind, like bursting fireworks on Independence Day. She screamed as Gol struck her and her head ricocheted against the lichen-covered granite. Time and space warped crazily in her mind. She fell through the air, the summer sun warming her limbs before she struck the cold water below. Mick’s hand on her waist as they swam to the surface. Gol's dispassionate command to wash herself in the lake after he had violated her. Micks dark eyes piercing, and full of love right before he closed them to kiss her. Mick’s finger tips brushing her own from the window of the train that would take him from her, across the ocean and into a world of war. Gol’s sadistic eyes upturned in amusement and on her as she tried to cover over the bruises on her face with makeup. She sobbed as she fell back into herself. For a moment she laid still, her cheek pressed to the snow like a shipwrecked survivor on a beach. She was too tired to go on.
Shame burned in her chest as a thousand scenes of abuse and humiliation stung her skin like so many hot needles. She hadn’t been able to stop him. Each morning she raised her head off her pillow only for him to smack it down again. Another scream of loss and grief tore from her throat. She hadn’t been able to stop her father’s death, or Johnny’s. She hadn’t been able to stop Mick’s heart from breaking as he read the few inadequate lines she had written to try to explain away all the love and promises they had once made to one another. She hadn’t been able to do anything. As her body cooled in the snow and biting wind she relished the beginning numbness overtaking her.
“Keep moving!” Mina heard called clearly through the blizzard. Her head snapped up as she peered over the vast crust of snow. She saw no one. “Keep moving!” the voice called closer. It wasn’t just any voice but Johnny’s. The snow blurred beneath her and a dark sandy beach replaced it briefly. I’m going crazy, Mina thought sanely. Men ran around her, heavily armed. “Keep moving, Gosh damn it!” Johnny yelled as he flattened himself next to her. Men fell all around them, so much blood soaking the sand like a scarlet oil slick.
“Johnny?” Mina whispered unbelievingly. Her brother's face the mask of a hardened warrior, an expression Mina had never seen before. Determination mingled with fear in the clear blue eyes that so closely matched her own. He glanced at her, his eyes failing to register any recognition.
“This way!” Johnny yelled. She saw a rise on the beach. A dark gloom hovered over whatever lie beneath it. Mina’s heart stopped.
“Don’t!” She yelled grabbing for his arm but it was too late. He had risen and he was already climbing the rise, his gun working back and forth in his hands as he ran. Mina jumped to her feet and began following. Johnny crested the rise and a bright white light saturated her vision so she fell to the ground blinded and stunned. The world around her shed its artifice and the blizzard returned, pounding the countryside with fat flakes. She rose shakily, tears streaming from her eyes as she ran.
“Keep moving!” Sounded ahead of her from time to time as she ran chasing a ghost through a snowstorm. She fled towards the echoing words. Soon she was on a town street and still she ran on as if driven by some otherworldly prompting. She didn’t stop until she burst through her front door. The sound of angry squalling assaulted her ears.
“Faith!” Mina called frantically removing her snowshoes, taking off her coat and unbuttoning her soggy shirt.
Evelyn stood at the window trying to soothe Mina’s daughter. “I’m so glad you’re back. I was really getting worried,” Evie said passing the inconsolable child to Mina. Mina whispered endearments as she sat to feed the child. Mina struggled to get Faith calm enough to feed. Her fair face was a mottled red, tears streamed from the corner of her eyes.
“It’s alright. Mama’s here,” Mina cooed, struggling herself to keep from crying. Evelyn had left the room to attend to Don. The cries of Mina’s child sounded shrilly like a steady stream of accusations of abandonment. Finally Faith latched on, the tug of her little mouth made Mina wince inwardly and then little by little as Faith drank Mina sighed in relief.
She watched the storm through the darkened window. The only light in the room came from the glow of the white without. Streams of water trickled from her sopping hair into the neck of her equally wet flannel shirt. She shook with exhaustion and cold. She switched Faith to the other side, which needed draining badly. A drowsy feeling overcame her and she lay down on the couch positioning Faith next to her.
How long she slept she knew not. When she opened her eyes again a blanket had been placed over the two of them. As her eyes adjusted to the lightened room they came to rest on the outline of her brother sitting in the chair opposite her. She blinked wondering what sort of magic had occurred on her strange flight home. He appeared as he had when she saw him last, nearly two years before. His golden hair parted on the side and smoothed back, a stray strand or two flopping forward onto his forehead. His light eyes focused intently on her. He was dressed in his marine dress blues, his white cap in his hands. He leaned forward in the chair. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch him. Surely this was just a figment of her frazzled mind.
“Mina,” Johnny said his elbows resting casually on his knees. “She’s beautiful, so much like her mother,” He said observing the two of them.
“Am I dreaming?” Mina asked hesitantly, a shiver rippling through her.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Johnny said quizzically smiling broadly.
“But you’re…you’re….” Mina stuttered
“Dead. I know,” Johnny confirmed matter-of-factly.
“But then how?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters, is I’m here. And I always will be. Like I promised.”
“You promised me you wouldn’t die, Johnny. You have a son you never even got to hold,” Mina gasped as her breath came rapidly and salty tears ran into her trembling mouth. “I miss you so much,” Mina added earnestly.
“I know. I miss you, too. Mina, sometimes we can’t keep our promises,” Johnny smiled sadly. “In this life we do the best that we can with what we know.”
“Your son. Johnny, have you seen him?" Mina asked.
“Yes. Everyday that I can. He’s perfect,” Johnny said grinning genuinely.
“And Evelyn?”
“Her too. She’s going to be just fine, Mina. You wait and see. It’s you I worry about. It’s you I came to talk to.”
Mina cast her eyes down wishing she could say anything positive to that. The words I’m fine gathered on her tongue but tasted bitterly of the lie that it was.
“What Gol does to you, Mina, it’s not who you are. Do you understand that?”
Hot shame flowed through her and she closed her eyes against the pain. Of course Johnny knew. Wherever he was now he had been watching. “I’m afraid of the person I’m becoming. I feel dead inside. I have nothing left to give anyone. All my love, all my hope was…taken from me,” Mina said tears rolling from her eyes.
Johnny's blue eyes blazed brightly in the gloom. “I know you feel that way. You will come to realize that you have plenty of love left to give but right now what you have, you give to your daughter. She is your lifeline, and you are hers. You will know it in a matter of time. It’s not your fault, either Mina...what happened to you. I hope you truly believe that,” Johnny said.
A dam slowly burst somewhere inside of Mina. She bowed her head letting the tears fall silently.
“What can I do?” Mina asked in anguish.
“Keep moving. Onward, as best you can. Some days you may have to keep still, to preserve your strength. But don’t you dare go backwards. Don’t go back and wonder. Don’t revisit what Gol did to you until you can look at it for what it was, without any false expectations put on the girl that you were,” Johnny said steel underlying his words.
Mina nodded, emotions tumbling inside of her.
“I love you,” She said when she was finally able to speak.
“I love you, too sister,” Johnny said. He stood then and bent to kiss her tear stained cheek. “Find peace,” He whispered. Mina blinked and he was gone.
A gasp came from the kitchen. Mina cleared her throat and tried to hold onto her brother’s presence. Like a warm breeze leaving the room it slowly dissipated. She sighed deeply and Faith stirred next to her, her tiny mouth open and her breath smelling of sweet milk.
Evelyn floated into the room as if in a trance. She carried Don on her hip. The flying snow outside the window fascinated Don. He clapped his chubby hands and giggled. Mina smiled at him.
“Mina,” Evelyn said her voice high and strange.
“Yes?”
“Do you ever wonder if the dead walk the earth as spirits? I didn’t believe in ghosts until….”
“Until what?” Mina asked goosebumps rising on her forearms.
“It happens at random moments. I’ll feel as if Johnny’s brushing my hair off my shoulder, or touching my face. Sometimes Don will smile into empty air as if he is seeing someone. In the kitchen just now I swear Johnny kissed my cheek, even the scruff of his face felt real. Crazy huh?” Evelyn laughed nervously.
“Not as crazy as you’d think,” Mina smiled, the memory of her brother’s voice still echoing her ears.
Set against the backdrop of WWII, the story begins in Northern Minnesota near the Canadian border. Mina, short for Wilhelmina is the main character. As America is called to war, Mina faces her own trials at home as her brother and her boyfriend are both sent to fight in the Pacific and the European theaters of the war. Essentially a love story about two people who leave such a deep impression on one another that their love endures through war, lies, terror and heartbreak. The story also touches on the worth of women, the valor of good men, they tyranny of bad men or in this case a bad man, loving God through hardships, and finding a way to live through tragedy.
I usually only share my writing with trusted members of my family because I feel that my writing is so personal and it reflects on myself. Seeing as the only people who read my blog are friends and family I do feel pretty safe and I know if I ever want to get published I will have to be willing to show my work to complete strangers. So if you have some time to kill I am posting a excerpt from my story below, tentatively titled Sky Colored Water.
November 20, 1943
A melancholy sadness swept down on the north wind, scouring Mina’s cheeks with icy claws. Mina kept her head up. The crunch of her snowshoes hardly registered in the late wintry afternoon. A sudden storm brewed overhead and the crying of the wind in the trees sounded alarmingly like a wailing child. It gathered milk from Mina’s swollen breasts and a steady stream of milk trickled into Mina’s bra. It created an uncomfortable mixture of sticky warmth and cooling milk. It soaked quickly through her shirt.
Faith would be hungry. She had lost track of time. The burning in her muscles had been a welcome affliction as she had walked up and over the ridge and wandered through the woods earlier that day. The woods had been unusually quiet, it suited Mina’s somber mood. A year before her brother had died on the beach at Tarawa, like thousands of other American boys far east in the Pacific.
Mina had let her mind drift darkly into morbid territory. How long had Johnny lay conscious on the beach as his lifeblood flowed out of him? Long enough to see friends and comrades fall, the beach a wasteland of dying young men? A sob had escaped her lips and she sat down in the snow directly as if her body were suddenly made of lead and a heavy grief that would not leave. She leaned her head against a pale Aspen in a bid for support. She screamed and railed until her voice gave out. She had stood slowly and glanced up at the naked branches of the tree as a sudden gust had torn through them. The tree having served its purpose as her confidante fell silent once more and she walked on through the rise and fall of woodland and stream feeling as drained as the empty vessel she was afraid she was becoming.
Flakes of snow descended like the feathers of a thousand angel’s wings being plucked out and scattered brutally on the breeze. They fell fast to earth quickly forming a soft blanket over the crust-laden snow. Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving. The refrain sounded in Mina’s mind. Her breath came in and out in ghostly expulsions. Mina kept her eyes on the ground beneath her, her eyes continually sweeping the snow for the slight depressions where her footprints had fallen earlier.
The conditions worsened and Mina became enveloped in an angry wall of white. She couldn’t be sure she was on the right course now. The snowflakes stuck to her fair lashes and blurred her vision. The trail covered over as if it had never been. A small dark sliver of her mind wished her entire being had never been. She stumbled and fell to her knees as her mind clouded over with memories of terror and blood.
Images flashed in her mind, like bursting fireworks on Independence Day. She screamed as Gol struck her and her head ricocheted against the lichen-covered granite. Time and space warped crazily in her mind. She fell through the air, the summer sun warming her limbs before she struck the cold water below. Mick’s hand on her waist as they swam to the surface. Gol's dispassionate command to wash herself in the lake after he had violated her. Micks dark eyes piercing, and full of love right before he closed them to kiss her. Mick’s finger tips brushing her own from the window of the train that would take him from her, across the ocean and into a world of war. Gol’s sadistic eyes upturned in amusement and on her as she tried to cover over the bruises on her face with makeup. She sobbed as she fell back into herself. For a moment she laid still, her cheek pressed to the snow like a shipwrecked survivor on a beach. She was too tired to go on.
Shame burned in her chest as a thousand scenes of abuse and humiliation stung her skin like so many hot needles. She hadn’t been able to stop him. Each morning she raised her head off her pillow only for him to smack it down again. Another scream of loss and grief tore from her throat. She hadn’t been able to stop her father’s death, or Johnny’s. She hadn’t been able to stop Mick’s heart from breaking as he read the few inadequate lines she had written to try to explain away all the love and promises they had once made to one another. She hadn’t been able to do anything. As her body cooled in the snow and biting wind she relished the beginning numbness overtaking her.
“Keep moving!” Mina heard called clearly through the blizzard. Her head snapped up as she peered over the vast crust of snow. She saw no one. “Keep moving!” the voice called closer. It wasn’t just any voice but Johnny’s. The snow blurred beneath her and a dark sandy beach replaced it briefly. I’m going crazy, Mina thought sanely. Men ran around her, heavily armed. “Keep moving, Gosh damn it!” Johnny yelled as he flattened himself next to her. Men fell all around them, so much blood soaking the sand like a scarlet oil slick.
“Johnny?” Mina whispered unbelievingly. Her brother's face the mask of a hardened warrior, an expression Mina had never seen before. Determination mingled with fear in the clear blue eyes that so closely matched her own. He glanced at her, his eyes failing to register any recognition.
“This way!” Johnny yelled. She saw a rise on the beach. A dark gloom hovered over whatever lie beneath it. Mina’s heart stopped.
“Don’t!” She yelled grabbing for his arm but it was too late. He had risen and he was already climbing the rise, his gun working back and forth in his hands as he ran. Mina jumped to her feet and began following. Johnny crested the rise and a bright white light saturated her vision so she fell to the ground blinded and stunned. The world around her shed its artifice and the blizzard returned, pounding the countryside with fat flakes. She rose shakily, tears streaming from her eyes as she ran.
“Keep moving!” Sounded ahead of her from time to time as she ran chasing a ghost through a snowstorm. She fled towards the echoing words. Soon she was on a town street and still she ran on as if driven by some otherworldly prompting. She didn’t stop until she burst through her front door. The sound of angry squalling assaulted her ears.
“Faith!” Mina called frantically removing her snowshoes, taking off her coat and unbuttoning her soggy shirt.
Evelyn stood at the window trying to soothe Mina’s daughter. “I’m so glad you’re back. I was really getting worried,” Evie said passing the inconsolable child to Mina. Mina whispered endearments as she sat to feed the child. Mina struggled to get Faith calm enough to feed. Her fair face was a mottled red, tears streamed from the corner of her eyes.
“It’s alright. Mama’s here,” Mina cooed, struggling herself to keep from crying. Evelyn had left the room to attend to Don. The cries of Mina’s child sounded shrilly like a steady stream of accusations of abandonment. Finally Faith latched on, the tug of her little mouth made Mina wince inwardly and then little by little as Faith drank Mina sighed in relief.
She watched the storm through the darkened window. The only light in the room came from the glow of the white without. Streams of water trickled from her sopping hair into the neck of her equally wet flannel shirt. She shook with exhaustion and cold. She switched Faith to the other side, which needed draining badly. A drowsy feeling overcame her and she lay down on the couch positioning Faith next to her.
How long she slept she knew not. When she opened her eyes again a blanket had been placed over the two of them. As her eyes adjusted to the lightened room they came to rest on the outline of her brother sitting in the chair opposite her. She blinked wondering what sort of magic had occurred on her strange flight home. He appeared as he had when she saw him last, nearly two years before. His golden hair parted on the side and smoothed back, a stray strand or two flopping forward onto his forehead. His light eyes focused intently on her. He was dressed in his marine dress blues, his white cap in his hands. He leaned forward in the chair. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch him. Surely this was just a figment of her frazzled mind.
“Mina,” Johnny said his elbows resting casually on his knees. “She’s beautiful, so much like her mother,” He said observing the two of them.
“Am I dreaming?” Mina asked hesitantly, a shiver rippling through her.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Johnny said quizzically smiling broadly.
“But you’re…you’re….” Mina stuttered
“Dead. I know,” Johnny confirmed matter-of-factly.
“But then how?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters, is I’m here. And I always will be. Like I promised.”
“You promised me you wouldn’t die, Johnny. You have a son you never even got to hold,” Mina gasped as her breath came rapidly and salty tears ran into her trembling mouth. “I miss you so much,” Mina added earnestly.
“I know. I miss you, too. Mina, sometimes we can’t keep our promises,” Johnny smiled sadly. “In this life we do the best that we can with what we know.”
“Your son. Johnny, have you seen him?" Mina asked.
“Yes. Everyday that I can. He’s perfect,” Johnny said grinning genuinely.
“And Evelyn?”
“Her too. She’s going to be just fine, Mina. You wait and see. It’s you I worry about. It’s you I came to talk to.”
Mina cast her eyes down wishing she could say anything positive to that. The words I’m fine gathered on her tongue but tasted bitterly of the lie that it was.
“What Gol does to you, Mina, it’s not who you are. Do you understand that?”
Hot shame flowed through her and she closed her eyes against the pain. Of course Johnny knew. Wherever he was now he had been watching. “I’m afraid of the person I’m becoming. I feel dead inside. I have nothing left to give anyone. All my love, all my hope was…taken from me,” Mina said tears rolling from her eyes.
Johnny's blue eyes blazed brightly in the gloom. “I know you feel that way. You will come to realize that you have plenty of love left to give but right now what you have, you give to your daughter. She is your lifeline, and you are hers. You will know it in a matter of time. It’s not your fault, either Mina...what happened to you. I hope you truly believe that,” Johnny said.
A dam slowly burst somewhere inside of Mina. She bowed her head letting the tears fall silently.
“What can I do?” Mina asked in anguish.
“Keep moving. Onward, as best you can. Some days you may have to keep still, to preserve your strength. But don’t you dare go backwards. Don’t go back and wonder. Don’t revisit what Gol did to you until you can look at it for what it was, without any false expectations put on the girl that you were,” Johnny said steel underlying his words.
Mina nodded, emotions tumbling inside of her.
“I love you,” She said when she was finally able to speak.
“I love you, too sister,” Johnny said. He stood then and bent to kiss her tear stained cheek. “Find peace,” He whispered. Mina blinked and he was gone.
A gasp came from the kitchen. Mina cleared her throat and tried to hold onto her brother’s presence. Like a warm breeze leaving the room it slowly dissipated. She sighed deeply and Faith stirred next to her, her tiny mouth open and her breath smelling of sweet milk.
Evelyn floated into the room as if in a trance. She carried Don on her hip. The flying snow outside the window fascinated Don. He clapped his chubby hands and giggled. Mina smiled at him.
“Mina,” Evelyn said her voice high and strange.
“Yes?”
“Do you ever wonder if the dead walk the earth as spirits? I didn’t believe in ghosts until….”
“Until what?” Mina asked goosebumps rising on her forearms.
“It happens at random moments. I’ll feel as if Johnny’s brushing my hair off my shoulder, or touching my face. Sometimes Don will smile into empty air as if he is seeing someone. In the kitchen just now I swear Johnny kissed my cheek, even the scruff of his face felt real. Crazy huh?” Evelyn laughed nervously.
“Not as crazy as you’d think,” Mina smiled, the memory of her brother’s voice still echoing her ears.
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