One of the most memorable cities was Rome.

***

Not to distract from our main story, but I have been to Italy once before. In 2005 I went to visit some extended family in Mola di Bari, a small town in Southern Italy. During my time there I met a kid named Nicky who was originally from South Carolina, but had moved to Mola at age five(ish).

Nicky and I became friends almost immediately – we were both excited to hear someone speaking English. However it wasn’t until I fixed his Playstation 2 that we became full-out comrades.

When Dimitri and I were planning the trip and decided to visit Italy, I gave Nicky a call to let him know the dates and to see if he could meet us. To our surprise he mentioned that he had just gotten a place in Rome and offered us a place to stay! We eagerly accepted – money was already going to be a problem, and a case of beer is much cheaper than room and board.

***

It was week three of our trip, and we’d already seen Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Prague, and Munich. We had recently left Venice and were almost in Rome. Our Eurail train debarked at about 10PM local time, and immediately I called Nicky.

“Hey man, we’re in town; we just got off the Eurail!”

“Awesome, ok you need to take the subway to [some stop]. Call me when you get there.”

“Sure thing, see you soon!”

We took the subway to [some stop]. It wasn’t very long, maybe 20 minutes. As we got out of the station, I called Nicky again to let him know where we were. He didn’t answer.

For almost two hours.

There we were, luggage in tow, sitting on the steps of a random train station in a random city on the outskirts of Rome. Looking around, we quickly noticed that it wasn’t the best of neighborhoods: dirty streets, skelly-looking people, few lights. Our only option was really to wait it out.

Suddenly at 11:30, Nicky calls.

“Dude I’m so sorry, I left my phone in the car.”

“It’s fine, whatever, where are you?”

“Well, now you have to take a train to [some other stop].”

“Wha..? What do you mean?”

“Just go to the train station and take it to [some other stop].”

“Nicky, the train station closed 45 minutes ago. How are we going to get there?”

After some bickering, we decided just to take a cab. Unfortunately, the cab fare to this particular destination was 40 euro. We weren’t very happy about it, but at this point our options were either to blow 40 euro, or to spend the night on the subway steps. It was an easy decision.

We got dropped off 25 minutes away on a dimly-lit street in front of a closed-down post office. After midnight. In Rome. With our all of luggage.

Fifteen minutes later, Nicky picks us up in a car. Now, you have to remember where we are; by “car” I mean one of those tiny FIAT rides that look like they could fit two and a half normal-sized people (or seventeen clowns). We then drive another fifteen minutes to his apartment.

Let me tell you, dear reader, that even after this long and terrible wait, my cousin and I are still ready to go out, party, and be assaulted by hundreds of beautiful Italian women. When we reached Nicky’s apartment, however, we were disappointed by the fact that there was absolutely zero chance of ever getting a decent young lady to come back to this place. Let’s step into the shoes of a visitor to this extremely humble abode.

The first red flag would have been the communal bathroom and kitchen for the floor. Actually, back up: the first red flag is step one into the building, where we are immediately told by Nicky to be extremely quiet so as not to wake anyone. No talking, no humming, no loud walking, no loud breathing.

Enter Nicky’s room (the apartment only had one). See complete disarray. Gaze for a spot to put your belongings for a moment until being told, “Oh, just move some things around; don’t worry about it.” Wonder how you will ever get a decent night’s sleep on top of three couch cushions, using your jacket as a pillow.

***

In the morning, we get up at around 7AM. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but that’s all the time we had to sightsee, so we needed to get an early start. I suppose it worked out that this also happened to be the time Nicky had to wake up for work.

The route to the city is actually a bus, then a train, then the subway, resulting in about an hour’s worth of travel. We board the bus, and ask Nicky if we need tickets. A chuckle and a “No” were the answer.

Then we watched in horror as the bus made its second stop and the ticket police boarded.

Dimitri and I look at each other with a wide-eyed “oh snap” kind of look, and then at Nicky with a “what the hell are we supposed to do now?” kind of look. Nicky says, “It’s ok, I got this.”

He proceeds to pretend to be an American tourist playing dumb. Let me remind you, dear reader, that Nicky has been living in Italy for the better part of his life and is a fluent speaker of Italian. This was possibly the worst idea ever.

After some back and forth, they lay it out to us simply: either we pay 50 euro each, we go to the police office and pay 100 euro, or we ditch the ticket, having a bill sent to our embassy for 220 euro. That pretty much made the decision for us.

This trip had already cost us 150 euro, not including the phone bill for the night before. Thoroughly annoyed and relatively broke, Dimitri and I parted from Nicky and took to the city.

***

Rome is a gorgeous city. Although running around doing everything in one day was less than ideal, we still managed to appreciate everything and take a lot of great pictures. It’s definitely a city that you have to experience for yourself, if for nothing else than to see School of Athens and the Sistine Chapel ceiling at the Vatican.

With blistered feet and sore backs, we ran around the ancient cobbled streets in flip flops through the Vatican and Sistine Chapel, from the Pantheon to the Trevi Fountain, from the Spanish Steps to the Colosseum.

***

Later that night, we made a plan to meet back up with Nicky so that he could introduce us to some beautiful Italian women. We met him at a bus stop in the city. The three of us sat around waiting for Nicky’s friend to pick us up. Apparently he had some sort of plan, but none of us really knew what it was. None of us, including him, it seemed.

An hour later we crammed into another one of those Italian clown-cars and drove for 30 minutes. Dimitri and I had no idea what was going on. It was at this point that we discovered that our destination was the beach! We were a bit confused, though, as it was 10 PM and we were not in beach wear by any means. The Italians told us not to worry. Feeling annoyed and, much worse, completely out of control, Dimitri and I looked at each other with a look that said “How much worse could it possibly get?”

***

The next thing we knew, we saw green lights hovering in the clouds: huge, looming green lights in the sky, emanating from some big structure.

After parking, we found the source: un concerto sulla spiagia – a reggae beach concert!

Our Roman adventure suddenly took a sharp turn from frustrating and chaotic into happy and enjoyable. We were amazed and completely forgot about all the trials of the day and just enjoyed ourselves. Beer and wine and street food and lots of beautiful Italian women; how could it get better than this?

Even looking back on the entire five-week trip through nine different cities and eight different countries (not including the stops in between), this is one of my most treasured memories. I think it’s the feeling that we really just earned it; like all the discord throughout the day was just a precursor to make the icing on the cake taste that much better.

There’s a moral here somewhere, although I think I’ll have to stretch to find it. Maybe it’s that if ever you go to a strange city and your friend offers you a place to stay, make sure he isn’t just talking.

A couple weeks earlier, an Orthodox Jew entered the chatroom of an religious community I had joined recently. We followed the Torah but believed Yahshua (AKA Jesus) was the messiah of the Jews and Gentiles. Most people in the community were attempting to learn Hebrew or consulted Hebrew concordances on a regular basis. Our interest in understanding the Hebrew scriptures in their original language and in following Torah law is why he stopped by. It was a reasonable question, that he should ask us where in the Old Testament scriptures was proof of the Messiah. I chatted with him and found him completely sincere in his desire for truth. I thought that showing him proof that Yahshua was the messiah would be an easy task, and decided to present it in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.

This PowerPoint presentation was what I was staring at despondently when my fiancé at the time gave me a call. I immediately cheered up, but inevitably we would have a conversation about our shared faith. The deathblow came unceremoniously-

“Melanie, I found something today in the scriptures that confused me…”

“… Matt, there is no God.”

“Woah, now Melanie! Don’t be ridiculous! I didn’t finish what I was going to say!”

“It doesn’t matter.” My mind ran wild.

When Matt and I first met, we had both been attending Southern Baptist churches. In our churches we became convinced that the Bible was the true word of God and he and I took this to heart. We were such a well-matched pair that it seemed it could be nothing but divine intervention could have brought us together.  Sharing scholarly temperaments, we tirelessly examined and reexamined the scriptures. For the year we spent together, learning God’s will through reading biblical texts, praying together, and fasting was our sole passion. We began to have a much more thorough knowledge of the text and the writings of early Christians than our pastors, and our interpretation of the text became radically different from theirs.  We sadly decided that they were heretics and unrepentant sinners, and we would continue to find that it was so in every new community of Christians we attempted to join.  It was very stressful to think how few people were making it to heaven, but expected, given, “…small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it. (Mat 4:14)”

Matt’s words, “…something today in the scriptures confused me”, released a tempest of memories upon me.  I remembered a slide show of all my previous convictions, and the struggles I had went through to change other’s convictions. I could not help but notice that the results of prayer looked unusually similar to results of reason, and that “progressive revelation” looked suspiciously like having formed more logical relationships between different passages and scriptures.  And lastly, the determined effort to understand God’s will looked the same in me, in Matt, and in all the heretics and sinners. In order to claim that truth came only to those who truly tried, I would have to assume aspects about a person other than what I observed from their behavior.  It seemed unfair to consider them liars, when I expected my own testimony to be believed.  I could come to no other conclusion that all the revelations, spiritual experiences, and supposed purification had all been imaginations in my head.

In what seemed like an instant, my evaluation of my experience went from being that of a believer to that of a non-believer.  For the first time since I had converted to Christianity, I found myself unarguably the heretic. I was struck by the sheer inability of my reasoning to shift to belief on command and the sincerity of my non-belief.  I had prayed, studied, and passionately loved myself into a conviction about the non-existence of God.

Now I know how it feels to be the one disbelieved and considered the heretic.  The closest of my friends and mentors, including Matt, have belief systems that cannot allow people to have experiences like mine. Those who should know how much I cared about my faith now believe, to different degrees, that my deconversion did not happen as I said it did, a mixture of intellectual and emotional evidence against the existence of God, but because I loved sin (most cited being pride) or faked my love of God all those years.

It seemed all I had heard about as a Christian was about how atheists could never truly be happy, about how it was by the strength of God only that we could do truly good deeds, and about how through God we could heal our loved ones.  Yet, during my time as a Christian, I had never fully forgiven my mother for a fight that had led to her moving out of state.  Something about not caring whether I was “holy” to some outside judging force helped me realize that I had been a jerk all those years.  As a Christian, I suffered from suicidal depression.  I had often prayed to be released from the depression, but it turns out that it all but disappeared with the passing of my teenage years, which happened to be during my time as an atheist.  The subject of many a tearful prayer and fast was my Dad’s crippling pain in his hip and constant flu-like illness.  He was absolutely miserable with pain, yet still labored selflessly as a plumber for his family.  Worse still, he had never prayed for salvation and had nothing but hell waiting for him in the afterlife.  I prayed for him to get better- so that he would feel better and have proof of God’s goodness. He started taking some vitamin supplements about a year ago.  He now walks without a crutch and recently ran for the first time since the accident that crippled him.

The point here is not to claim the ineffectiveness of the Christian religion.  My point is that despite reporting these experiences, many faithful look lamentably at me, “knowing” I cannot be truly happy and cannot truly believe there is no God.   They believe what I used to believe about atheists, and to believe my account (especially in its entirety) would contradict tenets of their faith.  Their knowledge of my honesty, introspectiveness, intelligence, and truth-loving nature is suddenly no help to me, though I might be trustworthy on any other subject.

I believe that people are sincere in all that they think they believe.  Like a rock climber, we base our beliefs on the holds we find in reality. We test each hand for strength and security, using it to move to the next hold.    That day I grabbed for a hold that was not secure and fell.  I took a different path up, whether I might have been happy trying again in the same direction I will never know, but I am satisfied with the direction I took.

***

Every Thanksgiving, my family would come together at my grandparent’s mountain house in north Georgia just outside of Helen. We went there mainly so my grandparents would not have to travel. It also is the most central location between all of my family. We are all spread out to where some live in North Carolina, and the rest all over parts of Georgia.

Every Thanksgiving was the same routine. We would pack the night before, go to school, be picked up by Mom and/or Dad a little early and head straight up to the mountains. As that time neared for my parents to check me out of Elementary school, the excitement always grew.

The drive up there seemed like it would take days because of all the anticipation and excitement to see everyone. Once we got onto the highway, it was just trees and cars. There really was not anything to look at. To help pass time, my brother and sisters and I would interact with each other. We often played the classic license plate game, trying to see who could find the alphabet in order first. My younger sister would always “win” partly because she had not quite learned the alphabet.

Another fun past time on the trip was to fight with each other. This game would often get mom and dad involved too. One time, we got into a fight over cup holders. As we drove through a fast food restaurant, my parents started to pass back the drinks. The problem was that the 1990 Toyota Previa we had did not have but maybe 2 cup holders, which were both located in the front. To help compensate, my parents bought several cup holders to hang from the window. We could not find all of the holders so we battled with each other over who would get a cup holder.

If not fighting with each other, my brother and sisters would sleep while I sat and listen to my Sony Walkman. I only had one tape at the time, the Free Willy soundtrack. While listening to the music, I sat there looking out the window at the same repetitive stuff, trees, grass, mountains, nothing exciting. All I could think about was how much fun it would be to go and play tag or capture the flag in some of the fields we passed. This also led to thoughts about what types of stuff us kids would do when we finally could get out of the car. When would we get there?

As the drive continued, we became more and more antsy. Because of this, about an hour into the drive every other thing we said was:
“Are we there yet?”
“Are we there yet?”
“How much longer?”
“Are we there yet?”

When we finally arrived, I always rushed in to greet everyone unappreciative to the true value of those hugs. I was more focused on playing with my cousins. The house offered lots of games and activities for us to entertain ourselves with. The adults often sat around and talked…boring; my cousins, brother, sisters and I would gather down the wooded steps on the lower level where the temperature was always 5-10 degrees cooler than upstairs, and play. We would build forts, play board games, attempt to play pool, hide and seek, and almost any other type of game you can imagine. We really only stopped playing when lunch or dinner was ready. When we would finally come upstairs, the adult’s where still doing the exact same thing, only in a different location. How could people talk that much to each other? At that age, just sitting and talking seemed boring to me. It seemed like they enjoyed being bored.

As I started to get older, the house started to mature with me. Extensions to the house were built to help our growing family. The walls started to become covered with stories. The rugs became more worn in giving the house a true home feeling.
***

Thanksgiving came back around. This time much older, I had to make the travel solo. My brother and sisters were coming from different areas and all were on different schedules. We each had our own lives to live; our once fun filled car rides have now become solo adventures.

Driving solo was good because I could lose myself in my own music as loud as I wanted. I could have some alone time to do, say, think, and listen to whatever I wanted. The music helped thoughts about friends, lovers, jobs, and any other issues cross my mind in positive ways. The thoughts came in and out in non-stressful ways because I knew for one, I could control the music and change the song to more upbeat tunes for more positive thoughts, and two, as soon as I got to the mountain house, all of these thoughts would be gone.

Coming to the end of the highway, the noise and clutter quiets down to the peaceful openness of the mountains. The trees, which are in transition from one state to the next, suddenly have more meaning. They become real and relatable.

Arriving at the house, a much stronger feeling of comfort and warmth circulates through my body. This time the hugs have more meaning behind them. It becomes a type of hug that is for the moment and also for the ages. It gave me a sense of love and comfort, things that a teenager often seeks out. But at the same time, it almost comes routine. I can almost predict where everyone is sitting in the room before I open the door. I can also predict who is going to give me a hug first.

***

Two months before Thanksgiving, I am headed on my way up to the mountain house. Even though the mountain house has become a place that I always look forward to visiting, I did not look forward to going this time. Sure the family was going to be there but not the same type of circumstances as usual. Nowadays, the only time my family can come together is for the holidays. But this was the middle of September and Labor Day, the only holiday near, had already passed.

The drive up there was a much different drive. It was very short, yet long. It allowed for plenty of time to really think about past traditions and memories. There was no upbeat music this time but rather a nice slow melody to make the memories smoothly transition in my mind. The drive was filled with clouds and rain, making the trip even more miserable. The air was damp and cold with not the slightest sight of a sun ray. The grass was wet and the dirt turned into mud.

Not only was the drive different, but the house seemed to have a different vibe as well. The clouds blocked out the beautiful scenery that usually surrounds the house. The trees looked depressed. Drenched in rain, they looked as if they had been crying as well.

Entering the house was a feeling I had never really experienced before. It was a feeling mixed between sorrow, comfort and an overall feeling of something unreal. Instead of a happy welcoming, it was a more embracing welcome. The usual predicted first hug, the hug filled with the most love, was not given. Because of that, nothing felt real. The house was still full of love but by one less lover; my grandmother had passed away.

The stay was short and sweet. The world kept on spinning and we had to get back into it. As I walked away from the house, a tear came to my eye. The day, dark and gloomy with constant rain, represented the true feelings each one of us had, but we covered it up with smiles. As I closed my car door I knew that was it. The reality still has not sunk in and probably will not until Thanksgiving. The memories and experiences in the house and the love that once and still is there, has made the mountain house one special place.

I remember standing at her graveside, the drone of the minister’s eulogy vaguely humming in the back of my mind as I looked on the surrealistic scene. It seemed like only moments ago that I had ridden horseback through this very place as a kid, growing up on a farm just down the way. Here the black tarred road twists dangerously sharp in an s-curve around the cemetery, cutting blindly through the hill. It was safer to ride down the center of the graveyard on the dirt and gravel path than attempt to travel the road. The great, sentinel-like oak trees are old here, they remember much. They have seen much. There are many aged and sun-bleached headstones so old that the engravings have long been worn away by the elements. This is a small community cemetery far out in the countryside surrounded by rolling hills and farms. A peaceful place. A nice place to rest. My focus comes back to the scene before me as the minister’s closing coincides with my thoughts “May she rest in peace.”

The next week is spent sorting through our mother’s things. I vaguely remember doing this. Mom had set out pretty well how she wanted things split but it was the little things that caused the most pain…”Who gets the old crock set?” “Who gets the pea salad bowl?” “Who gets the potato salad bowl?” Seemingly inconsequential items but they hold many memories of family holidays and get-to-togethers. Memories of mom’s cooking. Memories of happy segments in time. Memories before leukemia. Such an exotic word, isn’t it? Sounds innocuous, charming even. But it’s a dark word. It holds an icy grip of dread in the night, haunting the mind, disturbing my sleep.
Muted shapes at the edge of sight
Shadows prowling the darkness
Nightmares of the soul in the dimness
Imagination reflecting like a mirror the fright
Disconnected pictures and dire specters of the black night
Haunting, torturing, restless
Doubtful whispers between reality and madness
Affliction of the mind’s plight
Shaking against the cold
I strike against the prison of sleep demanding obeisance
Phoebus Apollo!
Calling forth the light so bold
Grasp tight the dancing radiance
And so the days go on, the calendar relentless in its march toward the future. I return to work after the allotted bereavement leave only to find out that the company is downsizing and I no longer have a job. “Hope you had a good time during your time off.” They said. “What the fuck? My mind screams. “Don’t they realize what I what I just went through?!” “Are they insane!?” But I look at them through bewildered glazed eyes and force a pseudo smile to my tightly drawn lips and nod mechanically while I numbly listen to their inane list of reasons the company must do this and that it’s actually a good thing for the public and their service to them. Without sensation in my mind or my body, I sign their non-disclosure forms and agree to leave quietly. In a fog I drive home and collapse on the couch. “What next!?” A question you really shouldn’t ask if you truly don’t want an answer.
Not knowing what to do with myself I took a temporary job through a staffing agency. Mindlessly plodding through day after day, just doing my tasks with no passion or feeling like a good little automaton. One day I get a call from my twin sister. “Hey! Want to come to Georgia?” “Georgia?” I ask. “Why?” My sister doesn’t have any family down there to help her through the grief and I didn’t have a job. Sounds like a good idea! In this reflection of the past, I realize now it was just a good excuse to escape. Rationalizing it to myself and to my fiancé John, we agreed it would be a good thing to do. Lying to ourselves, we even considered making a real move to Georgia. “I’ll check out the housing and job markets while I’m down there honey. Maybe things will be better than here. Sounded good too. [shrug]
Georgia. The peach state. Hoping to find the sweet nectar of change to be the catalyst that would amend my life, I went down to become a Georgia peach. The plan of course was to stay with my sister so we could “help each other heal from our loss.” Did this work? Of course not! In the beginning though, the prospects looked good in Atlanta and I had located several good areas to buy a house so I put my Illinois house up for sale. BUT, and you knew there had to be one, my sister couldn’t get along with my fiancé and we argued heatedly for days because she wouldn’t even let him in the house when he came to visit me. I moved out.
My house finally sold so I was expecting John to join me in Georgia. Remember? We wanted to start a new, better life? Only this didn’t happen. He found a much younger girl with red hair, he liked red hair, that he wanted to start his better life with. “I want children” he said. His own children that is. My son and daughter are from a previous marriage and I no longer can have more. He knew this seven years ago when we became a couple! “What the hell?!” I packed up my things again and went back home to Illinois to try and start over. Alone.
I lost my mother, I lost my job, I lost my relationship with my twin sister, and I lost the man I had been with for the last seven years. Believe me, I didn’t ask “What next?!” this time! No wonder my mind put this year behind such blurriness so I couldn’t see it clearly, looking at it like a stranger through a dirty glass window from the outside. Nothing really standing out. Shadows of a time best forgotten.
Now, forcing myself to travel back through this period I see there was much more on the other side of the glass than I realized. I also see now how this time has so greatly affected who I am, why I became reclusive, not letting anyone in to become too close, too involved. However, I have reconciled with my sister and I value the relationship even more. Writing all this down, putting it out there in the light of day, helps me to reconnect with my past and recognize the only way to continue moving forward is to know where I’ve been so I’m not traveling the road that cuts blindly through the hill.

My grandparents loved this home. My grandmother made sure, even
with 5 children, the home was immaculate. Every wood floor was
polished, window was sparkling and couch was covered with plastic. Even
though she worked part time as a domestic worker, was an active church
member as a choir member and usher and was the neighborhood’s on-call
babysitter, she did find time for one hobby, one joy- tending her garden.

My grandmother loved her garden, but nothing meant more to her than her fig
trees. She was always tending to them in every season watering in the
summer, fertilizing in the fall and pruning the limbs in winter. All that work
was a passionate love affair. But as her age progressed and strength
weakened, it became harder and harder to care for her beloved
trees. So it was not strange that when she became ill her main
concern was her fig trees.

“Honey, wheel me to the garden. I need to love on my trees.”

“Grandma, what is it about those trees?”

“Well, they are not meant to grow here. The weather is either too hot or too cold. Many
would consider them go out place, and maybe that was why I have an affinity for them. Because
I have always been out of place.”

I thought, “Out of place. This must be the rambling to older woman. She is the certain of our
family with 5 children, 13 grandchildren, and 27 great-grandchildren. She could never be
replaced.” But if I only knew the history, I know now. It would be too clear.

My Grandma Norma was an orphan among family. The product of incest, with a relative and her
fourteen year-old mother, she was branded as unwanted from birth, especially by her mother. As
a child, Norma always wondered why she did not live with her mother or her siblings, but she did want to live with her so called “family.” Because her mother, Clara, was emotionally
distance, unkind and cruel toward Norma for just existing. There was nothing Norma
could do to satisfy her biological mother. Instead Norma lived with her aunt and uncle,
who adored her.

It delighted her aunt’s heart to have a child after so many failed attempts to be a parent.
Aunt Helen and Uncle Norman loved Norma as if she were their own. With them Norma had
a childhood, love and encouragement. Aunt Helen taught Norma to sew, cook and tend to a
household, so she could be a good wife one day. But Uncle Norman had bigger plans for
Norma of being a teacher. See Uncle Norman was a self-educated Black man, who loved
classical literature and could moderately read Latin. He would have Norma recite Shakespeare
and annotate the daily paper’s editorial. He used every conversation or moment as an
opportunity to stretch her mind and build character. The character building came from his
nightly reading of Bible stories. This was Norma’s favorite part of the day. It was almost
like no one else was more adored than her. To Norma he was the smartest and kindest
man she in the world. Her life was perfect, until Aunt Helen suddenly died. This
devastated Uncle Norman because he had lost his soul mate, and soon he would loss
his daughter.

Two days after the funeral, Clara came to the house.

“I want my gal back.”

“Your gal?!,” shouted Uncle Norman.

“Yes, my gal! She ain’t gonna stay here. Not with you!

Norma could not believe it. Her thoughts raced, “My mother wants me. She really wants me.
But why? This woman hates me.”

Uncle Norman then forced Clara out into the front yard. He then
stood firm and spoke steadily as to not raise his voice. “I am not
giving her to you.”

“I am not asking! You know you own me. So have her ready
today.”

Norma waited for Uncle Norman to fight for her and tell that evil
woman to go away. In her mind, imagined him being a gallant
knight, slays the witch and saves the princess.

But there was silence, then the creak of an opening screen door.
Uncle Norman walked through the house to the back door. He
looked almost weak as if his steps were heavy. As he walked to the
garden, he called in a somber voice. “Girl, come here. I need to talk
to you.”
Norma slowly walked to her Uncle as he sat in the garden under a fig tree. She knew by the look
on his face that she was leaving. It was the same look of disbelief he had since her aunt’s funeral
–a look of confusion, anguish and a family loss.
In the same kind and endearing voice he used to tell Bible bedtime stories, he asked Norma to
come sit. “You see this tree. It is big and strong, but when it’s little it needs a lot care. Fig trees
are not meant to live in Georgia. But with the care of watering and protecting it from weeds, the
weather or bugs, it can survive. In fact, it will live longer than any of the plant you see here in
this garden. It can bear fruit for generations.”

Then with a hesitate voice Norma asked, “Please let me stay?”

“I’m sorry, but it is time to go with your mama. Child, I married your aunt, so I am not
blood family” with a sigh he began to stumble over his words. “I know your mama can be hard,
but there’s a lot of hurt there. And hurt people are folks who did get enough love. ”

“Hurt from what?”

“Things you are too young to understand. But don’t let her hurt change you. Promise
me.”

“I promise.” Norma wanted to argue, but she knew it was decided.

And the promise to remain unchanged was never broken. My grandmother’s story would not
end happily. Instead, she would spend her adolescences being a maid for her “new” family. But
she viewed her role as necessary to grow the family. Fulfilling her mother’s every request of
preparing all the meals and caring for her siblings was life.

My grandmother is the most loving and caring of person in my family. She
functions as the master gardener for the family tree. Her words and actions
water the spirits of her children and grandchildren. Now in her senior
years, she can look at the fruits of her garden. The question for my life is–
what I have grown. “ Am I nourishing my children’s’ spirits, watering
their souls or planting seeds of love in their hearts? Do I provide my sons
with what’s needed to grow confident men, loving husbands or joyful
fathers?” The decades hold the answers.

The kids’ childhoods are very different from my grandmother’s. There are no dark secrets or
mean relatives present in my children’s live. My husband and I try to protect our three boys’
childhoods–their innocence. This world is so full of bad news, mean words and depressed
people that it is not easy to shelter my babies’ eyes and hearts. So I like my grandmother, make
a conscious effort to teach my children moral behavior and act it out daily.
My grandmother would say, “Pour good things into your children, so only the
best can grow.” It has taken me 30 years to understand that “Pour good
things.” So it is my turn to pour love, understanding, kind words, and
patience onto my boys. I am so bless because I now have my own garden of little people who spirits, minds and bodies I must grow. Then, one day I will be my grandmother
and seat and “watch my fruit.”

The list of losses inside the sermons pew does not concede to one, but the passing of my dog seems the worst. Discarded sense of literal, maybe I never met the pew for his burial, but no reason for a formal wave goodbye for something as simple as a pet. Still his death meant so much, because I watched it pass. Death, as displayed on screen, is not an easy thing with which to cope, not a two line movie conversation. It’s never quite as glorious as the war depictions show, nor as happy as the medicated comedies. To feel the reality of life disposed, it must touch basis with your heart, not like a movie will, but rather from a touch given by that of someone you where close too. The same it did when he passed. Once you’ve felt the end so close upon your heart, you then begin to question what it’s all for. You hope the best for the passed away connections, but can’t guarantee your wants. When he died I watched his eyes, and they didn’t even close. No signs of souls torn free to float too heaven, but I guess it was never predicted for my dog. Left out perhaps the implications of dog heaven, much the same to ours. If the chance where real, did he find his way? Is he there now enjoying all his time. In me I will always hope hes found some sort of heaven, but without having passed with him, I could never understand where he is now.

I feel the same kind of pain and thought for family losses as I did for him. Questioned the chances of an afterlife condition as beautiful as it sounds. Want the best for them. They always say they’re waiting for you up in heaven, but what if their claim to perfect was different from my own? Would they have been sent into a different version, or do you find all the loves you lost in yours even if they’re in another? Then they’ll reside as just quaint representations of the ones you remembered. It might seem suffice to see them in that light, but it kind of kills the “I’ll see you again”. Literally yes you will, but technically it seems life takes this one against you. Seems it will have replaced what you used to know, with what you will simply recognize. This will satisfy you, and you may not even know the difference, but lies are always hard to spot. Seems we’ll be taken for a fool if heaven does exist unless, as I believe, heaven already exists inside of us. You can never be a fool within your own memories.

“The white of everything shined bright in front of me. Maybe there was a heaven to find. Maybe heaven was not an after death experience but rather moments of perfection graced inside your life. Can only hope that in death your sent to live within those times, the rest of your life in heaven held by memory. A nice compliment to life”

This passage grown from my own hands is where I began to find my way. The character succumbed to realize the possibility of what heaven might really be. As we pass through our days, we combine our senses to form recollection of the times we’ve had. Everyone we’ve loved holds multiple afflictions within our memories. You can’t shake the things that helped shape you, nor destroy the things that help you to smile. All those times under sunlit promises scattered along the lines into your past. Follow them closely and you’ll see how much of them are you. How much every second you remember really means. Even dreams stick with us, as they overtake our sleep. Nightmares the other side to the spectrum. All of it to shape us. Sure not all our past is pleasant, regret will always find its place. Loss of a loved one also sad. Even the worst of things have their silver linings though. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to you nothing but your own memories will shine quite as bright.

We work to create all these times as we pass through life. Then death finds the better of your world, no way around its pull. The people watch as your caskets lowered, their prayers fallen with you. Your mind though, even dead, I still believe will play. Your soul the power to its screen. As you lay within your final sleep, you watch as memories recollect inside your eyes. From day one till the final sunset, you watch all you have remembered, and it’s beautiful to you. You realize this is a heaven in a sense. Stuck within the happiness you’d long forgotten. The scenes may even be relived to an in depth constriction. The senses overpowered by what you remember as you reach the touch of loved ones closely. Your eyes may read from first person holdings, or maybe from the side. Either way your heart is kept alive as it warms and beats against your memories. This is why in the end you will see your loved ones again, it was not a lie at all. Just under a different light. Any light with them will be well spent.

I can’t forget though, the other side. Strangely enough, as good as heaven sounds, it’s not hard to create a world more perfect than our own. Crime combusted in an entirety around the world, with war scorched pasts from every culture. Screams of buried soldiers who never found their heaven, because we commanded them to hell in battle. Can’t have heaven without hell. Takes the opposite to understand the extremities of the beauty that is heaven. How many have found hell though that have been promised of a heaven. How many have we lied into our minds, really found themselves within the burnings of a fire. It like heaven is hard to fathom, and also hard to prove. It seems though, that if my beliefs where true, hell would not be made of fire, but rather the burns of your regret. You live a life of simple selfishness while hurting those around, then all your memory reads are those times of your imperfection. You must sit inside the scenes of all you’ve done without a happy time to find. Freeze in your own dedication towards the top, just to end at the bottom of our prayers. Enjoy the walls abound your chest, they’ll always hold like the shield you kept between the contact of all those who tried to love you.

My eyes closed as I searched for sleep
the afterlife made by memories
a piece it seems, both of heaven and hell
I’ve done some good, yet bad as well
and now I’ll live inside these times forever

By: Trent Watkins

I walked down my high school graduation isle dressed in navy robes as “It’s the End of the World as you Know it” by REM played on the speakers.  A slightly larger portion of the student body wore the more feminine white robes.  It seemed natural to distinguish male and female in this manner.  At the time I was not a fan of REM, but that song was the best song ever played at a high school graduation. One life was over, and a new life had just begun.

I learned a few things in high school, and most of it is like a bad memory.  I saw the power of isolation first hand.  I saw people congregate in cliques and ridicule those outside of their group.  There were the jocks in school colors with footballs in hand, flaunting their success.  There were preppies who curried favor with gold. There was the beta club: a select group of budding intellectuals madly scribbling away on blackboards and whiteboards.  There were the band-geeks ridiculed for only wanting to play on rich brass.  There were the wall-people—who later became the bell-tower people—with white makeup and “emo” stares before emo was a word.  There were rednecks who looked to emphasize the rural life with exaggerated accents and flannel shirts in a multitude of color patterns.  Last were those without a recognizable color.  They were easily picked on for their lack of a supporting group.   This is who I belonged with: the group always on the outside looking in.

I saw many fights in high-school— the mad flailing of youths trying to destroy anything different from themselves. I saw the black clad Bell-tower people launching lefts and rights at plaid clad rednecks. I watched blue and gold clad jocks pushing red polo-shirt wearing preppies and saw those same red polo-shirts attack the white clad beta-club.  I even scrapped a few times myself.  The colors didn’t matter to me.  They were all a form of evil and worthy of assault.  It seemed necessary enough despite its repulsiveness.  I learned that sometimes the best way to keep from being attacked was to attack first: open with a bloody fist, show no fear, taste the dripping red blood, savor it, and the attacks cease.  The red-red hate of war was its own defense.  I watched all this and hoped that the end of the world I knew was indeed at hand, so I walked down that isle in navy dress and gold tassel with some hope for the future.  I remember smiling broadly when I accepted that little piece of paper that I have since forgotten the location of.

My first act upon graduation was to accept a fall position with the Gold and Black of Atlanta and learned that the greatest enemy was the Black and Red of Athens.  I took practice chanting, “To hell with Georgia” with a thousand others clad in gold and black and was told I did a good job.  I have since learned that this ritual, or some variant of it, is repeated all over the nation.  It seems now the words were different.  I wasn’t so much chanting “To hell with Georgia” as much as I was yelling “Yay, a color clique to join!”  It was a place to call home.  For the length of summer, this fantasy was true, but for now I would have to go home and wait.

When I returned from the Georgia Tech campus, my mom, brother, and I set out across the country for two weeks to see the middle of America.  My little brother, who is now substantially taller, is separated from me by nine years.   In truth, he is technically a half-brother—the son of my father and his second wife—but despite everything we have been through and the vast separation of time and space, he has forever remained my brother.  The “half” has long since been forgotten as an unnecessary formality.

At various points along the trip, my brother would play is favorite game.  It was something I liked to refer to as, “What would you do if?”  He would invent a series of inane questions designed to do nothing more than test my patience: What would you do if I knocked your plate on the floor?  What would you do if I squirted yellow mustard all over your black shirt?  What would you do if I threw your Yellow Jacket shirt out the window?  My usual response was “beat the tar out of you.”  I tended to use stronger language when my mom wasn’t around.  Looking back now, it was sometimes difficult to believe how big a canyon of years is between nine and eighteen.  Then it was all so clear.

As we drove, I saw many things.  I saw green trees reaching for blue skies with brown earth beneath them as we passed through Alabama and Mississippi.  I saw a black man playing guitar in New Orleans.  The melodies his aged fingers played were as magnificent as anything ever played.  I saw white and red shirts pass his open black guitar case without leaving any green or even a shiny silver or two.  I saw green fields split by stretches of black tar with dead animals laying at the edges as we drove through western Texas.  I saw their rotting carcasses and blankly staring eyes and wondered why no one bothered to pick them up, to remove them, to give them a proper burial.  In New Mexico, I saw a swarm of black bats take to the night sky in a swirling rush.  When the light of dawn came, the same swirling rush came home to the black of the cave.

What I remember most was in Utah.  I like to think REM was playing as we drove through the sparse coniferous trees.  If it was not, then it should have been.  It had been a long day of driving and a long trip in general.  My brother was busy playing his favorite game, and I was doing my best to ignore him.  Long before this, I had pushed my mother to the travel trip breaking point.  It was a relief to hear my brother break from his game long enough to say, “Are we there yet?”  It was equally pleasing to hear my mother snap, “No, we’ll be there when I tell you we’re there!”  In retrospect it seems odd, sacrilegious, for one of the most important moments of my life to be trapped in a long, arduous, hot, tiring, frustrating car ride.  Ultimately that is the power of life: the least important, most inane of circumstances can lead to the most important of discoveries.

It was in the evening, and the yellow sun was setting behind the trees when I first saw it.  At first, it was nothing more than a great rift in the land filled with color.  As the trees parted, the rift opened its great maw and defied any to cross it—so vast, so daunting was its presence.  For as far my eye could see, the rift spread, and somewhere down below a mighty rushing river flowed.  The canyon was filled with rich and fertile sediment washed down by the mighty Colorado River.  The brown contrasted sharply with the brightly colored canyon walls.  Rich reds filled those walls, and sandy browns, and the green of trees and grass where possible, and vivid yellows also.  Eventually the canyon gave way to the sky in hues of orange and red and vibrant pastel pink, and even majestic purples gazed warmly up at the white and blue-gray of the overlooking moon.

I will always remember the canyon in the evening.  That is when it is at its most beautiful, but also at its most sinister.  The colors there don’t wash across the landscape and meld with one another.  They are finely segregated.  Each colored grain of sand has its own special place with other grains of sand of the same color.  Over the millions and millions of years time and space have first compressed these layers of colored sand into rock, cementing their legacy and forever separating them from one another.  Don’t get me wrong.  The colors are beautiful to behold, just sinister.  There is the notion that separating the colors creates beauty and to blend them together is less than beautiful.  Fortunately there is another force at work here.  There is a raging river flowing through the very heart of this segregated land.  It tears at the foundations, ripping the rock from the very walls, and shredding them back down into sand and soil.  The river is brown and turbulent, muddy and ugly, but it ever rages on.  It has so much work left to do.  If I lived in the canyon, I’d live by the river.  That is where the living things grow strongest.

Looking back, that entire summer was about color and division.  Each division was beautiful to behold: orderly, serene.  Things fell easily into these orders and became lost in a sea of similar faces and things.  It was only by climbing down into the canyon, the rift of America, that I was able to see what it really did.  It separated one side from the other.  It prevented travel, the sharing of ideas, the mingling of color.  It prevented the America of reality from becoming the America of dreams.  The dream is a powerful thing, a wisp of legend, of ideas, that whispers in the night of unity and sharing.  The dream swims in the river: a river that’s so hard to get to from the top of the canyon.  The hike down is arduous and fraught with peril.  There are spiders living in the walls and snakes in the caves.  They wait for unsuspecting travelers to drop their guard and then they strike.  They suck you into the wall and forever lock you in stone.  Beware the color-divided walls on your journey and may you forever find solace by the river.

But the one attraction that sticks out in my mind, the one things that holds my entire map together and unifies it, is what I like to call the Divorced ‘Rents Railroad. It’s the ride that kept me going back and forth between two different homes all my life.

Sure, a lot of kids these days have to deal with the crappiness that divorce in their family can bring. Even though I’m pretty sure it’s about the same as it is for thousands of other kids out there, sometimes I like to think my own perspective on it is just a little bit different.

My journey through the world of a divorced family started when I was five. That was a good fifteen years ago, and I was pretty young at the time, so I don’t exactly remember any of it. I have no idea how I felt or how long it even took me to fully grasp the concept of what was truly happening. My mom and dad were separating, and my dad would remain living in Atlanta while my mom, half-sister, and I moved back to Jacksonville, Florida.

It was kind of like when you’re a kid on your first real roller coaster, not sure what to expect and scared out of your mind. You just want to hold on to your mom or dad and have them reassure you that it’s all going to be okay.

For all my life, I never really knew why they divorced in the first place. At least, not until recently, when my dad and I were at dinner and I finally got the courage to ask the question I’d been wondering for fifteen years. “I’m not really too sure,” he told me. “For some reason or another, it just didn’t work out.” While it wasn’t an exciting tale, by any means, I was glad to know it wasn’t because I was born or because of some other extreme situation. It just didn’t work out.

So I lived in Jacksonville, just the three of us girls (with the exception of some boyfriends of my mom), for the next eight years. Thankfully, though, I was still able to see my dad often. He was the kind of dad who still wanted to be in his daughter’s life, so he would drive the 400 miles a few times a year, get a hotel room for a couple of nights, then visit with me. I was especially excited to see him during Christmas time and my birthday, because being the naïve little child I was, I knew I would get a few extra presents out of it.

Even when we weren’t together, we would write letters back and forth, some of which I just recently found. Rereading these brought tears to my eyes when I found them again.

“Allison – I just wanted to say HI! And tell you I LOVE YOU!! You’re my little cabbage rose, right? I’ll see you soon! Love, Daddy”

“Hi, sweetie! I sure am glad to hear that you like your new school so much! I think you would do really well no matter what school you are in. I sure am proud of you!! I love you always!”

The fact that some of these letters were dated as early as January, 1995, shortly after the divorce, still proves to me that he was determined to keep me happy despite everything else that was going on. He wanted to show me that he still loved me, no matter what the distance.

Growing up in Florida with a single parent was definitely interesting. On one hand, I remember thinking about how lucky I was that even though my parents were divorced, they both still loved me, cared for me, and overall just wanted me to be happy. But I also remember spending time with friends whose parents were still together, and being jealous about how both of their parents were there with them, all hours of the day, every day. I really wished I could see my dad that often, but I knew that that’s just how life was, and that it wasn’t the case.

As I got older, my parents thought I was mature enough to go up to Georgia with my dad and spend time with him there. Which I ended up loving, in part because of the pets that resided there as well, since the biggest pet I had in Jacksonville was a fish. There were two cats, Boo and Tabitha, and they became my best friends up there. There was also the fact that my dad let me sleep in his waterbed, which I thought was just the coolest thing. But I still got homesick some of the time. Those were the times I really missed Jacksonville, and especially my Mommy.

Once my dad moved to a new apartment, I finally had my own room for whenever I went to visit him. It was a Rugrats themed room, which I was obsessed with at the time. It was really comforting to have my own little space filled with cartoons that I loved that my dad provided for me, even if I wasn’t living in it all that often.

Throughout my childhood, I was raised by my dad’s side of the family as a Georgia Tech girl. My grandfather graduated from the school with honors, and both my dad and uncle attended. So of course, I wanted to go as well. Since probably sixth grade or so, I wanted to go to Georgia Tech for architecture. When it came time for high school, I reasoned that if I attended a high school in Georgia, I could get the HOPE scholarship to help pay for Georgia Tech. (This rationale makes me seem so much more money conscious than I actually am, though.) At the same time, however, I was invited to the International Baccalaureate program at Stanton, named one of the best high schools in the nation.

You know how when you’re in line for a big roller coaster, and you have to go back and forth and back and forth in the line while you’re waiting in anticipation for the ride? It sure does give you time to really think about if you’re sure you want to make that choice to ride the roller coaster, and that’s exactly how I felt when deciding upon where to live and go to school.

I had a tough choice ahead of me, and it was one that my parents left totally up to me. It was one decision I felt way too young to be making on my own.

Living with my dad was a lot different than living with my mom and sister. He had just gotten remarried and moved into a new house, so I had a lot to look forward to. I was suddenly transformed from the youngest child to the only child. Suddenly, I didn’t have an older sister around to hog the TV or to yell at me to get off the phone – I promise, now that we’re older, she and I get along a lot better, as most siblings do – and it was just a huge weight off my shoulders.

Instead of a sister, though, I now had a stepmom in the house. That part was a little bit strange for me. I had an older woman in the house for me to look up to and to get advice from during those awkward teenage years, but she just wasn’t my mom. I didn’t have that same connection with her that I had with my own mom or even my dad. But living with my dad, the one person in my life I think I’m the closest to, was such a rewarding experience for me.

To this day, my dad tells me that my choosing to take that metaphorical train ride once more to live in Atlanta for high school was one of the best presents I have ever given him. He even wrote me a senior letter when I graduated (Collins Hill High School, Class of 2007!) saying how much happier he’s been since we were living together, and how proud of me he was all through high school.

The funny part is, after moving up to Georgia with the intent of becoming a Yellow Jacket, I ended up not even going to Georgia Tech. And it’s not because I didn’t get accepted – I was so proud of myself when I got that acceptance letter. But, I ended up taking a campus tour of my back-up school, and just fell in love with it, which explains why I am at Southern Poly instead.

It’s amazing to think that such a non-physical idea such as divorce has even affected me even now that I’m in college. Being a writer, it’s easy to see how different things in my life have influenced my style. I do a lot of creative writing in my spare time, and divorce tends to pop up a lot in my fiction stories. In my current work, the teenage girl lives with her single father, and the reason for the mother not being is just never discussed in their household. Even in things that I wrote in elementary school, I would put the main character as having only one parent, and never really had a back story as to why the other parent wasn’t there. Since I’ve grown up living with single parents, I haven’t known any other way of living, so that’s how I always portray life in my stories.

It’d be nice to know if I could look into the future and make sure that whenever I get married, it won’t end in divorce. I would never want to have my kids deal with that like I did, but it’s just impossible to tell. No one ever can. It’s made me very wary of my relationships now, and I’m always thinking to myself, “Is this the right person?” “Would I really be able to stay with them forever?”

Changes in your life can really affect you, there’s no doubt about that. Whether it be your parents going through a divorce, or just a hobby you’re really passionate about, it will affect you in some way. You just have to push through it and plan for that positive that will come at the end of it all.

Kind of like a really long line for a roller coaster. Sure, it sucks when you actually have to go through it, but once you get past it, life is just so much more fun.

Please continue on to read some of our student essays.