When I Was Little…

Potty Training… Age 2

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 10:55:07 -0400

Colors. Bright green. And Brown. Trees. I’m outside. Front yard. Mommy’s there. Kitty! I want a kitty. Large Shadow. Daddy the Tickle Monster. I run. Darkness. I keep running. Darkness all around. Something up ahead. I get closer. A toilet. Good. I sit down. No!

My eyes snap open, afraid I was too late. I’m not. I sit up and carefully climb out of bed. Down the hallway and into the bathroom to my potty. I feel proud of myself. Before, I had accidents. But now, if I dream of a toilet, I knew I had to wake up and go. Strange that it’s always of the big toilet, not the training potty.

Run Nakkie… Age 3

Tue, 22 May 2012 05:02:00 -0400

I didn’t want to take a bath. I hate baths. But now that I’m in, I’m having too much fun to get out.

Daddy pulls out the plug. I stand and he wraps a fluffy towel around me and lifts me up out of the tub. All of the floating bath toys gather round the drain while the rest lay at the bottom of the tub.

Daddy walks me to my bedroom to help me put on my pyjamas. But I don’t want to get dressed yet. My blankie in one hand and completely naked, I run from my room, down the hallway and into the living room.

“Run nakkie!” Daddy calls out, letting me have my fun rather than insisting that I get dressed right away.

As I appear out from behind the couch, Mommy sees me. “Run Nakkie!” she calls to me, playing the game I initiated. I laugh in delight as I reach the wooden panel next to the fish tank. I turn around, and run back into my room, and into Daddy’s arms.

Once there, I turn around and, still holding Blankie in one hand, I run down the hallway again.

“Run Nakkie!” they both call out as I continue to laugh.

Most Precious Gift… Age 5

Mon, 14 May 2012 02:19:53 -0400

I’m turning five today! Mommy and Daddy said they had a surprise present for me. But we had to go pick it up first. I was bouncing in my carseat, completely unable to sit still in anticipation.

We pulled into a parking lot, and parked in front of a strip mall. Mommy told me to wait in the car while they went in and got my present.

While they were inside, I pressed my face to the car window to see where we were, and perhaps guess what my present was. Looking up at the lit-up sign, I wished I could read. I knew my letters, but I didn’t yet know how to put them together into words.

After forever, my parents came out of the store, carrying what looked to be a large purplish box. There was the bink of the car unlocking, and the door opened to reveal a pet carrier with a tiny, amber-eyed kitten inside

________________________________________________________________________________________

As soon as Mom set down the carrier at the top of our stairs, I let out my new kitten. I had been begging for one forever, and I couldn’t wait to cuddle her, and pet her, and play with her.

The kitten poked her head out and I lay down on my tummy to watch. As she stepped out for the first time, I saw she had four little white paws and a coat splotted with varying shades of grey.

“What do you want to name her, Dhal?” Mom asked.

“Mittens,” I said after a pause.

“Are you sure?” Dad asked. “You don’t want to name her Boots?”

“No. It’s Mittens.”

As we talked, Mittens was poking her nose around the couch and I watched from a distance, holding myself back from smothering her with affection. From my experience with cats in the past, it didn’t seem like the really enjoyed it, seeing how much they wanted to run away.

Mittens wandered into the dining room, and I followed closely behind.

“Dhal, leave her alone to explore on her own,” Mom said. “She needs to get used to the house a little before she will want to spend too much time with you. Do you want to put some food out for her?”

“Sure!” I said, jumping up and running into the kitchen. Mom was right; once Mittens was used to living with us, we would be best friends.

A couple weeks later, we couldn’t find her anywhere.

To be continued…

Lion King… Age 4

Sun, 06 May 2012 11:02:16 -0400

I was so excited- the Lion King was out in theaters today! Mommy and Daddy were probably going to take me to it this weekend!

At Kindergarden, everyone was talking about the new movie and how awesome it would be. One kid, though, knew a bit too much about it.

“Mufasa doesn’t die,” the kid said boastfully. “I saw it already. You think he’s dead, but he comes back later.”

Thanks for ruining it for me!

I didn’t even know who Mufasa was, but I already knew he supposedly died, and came back later. Even so, I was still dying to see it.

That night, I begged Daddy to take me. In the dark theater, I watched Mufasa fall off the cliff, and for the rest of the movie, I waited for him to come back and help Simba save the pride. He never did.

“What happened to Simba’s dad?” I asked as we left the theater. The walk to the car was always the time for me to ask questions so I could understand the movie better.

“He died. Scar killed him.” Dad answered patiently.

“He didn’t come back?”

“No, that was Simba all grown up.”

On the way home, I stared out the window in thought. The boy in my class was stupid. He thought Simba was Mufasa. Clearly, he hadn’t payed attention to the movie when he was watching it; it was so obvious it was Simba running around, even when some of the characters mistook him for his dad.

I couldn’t wait to correct the idiot when I went back to school on Monday.

Trip Through Time… Age 6

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 11:02:44 -0400

Crack open a can of Dr. Pepper. The hiss of escaping carbon dioxide; the distinct smell of the sugary liquid within. I am instantly transported back to a simpler time.

I am six years old, standing in the front yard with my child-sized spade and rake, helping my mom plant flowers. Dad is in the grass, pushing the lawn mower.

The day is hot and a bit humid, and Mom is wearing a large gardening hat to keep the sun off her neck. We started just after lunch, and she is showing me the bulbs and the direction they go into the ground.

“This way,” she said, “we don’t have to planting every year. They will keep growing back.”

I marvelled at the concept. Always before, if a plant shrivelled and died in the fall, we would have to replant them the next year, but now we were planting these magic bulbs that would die and grow a new plant in the spring!

“Keep planting, Dhal, I’ll be right back.”

I continue digging like she showed me, placing a bulb after careful inspection to see which way it should go in. I am just covering it with dirt when she walks back out with a can of Dr. Pepper and a neon pink cap to keep the bees from climbing in.

She opens it with a hiss then snaps the cap on and takes a drink.

“Can I have some?” I ask, not really expecting her to say yes. Pop was a treat. I was allowed a child-sized glass on the rare occasion we went out to dinner, and it was only every once in a while when she had a can that she would let me drink from hers.

To my surprise, she hands me the can and I take a second to inspect the design. We rarely buy pop, and when we do, it is not usually this kind. It is a super-special drink, one of Mom’s favourites. I can’t remember if I’ve had it before.

I tilt it to my mouth and just before the liquid pours in, I get a whiff of the distinct smell of the Dr. Pepper inside.

That was the last summer I remember doing yard work with my parents. After that, they poured rocks over the bare dirt and our front garden was how they wanted it, with all of the plants continuing to grow back year after year. It became a chore for any of us to go pull weeds, and to this day, we try to avoid it.

This summer, more than 15 years later, Dad wants to take out the rocks and put down mulch in hopes of decreasing the number of weeds for a couple of years. Maybe if we make it into another family project, we will have fun with it again…

The New Neighbors… Age 5

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 06:00:52 -0400

“Let’s go visit our new neighbors,” Mom said.

“Do I have to?” I asked. The last thing I wanted to do was meet the people who moved in down the block. It would be a boring meet-and-greet, with the adults talking for hours while I sit there tugging at Mom’s arm to leave.

“I think they have a daughter your age,” Mom added.

“Humpf,” I grumbled, putting on my velcro shoes and taking my mom’s hand as we headed down the street.

Around the corner, and down the block, the white house sat as the first house you see when you enter the neighborhood. I never knew the people who had lived there before, and I honestly didn’t want to meet the people who lived there now.

Mom rang the doorbell and waited.

A woman answered, revealing a simple split-level entry, like my house, and my mom greeted her with a wide smile. “Hello, my name is Sherry, and this is my daughter Dhalim. We wanted to welcome you to the neighbohood!”

The woman smiled. “Thank you! I’m Karen.”

A girl about my age peeked out from behind her legs. “And this is Dhalim. She’s five.”

“My Dhalim is too!” my mom said.

“Dhalim, how about you show Dhalim your new room?” Karen suggested.

Dhalim looked at me for a moment, then turned toward the stairs. I followed her down and around the corner to her room.

The bed was twin sized like mine, but much lower to the ground than I was used to. The room itself seemed about half the size of mine, but unlike mine, it had a small TV, which I would never be allowed. Dhalim went to her Fisher-Price toy box and perched on top of it, watching me.

Looking around for a place to sit, I decided the end of the bed, facing her, would be the best place. From my spot, studied the girl who had stolen my name. She had long, dark brown hair, wore a t-shirt that had rugrats characters climbing into the front pocket, and simply looked back at me, not saying anything.

I wasn’t about to open a conversation. What would I say? This girl was me, but not me. We shared the same name. How could we share the same name? I was Dhalim, not her! She stole it from me; I had it first!

Ten minutes passed in which we continued looking at each other, unknowingly contemplating the same thoughts, until finally my mom called, “Dhal! We’re going home!”

With one last glance at the name-doppelgänger, I went up the stairs, said goodbye to Karen like Mom told me to, and started home.

“They seem like very nice people!” Mom said enthusiastically, swinging our hands. “And you and Dhalim seemed to get along nicely. I got their new phone number in case you wanted to call her tomorrow.”

I thought about the girl I had just met, the one who took my name. If I played with her, I would be calling out my own name when I was really trying to get her attention- how did that work? No, I would not be calling her later; the whole thing was too weird to think about.

…

The next day, I was unbelievably bored. There was nothing to do, and Mom wanted me to go play outside. But then I had an idea.

“Hello,” I said into the phone. “Can Dhalim play?”

Life's Woes… Age 9

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 01:33:00 -0400

Finally! All of my other friends had already read the newest book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which had been published a week ago. Unfortunately, I had only been on book 3 at the time, and had to finish that first before starting this one. I had been so tempted to forget it and just skip to the Goblet of Fire, but everyone I suggested it to insisted that I had to read Prisoner of Azkaban first. Having finally finished it after a pathetic two full days due to a sharp increase in homework, I had to admit- it was a good thing I waited.

Now, though, the night was still young and I was only just beginning the first task.

There was a creek from down the hall, and I quickly glanced at my ceiling clock to see it had somehow become 1AM. Scrambling to shut off my flashlight, I quickly laid the book, still open, on my tummy and turned my head to the side as though I were asleep.

After several moments, I heard the sound of footsteps heading back downstairs and I breathed a sigh of relief. The light from my flashlight was bright enough to read by, but it was also bright enough to carry through the doorless doorway of my three-walled bedroom. There was a sheet stapled to the guts of what would eventually be the fourth wall separating my room from the hallway that had been cut through it, and while it helped keep in the light, it was only just. It was amazing they hadn’t noticed.

Settling down, I took out the flashlight again and picked up the book. After procrastinating all of winter break, Harry had finally worked out the egg’s clue and was now frantically searching for a way to survive in the lake.

1:30AM.

“Harry chewed twice and swallowed… Doing the only thing he could think of, he threw himself into the depths of the lake-“

“Dhalim! What are you still doing up?!”

I jumped, quickly switching off my flashlight as though it would make a difference now that I had been caught. “Nothing,” I said, looking up at the silhouette of my mom standing in the doorway.

“It is one thirty in the morning. Go to bed.”

“Kay.”

I waited for a moment after my mom disappeared into the master bedroom across the hall before diving under the covers and turning back on my flash light.

“…he threw himself into the depths of the lake-“

“Dhal, give me the book.”

I flung off the covers hiding my head. “Okay, okay, I’ll go to bed!”

“Give me the book now, and you can get it back when I get home from work tomorrow.”

Knowing it was the best deal I would get out of her, I handed over the book, put my flashlight on my bedside table, and attempted to quiet my mind enough to go to sleep.

“Dhalim, wake up!”

I pried open my eyes and squinted up at the ceiling. Though it was light in my room, I could just barely read out 8AM. I groaned and rolled over again. For crying out loud, it was summer! There was no reason for me to be up this early, and she always let me sleep in before; why was today any different? Especially now I have nothing to do today, I thought as I burrowed into my pillow. Mom was really good at hiding things she didn’t want found.

“Dhalim, get up, I’m leaving for work!”

“What’s the point?!” I wailed, throwing my pillow over my head dramatically.

I could almost hear her sigh. When it was quiet for a couple minutes, I thought she had left for work, but then I felt something land on the bed next to me.

I got my book back.

Mr. Sun… Age 4

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 02:32:29 -0400

Dad was driving me to another day at Day Care. From my big girl car seat I could look out the window at the houses and other cars, and all the trees and bushes as they passed by. Sometimes the sun would get in the way. I hated those times.

“Daddy, the sun’s in my eyes!” I whined as I squinted stubbornly out the window.

“Look the other way,” Daddy said. What a stupid suggestion. Why should I look the other way? I was the one that wanted to look this way- the sun should be the one to move!

“No!” I knew from experience that if I kept looking the way I wanted to, the sun would eventually move. After all, I had been looking in that direction first. Daddy just didn’t understand the physics behind it.

There we go- the sun moved far enough behind me that I could see again. And then the stupid thing moved back.

“Daddy, the sun!” I cried, shading my eyes.

“Dhal, look out a different window. I can’t do anything about it.”

I continued to glare to my right, but relaxed, victorious when we reached the part of the trip when I knew the sun always gave up it’s attempt to torment me and left me alone for the rest of the ride.

I turned my head in the other direction. I wanted to look out this side, now.

The Call… Age 15

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:13:00 -0400

The day started like any other. Normal weather, normal classes, normal fourth period Language Arts. I would like to say that I started getting a bad feeling around 11 that morning, or maybe around 1 that afternoon. But no, I had no clue that my life was going to turn upside down when I walked into Language Arts that day. I managed to figure it out, though, and it was all thanks to a phone call.

The classroom phone doesn’t ring often. When it does, it is usually for the teacher, the school secretary asking for him or her to organise the homework for that day as so-and-so is sick and can’t make it, but his or her mom will be by after school to pick up what he/she had missed.

That day, though. That day, the second the first ring interrupted my teacher’s sentence, I knew it was for me. I knew it was for me, and I knew it was about my grandpa. The second that phone rang, I knew my grandpa had died.

There was no logical reason for me to know this. He was not sick. He was not on bed rest. Hell, he hadn’t even had a cough the last time I had talked to him. And yet, the phone rang, and I knew.

But it couldn’t be; it was ridiculous, I tried to reason with myself as the teacher spoke softly into the receiver. My grandpa couldn’t be dead. No, it had to be about my little sister’s dance recital that night. For some reason, they were pulling me out of school so we could have an early dinner or something beforehand. Grandpa couldn’t be dead.

And yet, when the teacher hung up the phone, he looked directly at me. “Dhalim, you have been called down to the main office. Don’t worry about homework- there isn’t any tonight.”

As I put my notebook and pencil bag into my backpack, I tried to think of another reason why I was being called out of school. But every excuse I made kept bringing me back to my grandpa, and the fact I could not possibly know, that he was dead.

Maybe I received an award or something, I told myself, swallowing past the lump in my throat as I reached for the office door.

“Dhalim?” the secretary asked when I had opened it. “Your mother is waiting for you in the parking lot.”

I nodded a weak ‘thanks’, and walked to the front doors of the school.

Climbing into the car, I could immediately tell that my mom had been crying. “What’s up?” I asked lightly, trying to sound ignorant to the truth.

“Dhal,” Mom started, gripping the steering wheel tightly. “Your grandpa died this afternoon.”

At this point, I had known this so deeply, that I was not surprised, nor did I feel the need to react at all, as though I had already grieved and had accepted this new reality. However, seeing my mom looking expectantly at me, I forced myself to burst into tears. A little water works, then I could slowly drop the act and we could make our way home, business as usual. But the longer I cried, the less I was able to stop. It was as if a dam had broken inside of me and what started as forced tears, had become uncontrolled sobbing as I realised I would never see, or talk to my grandpa again.

My grandpa and I had never been all that close, at least not compared to Grandma and me, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realised the special place he had in my life. This was the man who had collected over 2,000 radios, made homemade bread, and cooked a full-out mongolian barbecue. He sat down with me one Christmas, and together we made a gingerbread carousel. When us grandchildren would ask to be excused from the dinner table, he would ask why we were so eager to leave “such a sparkling conversation”. Every Thanksgiving, he would buy a box of magic tricks to teach the grandchildren, and the five of us would put on a magic show, and every Thanksgiving he would throw up his hands in exasperation when my cousins revealed every single trick at the end of the show. He smoked cigarets for years, and only switched to cigars “because they’re healthier”, after years of my insisting that he would end up with lung cancer.

And I would never see him again.

Finally, after at least 10 minutes, I was able to force myself to calm enough to ask what was going to happen now.

“We will be meeting everyone at the hospital. Your uncle is flying up from Kansas, and your aunt will be meeting us there if she isn’t there already.”

At the hospital, we met everyone in a private lobby. Grandma was sitting in a wheelchair, which at first I thought was so she wouldn’t have to worry about trying to stand and collapse from grief, but I soon learned that when Grandpa had fallen during his heart attack, he had landed on her, injuring her spine and hip. Injured spine and all, she got out from under him, called an ambulance, and performed CPR for twenty minutes while waiting for help to arrive.

I sat next to her chair in shock, feeling useless as the adults around me began to organise the funeral and living arrangements for Grandma since she “cant live alone” in such a big house.

“Dhal, do you want to say your last goodbye before the funeral?” Mom asked me, gesturing towards the room where Grandpa lay.

I shook my head. Already, I could barely remember what he looked like, and the last thing I wanted to remember him by was as a lifeless corpse in a hospital bed.

Hours passed. My uncle took a taxi from the airport to the hospital, and got a ride with my aunt as we all made our separate ways to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. My mom, dad, and I still had my little sister’s dance recital to go to, and we had to pick her up from kindergarden. Following my parent’s lead, I didn’t mention what had happened even when we went out to Perkin’s for dinner, and then to the recital. As the happy music started, and I was struck by how normal this all was, despite our family’s loss, it occurred to me how little else had changed. Had nothing out of the ordinary happened that day, everything else at that recital would have still been the same. Even with our tragedy, life goes on.

Meeting Snow White… Age 5

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 23:09:07 -0400

“You remember Autumn,” Mom said absently, her eyes fixed on the road. “Sara’s cousin.”

“I dont wanna go,” I muttered, glaring out the window.

“There will be cake and ice cream,” Mom tempted me. “And Snow White will be there.”

That caught my interest. “The one from the movie?” I asked.

“Yes.”

At the party, it was a bunch of screaming kids I didn’t know, Sara, and her cousin neither of us particularly liked, Autumn. At the center of the chaos stood a woman with ink-black hair, pale skin, and a beautiful, yet simple white and black dress.

“Okay, everyone, Snow White is going to tell you some stories, then we’re going to have cake!” Autumn’s mom said, motioning for the parents in attendance to help herd the kids into a circle around Snow White.

Snow White told the best stories! She told us all about what it was like to be lost and afraid in the woods, and what it was like to have so many animal friends, and answered almost all of our questions. Yes, she had pet a deer; no, she had never been sprayed by a skunk because they were her friends; yes, she frequently sung with the birds. The other children were riveted, but I wasn’t so sure. Snow White was in a movie; how could she be real? And at that, the movie took place in the middle of the woods, and we were in the middle of the suburbs. She was hiding from a wicked queen; it seemed a little silly of her to be visiting a kid’s birthday party.

As the other kids rushed to be the one to get the first piece of cake, I hung back.

“What happened to your other dress?” I asked.

“My other dress?” Snow White asked.

“The yellow one you wore in the movie.”

“Oh,” Snow White said as she looked down at herself, “it was all torn up from running through the woods, so I wore this one instead.”

I looked up at her for a second longer. The dress in the movie didn’t tare, so clearly she was lying; this wasn’t Snow White. With a smile and an “Okay!” I ran off to get myself a piece of cake, satisfied to be the only one who knew the truth.

Favorite Color… Age 4

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 08:00:05 -0400

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Green!” I always answered. And it was. Red was nice, and there was a lighter red that was pleasant to look at; orange and yellow never appealed to me; blue was a neat color, and there was a specific, darker blue that I really liked, but if I said ‘blue’ no one would know it was really the other shade I was talking about. Green, on the other hand, was everywhere. All trees and grass and leaves were green, and in the summer, I’d be surrounded in it. Some gems were a deep, beautiful green, and that, more than anything, was my favorite color.

Until one day…

“You don’t like pink?” the other person asked, pointing to the color I had always thought of as ‘light red’.

I was stunned. It had a name! It wasn’t called red, which was a stupid, abrupt name for a color, it was called pink, a light, happy word that easily reflected the color itself.

And then I realised- pink was everywhere! A bunch of colors that I had always thought of as red were actually pink!

“Yes, I love pink!” I said. “It’s my new favorite color!” And it was.

Until one day…

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Green and pink!” I said.

“You don’t like purple?” the other person asked, pointing to the color I had always thought of as ‘a darker kind of blue’.

I now had a name to distinguish the color from blue! Blue, while pretty, didn’t seem as striking as purple had always been to me. Even lighter shades of purple seemed darker than their blue counterpart, where as blue only appealed to me if it was on the richer, darker side.

“So, you like green and pink?”

“Yes, but my favorite is purple,” I said. And it was.

Mom's business trip… Age 8

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 02:00:05 -0400

“Do you have everything?” Dad asked, sitting on the stairs while he pulled on his snowmobile boots. “Neck warmer, gloves, boots, coat?”

“Almost!” I called from the downstairs living room. I already had my snow pants on and I was in the process of putting on my own pair of snowmobile boots.

It had snowed the night before, leaving a healthy layer on top of the existing snow, and Dad had suggested going snowmobiling out on the lake while it was still light out.

I was excited to go. It was only my third or fourth time, but I loved how fast we went, and how warm my new snowmobile outfit was, despite the cold. Mom was on a business trip, the only one I could remember her taking. Usually, at least once or twice a month, my dad was the one to go on a business trip.

Just as we were heading out to the garage, the phone rang. Dad picked it up, talked for a bit, then handed the phone to me. “Mom wants to talk to you,” he said.

“Hi, Mom!” I chirped. “Dad’s taking me snowmobiling again!”

“That will be fun,” Mom agreed. “I have something I need to tell you.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Dhal, I love you.”

“I love you, too. What did you want to tell me?”

“Well, I went to a doctor today.” She seemed to take a deep breath. “I have breast cancer.”

My heart seized. Time seemed to come to a stop. I had heard about cancer in school. I knew it was a disease and people died from it. There was no cure. And at that moment, I knew my mom was going to die. I didn’t know how long it would take. For all I knew, I would never see her again. She was going to die. Tears welled up in my eyes.

It seemed to take her an hour, but really it was only a second later that she said, “We are going to get through this, though. The doctor said we caught it early enough and it is highly treatable.”

I cant remember the rest of the conversation. Whatever was said, it ended with me passing over the phone to Dad. He talked to Mom for a bit more, then hung up.

“Do you still want to go snowmobiling?” he asked quietly.

“No,” I said. How could I have any fun when Mom was going to die?

“Dhalim,” he started, sitting down with me on the couch, “she is going to be okay. The doctors are going to help her get better. She’s going to have some surgery to have the tumour removed, and then get some treatments to make sure it does not grow back. She’s not going to feel well for a while, but she will be fine. Okay?”

I looked up at my dad. I was still afraid of the idea of never seeing my mom again, but if dad said she would be okay, and the doctors said she would be okay, then there was nothing to worry about. After all, Dad would never lie to me, and the doctors know what they are doing. If everyone is saying Mom will live, then she will live. I nodded, reassured.

“Tell you what,” Dad said, standing up from the couch. “Let me put the snowmobiles away, we can take our boots and bibs off, pop some pop corn, and put in a movie. How does that sound?”

I smiled. “I can pick out the movie?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Okay!” I said, and began stripping out of my winter wear.

Ten minutes later, Dad and I were sitting on the couch, pop corn between us, watching Matilda. Dad even got a couple of cokes out of their rum and coke stash for us to drink. All of my fear and concern from the past half hour was gone, as if it had never been. Yes, Mom had cancer, which was something that, to my knowledge, no one had ever lived through, but she was going to be okay. That was all I needed to hear.

The Stranger… Age 6

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 05:31:09 -0500

As far back as I can remember, my parents have belonged to a local Yacht Club. Not a real Yacht Club, with giant 100 foot yachts that sail on open ocean. Instead, we sailed a Hobie 16 named The Lounge on the lake my grandma lived on. Every couple of weeks during the summer, there would be a regatta somewhere in the state, and if it was close enough, my parents would pack up their sailboat and camping equipment, and race against 50+ other Hobie 16s in hopes of making the top 20.

Usually during the weekends, I was left at my grandma’s house and we would watch Saturday morning cartoons, make pancakes, and do art projects together. Every once in a while, they would take me with when they knew of several other yacht club children who would be going as well whom I could play with.

Late one afternoon, having waited all morning and into the early afternoon for my parents to get done racing, I was finally allowed to put on my swim suit and wade out into the water.

The waves were huge, larger than any I had seen on any lake, and for years I was convinced this took place on Lake Superior. In reality, I was simply petite and the lake was wider than the one I lived on, allowing the waves to grow larger than I was used to.

The water was cool, it being still fairly early in the summer, but the day was warm, and the temperature difference was welcome. My parents took turns swimming with me, watching from the shore, and talking with friends with a beer in hand.

“Dhalim!” my mom called after what felt like less than an hour of swimming. I pretended to not hear her, having been promised until dinner to play in the water.

“Dhalim,” she called again. “You can keep swimming in a couple minutes! Come here, please!”

I dunked my head in the water a couple of times as I turned towards shore, procrastinating a bit as I gathered up the will to leave my watery playground, and slowly made my way towards dry sand, jumping to ride the waves as they came in, and siting down a couple of times to let them push me in until my butt touched the sandy bottom.

Standing up, I trudged to my mom’s side while she talked to a friend of hers. The problem with my parents’ friends at regattas was the liberal use of the word. They called both the people they had been sailing with for years, and the people they had just met, their friends, and sometimes I wasn’t sure who I had met before.

“Dhal,” she said, turning to me. “This is Rob, from our yacht club. Dad and I are going to go with some friends for a couple hours and he’s going to watch you while you finish swimming, and get you a snack when you’re done, okay? When we get back, we can have dinner.”

I looked up at Rob who was giving me a friendly smile. He was a tall man, still wearing his sailing gear, having just come in from racing his Hobie 18. His skin was tanned and a little red from the solid 5 hours of sailing that day, and his hair was a short, dark brown.

“Hi, Dhal,” he said in greeting. “You okay with hanging out with me for a few hours?”

I nodded, loosing interest in the conversation, and looked longingly back at the inviting waves.

I sensed that Rob had stood up when his voice came from far above me. “I’m going to go get changed and then you can head out.”

“Alright, see you in a bit. Dhal,” I perked up at my name, “you can jump back in the water, now.”

I was already half way down the beach.

About an hour or so later, I was starting to get hungry, and my growling stomach finally outweighed the fun I was having pretending to be a mermaid as I played in the waves. I glanced towards the shore, looking for my mom sitting by our beach bag, and instead saw a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt sitting about five feet away from where our bag had been, watching me intently. I looked around for the man I had seen with my mom, but he was nowhere to be found.

Standing up in the water, I looked further down the beach, but saw no one I recognised. The man on shore waved at me, and I immediately sank back into the water.

A little nervous, I stayed crouched down, water lapping at my shoulders, which was beginning to feel colder, and not nearly as comfortable as it had earlier. Even so, I knew that if the strange man on the beach wanted to come after me, he would have to come out to where I was, and while was busy wading out to me, I would be able to swim to the far side and avoid him.

About eight minutes later, however, I was too cold, and my stomach was too insistent for me to stay submerged. I reassessed the situation and decided that I would probably be safe if I moved further down the shoreline before making my way to the beach. From there, I could make a dash for our tent.

I continued to play, this time with a purpose, and casually made my way parallel to the shore. With trepidation, I watched the man pick up a towel and follow me down the shoreline. I tried switching directions, going back the way I had come, only to see him change direction as well.

Finally, I came to a stop. I was too cold and too hungry, and now I was beginning to get tired, for me to stay in the water. I had established that the man was truly following me, and presented a very real threat, but I had no choice but to leave the safety of the water and head to shore. I concluded that if I stayed at the water’s edge, I would be still far enough away from him to make a dash in the direction of our tent if the man lunged for me.

Timing my jump for a wave to help me towards shore, I kept low in the water, as though trying to sneak up on him, even as I watched him watching me slowly make my way closer.

On my stomach in the water, I let the waves push me in until my hands grazed the bottom. At that depth, the water was too shallow to swim, but too deep to move efficiently, making me an easy target, especially when the stranger had much longer legs and wasn’t quite as hindered by the water depth as I was.

As soon as my fingers touched sand, I jumped up and ran out of the water, eager to get out of the lake’s danger zone. As I reached the water’s edge, I stopped abruptly and the man reached down for the towel.

It became clear to me what had happened. This strange man had seen a little girl swimming alone, knew that the first thing I would need upon getting out would be a towel, and was now providing one in order to lure me in close. To do what, I didn’t know, but I knew getting too close would be a stupid thing to do.

He took a step towards me, towel held in front of him, and I side stepped away, studying him. This man was tan, like my would-be babysitter, but his hair was a bit lighter than the one my mom had introduced me to, and his hair was long, in a pony tail. Clearly to make me think he was supposed to be the one watching me.

He took another step towards me, and again, I took a step back, edging in the direction of my tent. Running was a very last resort. Pony tail man was much taller than me, and while I was younger, his legs would easily out-pace my own. This way, I was able to keep an eye on him, and he would continue trying to make me move closer if he thought I wasn’t going to run.

A gust of wind blew across the lake, making my dripping body shiver. I wrapped my arms around myself to retain a bit of heat. Pony tail man seemed to come to a decision, dropping the towel in the sand and taking several steps back.

Watching him closely, I took a cautious step forward, crouching down and picking up the towel. Eyes still on him, I unfolded it, and wrapped it around myself.

He took a couple more steps backward, and sat back down in the chair he had been using to watch me. I took several steps backwards, again in the direction of the tents, and was relieved to see him remain seated. Once I felt I was a safe enough distance down the beach from him, I turned around and started walking normally. After several steps, I looked behind me to see that he had packed up his chair and was slowly following behind me, though keeping the distance I had created between us.

Continuing down the beach, I made sure to keep glancing behind me every once in a while to confirm that he kept his distance while I headed back into familiar territory to look for my parents.

Over the next forty five minutes, I wandered the campground, keeping an eye on my stalker and another eye out for my parents all the while. By the time I had found Mom and Dad, laughing and joking with their friends by the barbecues, I had allowed Pony tail guy to follow me at a distance of ten feet, but no closer.

Reunited with my family, I dismissed the man as he introduced myself to my parents in favour of looking for some of my friends. After all, he was not about to try anything with so many people around, and as soon as he moved to get a plate of food, he blended in with every other regatta-goer wearing Hawaiian shirts. Even so, for the rest of the weekend, I made sure to keep an eye out for a man with a pony tail, just in case.

Mile Marker 202… Age 7

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:13:00 -0500

“Are we there yet?” Those four words are the most dreaded by any parent who squeezes a week’s worth of clothes and a family of four into a 1997 Pontiac for an eight-hour drive across the United States.

My grandparents were always the first to begin the annual Thanksgiving family migration to Kansas, and out of eagerness to play with my cousins as long as possible, I would leave with them. But that wasn’t the only reason. No, about halfway between home and our destination, they once made the mistake of stopping at a mall for a restroom break. Like any child my age, I was a master at sniffing out the only toy store in the mall; and so began the tradition of buying a toy to keep me busy for the rest of the drive.

That first year, however, I hadn’t realised the mall was halfway, and I continually asked, “Are we there yet?”

Finally, my grandfather had had enough. “Look, Dhalim,” he said, pointing to a small green sign as it flew by the window. “That sign is a mile marker. It counts down how many miles we are from the state boarder. When it reaches zero, you will know we’ve left Iowa and entered into Missouri. And then it’s another two hours until we get to your cousins house, okay?”

I stared out the window with rapt attention, hoping to catch a glimpse of the next mile marker and see how many miles we were from Missouri. The appearances seemed to be random to my seven-year-old mind with no concept of time, and I concluded that there had to be some way for adults to predict when the next one would arrive. The small white posts along the road seemed random, and I had never given them much thought outside of ‘what a waste of sign posts’ but now I was beginning to suspect a correlation between the two.

“What are those little white ones?” I asked finally, wanting to test my theory.

“Those are posted every so often to mark a tenth of a mile. Once you count 10 of them, you should see the next mile marker.”

Catching a flash of green, I immediately began to count the white posts as they went by, and sure enough, the next mile marker appeared just when I expected it to. I grinned and began counting the white posts once again.

On the way back from Kansas, I always rode with my parents because my grandparents left too soon for my liking. I watched mile marker 200 pass the car with a sigh. My plastic animals had lost my interest shortly after the sun went down as I couldn’t see them anymore, so I had to be content with staring out the window.

Without warning, there was a squeal of tires, and a series of crashes coming from behind me. My parents immediately pulled over to the side of the road.

“I’m going to go check to see if the driver’s okay,” my mom told my dad as she unbuckled her seatbelt.

“What’s happening?” I asked, trying to peer through the windows to see.

“The car behind us had an accident,” Dad said. “Mom’s going to be right back.”

A few tense minutes later, she opened my door. “Dhal, I need you to move into the front seat for me, okay?” As I unbuckled, she said to Dad, “Call an ambulance. He’s badly injured. I’m going to bring him in here to keep him warm until help arrives.”

I heard the trunk pop open while I slipped on my shoes and by the time I had moved to the passenger seat, Mom had brought in some towels to line the back seat.

Meanwhile, my dad had used his car phone to dial 911 and was attempting to explain our position to the operator. “Yes, we’re along 35E, heading North.”

“Mile marker?” he asked in frustration. “I don’t know what mile marker!”

I perked up, having just seen the green sign not five minutes before. “202, Dad! Mile marker 202!”

Dad glanced at me. “My seven-year-old says we just passed mile marker 202.”

After a pause, he twisted in his seat to look behind us. “Yes, I see it, maybe 200 feet back.”

I looked back as well and saw what looked to be a small building about 50 feet from the road and 200 feet behind us.

The back door of the car opened and I could hear my mom’s voice again. Climbing to my knees on the seat, I peered over the back of it and saw a man sitting in the back, blood running down his face from a head wound hidden by his hair. There was blood on his hands, but if it was from another injury or transferred from touching his face, I can’t remember. I said nothing, just looking at him, and all of the blood, watching as my mom applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

“Once I told them the mile marker, the operator was able to describe exactly where we were,” he told Mom in disbelief.

It seemed like only minutes of watching the man, and the EMTs were carefully lifting him out of the back seat and into the ambulance. My dad sat with me in the car while Mom talked with the police.

A police man squatted down in the passenger doorway and handed me a badge-shaped sticker. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “Good job.”

I gave a hesitant smile and took the sticker from him, though I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time. How did I help? I stayed in the front seat and watched a man bleed from the head while my mom took care of him. I hadn’t said anything like ‘Ew! Gross!’… Maybe that had helped him stay calm?

David and Goliath… Age 8

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:35:00 -0500

Ahh, soccer; the teamwork between offence and defence; the bias behind the teams where the strongest get chosen first while the weakest players are left to rot; the joy of you and your third grade class mates pointlessly chasing a ball up and down a field to score a goal.

I. Hate. Running.

But wait.

Two soccer balls; now that has possibilities. Twice the amount of balls means twice the number of cahnces of being goalie and, therefore, twice the time limit to get out of running up and down the field.

We can’t be too hasty about this, though. It is better to spend most of the Phy Ed period running around and get a nice break with your friend at the end than it is to waste your one and only ten minutes of rest in the beginning with the rest of the time to go.

Time goes by. No big deal. KIds trade spots, some being offence, others defence, and only a lucky few get to be goalie where all you have to do is stand there and watch for the ball, stop it if it comes toward you.

Then Kristy takes goalie as one gets antsy and decides to run around some more. I’m a little annoyed by this since she likes running while I hate it but she had just gotten off of offence, the position where you run the most, so I can sympathise with her seeing as I switched from offence to defence a few minutes ago so I’ve had more time to recuperate.

Now all I have to do is wait for the other person to walk away and I can jump on the chance to take her place…

A~any time now…

Oh, come on! You were goalie the same time the other person was and he left five minutes ago!

… Finally!

But what is this? Kristy, my best friend, has left her position to someone else only minutes after I joined her. This is very disappointing.

And look who is coming to take her place; Ryan Johanson; the ‘oh so cool’ RJ. PLease, someone hand me a barf bag.

“Dhalim, you’ve been goalie for ten minutes. It’s time for me and Lance to be goalie for a while”

“Ryan, I just got here. I’m not moving.”

“Dhalim! you need to leave!”

Looking over at Lance, it is obvious he couldn’t care less if he were goalie right now.

“Well too bad, because I’m not leaving.”

Without warning, Ryan pushes me, probably to show how tough he was compared to a girl for his buddy Lance. Well, gone were the days where I would stand back and take it.

Without preamble, I shove him back.

Angry, he punches me in the arm.

What do I do? I punch him back.

I barely have time to register his shift in weight before I block his kick with my kick. The combined strength of both attacks make us limp around like a couple of idiots for a few minutes, and I take the time to check where the balls were. Luckily throughout all of this, the two soccer balls were on the other side of the field so neither of us had to worry about letting one get by and score a goal. If that had happened, the team would blame me for the failure and I would have to endure more ridicule by my classmates, regardless of Ryan’s duty of second goalie.

My leg finally stops hurting enough for me to put my full weight on it so I turn and glare at Ryan. He must have seen something in my eye to warn him of the trouble he was in because he turned around and ran away from the field.

Adrenalin is pumping through me at this time and throwing caution to the wind, I abandon my post as goalie and take off after him like a pistol. At first, it looks like I was going to catch him, considering the second head start he had had, I was gaining pretty fast, but running was never one of my strong points and he soon pulls away.

Just as I was about to give up because I knew I would never catch him, he trips and I immediately pounce on him, kicking and punching him for all the times he had been mean to me but never turned it physical. Perhaps sooner than I would have liked, my anger was spent and I leave him in a ball on the ground while I walk back to the soccer field.

I sit down in the grass, shaking from the adrenalin coursing through my veins and breathing rapidly from the chase quickly followed by the fighting.

The Phy Ed teacher, who seemed to have been watching the entire exchange, calls over to me, “Dhalim, are you alright?”

I nod calmly and stay put until my breathing slows, which took only a few minutes, watching the goalies on the other side of the field struggle to stop the ball from going through the net. No one had taken over the position on our side, but it hardly matters as by this time, the bell rings so we all head inside to go back to our classroom.

Looking ahead of me, I see Ryan and Lance as they follow the otehrs inside and I am a little disappointed but also glad to see that Ryan wasn’t hurt. Somehow, I don’t think he will be bothering me again.

The Box… Age 8

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:15:00 -0500

I was always teased as a child that I would get a lump of coal for Christmas if I misbehaved. Every year my dad would warn me of the lump of coal that never came. While coal is the worst gift to receive, the best gift is the largest gift under the tree; as it is well known by all young children.

So when the three by two by two present appeared on Christmas Eve, all of the grandkids could hardly wait to open presents to find out who was being given the largest- and therefore the best- gift. My dad, playing Santa Clause as usual and handing out the wrapped packages, naturally kept that present for last.

“Okay,” he said when all of the other presents were handed out and opened. “This last present is for Dhalim.” Instead of the huge box that was, at the time, taller than I was, I was handed this tiny jewelry box that looked as if it contained a bracelet. In the presence of the larger box, this one had gone unnoticed by all of the kids.

Opening it up, I found not a bracelet, but the lump of coal I had always been warned about. Shocked and hurt, tears welled up in my eyes and blurred my vision.

“What is it, Dhalim?” he asked.

“It’s coal!” I wailed.

“But what’s on the coal?” he asked.

“What?” I squinted at the black lump, but couldn’t see anything past my tears.

“It took me three tries to get the nail in,” my dad was telling the rest of my family. “The coal kept breaking on me.” But that didn’t make sense. I wiped away my tears, squinting again at the coal, and was finally able to spot the tiny golden nail with a miniature pair of keys that had been delicately hammered into the coal by my dad.

“They’re keys!” I exclaimed. “Little keys!”

Carefully, I picked them off off the nail, getting the tips of my fingers dirty from the coal.

“What are they for?” I asked.

Without answering, Dad lifted the giant box and revealed a beautiful Victorian dollhouse with a puce siding and white trim. It was handmade by my dad and grandpa with several hundred shingles he sandpapered and painted, twice, by hand. The inside wasn’t finished, but he had managed to get the light switches in the house working.

After I inspected the dollhouse and he explained all of this to me, my cousins and I drug the box covering the house into the hallway and spent the rest of the night pretending with it.

The Bubblegum Story… Age 5

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:46:00 -0500

I dont know exactly what I know from my own memory and what I know from listening to years of its retelling, but it will be told from My daddy’s point of view because that is how I know it best.

“I was laying on the couch in the living room. It was about twelve o’clock at night and my daughter, Dhalim, walks past me and goes into the kitchen. She does this every once in a while, where she wakes up late at night and gets herself a glass of water, so I let her past without stopping her.

Well, she was in there for a few minutes and I didn’t hear the water running. So I called, ‘Peanut? You okay?’ and this little voice answers after a pause ‘Yeah.’

There was a few minutes pause and she still didn’t come out so I asked her again, ‘Dhalim? Are you okay?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Silence.

‘Dhalim? Are you sure?’

Several beats later, “Daddy? I think I need help.’

So I get in there and there is my five-year-old daughter sitting on the floor, her hands covered in taffy-like gum. She looked like she was trying to play an crazy game of cats cradle.

What had happened was she had gone into the garbage can and found a piece of gum I had spit out earlier and picked it up. Well, it stuck to her fingers so she tried to pull it off with her other hand but it stuck to that. She kept picking at it until it had stretched from one hand to the other. She tried pulling her hands apart and the gum just stretched with her, but when she tried to put her hands together they just picked up more gum.

I took her down stairs and wound up using mechanic hand cleaner I had down in the shop to get all of the gum off.”

They Start, You Finish… Age: 4

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:47:00 -0500

I was always told ‘treat others the way you want to be treated.’ They told me ‘it is mean to call people names or punch or kick.’ I thought I would get into trouble if I ever did any of those things.

The second I stepped into kindergarten, fresh from preschool, I was teased and pushed around by the larger kids. I came home every day and my daddy would ask, “Peanut, how was school?” and I would start to cry about how I didn’t like school anymore and the boys were mean to me and how I was feeling sick and didn’t want to go back.

Mommy and Daddy, of course, talked to Jill, my teacher, about what was going on during a parent/teacher conference.

“Dhalim doesn’t stick up for herself; I’ve noticed that as well. I’ve had to move Derek several times to keep him away from her but I can’t be watching every second.”

“We have talked to her about that at home,” my daddy answered. “We keep telling her to punch the kid in the nose the next time he tries anything but she’s afraid she would get in trouble.”

“In all honesty,” Jill answered, “He torments her so much that I’d like to see her do it.”

Months went by. Derek continued to take every chance he had to give me as much misery as possible at school. I continued to complain to my teacher and parents and they continued to tell me to retaliate.

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

I didn’t want to be picked on, so why would I do that back to him?

It is wrong to do mean things to other people- you will get in trouble… But my parents are telling me to do it anyway…

Finally, Mommy and Daddy sat me down to talk. “Dhalim,” they said, “you need to stick up for yourself. If you get punched, punch him back.”

“But I’ll get in trouble.”

“Not by us. If you punch or kick someone because you are defending yourself, you could be expelled from school and we will still be proud of you.”

“But that doesn’t mean you can just go around hurting people,” Mommy added.

“Yes. As long as they start it, you can finish it.”

Hmmm… Interesting advice. I should try it sometime…