What Real Love Looks Like

Memoir for my creative writing final exam.~


If I’d thought it through, I might have spent more time sitting in my granny’s hospital room with my mom and the rest of the family instead of running through the stairwells, playing hide-and-go-seek with my cousins. I was ten years old. I knew better.

Bud, Darla, Tammy, Sandy, Rita, Kathy, Cinda, Jerry Wayne—everybody but the Utah branch of the family was there, including cousins and family friends and aunts that I’d never met. I don’t remember how many days she was there, but I do remember everyone being upset that a couple of days before, she’d been fine. She’d just been there for something routine and simple, but had gotten sick in the hospital. Adults murmured about neglectful nurses, who would take care of Papa, and who hadn’t come yet.

My mom cried and cried, and eventually made herself sick from it. I felt like I should do something to help her, but what was I supposed to do? Rub her forehead and tell her it was going to be okay like she did for me when I was sick? She had good reason to be sad. Her momma was dying. There wasn’t anything I could do for her. When I found out all the other kids my age were sitting in the lounge, I didn’t think twice about staying in the room with my granny hooked up to a bunch of machines and tubes, my sick momma sleeping on the floor, and every other empty white hospital floor tile being filled with a teary, mournful adult.

Sarah, Brandon, and I could’ve helped anyone walking in the front doors find whatever wing they were looking for in that hospital by the second day. We played around in the elevator, skipped down every hallway, and played hide and seek on the fourth floor when we got kicked out of the stairwell. We watched nurses bring newborns into the nursery, drank from the bottom of the paper cone cups we got at water machines, hurdled over bushes in the courtyard, and played “the white tiles are lava” so we had to hop from pink square to pink square all the way down the fifth floor hallway. We had an absolute blast. I’d heard of people being scared of hospitals, but at that time, I honestly couldn’t understand why. There were endless possibilities of fun for a three kids with lots of time on their hands. But then Courtney scolded her little brother.

Courtney was only four years my senior, but she was at least a foot taller, and the epitome of everything I wanted to be. She played the flute, was on the volleyball team, and nobody could ever find her when we played hide-and-go-seek at Granny and Papa’s house. She actually played with us for a little while, but after lunch, she stayed in Granny’s hospital room. Several hours later, when I saw her in the lounge, I invited her to come play with us again, but she declined. She was frowning something fierce, so I didn’t press it, and I ran off to find Sarah.

Before I was actually gone, however, I heard Brandon ask her why she wouldn’t play. Brandon and Sarah were a year older than I was, and Brandon and Courtney were brother and sister. Maybe that’s why Courtney got onto him, but didn’t say anything to me. I remember exactly what she said to him, because as soon as the words left her mouth, I felt the most debilitating sense of shame I had ever encountered.

“Don’t you understand?” she hissed at him. I peeked back around the corner to see her towering over him, her long curtain of light brown hair obscuring her face from me, but not from Brandon. He didn’t seem too concerned with what she was saying, but then, Brandon never really listened to Courtney back then.  How many little brothers do? “Ni is dying, and you three are running around like a bunch of little kids. That’s not respectful.”

I knew the words weren’t meant directly for me, and had Courtney talked to me about it, she would’ve been a lot nicer to me than she had been to her brother, but I knew she was right. My granny was dying, and I was laughing and running through the halls.

When I shuffled into her hospital room to sit next to my mom, now claiming a spot on the window sill, the sad smiles and back-pats I got from a couple of cousins were probably meant to console my sorrow for my granny, evident by the tears running silently down my cheeks. I didn’t want her to die, of course. I was sad about that, but what was really eating at me was that I didn’t have the decency to sit there patiently, and just be with her in her last days. Guilt was what had an iron grip on my stomach.

It wasn’t until later, as I watched them bring my papa in and situate him in a chair that turned into a bed next to Granny that I really felt the mourning I should’ve been feeling the whole time. He cried, and muttered “Oni” as he held her hand as best as he could with his weakened ones. He’d been paralyzed for six years, and his loving wife had been taking care of him all that time, but then she was the one that was dying.

“Ni… I love you,” Papa whispered, and as I watched a tear fall helplessly from his blue eyes, I suddenly understood what real sadness looked—and felt—like.

Procrastination

I had to make a video about procrastination for my Effective Study and Learning class at BYU.  I decided to make it stop motion! :)  I've quite proud of the result, even though it's nowhere near perfect.

Also, an item from my live list. :)

Hello, happiness. It's nice to see you. :)

My first class yesterday was outside, and it was all about teamwork games, like putting everyone in a line on a log and having them rearrange themselves to order from tallest to shortest without falling off.

I sat next to a very, very attractive guy in New Testament and he asked for my number.

I got some really great ideas and thoughts for my major paper for my Historian's Craft class.  It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm really liking my topic, and I can start writing it right now because I feel like I know what I"m doing.

I was invited to play volleyball with some friends, and made some new ones.  It's been a long time since I've really played, and I made some mistakes, but all in all, I wasn't too bad!  It was still fun, even though one girl was really rude about me missing a couple of key hits.  Well, I don't feel too bad about that, especially since every hit she attempted either ended up in a tree or the creek.

I went country dancing with my roommate and some of her friends!  It was so much fun.  We ended up hanging out with some guys at the end who were very funny.  One of them saw me watching his friend cha-cha, and informed me that that was what he was dancing.  I said, "I know."
"You know the cha-cah?" he asked.
"Yes!  Of course I do!"
"I don't believe you can do the cha-cha.  I think you're lying," he said, and folded his arms.
"Are you sure?  You really don't think I can cha-cha?"
"Nope.  Not even a little.  I'll bet a pizza on that."
"You're sure?"
"Completely!"
So, I held out my hands as if to dance with him, and he said, "You're serious?"
"Yes!"
He took my hands, and when I held my head up high, he muttered, "Uh-oh."
And we danced the cha-cha!  He reverted in country swing since that's what we'd been doing a few minutes before, and I pulled him back into the cha-cha.  He said, "Dang!  You even corrected me!  I owe you a pizza for sure!"
"You promise?"
"Yes, I promise."
So, he gave me his number so I can text him whenever I want it and he'll bring it to me.  Haha!  We're all going back next week, and the guys even want to take us to a Latin dance.  Ohhh, I so love to dance.  He asked me where I learned to Latin dance, but honestly, I don't remember.  I think it was probably at a church dance when I was fourteen or so.

I had blueberry waffles for breakfast this morning. :)  That was wonderful, but because I spent my time eating them, I didn't get to dry my hair.  So I had to go to school with it wet.  But, it was just the right temperature outside, and windy, so by the time I walked into the class, it was mostly dry.  And, by the time I got out of that awfully boring try-not-to-keel-over class, it was perfectly styled and pleasantly curved instead of rimrod-straight.

I had the most wonderful time ranting about our self-important professor that doesn't act the least bit interested in her subject with my great friend Martha.  I'm so glad she's in that class with me.  If she wasn't, I don't know that I'd be able to stay awake.  I also got to walk half-way to work with her and Shawntell.

I got a $1 choclate frosty from Wendy's on my way to work.

It's pleasantly cold outside.  It's not freezing, there's not a biting gale, and it isn't snowing.  It's just incredibly cloudy, slightly sprinkly with really cold drops, and just windy enough to make my hair look really cool as I walk down hill in my leather jacket.

Tonight, I'm going to Rachelle and Meagan Porter's house in Springville to watch the Season 2 premiere of The Vampire Diaries, which I'm completely obsessed with.  It'll be fantastic to watch it with friends that love the show as much as I do, as well as watch it on an actual tv (and a rather large one, at that) instead of my laptop.

Ohhhh, life.  You're treating me so very well right now.  :)

Oh, and don't worry, mom.  All of my homework for tomorrow is already finished.  I've been looking forward to this night for four months!

For There Is Much To Learn

Every now and then, I requre a boost of interest in my subject of study, which is History.  I get bummed out about "Why can't I do this instead?" or just the simple fact of having tons of reading I have to do for my classes.  Getting out of those rutts is really hard, but defnitely possible.  All it takes is a new History. :)

I call it a "new History," but really, all it is the discovery of something in History that I haven't read about before.  As I cleaned my room tonight in anticipation for tomorrow's carpet cleaning, I popped in National Treasure to listen to.  A movie matchable in magnificence only by Batman Begins and Beauty and the Beast, it immediately made my cleaning duty a little bit more manageable.  When I got to the end, I watched the extra features for the first time, having never actually watched it on DVD.

In this extra features section, there was a learning bit about cryptography.  Cryptography has always fascinated me, even though finding hidden meanings and secret codes has never been a strength of mine (sadly).  That's probably why Sherlock Holmes and Dr. House are so intriguing to me, come to think of it.  Anyway, in this wonderful little section of information, I learned about Cardinal Grilles.

In the early seventeenth century, Cardinal Richelieu of France (yes indeed, the same Cardinal of The Three Musketeers fame) was obsessed with cryptology.  Cryptology is the practice and study of hiding information.  Through his obsession, he developed the grille.

To create a grille message, you start out with a normally-written message.

Then, lay a piece of cardboard on top of your message and cut out holes over the words of the true message.  By creating this device, your normal message becomes something else entirely.

Being without cardboard and a box cutter, I simply used a piece of paper and a nail file.

Cardinal Grilles became one of the most popular methods of sending secret messages.  Even though the invention of morse code came in 1865, Cardinal Grilles were used heavily in WWI, the most intense of which had over one hundred slots.

Doesn't this little piece of History make you eager for more?  Doesn't it just make you want to reach over and grab the History book closest to you and read it cover to cover?

That's what I feel like when I learn something new about my beloved History.

And one day, I hope that's what my students feel like too.