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A Hero Worth Meeting

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Caris, April 2021 Stubby They say never to meet your heroes. But I think an exception can be made when your hero is dead, stuffed, and on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. I may need to back up a little. Until a few years ago, I taught a grammar and writing class that culminated each year with a project called Faces of History. It was a bit like a wax museum: each student chose someone from a certain historical period, dressed in costume, and presented a paper written in the first person from that individual’s perspective. My daughter, Caris, was in my class the year we focused on American history. There are plenty of American heroines to choose from, anyone from Sacagawea to Harriet Tubman to Susan B. Anthony. Caris wasn’t interested in the traditional female figures. And though she could have picked any of the countless men who left their mark on the country, she didn’t want to be Samuel Adams, George Washington Carver, or Neil Armstrong. She had someone else in mind. Wh...
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Leo Tolstoy's Query Letter

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Subject: Query Letter for “War and Peace”  Dear Ms. A. Gent,  Are you ready for a literary adventure that blends war, peace, philosophy, religion, and history? Allow me to introduce War and Peace, a completed 587,287-word masterpiece. I understand it is customary at this time to inform you of the book’s genre. Well … that’s complicated.  The book, which is told mainly in third-person point of view with unexplained moments where the narrator slips into first-person, is as difficult to fit into a single genre as it is to fit on your bookshelf.  As you may ascertain from the title, parts of the book focus on war, while others focus on peace. The war sections fit into several genres: historical, philosophical, thriller, and speculative. These sections can almost be poetical in the lyrical beauty of their word-smithing, which is a nice contrast to the blood and gore.  The “peace” parts of the book are anything but peaceful. No actual bullets fly in these sections, bu...
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Baby Dreams

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Last night I dreamed I gave birth to a baby girl. It gets worse. My husband wanted to name her Descendia.  Which, on reflection, would have been the perfect name. Because if I gave birth to a baby at 46, I would feel as though I’d descended right into the pit of hell.  Don’t get me wrong. I love babies. My happiest memories are of caring for our newborn children. If I could revisit any time in history, it would be 18 and 15 and nine years ago, snuggling my precious babies. It’s not something I want to relive now, especially on the eve of launching our first daughter off to college. And certainly not in my late 40s.  For the record, I wanted to name the baby Adette.  Yeah.  Not much better than Descendia, but when I googled it this morning, I discovered it was a real name listed on a baby name site. According to nameberry.com, Adette is a feminine name with French influences. “The 'ette' suffix typically indicates 'little' in French, suggesting 'little Ada' as a ...
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An Excuse Not to Exercise

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I waited outside the yoga class, feeling every bit like a middle schooler abandoned by her friends. The instructor was nowhere to be seen. Sweaty men grunted over weight machines. Others pounded the treadmill. A desk worker stared into the void. Had I gotten the time wrong? I pulled out my phone, opened the app, and found the schedule in black and white. Yoga stretch at 7 a.m. This was the location listed.  I arranged my mat. Placed my shoes perpendicular to the wall. Took an unnecessary sip of water.  No one looked in my direction.  The clock said 7:05. An older woman sauntered into the gym. She wore leggings, a long T-shirt, and sandals. Her body was goals—toned, muscular, effortless. Relief washed over me like a cleansing breath. “Are you taking this yoga class?” I asked.  She stopped, glancing at my bare feet. “No. I don’t do that kind of stuff.” “Oh.” “Exercise,” she clarified. “I don’t exercise.” “Noted.” Would this be an okay time to point out she was currentl...
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Indeterminate Color

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When the ambulance took away my dad, I hid on my parents’ bed and turned the channel to Turner Classic Movies. This was the best room in the house for watching TV on hot summer afternoons. It was the only TV in the house that had a remote control. The basement stayed cool. The room was quiet. No one bothered me. The black and white Hollywood films with soft focus and film noir shadows were an odd choice for a third grader.  But my whole life felt like an odd choice. Above the bed, a tiny window near the ceiling was the only source of natural light. If I climbed onto the headboard, I could just about peek into the rose beds lining the southern exposure of the house. But I didn’t want to look out that window. So I stared instead at the TV.  The plots of those old movies required full attention. Without special effects or plausible green screens, the movies depended on witty banter, meaningful looks, and conflicts that usually went over my head. Still, I tuned in. Perhaps it was ...
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We Didn't Start the Fire

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From The Ding Dong Altar Boy by Donald Osborn and Anna Henkens Schmidt.  The bank across the street from Harry’s Conoco displayed the current time and temperature. I looked up from filling a customer’s car with gas and wiped the sweat out of my eyes to make sure I could see straight. The digital numbers read 120 degrees. Our small corner of western Nebraska had turned into the devil’s playground. And with half the world on fire, was it any wonder? Half of anything depends on your starting number. In 1973, living as a high schooler in a town with a population of less than 6,000, my world at the time was pretty small. And that world burned with historical significance. South of town by Chadron State Park near Dead Horse Road, a substantial portion of the Nebraska National Forest ignited with a hungry blaze, consuming thousands of acres. Volunteer firefighters from every town within driving distance arrived with shovels, water tanks, helicopters, and airplanes loaded with fire re...
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Are You a Dermatologist?

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  Some conversations you return to long after they’ve finished. One I return to often took place poolside at a Cancun resort. We only had the girls then, and they were little. Our oldest explored the splash pad with her new best friend, who she’d met ten minutes earlier, while I made sure our eight-month old didn’t topple over into the water.  “Are you a dermatologist?” I swiveled my head to see a bikini-clad woman dangling her feet over the edge. She looked straight at me. “Excuse me?” I said. “Are you a dermatologist?” she asked again, confirming I’d heard correctly the first time. “You look like a dermatologist.” For a split second, I thought maybe I’d finally nailed my skincare routine.  “Cause you’re all wearing swim shirts,” she continued. Oh. That. It was true. I’d learned early in the summer that slathering sunblock on myself, a four-year-old, and a baby made for a miserable experience. So I went out and purchased three SPF 50 swim shirts. They held up nicely agai...
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