jessicabeck's Xanga

Monday, May 26, 2008

Mon, 26 May 2008 03:18:29 GMT

my head and heart have sounded like this for the past few days:

i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you i miss you

please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back please come back

i am crazy. am i crazy? i am definitely crazy. am i crazy? i have lost my mind. have i lost my mind? yes, i have. i am crazy, but... am i crazy? yes yes yes.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:57:14 GMT

once, my grandfather told me that trees were alive. no, i insisted, they aren't. he must have asked me how i knew, because i told him that trees don't move. "but they're moving right now," he responded.

we stared at the trees. "sometimes they don't!" my argument was thin, i knew. still, he told me, "they never stop moving."

for the past twenty years, i've stared at every tree in moments outside, when i'm alone. i look for evidence of stillness and haven't found one yet.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 20:44:45 GMT

this year brought the birth of a new sensation, that of constant worry.

i read an article in high school that stated many women, statistically, cope with worry at a more heightened level than men. they lose sleep, have panic attacks more frequently than their male counterparts. at the time, i was experiencing the most anxiety i'd ever known and remember thinking, surely, this is true. but i suppose that, as we grow older, we understand better. i will understand with more wisdom in twenty years, will mark my years by the quantity of present stress.

when i was younger, i'd run to my mother. even in college, i would think about how i'd like to hug my mother when my heart felt broken, or my mind felt muddled. but as i've grown older, my mother is less of a comfort to me. i've watched some of my friends lose their own mothers in recent years, witnessed the overwhelming grief. we are so very temporary, aren't we?

i do not remember the day that i stopped believing i could fly--only that, as a young girl, i believed with the utmost sincerity that one leap from the stairs would send me hovering through the living room. it wasn't until my later childhood, around ten or eleven, that i recalled this trick of nature and almost tried again. unfortunately, fear kept my feet sealed to the stairs, and i dismissed these memories of flying to dreams, not realities.

several months ago, i spoke with andrea, who believed she, too, could fly. i decided then that maybe what others consider heretical are actually god's own magic tricks. a child's sweet innocence, dismissed as witchcraft, could be god's source of laughter and joy.

i have, of course, no sound theological evidence of this idea.

my old best friend was married one week ago. we loved books then, would have sleepovers that consisted entirely of reading until we fell asleep. when i wet my pants from laughing too hard at fourteen, she kept the secret and hid my pants in her parents' washing machine. when we tried to make a massive cookie at ten, we learned that, while the outside may burn, the inside would remain doughy and uncooked.

she was beautiful, a simple white dress and delicate veil. she glowed.

rarely do i feel like an adult, but i convince myself that the adults around me are the same--children on the inside, constantly amazed by the oldness of their hands, the way they cook meals and pay bills. i use christmas lights and soft blankets as evidence, perhaps concealed by a self-proclaimed appreciation of finer things.

on a beautiful day, we'd like to soothe the cramp of stress in our stomachs and climb a tree, listen to lullabies, sleep soundly. we are babies, quite simply.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 15:50:04 GMT

when i was quite young, i lived some kind of magical life at my grandparents' house.

at home, my mother made me try gross foods like cream of wheat. we drove in a carpool, and i had to wear snow pants to school. we lived down the street from a dangerous pit bull, so i could rarely play on the front porch. but at my grandparents' house, i lived in a state of constant discovery.

my grandparents, for one thing, owned a boxful of antique instruments. an accordian, bongos, maracas--a whole box of these strange, noisy instruments. sometimes jay and i would have a parade, or we'd just play a bizarre cacophony of noises. sometimes the neighbor girl--janice, who smelled like a tuna fish sandwich--would come over, and we'd play hide-and-seek with the instruments. one time, i told janice how she smelled, more out of curiosity than meanness. she got angry and told me i smelled like poop, and i cried.

janice and i also played dress-up. i didn't have dress-up clothes at my house, but my grandmother had accumulated a nice collection of multicolored veils and fake bouquets and lacy shawls. janice was kind of mean, so she always got to wear the fancy clothes when we played together. but sometimes i played by myself, pretending that a ballerina always wore veils and carried flowers.

my grandmother collected tea sets for me. i had tea parties, though rarely with real tea. "would you like some tea?" i'd ask in an affected voice, pouring coke or water from the spout. we sat at the table on the sunporch and look at the gardens while drinking our tea, real gardens. my grandparents have a large, wandering yard spotted with several gardens. lisa often visited her own grandmother, natalie, across the street. she became my favorite tea party guest. she fascinated me, even though she was a little younger, because grandma told me that she'd been born with her organs outside of her body. to further pique my fascination, my mother told me all kinds of stories about natalie--how she kept ducks as pets many years ago, how she ran over her drunk husband on purpose with their truck. they had a tire swing across the street, and lisa's uncle nathan--only a few years older--used to twist and spin with me.

shortly before we moved from ohio, my grandparents hung a swing from a very tall tree on the far side of their yard. it seemed so big when we were kids--miles of rope reaching to the branch, a seat for two children with room to spare. the swing, when pushed, swept over the ditch surrounding their yard like a moat, then flew toward the ivy patch. we could pretend to touch the leaves of the tree.

on summer days, we played on the deck. we blew large bubbles with wands bigger than jay. i pulled out my barbies and pulled their pink 50s convertible across the slats of wood. sometimes my grandmother filled a bin with water and soap, and i'd pretend to wash plastic dishes.

on winter days, we built snow forts. after blizzards the snow would overlap from yard to deck, sometimes five feet of snow. we'd tunnel through the whiteness, then throw snowballs at each other. or we'd build snowmen all around the house--five, six snowmen. on a tall mound of snow, i practiced fainting romantically. on an icy patch, a frozen puddle, we'd ice-skate in snow boots. if we could recruit my father, he pulled us around the block on a tobogan.

my grandparents' attic was, essentially, a miniature room. one could reach the attic through a small door. when i was so little, it seemed like a clubhouse. i loved to explore this room that smelled like mothballs, to look at grandma's old jewelry and clothes, to find pictures and report cards belonging to my mother or aunt. i wanted to meet other girls someday who liked these things, too, and have a club in this room.

in my room, once my mother's room, i had a daybed. i slept in the "secret" bed that pulled from underneath, and my grandma would tell me stories. she layered me with cotton sheets, quilts, an electric blanket. in my room with yellow flowered wallpaper, i found grandpa's yearbooks and old wedding scrapbooks in the closet.

before they remodeled the kitchen, a red booth surrounded the table. my grandmother taped fake elevator buttons inside the kitchen closet, and we pretended to ride from floor to floor. it was my favorite hiding space, this little closet. after the remodeling, they created a long bar and a little nook with a skylight--perfect, of course, for drinking hot chocolate while it snows.

i haven't been to my grandparents' house in five years. my parents say that it seems to be falling apart--cracks in the ceiling, warped wood.

but i miss the coat closet, the one with the window by the front door, the way that it seems to stretch into a netherworld. even as an adult, i think it seems endless. i miss the way my grandmother keeps pazelles and other holiday goodies on the porch, because it's very cold out there in the winter. i miss her garden flowers, and the smell of hot tar on the summer street. i miss their crabapple tree.

i miss the representations of magic, the shadows of childhood. this place is home, more than any home we ever had.

Sunday, August 08, 2004

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 03:15:49 GMT

my family is pretty well-known in our old hometown, though i suppose everyone is well-known in small towns.

my aunt and uncle own a lumber company. it's the kind of business that sons inherit, and my cousin josh will be owner one day. some of my early memories are playing house with the floor models of doors. i liked to lock jay out. everything was absolutely fascinating--toilet models, chandelier models, lots of metal and wood products. it made me feel important to hang out in the office. i think my aunt kept cookies in there.

my grandmother worked for the local credit union. all of the teachers banked there, and sometimes my grandmother gives me updates on the first-grade teachers. before they remodeled the office, a poster hung near the bathroom that said something like, "nothing can hide the stink of smoking." her boss gave us candy. even now, the employees there know how sandra's grandchildren are doing. they are trying to refinance my car.

at his old company, my grandfather invented some method of doing something more efficiently. i found out from a yellowed newspaper clipping buried in a scrapbook. he worked in an office with a leather chair and globe-shaped paperweights. i was vaguely afraid of the building and its mod-looking carpeted chairs in the lobby.

before i was born, my mother was a real estate agent. she made commission from the house my parents bought, the house where i grew up.

every friday night at a local restaurant called garfield's, they had a macaroni-and-cheese special. we ate there a lot--macaroni, chocolate milk, and muffins from the bread basket. sometimes the whole family would be there, sometimes just a few of us. we knew everyone in the restaurant at any given time, including the owner, who was greek and gave us chocolate bars.

during a family dinner--the kind where everyone came--i decided i wanted to dance. i decided that the family at a table around the corner would be my audience. they had two daughters. i squirmed out of my chair, meandered over to their table, and began to dance. the parents seemed a little mortified, but i wanted to be a star. so i spun around like a ballerina and squiggled a little, then ran away. and then i came back. five times. the girls began to say, "uh-oh, mom, here she is again." until finally, the mother said, "excuse me, our daughters are trying to eat and you're disturbing them." so i ran back to the table and stayed there.

garfield's had mirrors on the ceilings. jay and i would make faces at them all throughout the meal.

eventually, garfield's changed ownership, though i think it's a family business. my mother still maintains that you're utterly alone in ashtabula unless you have family. your family is your best friend.

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 18:04:35 GMT

sometimes it's exhausting to remember childhood.

my aunt and uncle had a swimming pool in their old house, which is where i learned to swim. i was very young when i learned how to jump off the diving board and doggy-paddle to my mom on the other side. they also had a slide.

after we moved to texas, i joined a community swim team. every saturday during the summer, we'd attend swim meets. we'd sit in chairs or on towels outside of the pool area, usually in muddy grass or on top of dead leaves, and we'd listen to walkmans, play gameboys, read books until our heat was scheduled to swim. it was at swim meets that i read the entirety of the my teacher is an alien books, as well as most of the lurlene mcdaniel collection (i thought being in love and dying simultaneously was so romantic). we weren't supposed to eat candy, but we would. after the meets, empty bags of chips and the plastic remainders of ring pops would litter our rest area.

swimming competitively is scary--standing on the block, waiting for the guy with the buzzer to say, "swimmers, take your mark." the crowd goes silent, and then there's a buzz and a rush of water. you're in another world, watching the arms and legs of other swimmers as they thrash through the water, trying to match and better theirs, only intermittently joining the crowd again when you breathe or flip at the wall.

before swimming, we'd sit in our heats on a row of benches. we could determine who the good swimmers were by who went first in what stroke. the last swimmers were always the best--the ones that went to ponderosa every year, the ones who went to divisionals without question. when swimming breaststroke, i sat in the second-to-last row. when swimming backstroke, i sat at the front. they rarely placed me in backstroke.

practices took place early in the morning, and i'd usually ride my bike. back then--it wasn't so long ago--young girls in bathing suits could ride their bikes to swim practice very early in the morning, and their parents would not get upset. it was very cool in july, surprisingly cool, with most of my skin exposed to the air. my goggles flapped against the handlebars, and my swimcap itched. but it felt good. the mornings were just swimming--lanes divided by rank of swimmer, one side for going and one for returning. sometimes we'd back up when a swimmer couldn't go faster. sometimes we'd do push-ups when we were all swimming slowly. by the end of the summer, we were swimming 90 laps during an hour practice.

one year i received the "most mature" award at our end-of-year party. i wasn't sure what that meant, but i expected it meant "snobbiest." i also received the "most improved" award, thanks to my abyssmal backstroke time at the beginning of the summer. that same year, our swim coaches got married to each other and moved onto better things. and after my best friend, who also swam, moved away, i quit the swim team altogether.

when i went swimming a few weeks ago, i found myself unsure of what to do. well, i'm in the water, i thought. now what? and while i could determine in theory what had been so magical about the water, about the sting of chlorine in my eyes and the silence of water above and around me, i could not make it a personal and intimate thing. i couldn't seem to make the water mine.

Friday, May 28, 2004

Fri, 28 May 2004 05:43:18 GMT

it's strange that, when i think about my house in ohio, i remember first the kitchen. i have several memories that involve our small kitchen in ashtabula, but they don't measure up to the memories that take place in other rooms. this kitchen had orangish tile and wallpaper decorated with small flowers. in the corner between the counter and the fridge covered in my drawings, i had a miniature fisher price kitchen. this corner eventually became the place for all toys discarded and/or misplaced.

when jay was a baby, he dumped his bowl of cheerios, complete with milk, down the register. my dad spent the better part of a morning in the basement, mopping up the cereal as it dripped from the vent onto the concrete floor.

we had a screen door, and my father put in windows during the winter. once, while the babysitter watched my brother and mtv in the next room, i pretended to run away from home in the most dramatic way possible--head down, hand pressed determinedly forward. i practiced this drill about four times--exit house, close gate, walk quickly down driveway--before i forgot, inexplicably, to press my hand forward and thus ran headfirst into the window. the glass shattered, and a distraught babysitter emerged just as the neighbors ran across the driveway to the sound of breaking and crying. every year thereafter, my father used plastic windows.

my father attended night school when i was young, and we'd know he was home when the screen door banged shut. i'd run to greet him. one night my father came home and threw his books across the dining room over a failed test. "i'm not going back," he said, and my mother held him. i stood in the kitchen entryway the way we'd been prompted to do during an earthquake and watched my dad, not fully understanding what had happened.

we used to have an old popcorn popper, and i can still remember the place on the counter where we kept it. my mother called the hospital twice for the neighbor in this kitchen, both times for heart attacks. he didn't survive the second one. i threw tantrums about wearing snow pants by that back door and held my grandmother's kitten on those back steps. in that sink, my mother washed out my mouth with soap--just once, because i said "dammit" and had developed quite the cursing habit for a six-year-old. my mother was cooking spaghetti on the day a water spout touched down near the harbor, and the back door flew open as we ran into the basement.

there are other memories that resemble photographs or fragments of film--my best friend's face by the telephone, my mother's expression when i asked to call a boy, the bile in the sink when i had strep throat, the toffee in the pot on the oven. there are the memories my parents gave me of things i did as a baby in that kitchen--my first laugh as the dogs ate marshmallows off the floor.

the kitchen was probably our one multipurpose room. we cooked and, on occasion, ate there. we also put on our coats and shoes, entered, and left from the same place. and we talked on the phone, played, laughed, yelled, cried. i suppose i can oversentimentalize if i really want to, but really i just want to preserve the memory. that kitchen was so tacky that i'm sure it looks different in 2004, and i wonder what happens there now. i wonder if they wonder what happened in that space.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

Wed, 04 Feb 2004 06:52:13 GMT

nearly ten years ago, the same month i turned fourteen, my family and i celebrated thanksgiving in cook forest with my grandparents, aunt, and uncle. every year they stayed in the same cabin near a creek. we had been with them the first year, the thanksgiving before we moved to louisiana, not knowing that we'd be transferred to texas two months after our arrival to lafayette. we also didn't know in 1994 that this would be the family's last trip to cook forest for thanksgiving, due to a relatively new population of mice near, around, and in the cabin.

two days before thanksgiving, we drove to the cabin at nighttime in a blizzard. cook forest is located in the allegheny mountains, and parts of the road swerved around the curves of mountains, unprotected by guardrails. we skidded on ice all the way to the cabin, which sat nestled in a thick blanket of untouched snow. we got there well after midnight.

i don't know who discovered the mouse in the kitchen wastebasket, but my uncle, grandfather, and dad were designated as the appropriate team to take care of this problem. i remember being very upset, afraid they would kill it. i had seen him helpless at the bottom of the basket. i still don't know what they did with him. there were droppings all throughout the cabin, but he was the only mouse we saw.

most of the trip i can't remember. the parts i remember, i remember well. i can recall a trip into town, where we shopped and i bought long underwear. i can see very clearly the daddy longlegs in the crevices of the bathroom; from my current perspective, i can also hear colby explaining that travelers get used to those things. we ate breakfast at an inn where they had good pancakes. jay went sledding down a hill on a garbage bag.

one night, we tried to roast chestnuts on an open fire, which proved disastrous. i'm not sure what went wrong, but they popped everywhere and burned. the friday after thanksgiving, we drove to the cleveland airport and stayed in a hotel before flying out the next morning, and our suitcases reeked of a log cabin fireplace. initially a comforting smell, the scent grew overwhelming and nauseating. my stomach turned when i changed into my pajamas. i could smell the fire for weeks afterward.

there are two images frozen in my mind. the first is a remnant from a walk i took along the creek. on the opposite bank, a mountain covered in pine trees heaves upward, completely obscuring the other side. it cast a shadow over the water, the snow, me, leaving a lasting impression of coldness. i feel cold even when remembering.

the second image is a contrast. i went with my grandfather, my father, and my brother to another mountain one afternoon to climb a fire tower. forest rangers sit atop these towers at certain times of the year and watch for fires in the mountains. i didn't get very far before a fear of heights overtook me. my father shares this fear, and we wandered around the woods as jay and my grandpa continued up the tower.

despite the snow, the leaves on nearby mountains burned against the blue of the sky. people of the deep south miss out on the oranges, reds, deep purples, yellows of autumn leaves. people of the north who don't live near mountains or hills miss out on the expansive color that takes over landscapes. my father and i--and later, my grandfather and brother--stood at a lookout point at this park and stared for an hour at the stretch of trees that rambled over the allegheny mountains and dipped into the river below. we stood between boulders where couples had left their mark in black pen, tried to climb higher to see further. i don't think we could have stayed long enough, not quite.

at fourteen, i thought everything was romantic. even though i had a boyfriend, i wanted to find someone in these woods to share the view, not yet understanding that romance can be experienced very powerfully when alone in a place. there is something intrinsically beautiful and personal about a world that hides its creators' secrets so well. those kinds of moments are difficult to translate, usually experienced in some unseen dimension that i'm not entirely sure we completely occupy, and thus our companion can rarely validate or give justice to those innermost revelations meant only for us. annie dillard talks about how xerxes stopped his army for several days to appreciate a singular sycamore tree and had its image fashioned onto a medal for preservation. "but it goes without saying, doesn't it, xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back the glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present?"

the lookout tower is located in some park, a park whose name fails me but that i tried in vain to remember for many years. if anyone asked me where my favorite spot in the entire world was--and no one ever did--i wanted to be able to tell them the name of the park without hesitation. i want to go back sometime, even though i'm not sure i can say that it's still my favorite spot. it's hard to catalogue the images into consecutive order anymore.

Saturday, January 24, 2004

Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:37:08 GMT

when we were pretty young, my mother got sick with the flu. we were shopping at the local k-mart, and my mom had to pull over to puke in the parking lot before driving us home. when my dad came home from work, i was playing with my magic trick set on the living room floor. he made dinner and shuffled back and forth all evening between my mother and us. the television was on.

at one point, out of curiosity, i ventured quietly upstairs and peeked into my parents' room. my mom was crying. "what's wrong?" i asked. "i'm so sick," my mom answered, then told me to go back downstairs or i might get sick, too. i returned to my magic tricks, trying frantically to make the foam rabbit disappear into a plastic yellow cup, deliberately focusing on something else so i wouldn't have to think about my sick mother.

at some other point in my childhood, my mother was sick again and asked me to get her a bucket in case she threw up. obediently, i wandered into the other room, returned to my parents' room, and set the bucket down. then, promptly afterward, i threw up in the bucket instead.

not much difference between these two stories, except one memory seems much drearier, while the other is hilarious by contrast. either way, i've hated illness since i was very young. especially throwing up.

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:53:31 GMT

since yesterday's entry was somewhat depressing, i wanted to tell a "lighter" story.

we took our second trip to myrtle beach, south carolina, sometime during 1985 or 1986--probably 1985. as a young family, we hadn't taken many vacations together, and we didn't have a lot of money. so, we would drive in our crappy little car from northeast ohio through the mountains, down the east coast, to myrtle beach. our mother would make us yawn periodically when we entered the mountains to "pop" our ears and avoid any ear aches evoked by altitude/pressure changes; during our first vacation to myrtle beach, both jay and i launched our parents into an hmo nightmare by getting horrible ear infections and having allergic reactions to hydrocortisone. sheri beck was taking no chances.

my brother, being the little boy that he was, would annoy the hell out of everyone until he collapsed into a heavy, sweaty sleep in the backseat. my mother would nap, too, and my father would drive in silence. at one point, after he stopped at a gas station for a pepsi, i nagged him about drinking and driving--i was only four or five, and no drinking anything whatsoever while driving seemed as logical as any other rule. the miami vice theme song was all over the radio during that time.

i stared out the window and whined about having to go potty. on the way back, i would whine about having to go potty every ten minutes, as i developed a bladder infection--which i'm sure is far too much information, but nonetheless it happened, thus irritating the crazy hell out of my highly irritable parents. that part of the story is neither here nor there; i just remember my mother standing outside the stall while i cried and she yelled at me to go. highly traumatizing.

we stayed directly on the beach in a fairly large hotel and played in the sand everyday. like most beach days of my youth (there were many, since we lived on lake erie), i burned pretty badly. my mother and i built a sand castle, and we watched from our balcony as a little girl on the beach kicked it. i screamed, the girl heard me, and our castle was preserved. a year or two later when a hurricane hit myrtle beach, i asked my mother if she thought the castle had survived. she said it had probably been washed away long before the hurricane.

the meat of the story begins here. my parents had met a couple staying in the hotel. one night on the 32nd floor, or some such floor, my parents stood talking to the couple. you know how, when you're young, it seems grownups just love to stand around and talk while you're bored? yeah. well, jay was about two at the time. he was fidgeting, like always, and i was probably pretending to be a ballerina. i remember looking at him and the events suddenly moving in slow motion:

jay reaches.

for a red switch on the wall.

that says "fire alarm."

someone says, "jay... nooo..."

a gregarious voice begins exclaiming, "a fire has been detected on your floor! please calmly walk to the nearest exit..."

the other couple somehow disappeared in a whirlwind of confusion, scolding, and nervous laughter. as my mother hurried jay and me into the little exercise room, my father jogged down 30-something flights of stairs to the front desk to tell them that his son had pulled the fire alarm.

my mother paced as i grew increasingly hysterical. "they're going to arrest daddy!" my mother wrapped a towel around me and told me to shut up and calm down. meanwhile, my brother fidgeted and made faces at himself in the mirror. i imagined mobs of people pelting my father with rocks and dragging him away in a police car for causing panic. such a dramatic girl, i was.

my father eventually came to find us. the fire trucks had already reached the hotel by the time my father reached the lobby. apparently, an older girl was panicking in the stairwell; she had been to a party in the hotel room, and she was crying, "i knew i shouldn't have come! my parents told me not to come, but i came anyway!"

hours later, we were sitting in our hotel room, jay and i begging our parents for room service, because room service is cool and you can get it in hotels only. but for the rest of our vacation, i told all the occupants of each elevator ride that my brother had pulled the fire alarm. my mother was not pleased.