Was He a School Board Man?

He sat in my kitchen, elbows on the grey armrests of his chair. His forehead was wrinkled slightly. His mouth was serious. 

He folded his hands together, and took in a deep breath. He looked like he was about to deliver some thoughts on doctrine, or maybe tuition. He moved his head from side to side, as if wondering where to begin.

 His hand moved to his chin, and I thought perhaps he was going to smooth out the edges of his slightly pointed goatee. He blinked slowly up at the ceiling for a time. Then he moved his left foot up and down in a thoughtful manner, and sighed again. Obviously this was quite a weighty manner. 

Later, we sat in the living room. He put his head to one side and have me his kindliest look, like he wanted to ask me how my Christian life was going. He was radiating contented good will.

 I smiled back. He opened his mouth, but instead of a reminder about the upcoming school functions , he let out a gentle burp. “Silly baby,” I said, and wiped the bubbles from his chin. 

Katie Friesen

Sledding Stories

You read all these wonderful stories about children going sledding. They whiz down the hill on their bright red Radio Flyer sleds, tumbling into drifts at the bottom of a long, gentle, beautiful hill. The sun is glaring on a million snow crystals and their eyes are bright with merriment. They trudge up the hill to do it all over again, laughing and shouting to each other.

My childhood sledding experience was a different matter, usually.

Before we begin, it must be understood where I grew up. Home was the flat farmland of the middle part of Kansas. Wheat waved over the level ground in the summer, and only rows of Osage Orange trees kept us from being able to see for miles and miles in every direction.

There wasn’t a hill in sight.

We had a saucer sled—bright green—that we pulled out every now and then. It snowed, sometimes quite a substantial amount, and like all children, my siblings and I wanted to go sledding. But where?

We tried every place on the yard that dropped in elevation at all. On one side of our old farmhouse, there was a small drop, part of the landscaping. For an exhilarating half of a second, you were rushing down toward the driveway below, the cold wind rushing past your freezing ears. Then you hit bottom. It didn’t take long to outgrow that one.

One day when the neighbor girl was over, playing in the snow with us, we realized that the drop down to the creek provided a wonderfully steep and long hill. The creek was frozen over pretty hard on that particular day. At least in some spots. Besides, we planned to stop the sled before it reached that point. We piled on and started down.

It was wonderfully stimulating.

We didn’t get it stopped.

I can’t remember if the ice held us or not, but for some reason, we only tried it once or twice.

The best days were when Dad and my uncle Jay got out the four-wheeler and pulled us in wide, swinging circles over the barren fields. That was living. The whole world was frost and ice and biting wind rushing by. Until the sled tipped.

Once, with a devilish gleam in his eye, Uncle Jay pulled my sister over a snow-covered dirt pile. Both sled and girl went flying. She claims her back has never been the same since.

I suppose the only real sledding happened on the vacations when we spent Christmas at Grandpa’s place in Colorado. There was always snow. It was superb. We’d load up (after an hour or so of general discussion and organizing) and head for the back side of Wolf Creek. Somewhere up on that pass, we’d pull off to the side of the road and find a big hill. We’re talking really big. Brutally big.

Some of us came from the land of no hills, some from the land of no snow. We were very young and slightly old and everywhere in between. That hill was a monster, and only a few of us were really prepared for its violence.

People skidded out clear onto the road. Sometimes, almost to the guardrail on the other side. Thank goodness there wasn’t much traffic on the road those snowy days. I remember a line of uncles standing halfway down, ready to catch a wayward sled before it rammed into the scrub brush on one side and injured its occupants.

There were mounds of snow to throw you off, and when you fell, it was deep. There were other people not to be hit, sleds that turned at the slightest shift of a rider’s weight, and tubes that might go flat at any second. Six-year-old me didn’t do so well, climbing back up that endless slope of white.

It was divine.

I grew up not sledding much. Now, at last, I live in the land of hills. My students talk about sledding. They don’t know the meaning of three-foot landscaper hills or four-wheeler pulling in flat fields. This is the real thing.

If only it would snow.

Savanna Unruh

Book Learnin’

Her name was Mrs. Thompson and she had accepted the responsibility of shepherding the minute packages of burgeoning humanity onto the pathway of book learnin’. There was no kindergarten in those days, and her tall, somewhat angular form had greeted the first graders of Unified district 477 for more years than I had drawn breath, and she had no plans to lay down the mantle for years to come. She was skilled in her craft.

The venue in which she plied her expertise was on the south end of the building, down a long set of stairs, adjacent to the room which housed the second graders. To the north across a short hallway was the boiler room where Clovis clunked away with his pipe wrenches. He was janitor in this institute of higher learning, beloved by all, and reeked of his habit of burning tobacco.  There was a bank of windows to the south, hinged at the bottom and with a quarter-turn latch to secure them in the closed position. A steam radiator in the corner of the room drove the chill away of a winter morning, hot enough to sizzle if you happened to spit on it. Her desk occupied the west end, behind it was the green chalkboard, and beside it a low table, surrounded by little chairs, where smaller groups could be tutored as required.  On the other side of her desk was an American flag, to which, with hand placed over the heart, the class pledged allegiance every morning. Completing the décor was a small library on the east end allowing enrichment to the souls who were able to complete their assignments with time to spare. And this is what provided the ingredient for the debacle that follows.

Time has erased some of the less significant details, but, as I recall, it happened at the end of a warm day in the fall, before the shroud of proper decorum had settled completely on me. Mrs. Thompson was seated at the low table with six or seven students, listening to them read. This was done in stages with the twenty plus apprentices in the class allowing free time for those not involved. I and another lad, maybe more, were looking at library books with the intent, which was allowable, of taking one home for further enjoyment. The problem arose when my colleague and I both insisted on control of the same hardcover. We, with book in hand, approached the table where authority sat, each hoping to settle the dispute in his favor. We got her attention, and she listened to our clash while the current reader droned on with halting words. Much to my dismay, she awarded the artifact to my, at this time, opponent. And it surprises me to this day, that as we turned away, I insulted the dignity of my fellow student within earshot of the teacher in awfully salty terms. Where I had heard the term I do not know, but once said, it could not be recalled. Retribution was swift in coming, behind my back I heard a chair sliding on the tiled floor, swift moving steps, and I was rebuked on my head with the only weapon she carried, which was a reading book. And it was remarkable how justice was served, it caused an involuntary, and unwelcome dysfunction with my plumbing. I made my way dejectedly to my desk, and in misery reflected on the injustice that had assailed me. Not one, but three things—I was cheated out of the desired library book, suffered chastisement witnessed by the whole class, and I was warm from more than just embarrassment.

It must have been that I dried off on the bus ride home, and in the recital to my mom on the day’s activities, I elected to omit the occurrence at day’s end. But, to my knowledge, I have never referred to a member of my species in that manner since. I must give credit to Mrs. Thompson; she was successful in her application of ‘book learnin’.

Billy and Randy

Yesterday I went to the post office. It cost $300. This is what I did: drive down a gravel road when I could have gone a little farther around on a paved road. Something big and sharp stuck in the tire. I looked out when I stopped to check after the tire pressure sensor light came on, and the air was hissing out pretty quickly. I got out to look, and the big sharp thing was sticking out. Well, no arguing with that. The tire was- 
  “Gotta flat tire?” yelled a guy driving a brown Ford pickup. Yes, most definitely. No getting around that. 
  He pulled over and hopped out. He squinted at my tire through his rimless glasses. I showed him the sharp thing. After talking to Peter and finding out he wouldn’t be able to help me, I popped the trunk so the man could investigate the spare tire situation. The sweat was already beading on his freckled bald head as he got out the jack and wrench.
  “M’ name’s Billy,” he said, starting to take off lug nuts. “Taught school for years an’ now I’m retired. Was headin up to do some work on m’ rental house. Well, I kin do this for ya an then go back up t’ house an git cleaned up if I need to.” I looked at his athletic shorts and pink breast cancer shirt. The shorts were full of paint stains and didn’t look all that cleaned up to start with, but good for changing a tire, I guessed. I told him how when I was younger, I’d tried to convince my dad to teach me how to change a tire. He’d said he’d only been able to get the lug nuts off by jumping on the tire wrench last time he’d tried to change a tire on my car, and plus, if someone saw me standing by the road looking helpless- 
  “They’d stop an hep ya,” said Billy. “Yeah, stan there lookin hepless and somebody’ll stop an hep ya.” 
  Another brown pickup pulled off the road. A bearish bearded face leaned out the open window. Billy indicated he had it all under control, but the other man parked his pickup anyway. Billy scrambled out from under the car and went to shake hands. Apparently, they’d known each other years ago, grown up in the same neighborhood. Randy, as the second guy turned out to be, informed me they hadn’t seen each other for probably thirty years. He heaved himself down to work on the tire too. They asked after each other’s mamas and daddys. Billy said he was sorry to hear bout Randy’s mama passing. 
  “Thanks,” said Randy, working the handle on the jack. 
  They were almost ready to take the tire off when the jack slipped and the car settled back down to it’s original position.
  “That ain’t good,” said Billy.
  “Naw, that ain’t good,” agreed Randy.
  Billy bustled to his Ford and went home to get a better jack. Randy advised me to put in my park brake, which I had done. He fished a T-post out of his pickup bed and wedged it behind a wheel for good measure. Then he started working on getting the car jacked up again so Billy would have room to slide the bigger one underneath. As he worked, he told me how he’d just been on his way up to see his mom. He was retired now, and had moved back into the area after working for years in the Metroplex. 
  “It seems like a lot of locals do that,” I said. “Grow up here and go work in Dallas, then eventually they always come back home.”
  Randy was puffing a little. His big hands steadily turned the handle. “Yeah,” he said. He asked me if I lived in Maxey. Funny how certain areas around here become pretty well known as Mennonite communities. Randy probably didn’t know the difference between Holdeman Mennonites and German Mennonites, so I didn’t bother enlightening him. I said I lived in Tigertown.
  “I hadn’t been up in Tigertown f’r years,” he said, breathing harder. I hoped the heat wasn’t getting too much for him. I felt perspiration running down my back, and I was just standing there. 
  And then Billy was back with his jack. They got the spare on, and Randy clambered up. 
  “Kin you make it up?” asked Billy, sticking out his hand. 
  “Yeah I’ll make it up,” said Randy, gaining his feet. “Gettin older ain’t no joke, but I ain’t found a way around it yet!” They both laughed heartily. 
  Not knowing what else to do, I held out my hand.
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
   Randy shook a little gingerly, like he knew his hand was terribly dirty but didn’t have much option.
   Billy said, “Well, I’m semi-clean!” and shook too. He helped me load the baby stroller in the backseat. 
  Then we all went our separate ways, to mamas place and rent houses and the post office.
  And I thanked the Lord for Texas neighbors, who wear boots and suspenders and call you ma’am and change your tire when you haven’t even been parked long enough to wonder what you’re going to do. For all the Billys and Randys out there who stop what they’re doing just to assist the person who’s standing out there looking helpless. Y’all make this world a definitely better place.

Katie Friesen

Jose

My medic for the shift was Catorra, a solidly-built, very dark African American lady in her early 60’s.  Catorra has a mile-wide smile, a hilarious sense of humor, and vivid story-telling skills.  She hones these skills for the entire shift, so things are always lively.  She was my first EMS partner in PA, and she enthusiastically took me under her wing.  I owe my PA EMS career to her and the night shift supervisor, a bald, muscled, gruff, goateed, and tattooed Afghanistan veteran whom I will call LD.  They are the type of people you want on your team when things hit the fan, as they exude both competence and confidence.  Both LD and Catorra are also considerate teachers in a salty language and no-nonsense sort of way, and somehow we three formed a friendship that continues to this day. 

It was one of those nonsense 0-dark-thirty transports.  “And I could be at home in bed, snug as a bug,” my mind foggily ruminated as we traversed dark streets.  But no, we were arriving Community Hospital to transport a psych to an inpatient facility an hour away.  I backed the white E450 box truck under the overhang, clunked the shifter into park, grabbed the hospital keys, and met Catorra at the back of the ambulance.  Ford 6.0 ‘Stroke fumes assaulted our lungs as we opened the creaking doors of the box.  I gripped the cold handles of the aging silver Ferno stretcher (or litter in PA-speak) and pulled.  The stretcher undercarriage hit the bottom of its travel with a metallic “clack!” and its unwilling wheels met the macadam.  The hospital’s dual sets of sliding doors squeaked a cheery “hello!” as they parted to admit us.  Security, who were evidently not feeling as chipper as the doors, gave us a cursory nod and examination as we strolled past, the stretcher in tow.

Our destination was PES, or Psychiatric Emergency Services.  PES security admitted us through a succession of locked doors, and we eased into the unit, stopping by the enclosed nurses’ station.  The tiny black-pony-tailed nurse in charge of our patient badged us in for a report.  I admired her courage.  I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to deal with mentally unbalanced humans if I was only 5’2” and 110 pounds.  She smiled a cheery “Hello!” and handed me a manila chart envelope.  “Your patient, Jose, is right across the hall.  He has been calm and cooperative, so you should have an easy ride!”  I filled out paperwork and received needed details.  The three of us then exited the secure area and met the patient in his room.  He was a minor, slim, sullen, quiet, and dark of countenance.  He dejectedly slumped on the stretcher and apathetically allowed Catorra and I to enfold him with a white hospital-issue blanket and click the seatbelts and siderails into place.  I smilingly introduced myself and my partner, receiving little acknowledgement in return. 

We softly rolled back through the security vestibule, halting once more before each door.  The maze of hallways came next, and soon we were out under the starlit heavens.  ‘Stroke smoke greeted us once again and the box doors squeaked open to admit Jose and I into their warm embrace.  I initiated a set of vitals as Catorra heaved her bulk into the driver’s seat.

The hospital disappeared after a series of corners, and the miles began to click away.  My conversation with Jose initially advanced in fits and starts, and then the dam ruptured.  He tearfully blurted out his story.  He was having a night of mischief out on the city with his compadres, strolling the streets, when one of their number discovered a handgun.  It was hurriedly snatched up and then passed around, with Jose ending up as the bearer.  As they recommenced their meanderings, the gun discharged, the round burning through Jose’s right calf.  A white bandage bore mute testimony to his story.  He bemoaned his misfortune, crying, “I’m such a worthless failure!”  The life he detailed was dismal, a stark existence in a city rowhouse, uninvolved and uncaring parents, no regular meals, no hope, no future.  Security and structure were foreign words.  No wonder he struggled to comprehend life’s purpose. The only bright spot in his life was an uncle who showed a little interest in him.  Tears flowed from both of our eyes as he wrapped up his story.  With a hand gripping his shoulder, I whispered, “Jose, I believe in you.  You can rise above this, and I have confidence that you can be a success.”  His next words ripped at my heart.  “Nobody has ever said anything like that to be before,” he sniffled, his deep brown eyes welling with fresh tears.  The rest of our conversation has faded from memory, but once again the call had long ceased being “just another transport.”

Our destination, Leaman Clinic, soon hove into view.  The Clinic at night looks like the perfect setting for a horror movie.  Aging native-stone structures bear mute evidence of the facility’s 70-year history and are set back from civilization down a long tree-lined lane. As you slowly dodge the speed bumps littering the drive, you wonder when you are going to hear a chainsaw and a maniacal laugh and see a shadowy specter looming up out of the gloom.  Thankfully, the facility seems to have quality staff who belie the eerie façade.

The truck squealed to a stop in front of the aging but still grand entrance, and Catorra’s toothy grin appeared in the smoky blackness at the back of the truck.  The Ferno protested upon being awakened, and sulkily rolled through the Clinic door.  The paperwork was given to the receiving staff, Jose dismounted our stretcher, and we exchanged parting words and encouragements.  Catorra and I were soon speeding down the deserted roads toward the warm station and rest.  A renewed thankfulness for God, my parents, and my own home was front and center in my mind until the clattering Powerstroke and humming Goodyears lulled my weary brain into a fitful sleep. 

I still think about Jose, and I wonder what he has made of himself.  I’ll most likely never know, but please say another prayer with me today for his success.

The Snapping Turtle

My brother’s co-worker’s brother and his wife were coming home at midnight from a birthday party.

They were coming down the bridge on Kercher Road, when they spotted a turtle crossing the road. Being lovers of turtles(and all other animals), they turned on their four-ways and parked in the median. They sat and watched the turtle as it crossed the road in relative safety. But Woe, Oh Woe unto the turtle. The guard rail prevented the turtle from reaching its destination. The turtle tried several times to pass, but to no good.

The man and his wife decided to help the poor turtle. If he couldn’t climb the rail, he might try to recross the road. They climbed out of the van and crossed to the other side. The man reached for the turtle and was crossly snapped at. Oh, a snapping turtle. A very large snapping turtle. How could they help this? They returned to the van and looked for something, anything; something to scoop. Maybe a shovel? Alas, no shovel. Then, the wife remembered a car seat. She babysat and had a spare car seat in the van. The man retrieved the car seat and the wife secured her phone. She was going to video the helpful husband helping an animal to safety.

Well, they got the turtle over the edge and stood there, watching it calmly frolic in its freedom. As they stood there, they slowly realized what they just did looked very suspicious. A man and woman, with a carseat, on the side of the road, looking over the edge of the bridge. The van was still parked on the median and cars had been passing all this time. Hurriedly, they returned to the van and drove away. Just as they left the scene, a car pulled out from a nearby drive and drove after them. Oh dear, this was bad. So they drove all over Goshen, looping and back tracking and generally just roaming through the streets. Finally, they lost the car. They drove home.

When they got home, they sat in the van for a bit with the doors open when the man heard a rustle. He swung out to check on the noise. One step, and whoosh! Lights and cops everywhere. They were separated and questioned. In stressful times, the man’s brain tended to slow down. When the cops asked him what he was doing, he started out with, “Well..it was my birthday today. We went to my wife’s parent’s house to celebrate my birthday…”

He dragged it out.

While the police were questioning the couple, the firefighters and emergency workers were down by the bridge, searching for the child.

Luckily, his wife wasn’t so slow. When the cops questioned her, she said, “Oh I know what you want.”

“You do..?”

“I have a video!”

“Oh, you do?” More excitement.

The video was produced and the cops apologized. Everyone went to bed and slept soundly.

Linda Peachey, 2021

Written down as heard from J.P.

“Coincidence?”

(a true story)

I don’t remember her name, but I know she must have lived in a house that had a clear view of the street. It was probably on a second or third story because the owners there usually live on the bottom floor and rent out the upper floors. I’m assuming a bit because she didn’t exactly say this, but said she was “Looking out of the window of my house” when she saw the incident. I also clearly remember that she was wearing a black North Face jacket. She showed up in front of our house in a beat up Mission Van along with a bunch of other well dressed folks.

I knew the route well they had used. It was the only way up to where we lived. The road started in Port-au-Prince where they would have flown in from Miami and it wound over the first range of mountains before dropping into the Fond-Verrettes Valley…. There they would have driven through the river before making the final steep ascent twisting through the Pine Forrest into a remote zone the natives there called Chadek. That’s where we lived. The name comes from a tree that grows there bearing a fruit best explained by “A mix of grapefruit and orange”.

…as they stiffly got out of the back of the beat up van, I smiled a bit to myself… I knew the road. Taking it in a pickup with good suspension was a rough 4 hour journey… they must have gotten bounced around in that van quite a bit.

We lived on a small mountain that overlooked the sprawling valley and I never tired of the view from the back of our house. It seemed like people’s eyes were drawn up first where we could see the highest point of the country from there. Pic la Selle. It towered remarkably higher than its surroundings and the natives would sometimes talk of the “devil or something” that lived at the top. Some days we fancied we could see the ocean to the south from our vantage point. When I stood there, I usually saw something new that I just hadn’t noticed before and always enjoyed taking new comers to see the awesome view.

Sometimes a person was so taken in with the panorama that they forgot anyone else was there.

She was a good conversationalist and I hadn’t talked to many other people (other than those I lived with) in my own language for about 6 months… that’s probably why we were standing at the overlook on the side of the hill and I was pelting her with questions about where she was currently living, if she had grown up there, and if she had any pets.

Come to find out she had lived in New York City for quite a few years… as I had also.. along with the other 8 million people that lived there. New York City is divided up into 5 main boroughs, 59 districts and covers around 300 square miles of urban jungle.

“Yup” I commented…. “There’s always something going on there. The city never sleeps they say”.

She half turned towards me from the view in front of us. “I watched a man get beat up on our street one day,” she said. “I was looking out onto the street through the window of my house when-”

While she stood there and recounted the incident, I was taken back to a quiet street in a small apartment on the 3rd floor. Our house was lined up with La Guardia’s runway 4-22 and I got to where I hardly noticed the endless flow of planes coming right over the top of our roof. One day my dad came home after being up town and said that he had just witnessed a couple guys robbing another guy right on our street. I remembered him standing in the kitchen telling us about it. “He had a new bike, and 2 guys came out of nowhere and started beating this guy with long leather belts,” my dad said. “The belts had big heavy belt buckles on them. One guy continued to beat him and the other guy was trying to wrench his bike away. When I went towards them, they both ran away.” I remembered my dad saying that when he had reached the man, he kept asking Dad… “Am I ok? Do you think I should go to the Hospital?”

“Ya” she said as she was finishing the story. “I really thought those 2 guys were going to get his bike away from him, but he kept holding on. They may have eventually gotten it, but then this man came running down the street and they both ran away.”

We stood for a bit in the silence. There was always movement to watch in the valley….. a farmer with a hoe in his garden. A lady spreading out fresh laundry on the tall spiky plants… the endless running of many children.

“Did you live in Woodside, Queens on 64th street” I asked.

She looked surprised. “Yes, how did you know?”

“Well” I said, “That man running down the street was my father”

Happiness

Well, she said, I used to think happiness was a flower. Now I know it is a brick buried in the flower bed.

Aunt Agatha was a very tall woman, absentminded, with craggy grey hair and perennial runs in her stockings. She liked to drop in now and then to wash my dishes, or if they were done, we would do something equally entertaining, like drinking coffee while painting my furniture. It was especially entertaining if the paint was not coffee coloured.

Ah, I said. Tell me more. I was young then, and did not like to laugh at my elders, supposing that seriousness had great virtue. I have since seen the fault of that theory.

My aunt lifted her brush from her coffee cup and lay it gently on a new issue of my husband’s favorite periodical. Happiness, she said. Everybody wants to be happy. And what is happiness, everybody looks here or there, or they sigh and wait for winter to be over so the flowers will grow. But I have learned, she said as she poured a fresh cup of Steamtrain’s Whatchamacallit Peaberry, that happiness hides in the dirt. You might up-end your whole yard looking for it, or you might be content and plant flowers and give flowers away to the neighbors and look at flower books and catalogs all of drifty January. And then about August when you dig for your garlic among the blooming coneflowers, a bee bumbles down your collar and stings you between your shoulder blades. So you sit on your garden bench applying baking soda with a fly swatter or a bath brush, and suddenly you realize you are happy.

I knit my brows and dipped my brush. Ah, yes, I said. But I did not get it then, being young and optimistic and hampered by high ideals.

Loree, jan 29, 2019

The Hot Mess

I grin to myself in my empty house. We have plans tonight.

“A pan of bars,” the host had said. Indulgently, I flit through recipes in my head and glow with leisure anticipation. I have all day to wash my hair, comb it just so, bake my pan of bars, be to school for a birthday party and then to our friends for supper. Which dress, which shoes, which recipe—the day spreads gloriously before me.

I lovingly push freshly washed hair into an exaggerated pompadour to dry.

And I know I’m being quite extra, but I decide to bring chocolate cake for my pan of bars. Gluten-free chocolate cake. They didn’t ask that of me either. Spiraling upwards on this warm thermal of magnanimity, I sally forth.

The hours in the day assemble about me, cocking their eyebrows. Right, I need to be at school by three o’clock, leaving at 2:45. Right, this cake needs to be baked before that. Right, I had better start now, and carefully. Being seven months pregnant, I have a hyperactive propensity for dropping things, spilling things, forgetting things, and reacting counterproductively to stressful situations.

First of all, I rewrite the recipe to acquaint myself better. Next, I slowly measure out each ingredient. I opt not to measure the cocoa powder and cornstarch because I despise how injudiciously they fly off the handle. I do, however, make sure I have lots. Then I begin dumping. Halfway into my mixing, I come to the cornstarch. Yes, I have a lot, but I didn’t consider how in the name of gluten-free, it takes the place of flour—two and a half cups, since the recipe doubles for my cookie sheet, as per instructions. Given my history of answered prayers, I optimistically pray, “Let there be enough.” In faith, I begin measuring. You know how cream of tartar and baking powder always seem to have another quarter teaspoon in the bottom? I plan on this happening with my cornstarch. Two cups filled, I start on my half cup. I reach two and a quarter when I tap out the last of the cornstarch.

I pause, trying to decide if a quarter cup short is too dangerous. Begrudgingly, I at last admit I cannot do without. “But I prayed,” I kept thinking. “I prayed and I trusted and—”

I know I can borrow from a neighbor but I need her to see my message right away, and this is item number three or four I have borrowed recently, and I really, really, really do not feel like leaving my half-mixed cake to go for a drive in the car.

Facing reality, I ask my neighbor. She sees my message right away. I leave my cake batter. My cloud of dust triumphantly announces, “This is a stressed lady.”

Pulling back under the carport, I think, “God did answer my prayer. He did provide cornstarch. I just had to humble myself and not be too lazy to go get it.” Subdued but thankful, I heft my baby and me from the driver’s seat and return to my kitchen. I dump the last quarter cup into the measuring bowl, and tip it towards the mixing bowl.

As the angel stopped Abraham’s knife aloft, he stayed my industrious hand. I glance at the recipe. It does not say two and a half. It says two and a quarter.

God smirks.

I smirk.

“See?” He says. “I did answer your prayer. I gave you egg-ZACKTLY two and a quarter cups of cornstarch. All you needed. But thanks for humbling yourself to ask your neighbor and thanks for being willing to drive over there. I love you, silly girl.” And then we laugh together.

Still grinning, I dump the borrowed quarter cup back into the container and proceed to mix my cake.

Next ingredient is three tablespoons of chocolate pudding mix. “Watch me not have that either,” I remark. Sure enough, I don’t. “I don’t even care.” I say. “I’ll use vanilla pudding instead. I add a bit extra cocoa powder just in case I’ve weakened the chocolate in the cake.

The last ingredient is a half cup of boiling water. “At least I have that,” I mutter, relieved. My mixing bowl is very, very full when I dump it in. The batter sizzles like an agitated rattlesnake. “Oh, no,” I’m cooking my cake in the mixing bowl,” I wail.

“Whip it like crazy,” Sally had said. So I whipped, and the sloppy mixture flung its arms in ecstatic dance. I covered the whirling abandonment with a towel.

“Home-free, just gonna dump this in the pan.”

There is batter for days. I fill an extra pan with leftover batter, realizing chagrinfully that downsizing my upsizing would have avoided the Cornstarch Fiasco.

The cake in the oven, I collapse on the couch. Relieved, relaxing, and pregnantly exhausted.

Eight to ten minutes later, I smell chocolate. That’s a bit soon to be smelling a cake. I drop an eyebrow in suspicion.

Ten to eleven minutes later, I smell something black.

My baby and I go check.

The batter is running over all sides of that pan. The pan is so large and my oven so small, it touches both the back wall and the oven door, so there is cake on more than just oven racks and oven bottom. A few limp sobs bubble up from inside me. My hands hang down. “I need this cake,” I whimper.

The smoke issues forth and my hyperactive smoke detector is a well-known acquaintance. The cake is much, much too far from baked to consider talking out early. So, leaving the oven on, I drag the rack towards me, and start scraping cake off the edge of the pan. The cake had curled around the rim making the pan entirely ungrabbable.

“Okay, different tactic,” I decide. I shove the cake back in. “Maybe it’s done running over. Maybe what’s black is done getting blacker. Maybe it can just bake now.” I close the door on the smoke. It takes two seconds for me to see my folly. The smoke pours out in thick brown clouds. The smoke detector is screaming panicked profanities and stealing the last of my sanity. “We can’t have a fire,” I reason. I snap on the vent fan full blast, then thundering about like a buffalo, I open doors and windows, praying the cats don’t come in like they always do.

“I must do what I must do.”

I open the oven and grab the cake by the scruff of its neck, mashing its face with my pot holder. “Sit there,” I say, sliding it onto the counter. I proceed to remove all its edges.

But I cannot clean a three-hundred-fifty degree oven and this cake must bake.

“Your lower oven,” God said from behind me.

Exultantly, I start heating my lower oven. I make sure the cake understands he is to behave in there. I never use that oven and it’s always in pristine condition. No place for an incorrigible cake to play.

And yet another hurdle rears before me. We had driven over my oven racks to flatten the last three inches, because only then could my big beautiful cookie sheets fit inside my oven. We had not flattened the lower oven racks.

“Focus, Kayla.”

I run to get the scratchy blanket that I use for all manner of situations. I sprawl it on the dining room floor, and cast the least-barnacled oven rack onto its benevolent bosom. I use steel wool to carefully scrape its still cooling ribcage.

Once again, the cake bakes and the home-free feeling fills me. I exit the kitchen, too exhausted to face the mass destruction decorated with bits of crusty cake.

The wave of relief is building and I’m preparing to body board all the way back to the beach on its momentum, but three seconds later, the wave breaks when I look at the clock. It is after two-thirty and I need to leave in ten minutes. I sink like a millstone.

The cake needs to finish baking. My hair is uncombed. I said I would bring the pop and ice cream for floats. Something whispers, “Cornstarch,” in my head. With horror, I realize I offered to bring ice cream without actually checking to see if it was there. “God,” I plead.

I tear into the bathroom, yank my stress-blown pompadour down and claw it back, clapping the clips in place. There is no time for a carefully coiffed construction. Clattering the hand mirror and crashing the hair brush, I fly back to the kitchen in a cloud of hair spray and desperation. Yank the cake out, slam my shoes on, heave the windows shut, mash the off-button on the oven, hook the handle of the grocery bag with my food, (yes, I had ice cream), snag keys, sunglasses, and wallet, and flee the scene. I will arrive at school by 3:00. “Thank you, God,” but I am panting.

A text message pops up from my friend, “Are you about here?”

“I’ll be there by 3:00. I am fine.” I say to myself.

I pull in and she comes running out. She carries my things in for me. “You said 3:00.”

“We wanted to eat by 3:00,” she says kindly.

My fluster flares. I am a mess. I drop a pitcher lid. I don’t know how to help. My ice cream is too hard to scoop. They stick it in the microwave while I martyrously begin scooping from her partial container into the cups for the kids. I keep tipping the cups. I bend to my job with Hercules-intent and the ice cream scoop skips the ice cream and jams its gloppy glory into my arm. Laughing like a kettle of boiling pasta, I shut down my senses and continue scooping. Every desperate attempt to redeem myself ends in a cacophony of criticism from the depths of my discombobulated bosom.

I try to explain but it doesn’t work so I shut up.

Out on the picnic tables, I sit with the children instead of my friends. I feel more at ease there. The sun is bright. My world reduces to the size of my squint and I feel comforted.

On the way home, I text my husband, “If you get home before I do, don’t be alarmed by the mess.”

Grimly, I return to face the carnage.

And tremulously, I open a cookbook to make frosting. I don’t even want to begin Another Dangerous Procedure.

Nothing terrible happens, but the cake is very, very ugly. And thin. Cringefully unworthy of the title, Chocolate Cake.

We arrive at our supper invite. I lay my offering on the kitchen counter beside an unassuming pan of bars. “Pride goeth before destruction…”

Yes, I think, “Destruction is a good description.”

When we leave for home, I forget to tell my husband the New Fancy camp chairs are leaning against the vehicle. “Bump, crunch, lurch.”

When we arrive home, I slide the cake in the fridge and the entire fridge shelf collapses.

“I am done,” I wail. “I am done with today.”

I can’t get into bed fast enough, where nothing can fall but tears, nothing can burn but my eyes and nothing remains but silence and softness and sleep.

Kayla B.

“In a Meeting”

                All of my life I’ve been surrounded by prominent and important people. They say, “If you want to be successful, you need to surround yourself with successful people.” I have obviously by some stroke of luck, did just that. It seems to me that everyone around me is successful. That’s the first step I guess and I have no idea what to do next.

                Sometimes I’ll call one of my successful friends and they’ll answer with… “Call me later..I’m in a meeting…” …and then there’s silence… while I’m stammering “Sorry” or “Excuse me”

This has always made me feel small and rather UN important.

 ….or sometimes they just text my phone. “In a Meeting”

                …Then I stare off into space with my phone still in my hand and imagine those meetings… the wide tiled hallways ringing with the sound of high heels.  The polished oak doors opening up into large decorated rooms. My friend is seated along with smartly dressed men at a conference table. They’re all drinking Fiji water… and I realize that I’m thirsty. I’m thirsty because it’s hot and the wind is blowing… I can feel it through the holes in my worn out jeans. I want to be in that meeting.

I just want to know what important people do.

                I was driving through a town with one of my friends a few weeks ago…. “See that place there?” He said. “Pretty nice….I’ve been to several meetings there”

                There it was again… what in the world was the meeting about? Did everyone walk out of there with a briefcase full of cash? Maybe it was something so important and confidential that I wouldn’t even understand if it was explained to me at a 3rd grade level. I rummaged around for something to eat and tried to think about anything to talk about that I knew something about.

                Last week a couple of us were clustered around a broken piece of machinery. I was in over my head and figured the customer knew that. I was standing beside him when his phone rang and he answered it. “I’m in a meeting. Call me back” Then he hung up.

                I’ve had my shoulders a little more square, and my chin a tad higher lately. I have successful friends and I’ve been “In a Meeting” with someone.  Things are looking up.