Home
I have only lived in one place my entire life. The 1300th house on Churchill St. has been my home for close to 15 years now. It’s the little one, at the end of the road. It’s the tan one missing a green shutter. It’s the house with the dog always barking and the family that yells and yells late into the night.
Despite what you may believe, it is a wonderful place. It is there I feel no pressure to be who I am not. There, that I can run and skip and jump and twirl without being judged. In that house I can play and laugh, but not be out of place. It is there that I feel safe and comforted, and though it is the house of the family that yells and yells, it is the one place I can call my home.
Origins and Heritage
I don’t know exactly how my parents met. They each tell the story a different way. One says they were set up by some friends, the other says the met by pure coincidence. Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter; they met somewhere, somehow and decided to get married, and I guess that’s where I come in.
I am one quarter Italian, one fourth French, one eighth German and one tenth Irish. I am English and Danish and Canadian too. But I get more than just my ethnicity from my parents. I am sweet like cookies and quiet like a mouse. I have a temper like a bull, yet I can be as calm as the ocean on a nice tranquil day. And all of the crazy contradicting elements which my parents decided to bestow on me make up my personality.
Kelsey From The Sea
My name sounds like a usual, common, ordinary name. It seems perfect for the name of an average girl. I know other girls named Kelsey, many of them more normal than I. Yet the meaning of my name is From The Ship Island or From The Sea, it is unexpected and outlandish. Like a goose my name is ordinary, it is something seen every day. But, if you pay more attention to the goose, you might find that it isn’t a goose at all; you may just find that it’s a Swan.
Hands
Hands are beautiful. They are the first part of you to say hello and the last part to say goodbye. Hands can be graceful, dancing a pencil across a page or they can be flirtatious, blowing a kiss. Hands can be elegant and bear precious jewels, ornaments, and charms. Hands are lovely.
I do not have lovely hands. My hands are cold and clammy. They take up space, awkwardly dangling at my sides. They are unclean from playing in dirt. They are ugly hands.
My father’s hands are big and strong. They are tough and abrasive from a hard day’s work. They are calloused; they are a rough outer shell that hides the soft, fragile, sensitive inside.
My mother’s hands are smooth and warm like melted butter. They are hands that like to play with hair and tickle bellies. They prepare countless meals and make tasty treats. Her hands are the sweet sort of hands that are always nice to hold, that caress sad faces and wipe tears from eyes. My mother’s hands are melted butter hands.
Jungle Cats
There is a garden. A great big one, that is next to my house. The one owned by the rich man living on the hill. I have always liked to wander into the garden, meandering through Lilacs and Sunflowers, winding through the Bleeding Hearts and Rose of Sharron, their leaves and stems brushing up against me, as if to say hello, to welcome me to paradise.
The garden is wondrous and alluring. Even the animals are attracted to the solitude it offers. Once you step through the white wooden gate, it is as if the entirety of the world disappears and you are all alone.
I often find my cats lounging under a hydrangea bush or stalking mice in the flower beds. I like to call them my jungle cats when they are in the garden; it transforms them into exotic creatures. The garden frees them and allows them to do as they please. It has that sort of effect on you, permitting you to be what you want instead of what you are expected to be.
Two Brothers and A Sister
My brothers’ names are Tiger and Jazz. They are not the usual sort of brothers. They are fuzzy, purring, whiskery brothers. They like to chase mice and catch birds. They are brothers who sleep all the time, only ever getting up to eat.
My brothers, being older than I, have been around my entire life. I have never lived without them. They are wonderful listeners; when I am sad or happy or angry they curl up on my lap or in my bed and listen to what I have to say. They never fight or argue, and they always take my side.
My sister Molly is little; she came after the first grade. She is not a regular sister either. She is a tail wagging, barking, squirrel chasing sister. At first my brothers didn’t like her; they hissed and swiped at the air when she came near. Eventually they came to see that she was part of the family, not an unwelcome intruder. Now they curl up on the couch together.
I love my brothers and my sister.
Cali
I was riding my bike, a new one with a shiny bell, when I first saw her. I was so proud of my bike, new and unused with a glossy pink frame and tires smelling of rubber. It was the most expensive thing I owned. But, when I came upon a girl my age, with a bike far better and far more expensive than my own, I felt ashamed of it.
Cali was like someone from a magazine. She was tall and lean, as much as a second grader could be, and as pale as the moonlight. Her blonde hair cascaded off her shoulders like a waterfall of gold. Even her name was glamorous. I was so intrigued, but completely jealous.
Then, just like that, we were friends. Always laughing and playing, with her new doll or her new tea set or other new toys that she got from time to time. We were inseparable
And that’s how it was for the longest time, Kelsey and Cali, Cali and Kelsey.
Books and Things
Maya sits on her porch with a book and reads. I see her across the street, just reading. She seems smart when I talk to her. She tells about the universe and how it is expanding. She tells me about insects and how they are different from arachnids. She knows everything from how a brain works to the reason leaves change in the fall. She even knows how to count to ten in French. All her smarts must come from the books she reads.
I want to read like Maya, so I can be beautiful like she is. Her insides are beautiful, since she knows so many beautiful things and since she can speak of them in beautiful ways.
Maya says the boys at her school don’t like beautiful insides, they like beautiful outsides like actresses or models. So she spends more time inside doing her hair and talking to boys on the phone, and soon I no longer see Maya reading.
Pretty Girls
They walk down the street with their pretty girl clothes and their pretty girl shoes. They get called by the boys and stared at by the men. The girls laugh their pretty girl laughs at the boys who call and the men who stare, as they walk their pretty girl walks down the street and into town.
Cali wanted so badly to be one of those girls. So she bought some pretty girl clothes and some pretty girl shoes, and she practiced her pretty girl walk. She even started to wear make-up, a new and foreign concept to me. She painted her eyes with black and her cheeks with pink and called it beauty. I liked her without the make-up; she looked stunning when she was natural, so why did she have to change?
Cali tried and tried to make me a pretty girl. But I refused; I didn’t want a pretty girl mask to cover my true self. Cali said I was childish, she said I was too immature for her now, and that was that.
I grew out of my pink bike with the shiny bell. And so it rusted in the back of the garage, never to be used again.
Mother Says
Sometimes I feel sad or lonely inside. I feel unwanted. So my mother tells me to stand in front of the mirror and say all of the things that make me wonderful. She says to tell myself that I am beautiful, smart, funny, and talented. Sometimes This works and I feel better, but more often than not, nothing changes. I still feel the same inside.
Lynn Likes Flying
Lynn was nothing special; she was plain and fair, good looking for the most part but not particularly gorgeous. She was however, interesting. Lynn would sit on her swing, one in her back yard, tied high up on a branch. She would think about becoming a bird and flying away. Although her parents were not particularly horrible and her life was not particularly bad, she knew there was something out there far better than Churchill Street, and she was determined to find it.
Lynn and I became friends simply because she moved to the little grey house next to mine sometime before eighth grade. Moving there made all there difference. If we didn’t live so close together, I would never have even talked to her at school. But since we did live close there was no shortage of talking. Lynn likes to tell me all about her pet canary, one that I have never had the pleasure of meeting. She tells about how her little bird sings in his cage, like he is crying for help. She wants to help him but she cannot. She tells me her bird wants to fly so badly, but his cage is where he stays.
Lynn asks me about birds while she is swinging on her swing. How do they stay in the air? She says. How do they soar and glide and sail and fly without falling? How do they just spread their wings and leave without a second thought? Where do they go when they leave? What do they see there? I have no answer to her questions, I can only look up to the sky and pretend to see what Lynn does when she looks.
One Loss, And Then Another
In one tragic week they were gone, both of them. The one time I wasn’t paying attention, the one time I had too much work to notice. They were my brothers and I loved them, but they were gone.
It went like this: Tiger wanted to go outside. He liked to watch the fireflies light up in the summertime. So I had allowed him to go, a stupid thing to do. He was old, 17 at that point, but I had no idea he wouldn’t come back. If I had, maybe I would have hugged him a little tighter and actually said goodbye. But there was no point in trying to avoid this, I think at his age it was inevitable.
After Tiger was gone, Jazz wasn’t the same. He cried every night for our brother, he wouldn’t go to sleep. So I would take him outside with me, to look for Tiger, a horrible idea, but I was in too much pain to think clearly. Jazz wandered around the yard crying, hoping Tiger would hear, and because I was too senseless to stay close, Jazz disappeared. Maybe he found Tiger and they had curled up and died together, or maybe my stupidity had caused both of their demise. I shouldn’t blame myself for what happened, or maybe I should. It wasn’t my fault was it?
Damon’s Magic Words
Damon is Maya’s brother. He has a way with words as one might say. He lets them slither, slip skate and slide across his tongue. He knows how to make girls giggle and blush. He can make you believe anything he wants you to. With only words he can hypnotize and mesmerize.
I like Damon, in a funny way that makes my belly do flips when he is near. Maybe it’s because he is one year older or maybe it is because of his magic words. The all the other girls flock around him like a gaggle of geese around a piece of bread. They all have dark painted eyes and straight, straight hair. Maybe this is why I did it, or maybe it was bound to happen anyway, but the point is that I did it.
Now that my eyes were painted dark with make-up I felt different. I felt as if I had stepped into a world that was more established than that where I had come from. Now that I looked like part of that gaggle, I was sure Damon would notice me, and he did.
Kelsey, Kelsey, what have you done to that face of yours? And as he says this I knew I had made the wrong move. He came closer and whispered in my ear. You are beautiful, why ruin what you already had with something fake?
Maybe it was just his magic words or maybe it was the truth. This I will never know, but I ran home and cleaned my face and I thought to myself, that the next time I looked into the mirror - the way my mother says to - I might actually believe what I am saying. I may actually be a Swan.
Far From Average
I don’t know why she did it. I don’t know what was going through her mind. I only know what I saw when I walked into Lynn’s room that day. She was huddled over her trash can, with a sad and guilty expression on her face, ashamed to be caught at what she had done. I saw how she used that toothbrush and how today’s lunch was no longer in her stomach. I saw the surprised look on her face when she noticed me standing in the doorway.
She thought she wasn’t thin enough, she thought she was not pretty. So I told her that she was beautiful. What else should I have said? She made me promise not to tell her parents. She would never do it again, this much I knew. Lynn just wasn’t that type. She may have tried it once but she wouldn’t do it again.
I thought she was confident and all this time it was eating away inside her. She had always been the strong one, the one that listened to me complain about my body. But this whole time it was she who needed to be listened to, and I who was never brave enough to ask.
Lynn let her canary go. It wanted to fly she said, and so it shall.
