dancing & a very dark night

     ***the story of a very dark, scary night last June in which my sisters and I dance with old men, talk to strangers, get lost, find the holy grail (just kidding) and eventually make it back home without being kidnapped. (Warning: it's long.)

      It was early June. We went to the contra dance because Sadie was invited to play the fiddle. We might have gone anyway, just to see what it was like. We do strange things sometimes. And going to a contra dance in an old creaky building in a little college town on a Friday night, in the company of a bunch of middle-aged people who may or may not have criminal records -- I'm just saying -- could definitely classify as strange.

     The dance was held in the old city hall building. It had a tile floor and a high ceiling and pictures of prominent citizens from 100+ years ago on the walls. Most of the people there were over the age of fifty. I don't know about you, but if it's not somebody I know, dancing with a middle-aged man is not my favorite thing in the world to do. I don't believe that line "it's only awkward if you make it." That's awkward, no mistake. Far less awkward is when the little five-year-old boy there with his mom comes up and asks sweetly if you'd like to dance. I was pleased when he seemed to attach himself to me.

     We danced around in circles while the string band played Scottish reels that all sounded the same. You know when you go someplace you don't normally go, and it feels like it's not actually happening for real? Like it's just a weird dream? The later it got, the weirder the whole thing seemed -- except at the same time it seemed normal. My mom, who brought us, left to go home. We would ride back with my sister Molly. We were on our own.

     The crowd....talk about interesting characters. Everyone there could have been in a Dickens movie. There was the man wearing a t-shirt with a female country singer on it, which he told us he'd bought because she looked just like his dearly departed wife. That slippery older guy "Tom" who was giving out his 'card'....(Mama, where'd you go?) The couple with the tap shoes who seemed like they'd been dancing together since they were both a lot younger. I was a little terrified of everybody.

    The most intriguing were those two girls, about our ages. They both wore long skirts. They obviously weren't sisters. One had a cute face, hair in a ponytail and acne just like the rest of us. The other was taller and graceful, with hair way past her shoulders and a round, rosy face. She was more beautiful than any girl I'd ever seen. She was shy, but us girls introduced ourselves because we like to talk to people. I couldn't understand what she said her name was and I literally thought it was "Papaya" until I learned later what it really was.

     She was wearing a long brown skirt and ivory stockings. She was fascinating. From time to time I saw her sitting down at the edge of the room, bent over a little notebook. What was she writing? Was she a storyteller? A poet? A spy?

     It was eleven o'clock and high time to drive home. Poor Molly was exhausted. She'd been talking to the two girls, and learned neither one of them drove and they didn't have a ride home. They lived nearby, they said. I don't know if they asked or if she offered -- all I heard was we were going to take these girls home. It was past eleven. They didn't live too far.

     We got in the Jeep and it was illegal because we couldn't all buckle, but it was way too late to worry about anything like that. The only thing we worried about was Mama. She had told us to come right home. Surely she would understand, we thought, and Sadie called her just to explain what we were doing and let her know we'd be a little later.

    I almost heard her voice through the phone across the seat, she was so mad. Sadie tried to smooth it over.

     "They don't live very far," she said. And then,"Mama, they're nice girls!" All of this, while both girls were right there in hearing. The Jeep, the old Jeep, is not very big. I wanted to crawl under the seat but there wasn't room.

     Mama was livid. It was almost midnight; Molly was sleep-deprived; we didn't know where we were going, we didn't even know these people, and who knew what kind of dangerous trap it might lead to. I'm guessing there was something else wrong because on any normal day we wouldn't get that kind of flack just for giving two pleasant strangers a ride home. Finally Sadie got off the phone, but we knew we were in for it now. It made for a very heavy feeling in the air of that tiny little Jeep stuffed with six girls.

     "You turn here," the Papaya girl said.

     She said it probably twenty-five times in all. We turned off the main road onto so many smaller ones, up hills and then down again, around sharp corners, deeper into the woods, out again, until I was so dizzy and disoriented I had no clue in heck where we were. And they told us to keep going. You don't live far, hm? I thought. I'd say wherever we are is pretty far from anything in this world, and we're not even at your house yet. Maybe Mama was right. Maybe we are headed for danger. And that's when I started to be suspicious. Maybe they were luring us into a trap, and planned to kidnap us and hold us hostage. We drove farther and I felt more and more uneasy. Imagination is a terrible thing.

     "It's here," she finally said. I was sure we had come to the very ends of the earth.

     It was a place so far removed from anything that there was total darkness. The sky was clear and you could see the stars, without any light from any city pinking them out. The dark made their farmhouse fuzzy, but I saw the barn across the road, and a cat scampered across the path in front of us. I didn't feel any sense of time here, except that it was very late. It could have been the 21st century. It could have been the 19th. I looked around for men with guns and gunny sacks while the others pondered a very real problem: now how to find our way back to our home, approximately a million miles away?

     The Papaya girl said she'd ask "Mr. B." She went into the house and appeared a few moments later with a map drawn on a piece of yellow legal paper. It showed us how to get back to route 380. From there we could manage. She thanked us and dropped something on the seat. Sadie picked it up. "Hey, is this yours?"

     She didn't answer. She just went inside the house.

     We unfolded the roll and found it was money, with a note that said Thank you and the girls' names on it.

     Following the extremely rudimentary map, we made our way into the night. We were really out there. There were hardly any houses at all. Still worried about our mother, we decided it'd be good of us to call her. Nobody wanted to. I don't remember how I got nominated to do it.

    "Hi Mama," I said, trying to sound like everything was fine. "We took them home, and we're on our way back, and everything's okay, and we don't want you to worry."

    "Okay," she said. Still mad.

     It wasn't until after I pressed end that I realized, oh dear, that really sounded like a hostage call.

     "Where are we?" one of us said. I think we all took turns saying it.

      It's a terrible feeling to be lost, but it's an even worse feeling to be lost after midnight. Compound that with the unpleasant knowledge that your mom is thunderously angry with you, and you're not having that great of a night. But as bad as it is to be lost, it's that much more wonderful to see a sign and suddenly realize -- YES, I know where we are now! We're getting closer! We're almost there! I thought maybe we'd make it home by daylight, and I was ecstatic.

    By some miracle we made it home. I collapsed in bed and was dead to the world until the next morning when I had to face my mother; and it must not have been that ugly of a scene because it's funny but I don't remember it a bit now. The night before seemed now like a hazy dream, something out of a Tim Burton movie. The more the day wore on, the farther away it felt. Like we had all woken up from some kind of spell in which we all imagined the same thing, and it didn't really happen.

     But Sadie still has the thank-you note and the map, so we know that it did.

********

<3 Emma

Grateful on a January Evening

     The snow melted and today it was almost 60 degrees and I'm a little confused because it legit feels like spring.

     Something about January makes my creativity levels skyrocket. I can be empty of words for weeks and then crazy January weather hits and suddenly I'm plotting out novels and thinking about submitting magazine articles and writing poems, of all things! I remember last year one day late last winter when the snow was melted and I went outside and sat in the bed of my dad's truck and read a book for hours, inhaling the smell of manure from the field by the house and the tingling feeling of winter crossing over with early spring. :-)

     Sometimes I get anxious. It's weird because so many things I'm so chill about, and then I'll agree to do something and find myself in a whole new setting where I feel totally inept and inadequate, and I start to doubt myself. Will I be able to do it, what if someone doesn't like it, what if I mess up?

     ...But.

     My faith should not be in myself anyway. I'm just a little girl in a huge world I have no control over. I say stupid stuff and get nervous My faith should be in the Lord, who never doubts and never leaves and never fails. He's got this whole thing in the bag and a lot of times I just need to calm down.

     Besides, there are so many things to be grateful for. Gratitude is so much bigger than fear.

- church: that place where you can go and you know you'll be greeted with smiles and hearty handshakes you'll sit down in a pew with the people you love most in the world and the Word of God will be spoken and life will make sense again. I love my church so much. A year ago I wouldn't have thought I'd look forward to Sunday mornings so much. I get to stand up on the platform with a bunch of older folks and sing old hymns I don't even know and I love it.

- far away friends: they might be scattered all across the globe but I wouldn't love them more if they all lived in my neighborhood. (Though that would be really nice.) You all rock and if I didn't have you I'd be generally nastier. And I wouldn't get so much mail and that'd sorta suck.

- homeschool homies: every Tuesday night my sister and I hop in my truck and drive a sort of ridiculously long way to a tiny little house where nobody lives anymore and it's only lit up once a week when a bunch of homeschooler kids get together and dance reels and jigs. I've been surrounded by these people all my life but I had to get older to realize how much they mean to me.

- western miniseries: laugh if you want. But my television series make me happier than a lot of things. Have you ever stayed up late at night by yourself and watched episode after episode of a show just because you could? I'm listening to the soundtrack of Into the West and remembering those summer nights when my family went to bed and my sister was away at camp so I filled the void with frontier exploring, Indian traditions, gold prospecting, and building the transcontinental railroad.

- the squad: even if it's down to just the three of us, we're still going strong. There's no one I'd rather go bowling with on a Friday night.

- the surprises: and the beautiful fact that I'm always learning new things. Which is sometimes terrifying. But it's a beautiful thing when you really think about it.

   
     So I'll give thanks, because that's the least I can do.

     ~Emma

P.S. I'm eighteen in a week and two days! Whaaaat!

hallowe'en and closing time

   

 
   Howdy! Happy Hallowe'en! If you're wondering why I've got an apostrophe in there, it's because that's how Tasha Tudor spells it, so that's how I'm gonna spell it.

     I know a lot of Christians don't celebrate Hallowe'en because of all its evil connotations, but I personally think Hallowe'en is great. I'll probably never outgrow the excitement of dressing up in costume. I have tons of fond memories of traipsing around the neighborhood in the most horrible of weather, dressed up in everything from a bathrobe to a dust ruffle (no kidding) ringing people's doorbells and giving out bags of apples. Some years it was so cold and muddy and rainy it was plainly miserable. So why did we do it? Because it was fun. And we were kids and that's what you do when you're a kid. And then we got to come back home and put on pajamas and eat chicken soup and watch creepy black-and-white screwball comedies. :-)

     Yeah, I like Hallowe'en. Evil and the appearance of evil are bad, I know, but Hallowe'en is like a bonfire -- it's totally fine if you keep it contained.

     Another reason I like Hallowe'en? Our family business closes for the year, and we can all go home and sit by the fire.

     That's the way it goes -- June through October every year our lives are a circus, running the business (known as 'the stand') and trying to keep up with everything besides. That's the way it's always been for me. We work hard all summer and then October comes, and my mom starts counting down the days until Hallowe'en, and then -- oh joy! -- we get to take down the OPEN flags for the last time, switch off the lights, close the doors, and go home to celebrate living through yet another season. It's really great.

     My mom said to my dad, "What do other people do to experience this unbridled joy? We get to close the stand every October, but how to other people know what it's like to be this excited?"

     It's been a good year. A very hard year, for me, but that's mainly because of my own silly emotional teenage-girl issues which absolutely nobody wants to hear about. The amazing thing is, as hard as it's been, and as many times as I felt like I was so tired I couldn't keep up, and as many times as I felt so badly about myself that I didn't even want to try....it was all really good. It was all experience. My family stuck together. I learned how to live a little better and I stopped brushing my hair. I loved the land even more and realized I always want to do this -- this farming thing, I mean. For me it's in my blood. Maybe that's how my Daddy felt, why he took over the farm. Anyways.

     When I think of this year I'll think of driving the red truck and picking pumpkins and going to get raspberries with Sadie and listening to Joey+Rory and talking waaaaaaay too much about trucks with my cousin Henry and eating grape stix at closing.
   

   

     It's a good day. :-) Hey, whatever you're doing for Hallowe'en, I hope y'all have fun!

     ~Emma

     P.S. Now there won't be all that work to do I'm gonna have to find something to keep me out of trouble all winter....

the schoolhouse at the crossroads

     I drive a lot. Ever since I got my license last February, I've been driving everywhere and it was kind of absurd at first, but now it's completely normal. Driving is one of my most favorite things to do, believe it or not. That's what Emma does; she drives.

     Emma also has a tendency to get lost.

     Not lost-lost, as in I don't know where I'm going, but lost as in I don't know where I am, exactly, in relation to anything else in the world. These situations seem to happen increasingly often. The first being on my birthday, when my mom and sister and I took an alternate route home to look at some different scenery and somehow ended up at something called the Little Bone Run Cemetery (and if that doesn't freak you out, you obviously haven't seen it). Then there was the time we were driving with my friend Naomi and Sadie told me to take a wrong turn like she sometimes does, and we ended up on a dirt road in some kind of Amish heaven. (That was beautiful.) Then there was yesterday....but let me back up and tell the beginning of the story.

      Sadie and I were playing for a wedding. That is, she played in a trio and I sang a song, half a song really, and spent the rest of the ceremony sitting there awkwardly spying on people...ahem. The bride was from an old blue-blooded family and the wedding was held in their barn at their home on the top of a hill in a nearby farming town. (I may mention that this family is the most aesthetically pleasing and obviously wealthy I have ever come across in my travels across our county.) There's something strange about being a fly on the wall at the wedding of somebody you don't even know...actually there's a lot of things strange about it, or maybe I'm just strange? It's extremely interesting, but at the same time you feel like you shouldn't be there. Anyway, The Wedding was beautiful. Still, Sadie and I were glad to get out of there once our job was done, and we hustled back to our car breathing sighs of relief.

    Their home is on a dirt road. The other half loomed ahead, unexplored. "Want to see where this ends up?" Sadie said.

    What did I tell you? We're really good at getting lost.

    We followed the road, over hill and dale, what looked like it must be the very top of the world, and I almost hit a dog, and that was scary, and we went down the hill, and came to a crossroads, and here's what we found:

     Hudson Corners School -- est. 1857

     We drove by and I stopped the car, backed up, and opened the door to get out. "I'm taking a picture," I said.

    It's a tiny white building on the corner where two dirt roads cross each other, nestled in a gathering of trees, with piles of assorted junk and a dilapidated tractor loitering off to the side. The outside is half painted, somebody must have started it and then given up.

     This little guy has been sitting here a long time. 1857 -- he's seen the start of the Civil War and he's seen the end of it. He's seen this part of the state go from no man's land to a place on the map, even if it's just a tiny dot. He's probably seen dozens of school children tumble though his door, stomp snow off their boots, sit down at their desks to learn their lessons while a long-skirted, high-collared teacher writes spelling words in cursive on the blackboard. I'll bet you he;s seen many a school picnic on his lawn and maybe even a few lovers' trysts in the trees behind. And when the school closed someone probably lived in him for awhile, until they threw in the towel and left before they got the painting done.

    Have you ever seen an old building and instantly felt transported back to some other place in time?

    I wish those walls could talk so they could tell me all they've seen and lived through in 159 years, and I wish I could write it into a story. I think, in a way, houses do talk. Don't they? Aren't they like people? Don't they have personalities of their own?

    Maybe the schoolhouse could have told me something, if I'd stayed and been brave enough to go try the door...though when you've read as many Nancy Drew books as I have that's kind of a scary though. But I couldn't stick around. I had to get home. So I settled for a picture, got back in the car, and we drove off, and that schoolhouse is going to keep on sitting there waiting for the next person to come along.

     I thought it was neat. I intend to write a story about it someday. :-)

     ~Emma

    P.S. We did make it home, by the way.