An Eighth Grade Extra Curricular Cultural Experience

In eighth grade, I took a trip with Adam, my Roman Catholic neighbor, and his family to Seattle. We were taking another friend, Cherif, to see his father who was in a hospital there. At twelve or maybe thirteen years old, I had little awareness of why my friend's dad was in the hospital, all I knew was that I was taking a road trip to the biggest city in our state with my best friend, and, perhaps best of all, without my own parents.

Before leaving, Adam's parents prepped me for a cultural difference I would encounter on our trip.

"You know how you fast every month?" they asked me. Mrs. Lewis, though a devout Catholic, had grown up with an LDS father, and was good friends with my parents besides.

"Yeah," I said. It was not my favorite element of being Mormon.

"Well, Cherif's family does something kind of like that, only theirs lasts a whole month. They can eat at night and early in the morning, but while the sun is up, they don't eat."

"For a whole month?" It seemed extreme.

"Yes. They call it Ramadan. So while we're in Seattle, Cherif won't be eating meals with us. But it's nothing to worry about."

We stayed in the Embassy Suites which had a massive open atrium in the center of the hotel. From our room way up on the sixth or seventh floor, I could peer down through the glass railing at the narrow trails wending through the greenery. I'd never seen anything like it. Piano music wafted up, playing masterful arrangements of popular songs I vaguely recognized, probably for a wedding reception or other event.

The three of us boys had our own room while Adam's little brother stayed with his mom and dad in the neighboring room. What made them think having three 12-year-old boys share a hotel room alone is beyond me, but come to think of it, I'm not sure I would have wanted to spend any time with us. We stayed up late - much too late - watching TV. A movie information screen came up for National Lampoon's Summer Vacation, rated R.

I knew I was not supposed to watch R rated movies - my parents and my church teachers had warned me against them, but something about that severe capital R in that square box, and the warning listed below prevented me from speaking up. Besides, Adam acted as if he'd seen it already and he said it was funny.

The next morning, around 4 am, I woke to the sound of Thunder Cats playing softly on the TV. Cherif hunched at the kitchen table with three or four boxes of cold cereal stacked beside his bowl. He saw me lift my head from my pillow squinting over at him. He grinned around his spoon, "I love this show!" I groaned and went back to sleep.

I lived an extremely insular and selfish childhood. I didn't know anything about Islam or Muhammed back then. I'm not sure when I even learned. Perhaps not until six years later when the twin towers collapsed as I lay sleeping in the lower bunk at my parents' house. At around 9 am PDT, Mom woke me up, told me the World Trade Center had been demolished, and that it was time for me to go to the orthodontic surgeon to have my wisdom teeth removed in preparation for my mission. I scarcely knew what the World Trade Center was, either. Even then I did not consider that Cherif, the friendliest person in my class, who had been class president our senior year, was Muslim in the way that the news broadcasters that I watched that long week as I recovered on the couch talked about Muslims. Those Muslims could not be related to that gap-toothed teenager curling around a bowl of Froot Loops in that sixth-floor room of the Embassy Suites. They were from separate worlds.

Later in the morning, we visited Cherif's dad. At least, Cherif did. Adam and I idled around in the waiting room. Afterwards, we all went to an arcade where Mr. and Mrs. Lewis bought us prepaid game cards that gave us hours of gameplay on any of the machines we wished. We would grow apart gradually in years to come as I joined band and spent more time with band friends while Adam and Cherif both entered concurrent enrollment courses at the community college and spent less and less time around the high school. But we remained casual friends who once spent a weekend together and had a great time.

devotee

that red bucket
you left on the grass
two days ago
stands now in a field of frost
wire handle frozen
straight up
waiting for your hand
as it has now for
two long nights

inanimate, stolid,
not sentient and yet
holding in its posture
all the longing
and attentiveness
of someone
waiting at the altar

december morning

Shadows shrink against the mountains

as the sun rises over their shoulders

spilling unclouded light into the valley bowl

where a school bus, amber-colored, rumbles

down a quiet road. A sound from its horn

raises a mass of warm brown bodies

from a golden field, black wings

beating groggily as they rise up

into morning.

Expunged

I lost my name today.
I brought with me, riding
in my shirt pocket but
when I went to write
the capital B, a blank
took its place. White
space. Whose face
is that, frozen in
the frame?      .
That blank extends
a chilly tendril out
from the white, enters
my throat, and finds
more emptiness.

tightrope

The first tightrope walker may not have been aware of just how aptly his actions would serve as a metaphor for all of humanity. How many times have I felt my path was so narrow, that the consequences of a single missed step would be so disastrous, and that I was the subject of a spectacle for hundreds of people who were watching me, half holding their breath, half hoping I would fall. The near impossible balance maintained with wavering steps, bent knees, arms outstretched as if bracing against invisible walls to either side. Or maybe that innovator first thought to stretch the line to represent his inner state of uncertainty and vulnerability.

precision

it's precision, probably
that makes me wonder
what to call those
black birds teeming
on the power lines above
the empty field. As one
they leap from their
perch and swirl over
the yellowing grass
like a cloud of bees.
Are they swallows? Sparrows?
Even if I knew their name
I would not have words
to describe the grace
of their flight, nor
the wonder of their unity.

fortunes

So, I was in a doubtful, confused, disoriented mood earlier today when I headed home for lunch. Kevin is moving up in the world, which increased my sensitivity to my directionless-ness, and Laura published some poetry, which increased my feelings of inadequacy in the creative realm. I prayed all the way home.

I felt immediately better when I saw my kids, Emily waved at me. I know they are the most important thing, and the best part of my life no matter what.

Then I saw the fortune cookies on the counter; I thought maybe there would be something pertinent to my current situation written in there: some direction, some answer to prayer. With anticipation, I opened my cookie and read this surprising fortune:

a wise lumberjack always has a sharp saw.

Traci's was more pertinent:

look to the future, but not so far that you miss the present.

Moral: God does not always answer prayers through fortune cookies.