Category: Health & Lifestyle

Health & Lifestyle · Nostalgic Posts

Drawings in the In-between

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I used to walk between the L and the 1 train via the F, M platform in the 6th Ave/14th street subway transfer passage every weekday morning on my way to work from Williamsburg to the West Side. It was routine – automatic and got me from 6th Ave to 7th Ave to catch my connection. Most of the time, I was too lost in the realm of daydreams or looking forward to getting back to reading my novel to pay much attention to my fellow sardines on the conveyor belt of dress shoes plodding along grimy concrete tiles. One day, however, I found myself paying attention by accident, while looking at the ankles of the person walking in front of me, noticing I was seeing those ankles not as skin-covered tendons, muscles, and bones, but as black and white sketched pencil lines on drawing paper. Strange. Cool.

Fascinated, I tried to pencil sketch the rest of my view of the person attached to those ankles in my head on my three minute walk through the in-between, but it was hard to get beyond the ankles with them walking so quickly. On my way home, I did it again, walking the pass-through from the 1 to the F, M platform to the L. I continued to notice peoples’ ankles on my commute on multiple random occasions, each time, not even noticing I was doing it at first, like automatic flip books of pencil sketched ankles and heels walking along the in-between pavers in real ballet flats, loafers, heels, oxfords, and flip flops.

This subconscious turned conscious phenomenon started happening after I attended a few life drawing workshops in the city through the Drawing America program. I had been missing the mindless exercise of timed drawing, the translation of reality to art, the feel of good posture and soft 2B pencil on drawing paper. Looking at the model as lines and shading is a learned, turned automatic skill from my art training in college. I miss the feel of making art in a studio a lot lately. Creative spaces really do fuel creativity.

Lately, I feel like I could cover the walls in tubes and tubes of paint with no rhyme or reason other than because it would be pure fun.

I guess I’d prefer the world to be art sometimes. I certainly seemed to on my city commute all those times through the in-between. It made the gray world more beautiful and animated, more strange and interesting. A brain that thinks in art can catch you off guard in the best way and I entertain it every time I notice it happening and let my imagination run wild like a Mummer through a convent.

I haven’t drawn pencil ankles in the real world in a long time, but I have translated memories into words and to me, that’s sort of the same feeling, if that makes any sort of sense. Even if it doesn’t, don’t worry. Sometimes things you can’t explain or understand can be the most beautiful. Documented murals of letters, words, punctuation, mixed in with me like paint with plaster, presented in a forum for the open minded. Am I art? Perhaps. The reviews are mixed, but I’ll always have the pencil ankles in the in-between, propelling me toward creative pursuit.

Cozy Posts · Nostalgic Posts

Home of the Great

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I remember being small at the house on Neptune Avenue,

The kitchen’s brown and white floor tiles – cold on bare, little, pink toes in the early morning,

Gray light filtering through embroidered curtains,

Casting an emerald jewel over the sink where the shamrock stained glass hung.

I remember the table under the windows topped with a lamp, pristine cloth, and occupied, melamine ashtray

And fearing the swipe of Inkspot’s front claws as he perched on the table with prideful defiance,

A gleaming panther in the cold sun, daring enough to live a little in spite of the photos displayed on the wall beside him-

An homage to pets long gone.

Shannon the Great Pyrenees liked to sleep in the walkway between the kitchen and dining room,

Our languid polar bear babysitter.

We’d climb over her, she- a mountain of white fur and a waggling pink tongue,

But she never seemed to mind us when we buried our little hands in her fluff,

Or scaled over her one chubby leg at a time, running in circles around the first floor.

We’d sneak slices of yellow American cheese from the refrigerator in the laundry room

And watch cartoons in Brepa’s old chair,

Presided over by the oil painting of the Madonna and child,

But we never let them choose the show,

Their gazes clouded with many decades worth of nicotine stains.

I wonder what they liked best on Nickelodeon.

We knew how to turn the silver dials on the brown TV set

Because there were limited options that we could wrap our molding brains around.

We bounced on the squashy, springy seat cushion of the arm chair,

A pile of giggles and twirled pigtails,

If we were lucky enough for Aunt Arlene to curl our hair the night before.

I remember the hi-fi along the back wall of the dining room,

The one with my mom’s baby teeth marks in it

And the concealed Ouija board beneath.

I remember studying the countless framed photographs up the wall along the staircase

And Aunt Arlene telling me not to complain about getting my tangled hair brushed

Because Natalie didn’t complain about getting her hair brushed.

There was a mirror by the front door,

But I’d have to jump to see anything other than the reflection of the ceiling in it.

Shadow was a stray tabby who’d visit from time to time for a snack.

“She made her way around the block”, the parents would say,

Whatever that meant, I’d think, trying to decipher the mysteries of adult conversation.

Shadow had kittens in a box on the porch one time.

“Mine” was gray and had six toes on his paws, but he died quick,

I forget his name.

I never thought about death before that,

But I guess Jersey City’s a tough enough place,

Let alone for a fresh feline.

At the time, I thought it had something to do with his extra toes and was relieved to have the normal amount.

The living room had the quilted, Irish hanging tapestry, embroidered with names of family and friends.

It was also where we named Sunshine,

The orange tabby who replaced Inkspot once his photo was added to the display in the kitchen.

We were four little girls laying on the floor, swinging our feet back and forth in the air,

Deep in thought in a matter of such importance,

Round cheeks propped up on plump palms.

I remember watching Sister Act and My Fair Lady a lot

Because those were the only VHS tapes available in the house.

I remember Katherine, Janice, Carol, and the McGinns.

I remember holding my breath when the Marlboros announced their presence on the porch,

Tom’s banana toothpaste in the morning and at night,

And squeaky clean hair.

There were St. Patrick’s Day Birthday parties

And the train set beneath the Christmas tree –

The shelf in the second floor bathroom- overflowing with haircare products,

Car rides with no seatbelt in the middle,

The tiny American Flag on the antenna, flapping in the wind,

The Garden Song on a loop-

We are made of dreams and bones.

The greatest of the Greats

Had patience for us beyond what she had for our parents.

She curled our hair

And loved us to pieces finer than the scrambledest eggs you’ve ever eaten.

I remember being small at the house on Neptune Avenue

With a life so much bigger than I could see.

The view was higher than I could jump.

I’d have to grow to appreciate it.

I’m tall enough now to look in the mirror and look the past straight on in the present,

Able to recognize the magic of a moment,

The lasting quality of the fleeting,

The memory of the lost.

The feel of cold tiles,

The scent of cigarette smoke and hairspray,

And ringlet curls-

Links to a past, present life that seems so far away now.

Health & Lifestyle · Music · Reviews & Reflections

Standing on [the] Bleachers

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

Good Morning. I’ve been hooked on an album for the past few days, filling the quiet with constant sound because it makes my brain feel good. It’s distracting in the best way and has had me dance writing in giant headphones for a few days now. If you’re feeling like you could use a little more head bobbing, leg bouncing, and shoulder dancing or just a healthy distraction in your week, join me in a listen.

I know it’s been a lot of posts lately. The reason for this is procrastination and overwhelm on my longer writing project. It’s getting there, but it can get there later for right now. I write here because if I don’t, I won’t write there. My type-A personality would have me organize my creative distractions in a spreadsheet and address them in a reasonable order, but that’s not how reality works and recently, I feel a little like a lamb searching for grass on a construction site. Huh– where did I get turned around? How long have I been gone from the pasture? This music is leading me back though. Isn’t “Dream of Mickey Mantle” great?

I went for a run along the beach trail the other day, going a little too fast because adrenaline allowed and it felt good to focus on the pleasant pain of blood pumping in my legs and behind my ears instead of other things. The wind was loud and sharp and the air was salty and fresh. I was exhausted after two miles, but the stretch after was soothing and necessary. Stairs will be tough for a day or so, but that’s part of the fun, no?

I watched Mike run his first half marathon in October my senior year of college. I was amazed that people run that much for fun and actually look happy doing it. After the race, he jokingly asked me if I wanted to do one sometime. I was like, “You’re joking, right?”

He was joking, and yet, the itch to do something BIG crawled onto my skin, seeped into my pores, and sank into my veins. Could I run 13.1 miles? Yeah; I could.

My times weren’t amazing, but I ran the North Jersey Half Marathon twice and felt good for ten miles both times and then felt like my legs would fall off for the last three, which is weird because you need legs to finish the race, and I was determined to finish. I remember a sign that one of the spectators held. She sat in a wheelchair and held up a poster board that said, “Pain is temporary. Pride is forever.” It is what got me through my first race. It is the mantra I used for my second. I think about that sign all of the time because to this day, it urges me to accomplish things that are tough.

A friend of mine recommended an incredible book by Glennon Doyle called Untamed. It is a memoir by a woman who did hard things because she realized she could do hard things and that she needed to. I know I can do hard things too. I need to do them. I know because I’ve done them before. No obstacle is too big, no distraction too consuming. If life were easy all the time, the good parts wouldn’t be so good.

What song are you on now?

To reduce less healthy distractions this week, I started listening to music while I write. Normally, I’m horrible at this type of multitasking, but for some reason, this album is fueling me and my fingers are flying. I did make the mistake of watching the music video for one of Bleachers’ newer songs, Tiny Moves, and it is incredible. Don’t watch it unless you have a nice chunk of time, because it is beautiful and you will want to watch it more than once. The video features Margaret Qualley who choreographed, starred, and co-directed the video and Bleachers front man, Jack Antonoff, her husband. I feel a weird connection to Qualley since usually, when people ask me, “You know who you remind me of?”, I could now just answer yes, since the answer is more often than not Andie MacDowell, Qualley’s mother. I shared the link for the video with my friends to whom dance was a huge part of life at some point – it never was for me; I haven’t the talent, but I always wished I could. I’ll happily settle for the talents that I can call mine though.

I got my first “real” haircut since December 2018 yesterday and honestly, it’s just fine. I never was one for salon small talk, so when the pandemic was like, try cutting your own hair, I was all for it. My self-hair cuts were fine too, not to mention free, so maybe the salon and I will do battle in another six months to see who gets to hold the scissors.

The independence of certain skills can be very freeing. Cutting my own hair and doing my own sewing alterations were difficult skills to learn, but they allow me to minimize interactions that I find tedious and that makes the pin pricks and temporarily looking like Samara from The Ring a little more worth it. Making a story outline was similarly difficult to figure out, but I know I picked up the other skills well enough so I have high hopes for what I’ve put together.

I just realized that my head has been bopping the entire time writing this. The music’s getting in my blood, the words are singing in my head. I’ll go for a run in a little bit and the wind in my ears will join the symphony and it will be a brain pounding and body pumping with healthy distraction. I will write words. I will read words. I will stretch mentally and physically, escaping into Gone Now, because it just feels good.

Have a weird day; have a fun day; have the best day you can. Get up, get dressed, brush your teeth. Do something little, because lots of little somethings lead to something big.

Love,

Beth

Nostalgic Posts · Poetry

Seventeen, Twenty-Six, and Thirty-Two

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I came to life at seventeen

With my suntan and purple shorts.

You were too cool, too witty for me,

But somehow you wanted me too-

A big smile and brown curls who woke up for you.

I wore a blue dress to the movies

And stole my sister’s shoes that she never let me borrow –

Head on your shoulder –

Arm in arm out the door to the car.

Ice cream kiss

Like kerosene poured on a slow burn.

I loved you before I even knew it

And realized it sometime walking in the rain,

Then woke up thinking it was all a dream.

A bus ride apart, an ocean apart.

No one understood us but us.

Love letters to Spain,

Love letters to Baltimore.

I keep them in a box to remember that you.

At twenty-six I wore a white dress –

The prettiest I’ll ever wear,

A veil, pearls, and pink shoes.

I walked a long way down to you,

Daisies, tears, and a smile on my dad’s arm.

We danced to our song

And the band erred on the words,

But the bar was open

And the room was full of love.

You twirled me when I asked you to

And I realized what it is to feel

You are exactly what you’re meant to be at a moment in time.

And I realized I was meant to be that white dress and those pearls,

That veil and those pink shoes

Being twirled around by you.

At thirty-two, I am yours still

And feel lucky you choose me too

Even though your brain can walk in a straight line

While mine thinks in roller coaster loops,

But I’m brave enough to ride them with you.

You suffer coffee kisses and New Jersey

And come home to me each night,

To water views and too many cozy lamps,

To sitting on the blue couch

Beside seventeen, twenty-six, and thirty-two.

Health & Lifestyle · Music · Nostalgic Posts · Reviews & Reflections

Vampire Word Salad

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I’m a nervous highway driver, on occasion. Weirdly, singing seems to help with that. So, sometimes, I sing when I drive. I sing when I drive when I’m nervous, that is.

When I was new to driving as a teenager, my dad would passenger seat “drive”. He had an imaginary brake pedal on the ceiling of the car and when he’d hold his breath in silence and reach for it with his hand, my confidence would waver. I remember thinking that a very real passenger-side clutch pedal would have been much more practical because no matter how many times my dad told me at first, “G’head; ease up on the clutch. You’ll feel it,” he seemed only to be all sorts of crazy at the time and me – all sorts of confused. Of course, he was right, and if you know how to drive a manual transmission, you know what I’m talking about. For the rest of you, there is no other way I have found to explain it; so you’ll just have to trust me on this one, okay?

Before moving back to New Jersey, I was out of practice with driving, having lived in New York City for seven years where cars are things that you sometimes forget exist as modes of transportation rather than simply as perpetual enemies to face at crosswalks and invisible crosswalks, alike. I decided to ease my way back into highway driving with a nice little “test drive” by following behind the U-Haul that Mike drove during our move. White knuckled and singing, with a nice big U-Haul to tail (and the U-Haul’s being restricted from going on the Parkway), we made it, somehow. Mike was proud of me, I was proud of me, and I think it’s accurate to say we were both sort of in disbelief. Turns out I could do it all along, like the whole time probably, you guys. Who’d have even thought?

Driving and music just sort of go together for me. My sister did most of the driving when we were in high school. She knew the radio stations to preset and had taste in music that I’d not yet honed for myself. I trusted her musical prowess and learned to like the emo pop and rock bands that were so popular in my school days. In middle school or high school (I can’t remember – help me out if you know, dad!), my dad showed me how to use his and my mom’s record player and my musical knowledge expanded to include Van Morrison, the Beatles, The Who, Cream, and Emmitt Rhodes, among others, heard as originally intended. The soft thud and crackle of a needle dropped in a vinyl groove has been a very comforting sound ever since. I’ve not touched a record or a record player for years now, but I can recall that sound as easily as I can hear my neighbor’s music playing next door right now. Unexplainable, yet simultaneously explainable – you know, magic.

Nowadays, I have an included music subscription through Amazon Prime, built on a Prime Music Unlimited subscription that I paid for (and got very limited use out of if I’m being honest), for over a year. It’s basically the same as the paid version, except that I can no longer pick the exact song I want to listen to at the exact moment I think to listen to it. The song’ll come on eventually, I have learned, and I’ll hear new stuff that I’d otherwise not have known about while waiting for it to do so. I use this music subscription, almost solely for car-based purposes and it has been my co-pilot (cough – karaoke machine) for many a long drive.

My taste has since evolved into something with an identity of its own that I’m proud of and that I don’t care whether or not other people share in. My go to for driving is almost always something by Vampire Weekend (or something similar now, by the unpredictable nature of the Amazon Music roulette wheel). Before I got rid of my paid music subscription, I mourned the final days of still having the ability to play the entire Father of the Bride album in its intended order, getting lost in songs like Bambina, Sunflower, and Flower Moon. I’d like to say I sing along to Vampire Weekend, but what I actually do is try to sing along to Vampire Weekend, as, at least for me, many of the songs would take a gazillion driving listens to get the words right (as you must remember; I cannot look at the lyrics because – driving). No, I sing whatever words fit the pleasant Koenigean warbles and “my audience” is not displeased.

I think of the Beatles writing Yesterday and Paul McCartney using the original placeholder lyrics of, “Scrambled Eggs. Oh my baby how I love your legs,” and I think it’s totally reasonable to change the words to something like Diane Young, Don’t Lie, or Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa for my own listening (and driving) pleasure. Someday I’ll look up the words, though I’m happy enough with my own versions for the time being.

Perhaps my nervous reaction to driving was born from that invisible ceiling brake. Maybe it was the watching for the opposing traffic’s yellow lights while I was stopped at a red at intersections (you know – to leave sufficient time to feel the clutch). Maybe it was how fifth gear liked to keep me on my toes by sticking every once in a while when downshifting to fourth. At some point in time, specific origin unknown, it came to be, and here I live to tell the tale, much improved thanks to uninhibited car singing and an affinity for Vampire Word Salad.

I’ll end it here before this last track skips, but feel free to set the needle down at the beginning again if you so choose.

Cozy Posts · Nostalgic Posts

Good Bones

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

The heart of the shore house beats with the influx of familiar faces after the renting geese who flocked here for a change of scenery migrate home. The stairs creak in welcome at the sound of our identifiable steps and the walls sigh with relief as we walk through the front door and exchange warm greetings amongst family. The smiles, raised glasses, wagging tails, and toddler hugs refuel our tired spirits and remind us that although we share this place with so many, it is ultimately ours and together, we are home.

The shore house, though never my primary residence, is the home that I remember best from my childhood. It is where I spent my summers with my Nana and my Aunt Arlene. It is where I learned to cook with way too much butter and salt which I’ve since learned to remediate. It is where I learned the manners of a lady and sometimes defied that lesson by channeling a hereditary instinct to be wild thanks to the generation before me (though it is now impossible to mislay the cup, napkin, knife, and fork in a table setting).

The shore house has seen me shattered, coming back to a gloom within its walls that seemed they’d never feel full again the day my Aunt Arlene lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. The shore house helped me to start the healing process in the days that followed. It is where I learned the benefits of solitude, self-reflection, and the great company and support that you can find on the pages of a book.

The shore house, along with my Nana and Aunt Arlene, is why I know my family so well, why my cousins are more like sisters to me and my sister, and why I feel a need to spend so much effort nurturing a building, these days, despite the fact that doing so can push me to my stress limits better than anything else can.

With the shore house, my Nana and her sister created a home for all of the family to feel is ours. Nurturing the space reciprocates a respect for the value that it adds and has added to our family’s shared experience. In our shared home, we strive for functionality and something that is easier to care for, for the benefit of our migrating guests, but we also make sure that there is an abundance of coziness for ourselves as well.

Coziness, to me, is a combination of functionality, minimalism, and personal identity. Sometimes coziness seems like something else entirely to other members of my family. We make it work, though I can’t fully say I understand how.

Conch shells, Bananagrams tiles, paintings of ships in storms, lighthouse figurines, and donation bags coexist.

Sisters, cousins, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, husbands, fiancées, Daisy (and Dixie), and friends coexist.

Someone always has to sleep in Room 6 and wake up with a head bruise or two, courtesy of the steeply sloped ceiling.

There are often more than twenty-five pairs of shoes by the front door. The TV volume always fuels debate for what is to be considered a reasonable volume, as my Nana used to say. It takes hours to settle on a movie to watch and then someone inevitably leaves the room just after we hit play.

At the shore house, we drink way too much whiskey, too much wine, and just enough beer. Cheese and See’s Candies are considered reasonable meals. We stay up too late talking and laughing on the porch. We wake up to Daisy sniffing at the bedroom door and come downstairs to the perfume of coffee, the sound of cartoons, and a chorus of good mornings in the living room with each new entrant.

There are porch people and couch people and beach people.

The showers are usually taken.

The showers are cold when it’s finally your turn.

The kitchen is stifling in the evening no matter what setting the ceiling fan is on.

Eggs, oatmeal, bacon, and Del Ponte’s treats nourish us in the mornings – and coffee, of course. “I could do another cup,” sings the chorus of porch people.

We smell like sunscreen and the ocean. We are fiercely competitive at Five Crowns and The Fishbowl Game. Our shoulders sparkle with dried, Atlantic salt. We find sand in unexpected places. We could write an encyclopedia of inside jokes at the end of each summer, but sometimes forget how they originated.

We welcome, we nurture, we work hard and together. We keep the dream going for another year and another year and another year, thinking it’s getting easier until something hard happens. And then we remind ourselves that despite occasional stress fractures, it’s possible to heal, and our house has good bones.

Health & Lifestyle · Mental Health

Let’s Hear it for the Boy

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

A friend of mine once asked me how I come up with ideas for my blog posts. I confessed to her that my process is not so thought out, but rather a let’s just see what happens approach. If I feel like I have the stamina to write something for the blog on a particular day, I open my laptop and hope to be inspired.

Most of the time, to my own astonishment, it works and words string into sentences and paragraphs like a dream. There have been seven times (maybe eight with this one, who knows?) when it hasn’t, but I have grown used to ignoring the number of unfinished drafts in my writing view of the blog. Maybe one day I’ll devote fresh eyes to those, but for now the back burner is big enough to hold them all, so there they will sit for now.

Sometimes a title comes first – sometimes a particular line of a poem. Sometimes a memory or a feeling gets typed out and sits alone on the otherwise blank page for a while until words fill in the space around it, disguising it amongst the forest of sentences and stanzas, seemingly equal to the rest.

I clutter with words. They are something I found again when I began to simplify things. Writing words brings me joy and so I do not set a limit on them.

I always wished I could speak as comfortably as I write, but something gets lost in translation with the whole words coming out of my mouth thing while simultaneously breathing and thinking. It’s nerve-racking to go off script when other people improvise. I often rewrite conversations in my head that have already happened. The ones that can’t be edited are torturous. I write conversations that will never happen as well and wonder how they’d play out in reality.

I used to have a debilitating fear of talking on the phone to strangers. Like, I was afraid to order a pizza growing up and I love pizza. There was even one time during college when I thought I left my wallet in a restaurant and Mike told me it was ok and to just call the restaurant and he was sure it would be there. All I can say in response to that is thank goodness that wallet was just stuck between the car door and the passenger seat of Mike’s mom’s car, otherwise it would have been irretrievable. I mean it was bad you guys.

To have an irrational fear of saying words as a person who loves words doesn’t make any sense and I let it limit me for way too long. I soon learned, however, to my relief, that I wasn’t the only one who had trouble on the phone.

The summer after graduating college, I got an internship as a scheduling coordinator at a rehearsal rental studio in Manhattan. I remember keeping a Post-It note in front of the phone at work with impossibly difficult information to remember such as my name, the name of the studio, and the studio’s phone number so that when my throat began to tighten when I picked up the receiver and my thoughts turned to static, I’d have some lifeline to hold onto. I know– tough stuff.

It wasn’t until I got a call at the rental studio from a boy who was clearly more nervous on the phone than I was that I began to get over this irrational fear. He forgot to give me his name when he booked and hung up before I finished asking for that info. I called him back to finish the booking, silently praising my Post-It note strategy, knowing that without it, I’d be drowning due to my overactive salivary glands that switched on as soon as I picked up the receiver. The boy picked up and admitted that he was nervous talking on the phone. I told him not to worry and that I was too sometimes (white lie- I know). I got his name and finished his booking and we ended the call, each feeling a little less alone perhaps and a little more comfortable on the phone. That phone call changed a lot for me and I grew confident in a career that heavily involved answering and making phone calls.

Writing helped me cope with my phone phobia. I used to write out everything I needed to say on the phone if I were making an important call; in fact, I still do sometimes. I have even learned that some of my friends do this too and it makes me feel less like a malfunctioning robot of society. Somehow, seeing the words written out in an order that makes sense before I release them from my mouth gives me confidence. You can’t, however, pre-plan most of life’s conversations. Like I said before, I clutter with words. They are shoved in the hall closet of my head like miscellany after panic-cleaning and I’d hate for something to fall out that would disrupt the order of the room. Sometimes, however, words fall out and get a laugh or a smile and those make the uncertainty of it all worthwhile.

Mental Health · Poetry

Cement Shoes

Beth DeFries2 Comments

I do not know my self yet.

Do you not know it too?

Defining dreams pours cement in my shoes

That makes it hard to move.

I chisel at my ankles.

I wiggle my toes loose

And slip away with shallow scrapes

That wandering heals anew.

I swim in wordless waters.

I run through salt-flecked air.

I channel why and wonder how

And if I’ll find me – where?

When priers ask, “What do you do?”

I’d like to tell them true.

I do my best –

Fulfilled, bereft.

I change.

And how ‘bout you?

Health & Lifestyle · Mental Health · Minimalism · Poetry

Shopping My Closet

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I’ve been shedding bits of myself lately-

Discarding layers

Like pilled sweaters and torn jeans in a heap on the floor,

Too careless to aim for the hamper

And call them as they are-

Pieces in need of care and mending.

Sometimes I’ll pick part of me back up and wear it again,

Beyond acceptable condition of wearability.

A muddy thought.

A wrinkled smile.

A stained mindset.

And it just doesn’t look right somehow.

And then I realize that I packed away the appropriate wearables months ago,

Vacuum sealed in a Small Space Bag 

In a plastic bin from Target.

I open the bin

And see the love, friends, hobbies, memories, and plans shriveled up like raisins packed for space rations.

I open the bag and they puff up into grapes again,

Turned with the chemical perfume of storage.

I wash my wearables

And extra spin so they look their best.

I slide into a brightly colored memory,

A cotton blend of calm and nostalgia that allows room to breathe.

I am me once again,

Happy thoughts folded in the drawers

where I can reach them,

The hamper and floor – empty,

Ready to collect me 

When I am over worn.

Books · Mental Health · Movies · Reviews & Reflections

The Boy and Girl Who Lived

Beth DeFriesLeave a comment

I first finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when I was ten years old. It was the summer of 2002 and I was in need of ways to escape the organized chaos that was The Work Family Connection day camp. I had seen the first Harry Potter movie in the theatre when it came out in the fall of 2001 and was mesmerized by the magical world of JK Rowling’s imagination, brought to life by the cast, crew, writers, and artists involved with the film. It was “movie magic” in its truest form and I absolutely loved it.

The Work Family Connection’s summer camp was located in the basement-level cafeteria of Southern Boulevard School. The cafeteria had waxed, linoleum, tiled floors, beige and blue cinderblock walls, and it was where WFC’s before-school program was held during the year. I had spent a lot of time there and made most of my friends, at the time, at WFC and have retained few of them, unfortunately, after we each grew up and went our separate ways.

Rather than gossip with my friends or ask (pester?) the counselors for their worldly advice about what it was like to be “adults”, for a few days I preferred to sit alone at one of the cafeteria tables with my book. I flipped open my paperback and allowed myself to be swallowed whole by Harry and his story. I disappeared into the fragrant pages of an enchanted world hidden amongst the very real-world places of London and the Scottish Highlands. With ease, the words blocked out the cacophony of Nok-Hockey sticks smacking against a particle board rink as well as the generally loud nature of pre-pubescents who each have something on the tip of their tongue that is absolutely the most important thing you will ever hear, no like seriously guys.

My parents had tried to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to me and my sister when we were younger, but either I or Katie (or both) couldn’t make it past Fluffy, the three-headed dog, a Cerberusesque creature, who guards a dangerous place full of enchanted obstacles and secrets much too dangerous for children.

If you have read the beloved series or watched the movies, you will realize that I was very close to Harry’s age at the time of the story and that I would soon turn eleven. Eleven is a pivotal age in JK Rowling’s fictional universe as it is the age at which young witches and wizards receive their Hogwarts letter. I, however, remember being petrified of turning eleven.

When I was nine, two of my best friends at WFC aftercare were reading from an anthology of scary stories and stopped abruptly after reading one line in particular. When I asked why they stopped, they looked at me with grim expressions and showed me a sentence in the book. The sentence prophesied that people born on my birthday would die in eleven years. It seems silly now, of course, but when you are nine and your best friends believe something as serious as this, even if only for a moment, you entertain the possibility that it could be true. In fact, you believe it to be. I- being nine and gullible, wondered with dread if I’d bite the big one at eleven or at twenty. I imagine neither of these friends remembered this traumatizing “prophecy” past that day, when they read the words in the book, but in many ways, this experience shaped me.

Harry Potter distracted me from my looming eleventh birthday and was there for me with the wave of relief brought on by my twelfth, having lived to tell the tale. Harry, who had already lived ten years longer than he was supposed to, at the time of the first book, was an exception to the rule, and so too, would I be, (and probably most people born on my birthday, for that matter). Sometimes, I wish I could travel back to that moment and give that nine year old girl a huge hug and let her know she’s got so much more time than she thinks she has. Thirty-two would have been an absolute dream for her, but let’s hope for even more borrowed time than that.

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, I visited the Weasley family’s bustling home, The Burrow, for the first time. Though book two is my least favorite of the series, due to the heavy lean on spiders in the storytelling, I fell in love with the Burrow and the Weasley family instantly. The Burrow is the epitome of lived-in cozy. It started as a small house and over the years, as Molly and Arthur Weasley’s brood grew to seven children, new levels, rooms, and towers were magically added here and there. It is a house filled with personality, color, hand-me-downs, squashy furniture, and imperfect perfection. There is a quote from the second movie that is not in my edition of the book, where Ron says, “It’s not much, but it’s home,” and yet, it is so much more than he thinks, something that Harry recognizes the instant he lays eyes on Ron’s unique family home.

I continued on my journey with Harry and his friends, tagging along like Neville Longbottom, wanting to fit in and be part of the crew. Once I was twelve, and out of the proverbial forbidden forest of my looming death prophecy, I could just be a kid again. I continued reading, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban then Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I got happily lost in these stories and met creatures I could never have dreamed up myself, a spectator to Harry and his friends’ exciting lives and challenges.

I went to a book release party for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at our local Borders (RIP!) with two friends and we went back to my friend Meagan’s house for a sleepover afterwards. I couldn’t put that massive blue hardcover down. Neither could my friends. It was the quietest sleepover in the history of sleepovers and we were all having the best time.

I bought my copy of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in the summer of 2005, the day after saying goodbye to a boy I had met who I really liked and who I would not see again for five years, when the door was firmly closed and deadbolted. I delved into my new book that hot summer, in need of my friends in JK Rowling’s world. I found a haven in Harry’s world, despite the darkening tone of the story and the trials lying in wait for Harry and his friends as the books progressed. I am grateful for that green book at that time in my early teen years when I really needed something to disappear into.

I then had two years to wait for book seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, to be released. My cousin and I speculated what would happen to Harry in the final book and who would survive what was to come in his magical universe. When I got that book, I think I finished it in two or three days, holed up in a squashy blue armchair with mugs of microwaved French Vanilla tea, wedged in the little reading nook between my parents’ dressers whenever their room in our apartment was available. I learned about horcruxes and rooted for Harry and the Order’s victory over darkness. I bore witness to Severus Snape’s most heartfelt motivations and saw Harry become a little more human in recognizing them too. It was thrilling and heartbreaking and everything I had hoped it would be and more. And when I reached the final page, I wanted to start the whole thing all over again, as I had done after finishing each book.

Throughout his years at Hogwarts and beyond, Harry faces many harrowing experiences and has a responsibility to be brave. Always in tow are his truest friends, Ron and Hermione, to help him through the toughest bits. The Harry Potter stories teach the importance of creating a support system for children, both through friendships and mentorships. They encourage children to be imaginative, brave, and adventurous. They succeeded in teaching me these lessons, for which I will always be grateful. I truly grew up with this series and it has been there for me through the trickier years in my life. As Albus Dumbledore says in Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.” When you are feeling lost or sad, try opening a portal to another world in the pages of a book and take a look around for a while to see if you find treasure there, as I did.

Thank you for reading this long post. If a particular book has had a big impact on you, I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment, if you’d like to share and happy reading! 🙂