How the Ocean Trapped Me

This year for the holiday, my family decided it would be best to rent a beach house in order to accommodate everyone with their own bedroom -- such is the way of everyone being an adult and picky. It was a good idea. It was my idea. And we quickly zeroed in on Dauphin Island as the perfect destination. Not only that, but we narrowed our search down even further to a house at the far western tip of that island where nothing but shrubs and grass grow and all is sand and water.

(I'm not being dramatic. That's all totally serious and true.)

Background: Dauphin Island is a barrier island off the coast of Mobile, Alabama. It's not too far from our home in Gulfport, Mississippi, nor is it very large. As islands go, it's barely there (6 square miles!), but it's historically significant as being a few hundred yards from Admiral Farragut when he spoke the words, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" during the battle of Mobile Bay in the Civil War.

Well, renting houses online is an exciting thing. Websites and photos give you a general idea of the place you're about to spend quality time in, but you can never really know what it'll be like until you're pulling your car onto a sand-and-pebble driveway in front of a up-on-stilts-house while the ocean laps at the shore just feet away. There's just no real substitute for stepping out onto damp sand and looking South to the Gulf of Mexico, then North to Mobile bay - both close enough to splash. No real way to prepare for what it might mean should a storm roll in while you're living in this up-on-stilts-house on an island with one road down the center...

As you've probably guessed, this is exactly what happened. On Christmas day, winter storm Euclid tore across the country and in the south, he called to the seas. "Rise up! Rise up!" He cried. "Higher! Louder! Steal that driveway! SHAKE THAT HOUSE!"

It was insane. The house shook every time the waves crashed against the stilts (a-ha! this is why they're on stilts!), which might have been lulling had I not been wondering just how deep those stilts were buried in the earth. I hoped they were all in the bedrock, but suspected not. By 10:00pm, the ocean had swallowed the bottom step leading to the driveway, turning the sand to muck, and the waves were nearing the road.

That's about when we stopped looking. We were in it for the long haul no matter how high the seas got. The tornado warnings kept going, but houses on stilts HAVE NO BASEMENTS. So we decided to get some sleep, and hope for the best.

Obviously, I'm still here, but the next morning was...interesting. I've captured some of the aftermath for you...

Thanks to the realtor, we had enough warning to move our cars across the street, otherwise, my trusty vehicle might still be in Alabama...or on its way to Costa Rica.

We were stuck for two days and just as the water receded enough to get our cars back in the driveway, another storm rolled in and it started all over again.

Hope your holiday was a little less eventful and ten times more safe than mine.

(All that said, I would totally stay in a up-on-stilts-house again. Just....in May or June.)

On funerals and family

I was eleven when my nonie died.

My parents decided that my sister and I were too little to deal with prolonged knowledge of her illness and only told us three months before her death that she had cancer. I remember where I was when my father called me inside to hear the news of her passing – standing in a four-foot-deep trench I’d been laboring over with my best friends, Tom and Mike. We had some notion that such a trench would help us capture one of the bullies in the neighborhood. What we would do after his capture, however, was a mystery, but that didn’t matter. The trench took weeks to dig and that was really the point of the exercise.

I don’t remember my reaction in the moment. I remember returning to that trench with my friends and having distant awareness that our trench was the exact shape and size of a grave.

We traveled to Mississippi where the family gathered. I remember feeling strangely detached and confused. I tried to understand. I knew death was sad. It was an ending and if the television was correct, there would be wailing and uncontrollable sobbing.

I waited for that to hit me and while I waited, I explained it to my little sister who, at the age of eight, was surely more lost than I was. It made me feel better.

“Rosie,” I said, “tomorrow is going to be a very sad day. People might not smile. We’ll have to be quiet.”

This was my way of preparing her (and myself) for a day with no laughter and no play. But when that day came, there were smiles everywhere I looked. My aunts and uncles smiled, my parents smiled, all the distant relatives I didn’t remember and couldn’t keep straight, they all smiled. They laughed and hugged and traded stories for hours. My favorite was the story of Nonie letting the horses follow her into the kitchen for a quick apple so long as Poppy wasn’t around to see.

It was many years before I would come to understand funerals. In fact, it was many years before I would attend another. I came to understand the sobbing and the wailing, I came to understand the laughter, and I came to understand how family weaves and unweaves itself around theses shades of sorrow.

Late this November, one day after I turned thirty-two, Poppy passed away.

This time, I returned home with equal parts sadness and anticipation. I knew there would be tears and difficult moments, strained throats and messy noses, but I also looked forward to seeing the aunts, uncles, and cousins who live all across the country.

I expected the reunion to be good. I expected it to come with surprises and stories and all the awkward moments imaginable. And it did. But it also came with moments so touching and humbling that I hardly knew how to react.

One of those moments was on the day of the funeral. After the service, the church had prepared a meal for the family and we all filed over to the gym to feast. I stood to the side with a few of my cousins, letting others go through the line first. One cousin, who I’ll call J, studying the buffet table, said, “Those better not be Chick-fil-a nuggets.”

This was a surprise. Of all the cousins and as far as I knew, I was the only one that fell in the LGBTQ spectrum. My cousins, all younger than me, didn't have to care that the church was serving food from an institution that actively takes an anti-LGBTQ stance and funds anti-LGBTQ causes. They didn't have to care, and yet, they did. They all did.

Cousin J went to the table, plucked one from the platter, and tasted it with the results we feared.

The rest of the cousins collectively sighed and as we moved through the buffet line, every single one of them walked quietly past the nuggets and instead filled their plates with potatoes and salad.

It was a quiet resistance and I marveled at the cousins I hardly knew all making that choice.

When my uncle sat at our table with a small pile of nuggets on his plate, no one said a thing. At least, not while I was there. I left the table at one point and when I returned, noticed that my uncle had pushed his nuggets to the side of his plate and didn’t eat a one.

In some ways, this defied all expectation. This was certainly one of the last things I expected to learn about my Mississippi-based family while sitting in church. It was almost as absurd as discovering that my great-great grandmother’s middle name was Bobo. Almost as absurd as the number of roosters in my grandparents’ house. Almost as absurd as sprinkling Poppy’s ashes into the lake – his lake – ten feet from a floating gator head. But no less amazing and wonderful for it.

I thought I knew about funerals. I thought I knew that they were for the living – for mourning and remembering and moving on. But they’re also about discovering who we are now and how we fit together as pieces of a family.

Conversations with Mom

A short time ago, my sister and I visited my mom. While we were there, I decided to introduce them to The Vampire Diaries. It was really more for my sister, who I was sure would love the show every bit as much as I do. She did. But the surprise was that my mom did also. After I left, she continued to catch up through the end of season two. She missed season three entirely and one day, this happened.

(Note - all conversations with my mother improve if you imagine that she speaks like a Southern Belle.)

(Second note - she doesn't actually look like Katherine Pierce, but I don't have a handy picture of her in hoops.)

MOM: You remember that vampire show? The one you showed me?
ME: The Vampire Diaries?
MOM: Yeah. That one. Well. I turned on the TV the other day and there it was -
ME: Oh, no. You mean you caught the season 4 premiere?
MOM: Well, yeah. I guess. I just thought I'd be able to fill in the gaps on my own.
ME: *cringing* ....and?
MOM: And I'll be damned if Elena didn't turn into a vampire!

And then yesterday, we were chatting about nothing related to vampires when this happened.

MOM: Have you seen Lincoln, yet?
ME: No. I promise you I'll see Breaking Dawn 2 before I see anything else.
MOM: Oh! I hadn't done any of the Twilight things until just the other day when they showed the first two movies on TV. I watched them.
ME: ....and?
MOM: You know what I've decided? I've decided that the next time I get a pet, I'm going to get a werewolf.
ME: .....
MOM: Because I miss my cat, but I don't have a lot of time and if I got busy, my werewolf could just take care of itself. They're very self-sufficient and I think they're pretty. Don't you think they're pretty?
ME: .....I have to go internet you now.

So there you go. Some people post conversations with their children. I, apparently, post conversations with my mother.

Witches are Women, too

Friday the 13th, perhaps more than any other day of the year, makes me think of my mother.

It's a strange sort of association, and not one she intentionally worked to create. In fact, I think she'd be surprised to learn that every single time the 13th of the month falls on a Friday, I hear her voice singing, "Happy Women are Powerful Day, darling girls!"

I'd be willing to be this occurrence was unique to my house. This is the sort of story that I think captures the essence of my mother.

We didn't always go around calling Friday the 13th Women are Powerful Day. In fact, we probably didn't call it anything at all until I was in elementary school and capable of bringing home scary ideas like viruses. One day, I came home with Friday the 13th in tow - there was one on the horizon and I'd learned they were dire things. I remember explaining to my concerned mother that there was a list of things we needed to avoid: black cats (and we had three!), ladders, the color red, and umbrellas. When she asked me why we needed to be so careful on the 13th, my answer was obviously, "Because of the WITCHES."

"And what," she asked, "do witches do?"

"BAD THINGS." I was horrified that she, a grown adult, was clueless.

Since this was also the time in my life when I discovered a love for books by R. L. Stein and Christopher Pike, I'm sure she was already looking for signs of trouble. I know this to be true because whenever I picked up one of their books, my mother transformed into hag from 'The Princess Bride' and shouted, "Boo! Boo! Booooo!" She'd continue until she ran out of breath, at which point, we'd enter negotiations, which usually ended up with "If you get two MORE books and read them BOTH before that one, then you may get it." 

(Man, I miss that sort of negotiation.)

So! What this meant was that mom was tuned into things like useless fear and degradation of women (yes, witches are women, too). She wasn't going to stand for my blaming all the bad luck of Friday the 13th on a group of women, so she reclaimed it. 

"Natalie," she said. "I'll tell you a secret. Many people are afraid of witches because they were powerful women. Just like you. So, you don't have to be afraid of Friday the 13th. It's not actually bad luck. Not for us. It's our day because we are powerful women."

Well, you can bet I went right out to convert my friends over to this way of thinking (an unsuccessful campaign). I also started looking forward to the 13th because I thought, surely, on one of those days, my magical ability would present itself (still waiting...).

So, Happy Friday 13th, everyone. Live it up. I hope you go out and cross the path of a black cat, walk beneath a ladder, and that you're wearing red. 

Disney on Proper Hygiene and Fear

And so for the fifth time in my life, I went to Disney World. This is the sort of thing that makes me want to get all Susan Cooper-y and say in a boomy voice, "And then there were five." (Sooooo many bonus points if you take my meaning).

Disney with the Gratton's is always a lesson in strategy and quick crowd navigation. By now, I expect the plan to be laid out in beautiful detail days before we set foot in the park. This time was no different, but this time there were apps and the potential to reach maximum fun capacity was high. Tessa has already posted the play by play, so I think I'm going to talk about how Disney can still make me feel like a little kid and also about bathrooms.

Yes, bathrooms.

But let's start with feeling like I'm ten or twelve years old when I look up at the amazing display of fireworks (choreographed with music) and see hearts and Mickey's and REAL MAGIC in the sky. Or when, during one of their many 3D adventures, the seats/floor/air does something I didn't expect and I'm *actually* surprised. Or when my entire family breaks down in laughter over a shared joke and everyone is so, so happy. Or when I'm in line for Space Mountain and my legs are weak even though I know what's coming.

Space Mountain is really what does it to me. Every single time I get in that line, I remember the first time I rode it and how I begged my parents to take me. I remember feeling like I was finally old enough, wise enough, mature enough to be able to handle it and how I boasted it would be no big deal.

I remember being wrong. So very wrong. I remember being Scared To Death, but riding it again right away because my dad saw that there was no line and wanted to go again. He was probably just excited to finally have a chance to ride the thing. I couldn't back out and my legs were nothing but jello as we climbed back through the tunnels to the cars.

And that's what happens to me TO THIS DAY. I get in line for Space Mountain and I'm a bundle of irrational nerves. I sort of love that. It makes the ride thrilling every time I do it.

Usually, I can't do much other than hold on to the safety bar (seriously, SM is the only coaster on which I WILL NOT raise my hands) and hold my breath until it's over. By the third time (maybe?) I was feeling slightly more confident and when we were moving through the first tunnel before they shoot you into space I snapped a picture.

It's blurry because my hands were shaking with FEAR. Also, Tessa was yelling at me to put my phone away. I'll admit it wasn't the smartest thing to do on a roller coaster, but I think that photo was worth the risk.

But now let's talk about bathrooms. Why? Because there we found two remarkable things about them.

First, let's go with Disney, who cares so much about proper amusement park hygiene that they post signs in every single bathroom reminding you the steps required for washing your hands as though the process is as elusive as that for the three seashells. . .

Just in case you can't see in the photo, I'll repeat:

STEP ONE - Wet hands and apply soap.

STEP TWO - Scrub hands and rinse.

STEP THREE - Dry hands thoroughly using paper towels.

STEP FOUR - Re-read steps 1 through 3 to make sure you haven't missed one. All steps are crucial!

STEP FIVE - Take a picture and spread the word. Clean hands are happy hands!

O_O

So when it comes to bathrooms, I have to say that Hogsmeade wins. Hands down. Because this was their ladies room sign:


I mean, how awesome is that?

I was probably too thrilled when I noticed this sign. I can pretty much guarantee I was the only person photographing the public conveniences in Hogsmeade. At least on that day. ;)

And finally, my favorite picture from this trip, taken on the last day in the Magic Kingdom at just the right moment to capture some Mickey Magic.

Brother Adam

The distance between me and my siblings (not to mention my parents) is geographically challenging. There is an ocean between me and my sis and the better part of a continent separates me from my little brother, who came into my life when I was 17 and in the lands of LJ goes by adamposadas (and this is where I tell you if you aren't already reading him, you should, or you're missing out on gems like this). We are an adventurous bunch, that is for sure.

We spent the holidays of 2010 with my family in the depths of Mississippi. We didn't get everyone together, but we did manage to get Adam, who climbs things. No matter where we are, he climbs things. And I didn't realize this until we became adults with organized photo collections and had the experience of flipping through them and going, "Oh, look who's climbing that ___" wherein ____ stands in for castle, tree, statue, snow bank, telephone pole, thing that shouldn't be climbed up.

That might seem like a tangent, but it isn't. As a detail, it's remarkably central to his character. It used to make me nervous to turn around and find him missing and know that the most likely direction to look was up. But it doesn't anymore. Now, I'm more likely to point out the impossible climbing objects, because it's just plain fun to watch him work.

I have several Adam-related stories from the holidays. I'll get around to them, but really the whole trip really boiled down to this other picture, in which Adam tolerates his sisters.