A Soldier of Other Sorts

Summer of 2010

My grandmother's name is Kitty Holst.
If I were to make a list of things I've learned from my grandma, boy, you and I would both be here all day.
I remember shopping with my grandma on black fridays, how she always has a coupon for everything. How she would give us cough drops from her purse if we had a bad taste in our mouth. How she taught me all  the swearwords I know in Deutsch, and how she alone influenced me to take the language in high school. The over-the-top christmases she would spend months shopping for and decorating the Christmas tree every year. Her stories. Her hugs.  Her laugh. how she loved my craziness, how she encouraged my mistakes and appreciated how different I was from my sisters.  Those and many other things will forever and always be embedded in my memory.

About eight months ago my grandma was diagnosed with lung cancer.  She had many different types growing in her body and they gave her only four or five months to live.
The day I found out I went for a walk, not uncommon for me when something upsets me and I need to think things through.  I took my phone, sat on the bleachers at the park behind my  house and called my cousin Mikey.  I'm always able to talk to him about serious things like that.  He and I talked about the situation for a while, both of us unsure of what to do or what could happen. It felt unreal.  Cancer is just one of those things that doesn't make sense to you, until you are the one dealing with it.

I cried the next time I saw her, at Thanksgiving.  She was cheery as could be.  I gave her a hug and ran downstairs crying.  It was so hard to know she was sick on the inside when she didn't look any different on the outside.
At the cabin for Christmas I went running for my grandpa because she was screaming for him, crying and in what sounded like too much pain.  He went in there and sat by her on the bed, and asked me to shut the door.  Once more I held back tears.

I avoided calling my grandma for a very long time.  It was too hard to talk to her on the phone.  Because she sounded just fine over the line. There was nothing wrong in her voice. But I knew, in the back of my head, that she was sick.  Like a nasty little joke the telephone was trying to play on me.  So I avoided it.  My mom told me I'd regret it.  I'd look back one day and wish I had taken more time to chat with her.  And I felt guilty.  But I couldn't make myself pick up the phone.
Until, that is, about a week ago today.
I called her because I had no classes.  And she was delighted to hear my voice.  We talked for while, and she told me about having a lunch date with her friends, about some old times, memories she had. I cringed every time she brought up her treatments, like it was some casual topic of discussion. But when we hung-up I felt like a ten thousand pound piece of guilt had been lifted off my concious.  I only felt bad about not doing it sooner.

I am so PROUD of my grandma.  She has decided to go through kemo to buy more time.  Not for herself, not because she wants more days for her own, but because there are people that love her in her life that she refuses to let down.  She's fighting for her eight grandchildren. For her three children. She's fighting for her husband.  She's fighting for her family and friends, for her pastor and all the people that are praying for her.  I have never seen a person commit a more self-less act.  Because kemo is no picnic for her.
Since that day she was given four to five months, she has shown them up them by three or four more.  Just this weekend I was blessed enough to come home from work and see both her and my grandpa.  They stopped by before heading out to do some casino hopping with their friends down south.

I love my grandma, and words cannot describe how proud of her I am.  When I am older, my last memories of her will not be taken over by the fact that she was diagnosed with cancer. I will remember instead how she fought back stronger than the cancer could act.  Like a tiny, stubborn little soldier.
I will forever remember, how she is, and how she did, fight for her life.

Adapted Learning Inability

I'm sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for someone to be done with a check-up.

In the waiting room with me is a little girl.

She can't be more than eight years old.  Her hair is messy, and her clothes don't match.  She's sitting on her mother's lap with her knees up to her chin and her arms around her legs, asking questions about the things she sees on the TV screen.  The pictures, the people, the products in commercials, anything she has the slightest bit of curiosity about.

This morning, in my psychology class, my teacher said something in his welcome speech that caught my attention.

He said that he was afraid for college students. 

Picture borrowed from lifeatdrtoms.blogspot.com

He had a fear that we had lost our desire to learn, that all those years of homework in subjects we had little interest in made us loose our imagination, our curiosity to discover what we do not yet know and our excitement to find the solutions.

And he’s right to worry, you know.

How many of us open a Biology book and think, THIS is going to be FUN.

... Not many.  We look at the bolded words scattered around the pages and think damn... I have a lot of flashcards to make.  Or how long is studying for this final going to take me.

We no longer hang our papers with good scores on the fridge at home, or rush off the bus to show our parents our report cards.  A lot of us just aren’t excited about learning anymore.  Somewhere in our twelve years or general education before college we had the passion sucked right out of us.

In college, it is hard to get excited about learning a subject that doesn’t pertain to your major without thinking “this is not how I wanted to waste 2 grand or two hours of my time." But every part of the world around us really SHOULD interest us. We have the opportunity to slow down our busy lives and take a good look at the different aspects within it; be it plants, rocks, literature, art, biology, or human anatomy.  And that is rare and is something we should enjoy. 

So why do we look at learning as more of a chore as we get older?  Why do we loose our interest in gaining all the useless facts and knowledge we can?

I think it’s safest to say that college kids run on caffeine and energy drinks and usually work two or three jobs. That leaves just enough energy to do as little work in school as we can get by with doing, while still recieving passing grades.

This is the only class I have where the professor encouraged us to act half our age.

I hope there are crayons and water coloring activities involved... I’ll have to check my syllabus.

Strangers

"I couldn't help but think to myself, just how much I love strangers sometimes."

A house has been left in my care for this past week. When I stopped by today I received quite the shock; there was a truck and trailer in the driveway, the garage was open and a man was walking around in the yard.

I wasn't sure what to do.

I walked slowly up the driveway with the mail and accidently scared the daylights out of him. I said hello and I introduced myself as the person watching the house. He said hello and introduced himself as the guy working on the house. I laughed and said it was nice to meet him. He returned the gesture.

I decided he was potentially harmless and went inside with lunch I had brought. I thought about how cold he'd looked working out there. I remembered how my mom used to make lemonade and bring it out to the guys who worked on our roof during the summer. I dug through the pantry till I found hot chocolate mix, whipped up a big glass, and took it out to him.

He looked shocked, but took it and thanked me. He took a big gulp, re-thanked me, and went back to work.

I went back inside. While I was feeding the pets I thought about how he might be lonely working outside by himself and decided I'd shovel the driveway again and give him some company.

I put all my gear on and went outside. I shoveled in silence for a little while, until he came back around to the front of the house. He laughed at me and said I was going a little above the call of duty. I l told him I was just trying to do a good job. We got to talking while we worked.

People cease to amaze me.

His name was Steve; he said it was an old-fashioned name because nobody is named Steve anymore. He's on his second failed marriage; both times his wives cheated him on. One wife was a traveling salesmen, and he told me that's the number one career known for un-faithful spouses.

He stopped at one point, he looked really embarrassed and said it was weird to talk with a complete stranger about something so personal, but also that people had told him talking about it would help. I told him that I didn't mind listening, and that sometimes complete strangers are the best people to talk to simply because they've no right to judge you and they don't know who you are.

He considered this and went on.

He finds himself now a single dad with two sons, one nineteen years old, and one eleven. He moved back to the cities to be around family for the support during the divorce. He had lived in Hawaii when he was nineteen, and said that he hates the cold so much that he has no idea why he ever moved back.

"Stay in school," he told me. He dropped out and became a carpenter, and he regrets it now. He likes knowing how to do all different kinds of things though, and when he is sent to a job they don't even tell him what it is he will be doing till he gets there.

I told him my plans for the future, how I wanted to go into interior design and architecture. For a little while he even let me follow him around. He showed me what he was doing on the house and how it all worked with the electric boxes and bricks. It was cool to shadow someone who works by hand with the things you may one day be designing.

He kept telling me I was going over the top taking care of the house. And when I started scraping off the car in the driveway he just shook his head and laughed. I explained my situation and how I was trying to kind of impress the people whose house I was looking after. How I figured going over and above the job given sometimes does the trick.

I stayed out there while he was packing up the trailer, fiddling with things in the garage till he was done. I wanted to give him a proper goodbye.

"Well Aimee, it was very nice to meet you."

I shook his hand and said it was nice to meet him too. He told me I shouldn't try so hard to impress people, that he thought I had a "good heart," and that I'd go far in life just being me.

I told him that I hoped everything going on in his life would get better; he said he believed it would all pan-out eventually.

Then, he got in his truck, and began backing out. I took his empty hot chocolate cup and headed inside. I couldn't help but think to myself, just how much I love strangers sometimes.

I don't think people understand my reasoning for wanting to be a bartender. I want to be the girl in the old movies that hands a beer to a customer and asks him why he looks so down. I want to lean with my elbows on the counter in my band T-shirt and my face in my hands and listen as he tells me his stories. I love being that person, that just listens without giving advice no one plans on following. Because sometimes advice isn't what people want. And half the time they wont follow it anyways. 

They just want somebody to listen to them. Without judging who they are. And today just further confirmed that desire. I never mentioned those plans to Steve, but I feel he'd have understood during our chat this afternoon.  It's funny, how a complete stranger can se more promise in you, and believe in you more than those that you've known your whole life.  The ones you expect that 'support' from. 

An afternoon well spent.

If I Had A Million Dollars

In the song the artists list-off houses, cars, outrageous animals and other things they would purchase or give away had they the money to do so.  They sound like grownup kids in a candy shop, with a million dreams to match every dollar.

I work, as most know, at an SA gas station in a smaller town and we sell lottery like the stars come out at night.  There's a flashing neon sign in our store window that runs the amount of each jackpot every few minutes. 

Work is really slow, in fact I'm writing this on my break as we speak, and I caught a glimpse that one jackpot, the Mega Millions, is up to 290 million dollars.

290 mill!  A week or so ago a customer told me that someone in New York had won 16 million on that same lottery.

I started thinking about purchasing a ticket myself.  What would I do with all that money though?  Business is slow and ideas began popping into my head.  
They say money changes a person.  We've all heard the stories of past lottery winners; quitting their jobs, retiring early to a private beach and then ending up in some dramatic scandal due to greed taking over their better judgment.  
Well, there's those people and then there's the little old couple in Idaho that wins a couple million and donates as much as they can to charities, while keeping there jobs and living a comfortable, humble life.

So what would you, or anyone do, with that kind of money? 

I know so many people with financial problems; loosing jobs, not being able to afford school, housing foreclosures, etc.  
I know someone who can't even afford his or her own divorce.  With our national debt and the economy down the toilet it's about all we seem to be able to think about.  People are more cautious about swiping that credit card. I know for a while I handed mine to my mother and told her not to give it back to me out of a streak of self-discipline.

I have a few ideas, of what I would do with such money.  People like using the phrase "If only," and I've remembered some things they have told me they’d like had they the money for it.

I would help my mother get somewhere warm, because the cold makes it hard for her to breathe.

I would give my dad any tools he needed to start-up his own computer business.  He's always wanted to be his own boss.

I would buy my friend Annie her own helicopter, because she's wanted to be a pilot since she was eight years old.

 I would buy my ex boyfriend the nicest, fastest car I could find.  I remember once when he told me that if he had a nice car he would be happy, because it's all he really ever wanted.

I would help pay for my friend Tyler’s college education, so he could get out of his house and start life on his own without the worry of debt.

I'd pay off my friend Jess's school loans, so she could start her life with her boyfriend comfortably.

I'd buy Lizzy a hamster, with an awesome wall-to-wall crawling cage, just because she's always wanted one.

I'd buy my sister Megan a dog or two, and donate some money to the human society in hope that it’d solve all animal cruelty problems and those sad commercials wouldn’t show up on my TV screen anymore.

I would help my friend Aaron start and design his own coffee shop… he’s a little addicted to the magic bean (:

And for myself, well I've always dreamed of traveling the world.  I'd pay off my college loans before bringing my boyfriend, and best freind, Peter, with me, to see the seven new and old wonders of the world together. 

 It would be great to win that 290 million, to think of all the things I could do.  Those are just a few of the things I’d do first.  
The things I really want, money, of course, can't buy me; new bones and lungs for my grandma, or a time machine to take me back with all the knowledge I have today. 

So what would you do, if you won all that money?  Is it really that easy to solve our problems, and the problems of the people we know?  For the longest time I've stood by the fact that money cannot buy happiness, and I continue to believe that. True, your life would be easier.  But most people's problems aren't about material objects, those objects just act as a comfort.  And as far as happiness goes, it's human nature to always want more than we can have.

I'll admit... I'm probably going to end up buying one or two tickets before I leave work today.  But for those of you that are mentioned in this blog, if I win the 290 million dollar jackpot, you be sure to keep me to my word.

The Myth Behind the Perfect Imperfection.

A week or so ago, while on a group trip to Duluth, one of my good friends and I spent a good portion of our night arguing about the word that is "perfect," and it's existence in our society today.

According to Dictionary.com, the word perfect is defined as being:

Perfectper·fect

[adj., n. pur-fikt; v. per-fekt] –adjective

1. conforming absolutely to the description or definition of an ideal type: a perfect sphere; a perfect gentleman.

I personally don't believe it has a place, that there is no such thing.

But I suppose like any other word in the English language, it could heavily depend on the context in which it is used.

I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times my parents have made it exceptionally clear to me just how imperfect my decisions and actions can be.  Whose hasn't?

More than once during high school a paper was handed back to me with an "A" written under my name on the front page of the document I had handed in. 

An "A" on a paper is considered a "perfect" score.

But is that in itself even a realistic judgment?

I handed that paper in to one teacher and one teacher alone.  I bet you, that if I had taken that same exact paper to four or five other teachers, at least one of them wouldn't have liked it as much.  Eventually one of them would have told me to change something about my writing to make it better fit their own personal taste.

So the word "perfect" is, in itself, truly an imperfect thing. 

An unrealistic adjective created by people to describe something that meets their own personal satisfaction. 

What tastes like a steak cooked to "perfection" to one person may be grossly over-done to another.  We as people have such different tastes in anything and everything, in ways of seeing and thinking about things, that the word "perfect" can't possibly exist as being the same thing in the eyes of every person.

Yet it is used as a universal adjective, and always has been seen as a word that anyone can use to describe anything they please. So the next time someone complains about your cooking, don't take it too deeply to heart, they probably wouldn't have made anything you would've wanted to eat anyways.

The next time you get an "imperfect" grade on that paper you spent hours the night before critiquing to perfection, go get a second opinion from a different professor before you go breaking your keyboard in half.

Better yet... remind your parents the next time you get scolded for doing something they don't approve of, that realistically there is no way you can meet their expectations of being a perfect child, so you've simply given-up trying.

They can still ground you, and scold you, and hell; they'll probably do both.

But you'll have the sweet satisfaction in the back of your mind knowing that you are technically the only one that made a realistic point during the entire argument.

It's a universal, perfect excuse for any and every occasion.

Thank you, Mr. Webster.

Running from Memories- Everything Happens for a Reason.

"Sometimes, you have to retrace your steps to become
comfortable with the idea that it is a memory for a reason."

Every day that I walk into work, I learn something different about life.

I work at a truck stop on the outskirts of a small town, stuck between cornfields and one long stretch of highway.

I remember my first day there.  I was almost late because I wasn’t familiar with the area (so I thought), and I couldn’t find the gas station.  Turns out I had passed it twice without noticing it. 

My mind contains certain memories like stamps on an envelope.  I remember what the letter was about, but the stamp is the distinct moment about that day that doesn’t seem to make any sense to me until a good deal down the road.

Over a year ago, we were trying to find our friend’s graduation party, but we had passed it because I was complaining about churches being so huge and extravagant.  He was driving and trying to listen to me talk, so neither of us noticed the massive climbing wall on the other side of the road that had been put up by military sergeants at the party.

We drove down the road a little bit more and once we got to the top of the hill; I distinctly remember two things happening.

1)   1) Him saying we needed to turn the jeep around because we were in the wrong place we must have already passed it.

2)   2) Seeing a gas station at the bottom of the hill.

Like a time stamp on my memory I remember thinking that it was an odd place to put a ginormous gas station.  We whipped a U-ey and found the party on the way back at a park we had passed on the opposite side of the road as the church I’d been criticizing earlier.

            There were open, walk-in interviews for my job now, about five months ago.

I walked into the store and filled out an application on a whim.  I was hired three days later and they told me the name of the store I would be positioned at (you don’t have a choice, you go where the company sends or needs you) I walked in just in time on my first day, and met my new boss and some of my new co-workers.   I spent my first day watching training videos. 

My second day I hid in the back and scrubbed the floors. 

And my third day, I finally got to train on my register.

A week or so into my job, I was looking out the window, watching the pumps, and noticed that the street in front of the station turned into a steep, winding hill a little ways up the road. 

My stomach went numb. 

All of a sudden I flashed back, and in my mind I saw a view from the top of that hill, a about a year ago sitting in the passengers side of his jeep, looking at a curiously placed gas station. 

I wanted to quit my job. 

You have to understand at the time, he and I had separated not long before, and I was doing all I could to start over and forget everything that had happened. 

Days later I learned seven miles up the highway was his hometown. 

About a month after that, I was invited to go to the bowling alley on the other side of the trees in our lot and realized it was the bowling alley where he and I had had our first date. 

I started freaking out, doing the best I could to ignore the fact that I was surrounded by things and moments I was trying to forget.

A couple of weeks ago, a boy that I am seeing now visited me at work and asked me what way I was taking home.  I told him I took the highway home, because I was scared to take the hill… “There are no lights.” I didn't tell him my real reasons... but he egged me on for weeks to take that way home, because it would be faster.  And every time I would get to the turn out of the parking lot after my shift, I would stop and think about it, but couldn't make myself turn my wheel right. 

In reality, I just didn’t want to look in my review mirror at the top and flashback.  And I didn’t want to see the park where my friend’s party had been, where we had spent all day and most of the night, until we had to rush home.

Then about a week before thanksgiving, I gutted-up and decided to try that way home.
And I did look in my rear-view mirror to see the station behind me at the top of the hill,
and I did pass the park where the party had been and remembered everything that’d happened that day. 

But now, I take that way home every time I work.  And it isn't really even that much faster.

Because I’ve learned, from the people that I work with, that it is not a bad thing to remember, it is a bad thing to remember and not learn.

Every single person at my work has bad things going on in their lives.  

For one woman, it is a constant, never ending guessing game of chancing her heart being broken once again, because she has faith in the man that has hurt her before to change his ways.

For another girl, she is too young, pretty, and fun to be the most negative girl I’ve ever met. Her boyfriend is a solid support system in her life and I myself can tell he wants nothing more than to always be there for her.

There is a man that is newly married, and already I can tell his marriage is struggling and on the verge of possibly being very unhappy.

There is another girl who settles for less than she deserves, impatient on finding the one that will treat her right.

Listening to all their stories, their pasts and experiences, I’ve been able to, as horrible as it sounds, feel much better about the events in my own life.  There is always someone out there that has had things worse than yourself happen to them, by listening to their stories and observing their attitudes you can learn how not to act, how not to see life, or what not to do. 

Sometimes, you have to retrace your steps to become comfortable with the idea that it is a memory for a reason. 

Memories are not meant to harm you but meant to teach you and lead you somewhere else, to take you back and make you learn what it was that went wrong, so you can avoid it and help other’s avoid similar situations in the future.  If you cannot become comfortable and accepting of your past, there is no way to move on into the present with the ability and mind set to accept anything and everything that is in store to come. 

Posture- What You Say Without Actually Saying Anything

You can tell a lot about a person’s self image as they walk down the hall past you.  Look at how they hold themselves, how they walk and how fast, where their eyes go when you get close.

Do they hunch their shoulders and stare at the floor?  Do they clutch their books to their chest and increase their pace as people pass them.  Do they veer as far to the other side of the hall as far as they can go without falling through an open door.

I was walking down the Medical hall to my next class and a boy in a sweater vest nearly ran into a trophy case.  Not even three minutes later a girl clutched her books to her coat and watched her feet steep one in front of the other.  

My first thought was I hadn’t put on any deodorant, or I’d forgotten to shower.  Maybe I’d wiped my nose and smeared snot all across my face. 

None of those seemed likely.

This got me thinking.  Why do people have lack of self-confidence in the first place?  

I mean if you think about it realistically… None of us look the same.  So what’s the point in worrying about it? 

No one person looks alike, so why do we whine and complain about everything that’s wrong with us when A) we can’t do anything about it and B) we can’t physically make ourselves all look the same, so no matter what “flaws” you have, you will always in one way or another look and act differently than someone else.

I bet you if you asked someone to come up with ten things they hate about themselves it would take them thirty seconds to point at everything they hate on their body.  If you asked them to tell you ten good things about themselves, they’d veer away from physical aspects and list off their talents or abilities instead.

Why can’t people look someone straight in the eye and say hey what’s up? This is how I decided to dress this morning and if you don’t like it, well, quite frankly my dear, I just don’t give a damn. 

I used to be vain about my looks.  I used to spend hours and hours on my hair, make-up, outfits...  I’d stand in front of the mirror with magazines in front of me, trying to get myself as close to the girl in the picture as I could get.   What was the point of that?  I was never going to look exactly like her. We  didn’t look the same naturally much less with ten gallons of eyes shadow weighing down our lids.

So stand-up straight, walk comfortably in your own shoes.  Meet people’s eyes and avoid injury from unexpected open doorways or glass cases.  Because you look stupid when you walk as if your afraid of yourself.  If you don’t have a problem with you, no one else will either.  You might as well respect and see the beauty in your own features and personality.  If you don’t like you… how can you expect anyone else too?

Just a thought.