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Trapped in chaos as terror reigns
Empire collapsed and crumpled
Survivors have faith as they live in their sanctuaries
Independence stolen from them
Icons maimed and burned
Their beautiful glass homes shattered
Flawless people, lives
Devoured in horror victims scream
Trapped in chaos as terror reigns
Imagine heroism
Faith in their sanctuaries and cathedrals
Liberty and independence
Chaos no more
I wrote this for my gifted & talented writing class in high school. We were given a page from the article If You Want To Humble An Empire, written by Nancy Gibbs and published in Time Magazine on September 14, 2001. The assignment was to circle some words of our choice and try to create a poem from it. I actually had it published in some poetry book years ago but I don’t even remember where now. So there you have it.
I remember sitting at the lunchroom tables in study hall with Mrs. Tello when a student (whose name I wouldn’t forget but will withhold for privacy reasons) came running in to tell the teacher of the news. It didn’t take long for half the school to congregate in the gymnasium where the phys. ed teachers had turned on two televisions broadcasting the news. I was a senior in high school, 4 days past my 17th birthday, as I watched the second plane hit the second tower. Paper flying through the air, people jumping to their deaths on national television.
I worried about my cousins’ uncle, a firefighter in New York City. I worried about my brothers, and what this act of terror meant for the men (boys) of this country.
I remember standing at the end of our driveway Tuesday night with my mother while we held candles in our hands.
I remember being on the soccer field at school, days after the attack. A puddle jumper plane flew over and we all held our breath and realized it had felt like an eternity since we had seen a plane in the sky.
I didn’t go to war. I didn’t have to lose anyone I loved, but many people did. And as for the rest of us, I think all of America lost a bit of innocence that day. As a parent I continually wonder and occasionally worry about what kind of world my daughter is going to grow up in. I hope she never has to question the safety of this great nation like we did on that Tuesday in 2001.
Where were you when you heard about the terrorist attacks?
Well, all in all I would say this was a pretty decent birthday. First of all it was kicked off over the weekend by our amazing fry-a-thon at camp. Then, my husband gave me this little thing:
I go to work for a half hour yesterday morning before heading out to my ultrasound. And we get to see this little bean:
They tell me baby is measuring 7 weeks and 1 day but I feel like my 7 weeks 5 days is more accurate so I’m sticking to that. Heart rate was 146 beats/min.We leave pretty happy.
I go back to work for a couple of hours and then head off to a dentist appointment where I am reminded how awesome my teeth are. That’s right. Awesome.
After a near-death-from-boredom experience at work, I go home to my little girl, wearing a Sesame Street party hat, standing at the window, yelling, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MUMMA!” Seriously cute.
Penny’s Nana shows up to take her for the evening so that husband and I can go see a movie. We throw around dinner ideas but the bottom line is we don’t have a lot of time and I refuse to eat McDonalds or Burger King on my birthday. Husband takes me to Sonny’s pizza and buys it by the slice. Huge score. We head to the movies. I want to find out about this thing Flagship Cinemas does where supposedly you can see a movie for free. Turns out it’s for real and husband and I go see Apollo 18. Kind of awful, kind of entertaining. Considering we only paid for 1 of us to get in and the alternative was something like Shark Night 3D or Spy Kids 4D….I’ll take it and call it a success.
I was slightly 16 years old again when a preview for a Daniel Radcliffe horror movie came on and teased us with, “Coming Soon.” WHEN? COMING WHEN??!?? Leon told me to quiet down and I told him this was my one day a year that I could be… “Obnoxious?” He asked. Yes, actually. Obnoxious. Also, I’m fairly confident that any other female movie goers in that theater agreed with me. I mean honestly who shows a Daniel Radcliffe preview and ends it with “Coming Soon” ? Stupid.
After the movie we go pick up The Penster at my mothers house and have a good laugh in her kitchen with my mom and sister. Somehow my sister and I decided that my daughter spoke Pirate and thought we should put words into her mouth, “Arggg! I need to go to bed matee!”
So we head back at home and finish the night with Big Brother in bed.
And maybe I’m old because skipping work for a doctor and dentist appointment were the highlight of my day. And maybe I’m old because I had a seriously awesome birthday and it didn’t involve a bounce house or clowns. But it was awesome, even though that movie preview was ridiculous.
Because tomorrow (9/7) is my birthday (the big 2-7), I thought I would write a post about things you may not know about me. 7 things to be exact. If you have to ask why 7 and not 10, re-check the calendar. I’ve come across some of these [things you didn't know about me] posts in the past that I have found thoroughly enjoyable so I thought it might be a fun way to start the day.
Below are 7 things you might not know about me
1. I once shaved a cat. For real. When I was in high school I worked at a Veterinary Clinic owned by a friend of the family. Usually my duties involved cleaning kennels and mopping floors but occasionally it included shaving animals for surgery. The first time I was ever actually in surgery, watching a cat with an abscess being cut open, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And then, to my dismay, I got real light-headed. The veterinarian must have seen the color drain from my face because he yelled at me to sit on the floor and pull my knees to my chest. Not my proudest moment.
2. Drummer extraordinaire? I could play drums in high school because my father had a kit and I played when I visited him. I think I was okay, but I’m no Travis Barker. Somehow it got out at school that I was some kind of amazing drummer and had been playing since I was like 4 years old or something. People actually came up to me to ask about it. It was the weirdest thing and I have no idea where that even came from.
3. Professional Librarian. When I was in college at UMaine I worked in the library for work-study. I loved it there and I could totally have taken naps while putting books away at 10pm on a Friday night. But, I didn’t. I did however proudly wear a One Fish, Two Fish t-shirt while working at the front desk.
4. 7 year old’s future: pregnant drop out. In 3rd grade, to my mother’s dismay, a teacher suggested I would become a pregnant drop out by age 16 because I held my pencil incorrectly. Well guess what? BA in English, Mrs. Poulin! OH SNAP! And I hold my pen the same exact way to this day, thankyouverymuch!
5. The family play. When I was a child my cousins and I would come up with various skits to put on at family get-togethers over the holidays. Usually this involved my artsy cousin, DeAnne, being bossy, which none of us noticed because we were caught up in her sparkle and dazzled by her amazing knowledge of directing. My sister, Chelsea, played a baby while my cousin, Marty and I played dogs. My name was always Fluffy. I don’t know why. I can only imagine what our parents thought.
6. I smelled like a homeless person. When I was in college in Utah, my sister embarrassed both of us on a campus shuttle. It was BAD. It’s a long story so I’ll cut to the end. When we got off and she realized her mistake she repeated (a hundred times), “Sissy, I didn’t know!!” I laughed so hard that I peed my pants. Right in the middle of campus. I’m classy like that.
7. Half of my heart is in Utah. And I can never get it back. It’s not a person or any particular thing. It’s just a little bit of everything. It’s waking up every day and looking out the window and being surrounded by mountains. It’s the way the leaves fall in the road late every fall. It’s the mild winters and the early springs. It’s the color of the flowers that show up every March. It’s the dry summers. It’s the feeling of a fresh school year. It’s walking on campus and running to catch the shuttle. It’s the college and high school initials on the hillsides. It’s sharing a dorm with my sister. It’s taking the train downtown to go shopping. It was a time of being responsible while still being a kid. When seeing an LL Bean backpack made me gasp while my heart skipped a beat [another East Coaster??]. It’s how everything seemed new and clean and everything was an adventure. It wasn’t perfect and I missed almost everything from back home. From people like my mother and now husband, to the most unexpected things like running into someone you know every time you go to the grocery store. I missed those things then. If I could turn back time I wouldn’t do anything differently. I’d still be here, where I am now, in Maine, with my family. But I still can’t shake that longing for the freedom and adventure of my college years. Of being out-of-state, on the other side of the country, living on the side of something majestic. I don’t know if I will ever really get over it, and I struggle with it every time the seasons change. Even 5 years later.
Tell me something about YOU that I don’t know!
As long as I can remember my family has been meeting at our family camp every Labor Day (and many other days throughout the summer). When I was away in college I felt lost each Labor Day. Like I had misplaced an important part of me. Labor Day at camp is like Christmas morning in the living room. Without it, things just don’t seem right.
I remember sitting around the picnic table through the years while I celebrated birthdays with my cousin, born one day prior to my first birthday. He turned 8 and I turned 9, he turned 13 and I turned 14. This year we turn 26 and 27.
But Labor Day weekend was always more than the trucks or walkman our grandmother bought us in 1994. (yes, that dude in the Florida Marlins hat was me. Serious tom boy at age 9 ages 2-14)
Goodbye to the days spent sitting in circles, watching the water with friends.
Goodbye to the evenings with cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents, sharing burgers and corn on the cob .
Farewell to watching loons swim across the pond while laughing at the uncle dropping the F-bomb, the artsy cousin telling stories, and to our grandparents who insist we must want just one more burger.
On Labor Day we say goodbye. We will see each other soon – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and times in between. But to the camp we say see you next year. And we celebrate this farewell with food of course. As kids, we often closed the summer the same way we opened it; with lobster, chicken or cheeseburgers. But we have a new tradition now: the fry-a-thon.
The fry-a-thon is a serious event. Pickles, snickers bars, fries, turkey, reece’s, oreos, onion rings, twinkies, cheese curds, bacon wrapped white castle burgers, bacon wrapped cheese sticks, bacon, perogies, avacados, peppers, green beans, sweet potato chips. We didn’t mess around. And by we I mean the entire family who helped purchase, cut, batter, fry and consume all of that amazing goodness.
So now Labor Day is over, and I’m sad to say goodbye to all of those people and memories so dear to me. So, while I detox from all the grease, I’ll anxiously wait to do it all again next year, because nothing tops an end of summer celebration with the whole family at camp.
Oh yeah. Happy Birthday, Marty 
Authors Note: In all fairness, we could very well wind up right back at camp tomorrow night or even next week. It’s not over til it’s over and September could still be fair game for camp hangouts. It’s more about the end of summer feeling. Also, if you have to ask about Labor Dabor, go here.
Imagine a place where everything is big and flashy and you can sit on these flashy things and they move. Everywhere you walk you see your favorite Hispanic chica in balloons. There are cows and goats and pigs and french fries that come in a paper bowl the size and shape of your dogs water dish. This place is the fair.
My mother asked me this week (Friday?) if she could take Penny to the Windsor Fair. I said sure but wondered if I could go as well – who doesn’t enjoy a good fair? Also, I really just couldn’t miss seeing Penny’s face when she saw the animals and went on a ride or two.
When we woke up Saturday morning I tried to convince Penny she needed a shower. “Don’t you want to go see Nana?? We’re going to the fair with Nana!”
She looked at me like I was stupid and just said, “No.”
What she meant was, “I have no idea why you want me to shower. I want to live in these Dora PJ’s for the rest of my life.”
It took some coaxing on my part, “Penny, look at me. Nana is coming. She is going to pick us up in [key words] Nana’s car.”
I had her attention. For some reason she thinks Nana’s Subaru Legacy is the best car ever.
“We are going to ride in Nana’s car and go to the fair. At the fair we will see [keywords] animals like cows and pigs and horsies. And you can go on rides. But we have to take a shower and get dressed first.”
She looked at me, obviously thrilled with this idea. She threw her arms out and gasped, “I NEED SHOES!”
No, no, crazy girl. You need a shower first!
And that was how our morning began. Nana showed up and we hit the road. While we gabbed on and on, Penny patiently looked out the window in the back seat. When we parked at the fairgrounds I began to unbuckle her from her seat.
“I wanna turn da wheel, Mum!”
She repeated it a couple of times and I actually said to her, “Turn the wheel?? I’m sorry, Penny, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
It wasn’t until we began to make our way to the entrance gate that I realized what she meant. She threw her arm in the air and pointed to the big colorful wheel in the sky with buckets hanging all around it.
“The wheel!!!!”
Oh, the ferris wheel! We saved that for later.
We took some time walking through the farm animal area. She checked out the goats and pigs and cows and sheep. Obviously she was concerned about her fashion sense amidst farm animals.
I’m pretty sure she was saying something along the lines of, “Stay, cows!”
When the animals got boring we walked over to the rides but as it turned out, they weren’t open for another 45 minutes. It wasn’t hard to waste time by eating lunch. Between the three of us there were two hot dogs, two corn dogs, a candy apple, a dough boy and a shared bowl of french fries.
Here she is, leading the way. “Mumma, Let’s go!”
At one point Nana decided she wouldn’t mind throwing away a few dollars so that Penny could play a game. The game involved picking a rubber duck out of a blow up pool (for no apparent reason) and then automatically winning a prize (possibly worth $0.25). Penny picked a pink doggie. He looks work it, right?
Soon the rides were open. The carousel looked safe enough so I took her on that first. What I didn’t count on was it going 40mph while I struggled to hold Penny and questioned my ability to take a photo in motion at that speed. Each time we rounded the corner again she would shout, “There’s Nana! Hi, Nana!” The ride went so fast that she screamed with joy and I can’t say I was surprised when she bellowed out, “Yee-Haaa!”
We wanted to let her go on the train but it wasn’t moving yet, so we did the bounce house. When she figured out what was going on, she kicked her shoes off before even getting out of the stroller.
We contemplated some of the other kiddie rides but based on speed and set up, we weren’t too comfortable with sending her on a helicopter or bumble-bee that twirled in circles without an adult to hold onto her. Am I the only one freaked out by these toddler rides where they ride alone? They seem super sketchy. My mother commented that if we had to question it, we should avoid it. Good point. So we all went on the ferris wheel instead.
She might have liked it.
Here she is yelling to the people down on the ground. Something along the lines of, “Hello! I’m on da wheel!”
I like the death grip I have on her in this picture. She was a little too brave for my liking.
We decided to search for other rides and saw the train running. This was the moment of truth for Penny. She was going on it (dun dun dunnnn) alone. I didn’t worry too much except at this point she was clearly exhausted.
And then it took off.
We went another trip on the merry-go-round and then called it a day. Someone needed a nap, but not before Nana had to buy her a Dora balloon and candy bracelet.
Here she is on the ride home. Candy bracelet face. Not tired at all.
We had so much fun and I am so grateful to my mother for bringing us to the fair. I think she and I had as much fun as Penny did, just watching her facial expressions was a riot. I was thinking of taking her to another fair that starts next week. Necessary? No. But how could I not want to see this face again?
Sorry I’m so late in posting this! Got carried away between a visit to Auntie’s house this evening along with attempting bedtime and needing to read about a million books before Penny would call it a night with me.
So here it is, completely random (thanks to random.org), the winner of the 250 Personalized Stickers giveaway is…
Congratulations, Tanya! I bet you will come up with a great way to use these personalized stickers!
Please contact me via email at pensparade@gmail.com so that I can get your contact information for the prize.
Thanks to everyone for playing!
