Another Letter

Dear Aunt Janice,

I didn't know you very well, and now I never will, but I'm not sad about it.

I know this sounds horrible, but you never did anything to deserve my tears.

All my life, your name was synonymous with fights, grudges, petty family feuds. You tortured my grandmother, and you did it on purpose. As my grandma likes to put it, you sunk your claws into my uncle while he was too young to realize what he was getting into, and you didn't release him until yesterday. But worst of all, you tore apart her relationship with her brother.

They were once very close and you very jealous. She even named one of her children after him, a child who probably won't even bother making the drive to your funeral. Having two Uncle Dougs, I distinguished between them by "the one with the mean wife" and the one without.

As I grew up and learned more about your conflicts with the rest of the family, the more you became a picture of what a life shouldn't be. When I die, I don't want my nieces and nephews to bow out of my funeral. I don't want to only be remembered for the grief I caused.

I've always thought that grudges are a waste of time, and you prove that. Months and years of silent treatment is ridiculous and immature, especially when you're over twelve years old.

I hate to say it, but the world might be better with you not in it. You've shunned your children and cut your husband off from his family. Maybe now my grandmother and her brother can renew the relationship you tore away, and forgiveness can mend the wounds you caused.

But I'm afraid the scars you left on Grandma's fragile conscious will be hard to erase. She will feel guilty for the nature of your relationship, even if it was your own fault. That is because she is a better person, a bigger person, than you ever where.

So I guess I should thank you for leading by example and showing me how not to be. I hope you're happy now.

Samantha

(This is my 100th post. I wish it were happier.)

Fate

When my mom gets drunk enough (I can usually tell when this point has been reached because her left eye closes.), she likes to talk about fate. It has annoyed me most of my life, but I have to admit, there's some interest in it for the sober person.

My mom has never been completely happy with where we have lived. She always finds something wrong with it. With the exception of one place, I've always tried to find the good parts about the area and embrace them. In our current town, she swears the people "are just weird here." I try to tell her that people are weird everywhere, and the people of this town closely resemble those of her beloved and often romanticized hometown, but she'll have none of it.

Anyway, during her fate conversations, she always wonders what would have happened if Dad, while in the Air Force, had gotten orders somewhere else, or other things that would change the course of events that led to me sitting here in this house, in this town, in this state, in this country. Playing with what ifs is kind of fun.

What if my grandfather hadn't fallen dangerously ill in the months preceding my birth? Living in Japan, Mom wasn't qualified to fly or something while she was pregnant with me, and couldn't come home to Virginia and her ailing father, but I was born three months early and they were able to fly home with me to see him in his last months. If that hadn't have happened, I might have grown up in Japan. How different my life would have been! Perhaps if my grandpa hadn't smoked all his life, or worked in the coal mines, or had a better genetically engineered heart, I would live in Japan right now.

Or what if my dad hadn't joined the Air Force? I would still have been born, but I would reside in my parents' hometown. I wouldn't have the childhood I'm now grateful for. I would have been subjected much more strongly to the religious throes of my grandmother. I would probably be sheltered and devout and slightly redneck.

I could sit here all day and play out the what ifs. A lot of things had to happen in order for me to arrive here the person I am. It's easy to say I'm glad what happened happened because I'm grateful of any good qualities I've come to possess and can tolerate all my faults.

But perhaps there's a far better version of myself lost to the hands of chance.

A song goes "some believe in destiny and some believe in fate, but I believe that happiness is something we create, and you best believe that I'm not gonna wait." I love that line. It's so true, and something perhaps my mother should embrace. It's not about where we moved to, the people and places that shaped me. It's about what I choose to do with what I have, and creating my own happiness. I'm only doomed to be unhappy if I condemn myself to it.

No fate about it.

PostSecret

(This isn't mine, but I do love it so.)

I've been obsessed with PostSecret for over a year now. I don't remember where I found it, but I'm sure glad I did. Something about the whole concept, and the postcards themselves, just mesmerize me.

(For the sake of clarity, PostSecret is an art project started by a man named Frank Warren. He left blank postcards with instructions to write a secret that is completely true and nobody knows about on it and mail it to him. It started with him just leaving 3000 cards around his home town in Maryland and has exploded into a nationwide phenomenon and two bestselling compilation books.)

I guess it all operates off the idea that you need to get things off your chest before you can move forward. Some of the secrets are heavy and sad, some are funny and light. But I bet they all feel good to admit.

There are random quotes throughout the book people sent it about the experience of sending in their secret. Several of them say it gave them a feeling of renewed hope, others gained the motivation to confess to their loved ones. Some just felt a little lighter.

But what I like most about PostSecret is that it shows a common link between all of humanity. Everybody has secrets, things about themselves that they don't like, or experiences they've never been able to share. And when you read through the secrets, you can always find one or two that hit close to home. You're not alone; you're only choosing to be by keeping quiet. PostSecret allows you a unique kind of confessional anonymity.

Also, some of them are just beautifully made. It is art, after all, and how people choose to represent their secret aesthetically often says a lot about how they feel. Most of them express a new confidence with bold lettering, some display bright colors and vibrant pictures signaling new hope, and others are dark with pain and admittance.

I look forward to the weekly posting of new secrets on Sunday at www.postsecret.com. Frank still sorts through them by hand and chooses which ones to put on the website, and only the current week's secrets are available. It all adds to the experience.

Perhaps I'm a little overly fond of this project, and am treating it with more religious value than it actually serves, but I can't help it. Perhaps if we all used this kind of therapy, life would be a little less... secret.

Landscape Part One

In spite of myself, something I learned in school has seeped its way into my subconscious and is now slowly affecting the way I view the world. Education works, who woulda guessed it?

As I traveled various places in the last month and a half of summer, I stared out the large mini-van window to my right at the rapidly changing landscape.

The familiar fairly flat and slightly hilly land of my native area gave way to the metropolitan forests of the North. You see highway and more highway until all of the sudden you're surrounded by water, confused at the winding roads leading to tollbooths, and then BAM you're in the middle of New York City. There's nothing gradual about it. Lincoln Tunnel and then Manhattan, in all its polluted, crowded, and miraculous beauty.

The very first thing we saw was an extremely narrow street (the streets get wider as you work towards the middle of the island) flanked by delivery vans with complete disregard for awestruck tourists, and a foreign system of street signs. I wasn't the only one marveling at the concrete-shock. Dad could only say, "Samantha, take a picture of this":




Soon we began to pick up the nuances of the city, and it became less overwhelming and easy to enjoy. But I was always aware of the contrast to home. Once, while we were walking around in Battery Park, we heard a fellow tourist behind us sum it up so well: "You really are transparent in New York City!"

Transparent. That is the perfect word. While the rudeness of New Yorkers is often exaggerated in the name of stereotype, it is perfectly true that while you walk up and down the streets, nobody cares about you. The nodding of heads and "how are yous?" of small-town North Carolina do not exist there. Nobody makes eye contact, even when swerving out of your path. Ipods, newspapers, frappecinos--these are what hold attention.

Is the anonymity born of the landscape? If you stopped to talk to every New Yorker that you passed by, nothing would ever be accomplished. After all, eight million people live on that tiny island, and that doesn't count the commuters that flood in every day and the tourists that pour in from all over the world. It isn't practical to be friendly. You have to look out for yourself, because you haven't the time or ability to look after anyone else.

I kind of enjoyed the fact that nobody was paying any attention to me. It's a different kind of freedom. It eliminates an air of self-consciousness. Maybe that's why New Yorkers appear more confident. They aren't raised with the feeling that everyone is watching them, because they simply aren't. Being pulled into a flood of millions of people allows you the freedom to concentrate on yourself.

But I also enjoy the feeling of community and the togetherness of home. I like passing by people you know in the grocery store, and even ones you don't, and having them acknowledge you. The sense of belonging. If everyone is watching you, then everyone has the opportunity to help and you have the added drive not to let them down.

It's amazing how one species, so spread out, can be so different. A human is a human, whether surrounded by skyscrapers or cornfields. I'd like to be a person that can enjoy both.

Charge!

I've been so horrible about writing lately! I really must get back into the habit. But I've been far too lazy to even convey a coherent thought. So I'll just rant about war re-enactments.

I do not understand them. They look so horribly hot and boring, especially the guys that get shot outside of the small relief created by shady trees. I saw one guy die expertly in the creek. That was smart.

And what do they accomplish? Why do we need to redo the war? Why do people need to watch? I guess it's human nature to revel in the violent, but there's not even fake blood in war re-enactments.

Also, they were redoing a fake Civil War re-enactment on the 4th of July. Shouldn't it have been a Revolutionary War re-enactment? I guess nobody wanted to be the British, or the red coats were more expensive? I'm pretty sure these Civil War soldiers were using Revolutionary War style muskets though. This thing isn't even historically accurate.

But the thing that bugs me the most is that the South won this battle, and all of the audience was pulling for the South! I understand that we live in the South, but they lost the war! Thankfully! They were fighting for slavery and secession and all sorts of things that probably would make dear old North Carolina a much less habitable place had they won. Yet, we're pulling for them! This is an inexcusable ignorance or denial of American history, I'm not sure which, that is kind of frightening. After all, it was taking place on the 4th of July. I'm sure the founding fathers way back then would've loved if we'd re-acted the Revolutionary War but had the British win.

All the little kids were surrounding the battle scene, using those toy rifle things that shoot out a cork on a string to get into the action. People eating picnic lunches and funnel cakes and ribbon fries while a battle raged on around them. It's so funny if you just step back and look at it.

I wonder if in like fifty years, there will be Iraqi war re-enactments. The thought seems kind of morbid and appalling right now, while the war is still raging. Why do two hundred years make it okay to make the war a form of entertainment at a street festival?

Perhaps I'm being a bit severe, but it must be admitted that humans are very strange creatures.