J.E. Shmeebs
Aspiring Urban Fantasy/Romantasy writer with a story in my head that desperately deserves to be on the page.
J.E. Shmeebs
Aspiring Urban Fantasy/Romantasy writer with a story in my head that desperately deserves to be on the page.
Aspiring Urban Fantasy/Romantasy writer with a story in my head that desperately deserves to be on the page.
Aspiring Urban Fantasy/Romantasy writer with a story in my head that desperately deserves to be on the page.
When we met, all I saw was grey. Not the peaceful cool grey tones of the rainy PNW sky but rather the lifeless grey that felt like grief and loss personified. He made me so angry and was the literal grey cloud that followed me around everywhere and brought my spirits down making me more angry than I had ever been in my life. Before I met Callahan, I firmly believed that I didn't have an angry bone in my body because, in any situation where someone would typically feel furious, I always skipped that step and looked for a way to make it better. But never Callahan. At least not at first. Now looking at him across our favorite table in the basement of the library, I realize he wasn't ever just grey. His soul is the color of the inside of the many shells I have found on our long beach walks, the kind of shell that changes color depending on how you look at it. Sometimes, when you first pick it up, it's just grey. But if you shift it in your hand so the light hits it differently, you uncover pinks and blues and purples that are indescribably intriguing. That's how Cal's soul is. When I first looked at it, I caught a bad angle. But as I got to know him better, I could see that his soul also has exquisite pinks and blues and purples. You just have to look at him from a different angle. He doesn't deserve my anger. None of it is his fault. But he was an easy person to blame. And that short-sidedness cost me so much time spent misunderstanding the true colors of this man's soul.
In my youth, my feet were tied to the ground for but once a year.
Each summer, I was set free in the once-foreign mountains that quickly became the closest thing I'd ever had to call home.
I was the kid always lost in a daydream in history class wishing I was running through the pines, playing Capture the Flag with my summer camp friends instead of running down the sidewalk from the bus stop to my doorstep to get out of the rain before it could soak me to the bone.
My only goal in growing up was to escape; to leave that coastal town and find refuge in the mountains.
I had only ever seen my mountains in the summer when they were dusted with wildflowers and kissed by the sun all day long. That first winter was a harsh wake-up call. The wildflowers were replaced with snowflakes and the warm friendly company of the summer sun was replaced by the harsh bite of the winter wind. I was suddenly alone in the only place I'd ever been able to call home.
So I did what any desperate young person would do and I moved across the ocean. To a far-off land, I brought my 23 kg suitcases to chase a new mountain home. It was everything I thought I'd ever wanted but I had to leave too soon. And though I grew up a lot in those foreign mountains an ocean away, it wasn't enough to stop me from doing it again.
This is my third time running away to foreign mountains, I think I have it figured out. Don't let yourself float away to the moon in search of newer mountains that won't pack a winter bite. Or you'll miss the flowers under your feet that bloom while you're distracted looking for your new home. Home is where you are, where you plant your own wildflowers and make your own summer sunshine warmth.
So now I yearn for those first foreign mountains that will always be my favorite home. A piece of my heart lives in each of the mountains I have floated away to. And I feel at home in each, but nothing can compare to the first place you make your home and find yourself starting to bloom.
The horses in the stable went wild; they knew of the coming storm. After months of the same routines with the same noises and smells, the twenty horses spread down the alley knew exactly what was in store for them. Their bodies reacted to the stimulation around them before their minds could find any sort of rationalization or recognition of what was about to happen. The pawing of hooves and the chorus of nickers spread down the alley as more and more of the herd recognized what was to come. The Storm the humans called it. To the horses, it was just another work day, another chance to do what their bodies pulsed to do above all else. There's something special about the heart of a racehorse. A true winner has a special vibration through their core when it comes to race day. And it was palpable in the rows of stalls today. As the jockeys and trainers and owners hurried around to make final preparations, it became increasingly difficult for the horses to contain their energy. There was nothing like the feeling of being able to stretch your legs further than you thought was ever possible before you felt the adrenaline of a race day. As they strutted past the crowds doing their warm-up laps, everyone's pulses - horse and human alike - were beating so fast and so hard you could practically feel the earth shake beneath their feet. The call was made over the loudspeakers and the athletes began their parade to the track. The deafening noise from the warm-up area was muted as they entered the tunnel to pass under the grandstands and enter the race track; the final moment of the closest thing they could find to calm before the greatest storm of their career. The final preparations were made and horses with their jockeys were led into the starting gate. 20 gates clicked shut. 20 horses huffed with anticipation. 20 jockeys secured their goggles. 40 hearts raced with anticipation. Everything around them slowed down as everyone on the track and in the grandstands took a collective and final deep breath. As everyone's lungs filled with air with an eerie momentarily falling over the anxious audience, the buzzer went off and the gates flew open. With that, the crowds erupted with cheers and they were off. The storm of hooves and dirt and racing hearts hit them like a category 5 hurricane. The kind of storm you can't look away from while it steals the air from your lungs. For 10 furlongs, horse and rider faced it all together. The push and the pull of the fury of wind and waves of earth-quaking hoof falls swooped through Churchill Downs. The most beautiful storm you ever did see and the best seat in the house was on the backs of the animal athletes who would run until their hearts burst if the jockeys allowed it. The only storm anyone in Kentucky ever prayed for and one that came but once a year. To the horses, it was just another day of working the job they love. They lived for the storm they created.
There's a girl I see every day. I know every detail about every version of herself she has ever been. Some days I am excited knowing I will see her, but some days I hide and pray I won't catch a glimpse. She's different now than the version I first knew. The girl she used to be was one I could never love. She was loud and bossy and never had the right thing to say. Then she evolved into a person I could mostly endure being around. She gained a sense of humor that I understood and gained her laughs from the people around her. She started to develop a twinkle in her eye that only I could see. She was always chasing someone though. A boyfriend who saw her as an option, a best friend who only came around when she needed someone but was never around when she herself was needed. My heart broke for her every time a person who was supposed to care about her would leave her in the dust for greener pastures. As she grew and evolved, she outgrew those around her. Everyone except for me that is. And then one day I watched her make a silent and irrevocable decision: to live a life where she was okay to be on her own. She'd go to lunch alone, she'd hike the mountains she'd always admired by herself, and she learned to love her own company. I would catch glimpses of her from shop windows as she'd pass and I could hardly recognize her. The sparkle that I once saw only in her eye started to become her whole aura. That sparkle isn't as bright every day but it's brighter than it ever was before. She is so different than the girl I once knew who I couldn't stand. So as I sit down at my vanity with a guttural sigh and start my day, I don't flinch or look away from the girl I see looking back at me who loves my company just as much as I now love her's.
"Y'know, you should've-" "I know I should've done this years and years ago, please for the love of all things sacred stop reminding me," I bark at Angela. "I was going to say you should've brought some dust clothes up here with you but I won't say you're wrong," my eldest daughter corrects. When Angela arrived at my house twenty minutes ago declaring that today was the day we were going to sort and empty the attic, I did everything I could think of to stall her. I have been putting off this burden of cleaning for so long I was beginning to believe that I may never have to do it. But Angela wouldn't have that and she put her foot down. So I begrudgingly followed her up the ladder and into the storage attic where things go to die. Angela won't tell you this, but I'm getting up there in age. Her real motivation for rushing this clean out is so she won't have to go through it by herself when I "go into the light" or whatever it is that happens when the day I get called home eventually comes. As an eldest daughter myself, I have always been a little extra protective of our shared tendencies so I finally gave in and agreed to join her in the Great Attic Gutting. We get to work assessing the hazards that surround us in the dusty space. Angela was right, a rag would be great right now. After fifteen minutes of praying I don't find a dead mouse every time I move an old bag or box, I declare "alright, that's it, I'm going back down to get the rags". "No, Mom, let me," Angela insists. "I can still handle the stairs just fine, Angela, my bones haven't turned to ash yet." I argue back trying not to remember how achy my knees have been lately. "I'm not saying you can't walk up and down the stairs, I just don't want you getting distracted and leaving me up here by myself." Clever girl... "Fine. You know where they are?" She nods as she's already descending the ladder leaving me in this dusty rat dropping graveyard all alone. With a more than dramatic sigh, I turn to the next pile I planned to assess and see a trunk I had always hoped would get lost every time I had to move in my younger years. With a healthy dose of disbelief that this trunk is still in one piece, I shove over the pile of old linens sitting on top of it and open the box I used to carry with me to ever circus performance I went to from ages 19 to 26. I easily sorted the long-expired makeup into the trash bags, the clothes that didn't have mouse-bitten holes into the laundry pile to be washed and donated, and nearly gasped when my eyes fell on a discolored and wrinkled four by six card. I was sure I'd lost it or thrown it away decades ago. Yet here it was, face down in my old trunk. Even without being able to see it, I knew who stood with his arms around me in the picture from when I was 20. My hands shook as I reached down to pick it up. As my fingers carefully pinched the edges, I was flooded with memories of the traveling circus and the man I'd met along the way. Nights on the roof of the train cars as we stayed up all night talking after a performance. Days on the train passing the time with card games and re-reading the same traded books since we didn't have the money to buy anything fresh for our small libraries. My Peter making everyone laugh around a fire after even each and every one of our hardest performances. As the images in my head flew by, they morphed into fantasies that never had the chance to be. The house we always dreamed of buying once we'd saved enough money to leave the circus and settle down on a quiet plot of land in South Dakota. The children we'd have running around with their blond curls chasing after them in the wind. His blond hair turning white as we grew old together, still passing the time by playing card games and sharing books. It was all too much. I dropped the photo and the attic came back into focus. The house, the kids, the grey hair, the books. The man. None of it ever came true. I was further reminded of this as Angela came up the ladder, pushing her long brunette bangs out of her face and passing me a rag. I slid the photo into the trap door storage compartment in the lid of my old trunk where I'd once hid my savings and turned to the next pile. I was far too old to spend my days fantasizing about the life I thought I'd wanted when I was in my early twenties. I had lived a beautiful life with three beautiful kids and a husband who loved me but left too soon. I could wish for that dreamworld life until I was blue in the face but that wouldn't change the speed at which life had come at me in those years.
It had been so long since I'd fallen asleep dreaming up a life with Peter, but that night I did. He wasn't My Peter anymore but in the new dream world I created he was. I would be walking down Main Street heading to the bookstore or cafe and he'd come out of the hardware store. He'd nearly run right into me because he never could look where he was walking. We'd lock eyes and in spite of his almost white hair and defined smile lines, I'd know him immediately. And he'd just crack the same goofy grin he was so generous with sending my way when I was twenty-one. He'd say "My Ang" and we'd walk off into the sunset to catch each other up on our lives sitting in a cafe rather than on a circus car roof. We'd get the second chance I had given up on. But I'd wake up the next day. I would call Angela while I drank my coffee and she'd tell me about her schedule for the day in her final quiet morning moments before her twins woke up just like we did every morning. Maybe Peter was somewhere out there sipping his favored black tea with milk. He wouldn't be sitting across from me at the kitchen table like My Peter would have been. That was a story for a different universe. One where the photo that now sat in the hidden compartment of my trunk instead sat proudly in an ornate frame on our shared mantle in our house in South Dakota. I wouldn't lose sleep on these dreams. Instead, they'd bring me the greatest sense of peace as I drifted off into quiet oblivion.