To an Imaginary Friend

Why do you haunt my dreams still?

I wake up and I know you've been with me all night. 

I thought imaginary friends were supposed to vanish at adulthood. 

Yet, here I am at 26, and you're still with me. 

Maybe I'm trying to resurrect the spirit of my childhood. 

If I am, I've been successful—

For every time I think of you, speak of you, and especially write of you,

There you are—in a word, a message, a picture. 

You don't fade with time as I once thought you would,

And I'm beginning to think that you are mine for life. 

Or perhaps, 

Just perhaps,

I am I yours?

The House That Never Had a Christmas

The House That Never Had a Christmas

By Abigail Shaffer

There was a little house

That was happy all spring long.

When the birds chirped cheerfully,

He was glad to sing along.

He always smiled in the summer,

When his yard was filled with play.

His little family laughed and sang

Through every long, hot day.

And then it was the autumn,

When all the leaves would fall,

That he would think to himself,

“I love this season most of all.”

But the next season was the hardest.

When winter came, he was sad,

Because he knew Christmas was coming

And he’d be left alone by the kids, Mom, and Dad.

You see, he had never seen a Christmas.

Not a single one.

Every time his family returned,

Christmas would be done.

He’d never seen a Christmas tree,

He’d never seen a sparkly light.

He’d never watched a Christmas movie,

Or heard “Oh Holy Night.”

He wanted to be a part of the joy

That was this special time.

He wasn’t decorated like other houses,

And he felt so left behind.

“But maybe this once,” He thought, with hope,

“There will be decorations there.

Perhaps it’ll be the first time

They light a yule log here.”

He hoped and he hoped

And he wished on a star

And when he went to sleep

He prayed very hard.

The very next morning

He awoke on Christmas Eve,

Feeling rather nervous

Because it was the day his family would leave.

But what did he see that morning

That filled his heart with joy?

His family decorating a Christmas tree,

Every man, woman, girl, and boy!

Then it was the big day!

The house was filled with cheer.

The kids opened their stockings

And to the house it was very clear.

Christmas is a time of family.

And to him it had been the reason

That he had wanted to share it with the family he loved,

For Christmas is the very best season.

For the Friend I Lost, and the Friend Who Carries On Without Her

You can see it in her face.

It isn’t lines or age.

It’s time and pain.

There has been so much hurt.

So much loss.

It wasn’t even my mom, who is gone,

But sometimes I feel like it was.

I’m afraid to express my own pain,

Because it isn’t fair to her,

Since she lost more than the rest of us.

But she wears her pain

Like water wears the glow of the morning sun.

It’s made her better,

Stronger,

More beautiful.

She makes me want to be like her—

And that’s the same way her mother always made me feel.

Hoverboards and Hope

Marty McFly traveled to a bright future full of hoverboards, pretty colors, and cool inventions. Even though his future wasn’t exactly what he was hoping for, it was still bright and hopeful as a whole. It’s indicative of older futuristic movies—the likes of which you really don’t see anymore.

But now the future is here and we all have computers in our pockets and cool inventions that make our lives easier, even though I don’t ride to work every day on a hoverboard (get on that, NASA). However, our media doesn’t reflect that. More recently, our movies and TV shows are generally about apocalypse, end times, zombie attacks, and mass death. It’s dark. It’s depressing. It’s hard to find the hope. People are cast off like dandelion seeds, and human life is disposable.

Last Christmas, one of my best friends made me a painting with a quote from the BBC show, Doctor Who, which said, “Nine hundred years of time and space and I never met anyone who was unimportant.”

It spoke to me. Everyone is important.

And recently I was watching an episode of the same show, when the Doctor was in a usual, desperate situation where he finds himself on a strange planet, with a bus full of people he was trying to save. He began to ask them where they were headed when they got on the bus. Some were headed to dinner, others to see friends and family, some just wanted to go home and watch TV. The Doctor told them, “That planet out there … that planet is nothing—you hear me? Nothing compared to all those things waiting for you: food, and home, and people. Hold on to that.”

This morning I was talking on the phone with my boyfriend as I got ready for work. He had been reading the Bible in the morning and he said he had been thinking about “the little people” in the Bible who are just part of a group and never get mentioned—the ones who marched around Jericho, or who wandered in the desert. He was talking about how we as people are always told that we can do great things, that we should strive to reach our potential…but what about these nameless people who were essentially the cogs of something bigger…but never had their names mentioned or made a big difference on their own.

I’ve been thinking about that this morning, and it makes me think of those Doctor Who quotes. There isn’t anyone who isn’t important. Every person makes a difference, even if it’s small. Even if it just means your life is composed of going to your boring day job and coming home to your loved ones at night.

We are all part of a bigger picture, and together we make a difference—even when we don’t think that we are. When we are living our lives, doing what God intended for us to do, we’re doing the greatest thing we can, even if we aren’t curing cancer or saving someone’s life.

Life happens in the little things. Life is made in the tiny decisions. Our lives matter, even in the great scheme of things and the vast cosmos that we know so little about. We matter. I matter.

YOU matter.

RANT.

Hello. My name is Abigail and today I’m having a meltdown.

I feel like I’m being pulled in so many different directions. There is so much to do and never enough time to do it.

The boyfriend is moving into town this weekend…which also is when Hurricane Joaquin is moving in. What a coincidence.

The boyfriend needs me to pick up a router for the new apartment, on my lunch break.

The boyfriend’s roommate needs the router BEFORE my lunch break.

GUYS. I ONLY HAVE ONE LUNCH BREAK.

Work has been fulfilling, but very busy. I don’t have time to be orchestrating all of this.

I am so happy that the boyfriend is moving closer, but I don’t handle change well.

All of a sudden we go from seeing each other once every two months or so, to seeing each other every day.

I’m psyched about this, but just about every weekend this month, we’re going to be going on a trip together to go pick up furniture for him, go to a wedding of one of his friends, and a trip with some of my friends…

It’s all great stuff…but I’m losing my mind. I need a grace period to see how he and I work together in person. I’ve only really seen him 5 times…for a total of MAYBE two weeks if it was all smooshed together.

I NEED TIME TO GET USED TO IT ALL FIRST.

Oh! And the bathrooms at the house need to be cleaned. Usually I just do it, but I need help this month. Thankfully my roommates are great and step up when I ask, but I hate having to ask for help.

Oh! And WE ALL USE THE BATHROOMS!!

IF ONE MORE PERSON SAYS THAT SINGLE PEOPLE HAVE NOTHING TO DO I AM GOING TO HURT SOMEBODY!

OH! And here, proof a bazillion things that were due LAST WEEK but we’re only getting them to you NOW.

END RANT. *Takes bow* Thank you.

The Story of the Stable Sable and the Bumper Hullabaloo

Pick-N-Pull

Betsy looked like the Terminator.

My poor car (the aforementioned Betsy) has needed bumpers for months. The back one was smashed when someone backed into me, and the front one shattered when I skidded on some ice in an 8mph crash earlier this winter.

The Sable just like mine!

Taking the bumper off

My friend Nick and my roommate, Ann, decided to help me with the bumper situation, so we all went to Pick-N-Pull—which is basically a glorified junk yard. It was a magnificent thing. Hundreds of cars stood all in rows, grouped by manufacturer. After walking around for a while through what we weren’t aware was the GM section, we finally discovered the Fords. That was when I found it.

My car: a white, ’95 Mercury Sable with a pristine front bumper. The clouds opened up, and sun shone down on it in a halo of heavenly light. Angels sang the Hallelujah Chorus. It was beautiful.

Carrying the front bumper

Ladies and gents, I’ve never been under a car before, but there I was, right next to Nick, under the car, wrench in hand, trying to loosen the bolts so that we could take that bumper for Betsy. We took a lot of pictures. This might never happen again. Do you have any idea of how filthy you can get when laying on gravel? Also, I learned that I can sweat from places I didn’t even know had sweat glands.

By the end of the morning, we had two bumpers (took the other one from a green ’94 Taurus) and a spare tire, all for $160!! SUCCESS!!!

As the three of us joyfully lugged the bumpers, spare tire, and two full tool boxes back to the car…it was then that we realized…we had no idea how we were going to get all of this (and ourselves) home. None of us had a truck, so we had driven over in my little Sable.

We began the world’s biggest game of Tetris.

Finally, we managed to get both bumpers in the car, as well as all of us…even if one of the bumpers hung out the window a bit…

Ann + Nick in the back of the car with the bumpers

Everything was going so well…we thought. I had high hopes that my car was FINALLY going to be okay. I had just gotten a new battery in the car the day before (because the car had a bad habit of dying and needing to be jumped), and now Betsy was going to be pretty and in one piece. Yes. Things were looking up.

Then it happened. We dropped the bumpers off at Nick’s house, and were headed out to get some lunch when the car died. Again. Just like she had been doing for months, before I put the new battery in. *Insert expletives here* The bad thing was that she died as I was waiting at a stop sign. There was a truck behind me…and I couldn’t get her started.

Nick befuddled as to what's wrong

Instantly, Nick threw the car into neutral, yelled “step on the brake!” and jumped out of the car. Before I knew it, he was pushing the car, and the truck behind us was backing up. My roommate also jumped out to help him, and even in my frightened state, I did manage to turn the wheel and maneuver the car into a safe place out of the way.

Nick and Ann kept their cool pretty well as Nick looked under the hood, trying to figure out what was wrong. I laid against the side of the car and cried out to God. “Why, God!? WHY?!?!” Car still did not start.

Pushing the car...

More pushing ensued. Nick seemed to be enjoying it immensely. Ann sang Air Force running songs. I felt guilty that I wasn’t pushing. About half way back to Nick’s house (thankfully, we never left the neighborhood), I told them to stop so that I could try to start the car again. She started. SUCCESS! But…the blinkers and flashers wouldn’t work. NOT SUCCESS.

Safety first

We then went to lunch, where I drowned my depression in two sausage links, two slices of bacon, two slices of ham, hash browns, scrambled eggs, and two pancakes…and ate every single bite of it. Nick and Ann were impressed with my eating skills. Nick tried to help me figure out if I could change my finances around a bit and somehow get a little more money out (optimistically for a new car), but he came to the same conclusion I did: Nope.

Painting the bumper

The following day, Nick and I worked on the green Taurus bumper. The paint had to be stripped before we could paint it white to match my car. I don’t even want to go into the pain and agony it was to strip all of that paint off. OH MY GOSH. NO. The first paint stripper we used was too gentle, that it only got some of it off. It was during a trip to Wal-Mart that we discovered the stripper that we knew needed to be in our lives: the one that was literally eating its way out of the can.

Putting the bumper on

We took the radioactive substance back to Nick’s house and used it on the bumper. It worked like a dream, but left the bumper covered in what can only be described as black “Flubber.” There was much scraping, sanding, and hosing it down. But eventually, we got it back to looking like a bumper.

Then I primed it. And painted it. Two coats. So much heat. So much sun. Not enough water. My head ached. It still aches today as I’m writing this.

When I was finished, I went to see what Nick was up to. And together, he and I put the new front bumper on the car. More time spent on the ground, under the car, loosening bolts. I was thankful to be there, though. It was cooler under the car. 

By the end of the day, the car had two new bumpers. I was hot, tired, and thanking God that Ann came over with cold Gatorade. The shower water turned gray when it hit my body, but it didn’t matter. We had gotten my car’s body fixed up, and she looks fantastic. It might have been the hardest work I’ve ever done outside of a ballet studio, but it was worth it. 

Finished bumper...and Nick's legs

New front bumper!

Because You Asked For It...

I remember reading a book called White Guilt in college. It’s been a long time since I’ve read it, but the basic views expressed in it were that many Americans try to overly make up for the racial sins of the past—sometimes to a fault. You had to read all of it, pay attention, and listen to what the author was really saying. There were quite a few students in the class, however, who hated the book because they said it made white people look bad, etc. I won’t go into all of that, because it’s not my main point. My main point is this: I later talked with the professor about it, and he expressed that those students had gotten so defensive about feeling attacked that they had missed the point of the book entirely, much to his disappointment.

This is what I feel has happened for Harper Lee’s new book, Go Set a Watchman. About a dozen people have asked me to express my thoughts on the novel, so here I go:

The controversy has been that Atticus is a racist in the new book. Everywhere I go lately, I hear much discord and disgust towards the book—all from people who haven’t read it. I’ve talked to many friends and even strangers about it, and so far, only one person had read it. It has only been out for a little over a week, yet so many individuals have shut their minds and will hear no more. Almost all of those people are getting their information second-hand. They haven’t paid attention long enough to understand what the author is actually trying to say.

Without giving any spoilers, this book isn’t actually about race as much as the hype makes it out to be. It’s not like To Kill a Mockingbird in that area. It’s about knocking down childhood idols and learning to think for ourselves. Scout, or as she’s called in this one, Jean Louise, actually is very similar to those who are currently criticizing the book. She sees something she doesn’t understand, but thinks that she does, and she quite literally freaks out—repeatedly. I’ve never seen such tantrums from a grown woman. She then shuts her mind and her eyes to any reason or explanation—just like the critics who refuse to read the book solely on the basis of what they’ve “heard” about it.

The novel does represent the two sides of the race battle, but I don’t think that’s exactly what Harper Lee was trying to express. In a lot of ways, this book is a late coming of age story. Scout is 26, but she’s still got a lot to learn. There were definitely moments where I related to her, where I understood her struggle to realize that her father is a flawed human being, that he’s old…that he won’t be around forever.

I related to her most, I think when her Uncle Jack (Atticus’ brother) said this to her:

“…now you, Miss, born with your own conscious, somewhere along the line fastened it like a barnacle onto your father’s. As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings—I’ll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes ‘em like all of us. You were an emotional cripple, leaning on him, getting the answers from him, assuming that your answers would always be his answers.”

                Maybe I’m a little bias towards this book because I, same age as Scout, have just realized that I too have done this. I lost my great grandmother last year, and it wasn’t until she passed that I realized that I had put her on a pedestal—that I had, as Uncle Jack says, “Confused” her with God. I refused to see her flaws and her failings. I idolized her. And when she died, it was more than just a normal human death to me. It was as if God had died.

And I think this was what Atticus was trying to break in Scout. She needed to see that he was a human man, flawed like the rest of us. And she needed to see that she had her own mind, and if her views didn’t line up with her father's, well…that was alright. She had to learn to make her own choices and stand for them.

And if you’re still hung up on the race relations, take a look at this: Scout looks up the word “bigot” in the story and reads aloud, “Noun. One obstinately or intolerably devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion.”

I won’t say anything more about the book, because as sainted LeVar Burton used to say on Reading Rainbow, “you don’t have to take my word for it.” Read it for yourself. Or not. Just be careful of how intolerant you are towards a novel you haven’t read. Or else, you might end up sounding a lot like that dictionary definition…