Boundaries

Yesterday I passed the site where a 13-year-old girl, Kelly Valentine, was killed while crossing Cedar Road in Chesapeake last week. Young teenagers held each other, wiped each other's tears, and had news cameras not more than two feet from there faces. The scene has nagged me for 24 hours now.
Don't get me wrong. I was trained as a news reporter. At Virginia Tech I would do anything to get ahead and impress my editor. I called the father of Mindy Summers, a girl who fell out of a dorm window and died. I called the roommate of a student who jumped off the back of Lane Stadium, rather than take his engineering final. I called the family of a boy who walked onto Rte 460, put his hands on his hips, and waited for a semi to smack slam into him, crushing both of his legs almost beyond repair. I called them hours after his first of many surgeries. While they were still standing vigil at the hospital.
I'm not proud, but I did it. Sometimes, those call are necessary. They're for the greater good. Unfortunately, Mr. Summers hung up on me. But the Lane Stadium story brought to light the stress of exams, and services the university provided students to cope. And the story of the kid on Rte 460 made people realize that college students face depression, anxiety, and very real stress. It was his second time attempting suicide. It put the signs of suicidal students in the minds of roomates, professors and parents.
Several years ago I wrote a story about Colin Stealey, a soccer star at Indian River who died when his car plowed into a tree and exploded. I went to the school from which I graduated, completely determined to keep the interviews professional. I tried to remember what I'd learned. Years of writing for a community paper had softened my hard edge.
But when faced with six grieving students and three choked-up coaches, I cried with them for an hour. My mascara ran. I couldn't finish my questions. I could feel their pain. I put down my list of questions, and we just talked. They talked about their grief. Their memories. Their healing.
The next day I got a call from my editor, asking me to grab my camera and run out to the accident site. Kids were gathering, creating a shrine. The mainsheet wanted pictures. They thought I could use my history with the kids to get close. At first, I was scrambling to find the correct lense, and matching shoes. And then I stopped. These were the same kids I'd cried with the day before. Their pain was raw. Real. Uncensored.
It was too close. I said I didn't feel it was right. He understood, and the mainsheet sent out some random photographer, who ended up being cussed at by a grieving 17-year-old. They still ran the shot of the teenages, huddling by the scorched tree. I think about them every time I drive past the now faded, tattered memories they laid at the site that day.
Watching the cameras surround those kids yesterday reminded me of just how motivated I once was to work at a large paper. The editor who had me call all those grieving families now works for the New York Times. He's ridiculously successful. And to be honest, every now and then I feel a twinge of jealously. That could have been me.
But yesterday I realized something. The Times doesn't write about the soccer star teenager. Or the waterboy who wants to play baseball like his big brother. Or the old man down the street with a story to tell. But those are the stories I want to write.
I want to write stories that make a difference. A few months ago I received a voicemail about a story I wrote seven years ago. It was a standard, 12-inch feature about a kid who played basketball. He wasn't a great student, and to be honest, I don't really even remember him. But he remembered me. And so did his mother.
She left the message to make sure I knew I had changed his life. He turned his grades around and sneaked into college. This May, he will graduate with a master's degree in education. The mother said the story was a turning point in this young man's life. He realized he was special. That he could be somebody.
I cried, and realized that I truly miss reporting. When Juni begins kindergarten this fall, I plan on calling the new editor at the Clipper (the Chesapeake city insert in the Virginian-Pilot), and ask the new editor if I can't wiggle my way back onto the correspondent list. At one time, I wrote more than any other of their correspondents. But once Juni came along, I faded into the background, and eventually disappeared. Writing is good for my soul. I need it like other people need air, water and food. It also gives me something. It gives me power.
But not the kind I once wanted. It's not the kind that comes with the New York Times. It's the kind that comes from a community paper. The kind that causes a mother to keep your phone number for seven years, leave a message, and make you cry.

Here's a link to the Colin Stealey story...
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/virginian-pilot-ledger-star-norfolk/mi_8014/is_20050306/indian-river-students-mourn-loss/ai_n41280655/

For Harold Higgerson

A good friend of ours passed away this week. Harold Higgerson. His death marks the first time I've known someone who literally died of pure old age. He was 96.

Harold began Higgerson-Buchanan Inc.; at one time, his company was the largest earthmoving company on the eastern seaboard. They completed the site work for Greenbrier Mall. The Rte 168 bypass. I-64. Every time I see one of their sunshine yellow, pristinely polished dump trucks barrelling down the road Juni smiles and says "Mommy! That's a Don (Harold's son) truck!"

Jasen loves the Higgerson family. They have taken him under their wings, taught him, loved him as one of their own, and supported him and our business. Without them, Jasen says he would be no where. I don't know if that's particularly true, but you get the idea. The work they pass along to us is our bread and butter. These are loving, giving people. Whom I love, as well.
Jasen and I had been married about a year when I met Harold. He was 90. He'd given the reigns of the business over to his sole child, Don, and lived with Don and his wife in their mother-in-law suite.
I felt like I was going to meet The Grandfather. Jasen had so many stories of this hugely successful man I actually felt butterflies stir. What was I going to say to this man? Seriously...The Grandfather of sitework. And ridiculously good at it, too.
So imagine my surprise when I walk into the house. Here is this bear-of-a-man with hands the size of dinner plates. Swollen from years of work. He's sitting at the kitchen table, a paper towel tucked into his shirt. And he is literally devouring an entire Styrofoam box of Pollard's Chicken's liver and gizzards. Yellow grease drizzles down the creases of his chomping jaw. A pile of poultry bits is gathering on the floor, in his lap, and on his shirt.
He's hard of hearing, so I'm practically yelling "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Higgerson!" "Huh?" He says, his chicken treats spewing from his mouth. "You Jasen's wife?" "Yes, sir! It's nice to meet you!" "Nice to meet you too, young lady. What the hell are you doing with this kid?"
I love this man instantly. My grandaddy worked quite a bit with Harold, and always told me how much he respected him. My dad will attend the funeral tomorrow. As will probably 500 other people.
Juni will be in school, unaware that his Daddy is probably crying under his sunglasses. As will I. Anyone Juni loves, I love. He calls Harold "the old guy who rode the tractor and fell asleep in the shop with all the dumptrucks." Perfection.
I look at Harold's life as an ultimate specimen. He worked hard. Smiled hard. Came from literally living in a tent with his newlywed to owning one of the largest, most respected companies this area has ever seen. He oversaw the business and drove his tractor around the grounds less and less in his twilight, but people knew he was there. They listened when he spoke. They respected him. They loved him. He was burly and brash and lovely, all wrapped up into a working man's body.
And he died, peacefully. On his own terms. In his own time. Goodbye, Mr. L Harold Higgerson. You will forever stay in my family's hearts and minds. May you enjoy an endless supply of chicken liver and gizzards. You surely deserve them.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pilotonline/obituary.aspx?n=l-harold-higgerson&pid=150238047

A Shitty Situation

Literally. There was a day that I fell into shit. A lot of shit. It's funny now, but believe me. At the time, all I could do was cry.
I was 12. Not exactly the easiest time in a young girl's life. My parents say I had baby fat. Me, I just say it was fat. I couldn't wear makeup yet. Or shave my legs. Or pierce my ears. Or figure out how to wear my hair so it didn't look like a rat had taken up residence. Basically, I was an insecure mess.
So this day didn't help.One of my best friends growing up lived in a historical home that was registered with the historical society. All that means is that the house must remain preserved, and that all repairs, additions, changes, whatever have to go through the historical society.
I'm sure the family resented not having total domain over their home, but I'm also sure there's no excuse for what happened to me.
I fell into their septic tank. Up to my neck. In shit. Shit that was sludgy, thick and sticky. Shit that smelled like nothing I had smelled before. Beyond feces and urine and toilet paper. Beyond rot. The smell was raw. Putrid. Decay. Death.  The kind of smell that forces your eyes to water, your nose hairs to burn and your throat to swell and heave.
My friend and I were running through the yard, and the tank had deteriorated so badly and for so many years that alligator grass had grown over top the sewage. Which is why I didn't know I would tumble like a rolypoly Alice into a hole of smelly hell.
I remember not being able to get out. Grasping at the earth, trying to push with my legs. But the sludge was too thick. My friend ran in to get her mom, and they had to drag me out.
Before I knew it, my mom arrived. And she was understandable irate. Not only because of the overall shitty situation, but because they were laughing. That's right, they were laughing. They were f'ing laughing. I still love them both to death, but at the time I'm sure my mom wanted to douse them with their own sewage just to shut their pieholes.
 I sat on towels for the ride home, not quite sure what I'd fallen into. But I was 12. Not an idiot. I knew. I just couldn't accept it, or I'd have been covered in shit AND vomit. And that's just unfathomable.
I remember my mom filling her giant tub with the hottest water I could stand, and her washing me. I realize it's not particularly normal for a 12-year-old girl to have her mother wash her. But it's also not normal to be covered in shit, either. Think about this for a moment. Hair. Fingernails. Toenails. Unspeakable places. All covered in shit.
She'd wash me, drain the tub, rinse and repeat. I don't know how long this went on, but I'm assuming it took a while to not only disinfect me, but soothe my mom's very understandable fears. I mean, seriously. Raw sewage? I can't imagine the bacteria chomping away in that crap.
My mom was so enraged she reported the situation to the health department the next day. And I didn't go anywhere near that part of the yard ever again. It was like the corner of death to me.
So from that day forth, I was not only an overweight, broken-out-faced, hairy, bald-eared, insecure pre-teen. I was also the girl who fell into an endless hole of shit.