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Hello, all.
Today I had to make a really tough decision to take down my blog. I plan to reenter the blog world soon with a different domain. Please email me if you would like to be on the mailing list when my new blog goes up. In the meantime, I'll still be posting on Mondays at The Collective. And, as always, you can reach me at heatherannehogan [at] gmail [dot] com.
love,
Heather Anne
When I was five-years-old, I came home from school with angry, red splotches all over my body. I told my mom I itched, and next thing I knew she was shouting pox! pox! and throwing my sister and me into our toy room with five-days worth of sandwiches. She locked the door behind her as she fled, and it was only by holding a plastic cup to the wall and eavesdropping that I was able to ascertain that I had been pocked by a chicken, and that Jenn was to be sacrificed for my entertainment pleasure. In my benevolence, I kept the truth from my little sister: that she, too, would succumb to the pox. There is an inexplicable bond that comes from being quarantined with another person--a certain beauty in the tension of waiting together to die, or to turn into wildfowl. (It was unclear from the muffled voices what would be the ultimate consequence of this chicken pandemic.)
Luckily, we survived the pox--my sister and me--and we grew up loving and beating on each other. On the good days, we would spend all afternoon on the hammock, reading the same book together; she would laugh and try to tell me what was happening, and I would say, "Slow down! I'm not there yet!" On the bad days, I would toss 2-liters of soda at her head, and we'd patch up the wall before our parents came home from work. One time, after a particularly nasty blow-up, it snowed. Jenn had the flu, so she had to stay inside. I went from angry to obscene, layering up in my snow clothes, asking to borrow her mittens. I went outside to spite her, but once I got outside without her, it was no fun. I played for hours in front of her bedroom window; she'd cracked it open to chat with me. She tossed down accessories, and I built her a snowman.
My sister was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when we were in our early twenties. It's the kind of thing that shoves you into adulthood and kicks you back into childhood in the same breath. After several weeks and several surgeries, she was isolated in a special hospital room to receive radiation. The rule for family members was that you could visit once per day for ten minutes, and you had to put on a special suit. Recklessly, understandably, I forwent the suit the first day I visited her. I stayed longer than ten minutes. I brought her books. I made her giggle. The nurse kicked me out with a warning, "Ten minutes only! And you have to wear the suit!"
"She's my sister," I explained, and marveled that some people don't understand the weight of the word.
Two weeks ago, Jenn and I set out on a road trip to Birmingham. It was our first trip together since UK '05--our first extended outing since my nephew was born. Her plan was to run a half marathon and my plan was to take pictures. Our joint--unstated--plan was to laugh and eat convenience store snacks and sing our Indigo Girls' playlists all the way through. It used to be that she was the harmony to my always-melody, but these days we take turns.
The day of her half-marathon I couldn't help but mollycoddle her: do you have your energy jelly beans, are you hydrated, will you be warm enough? Are you sure? Are you positive? She sat in the car and shivered, more out of nerves than anything else, and half an hour before the race began, she left me and walked toward the starting line. After she was gone, I sat in the car and shivered (nerves, too) and when I couldn't take it anymore I got out and walked toward the race. When the gun went off, 9,000 runners sprinted past. "Whooo!" I yelped when she ran by in a sea of dry-wick fabric. "Yes, yes, you are awesome!"
I followed the course on foot, catching her at some mile-markers, missing her at others. Finally, I went to the finish line to wait. Three hours after she started running, one year after having a baby, three years after beating cancer, twenty years after I built her a snowman, she came down the final stretch. When I saw her I jumped up in the air. "That's my sister!" I shouted. "My sister! My sister!" I ran along beside her and took her picture. I cried.
I think there's a special pride you can feel only if you've climbed into a radioactive hospital bed with a person.
"Jennifer Fitzpatrick, 27, Atlanta, GA." The announcer said.
"Yeah!" I shouted again.
Nearby, a man looked at me, then at my sister, then back at me. My tear-stained cheeks perplexed him. He didn't understand how her victory was my victory--her happiness, my happiness. He was not a sister.
"Does she belong to you?" the man asked
"Nah," I said, shaking my head, sniffling. "Not really." I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I took one last picture. "But we did beat chicken pox together once."
Heather Anne: Do you know when to use "people" and when to use "persons."
Sister: No, but I do know today is National Pancake Day.
Heather Anne: Wait, what.
Sister: iHop is giving away free pancakes.
Heather Anne: How do I get them!
Sister: Go to iHop and tell them Free! Give them to me!
Heather Anne: Okay, bye!
Apparently today is National Pancake Day and iHop is giving away FREE PANCAKES. You can get all the information at iHop's website. I am going there for lunch. Right this very minute.
Also, Kat knew the answer about persons vs. people: "Persons for a group of individuals. People for a collective body, e.g. the American people." That Kat knows all the things. I love her.
Today at The Collective, I lay my heart on the line.
One morning last week I accidentally listened to my local A.M. radio station during my commute. When, during the traffic report, they said, "There is a patch of ice out in front of Reed's Cafe. Careful that you don't slip and spill your grits when you come out the front door," I said to myself, "Waterlily," (That's what I call myself sometimes.) "Waterlily, you need to listen to this station more often."
Yesterday I called in to my local A.M. station because someone from the Huckabee campaign was on air, saying Huckabee didn't make computer-generated calls in Georgia on Super Tuesday. And, well, Mike Huckabee's computer called me twice on Super Tuesday: once to ask me to vote for him; a second time to tell me he'd won West Virginia. On the radio, I was all, "I got some computer calls." And the campaign guy was like, "No, you didn't." And I was all, "Um, yeah, I did." And he was all, "They must have been personal calls." And I was like, "You mean it actually was Mike Huckabee on the phone?" And he said, "Yeah, probably." Waterlily thinks this is a lie.
This morning on local A.M. they asked listeners to call in and give their memoir in six words or less. Some woman said: "Happy mom of six little boys." One guy said, "Born bald. Grew hair. Bald again." Another listener said, "Voted for Bush twice. Not sorry." I didn't call in, but I decided my memoir in six words or less would say: "Ate some cookies, read some books." And for the sequel: "Loved Britain more than entirely appropriate."
Question.
Your memoir in six words or less, what would it say?
6:30 in the morning--Super Tuesday--Amy and I queue up third and fourth at our polling place; the sun is not awake. In front of us a grandfather-type and a woman in mom-jeans chat about the unseasonably warm weather, and I give Amy a look that says we could have been first and second in line if she hadn't needed to put on makeup. She rolls her eyes because everything is not a competition, and steps out of line to read the rules posted on the side of the building. No campaigning within 100 feet of the polling place, I try to tell her, but she wants to read it herself.
With seven minutes left until the polls open, the grandfather-type stands on his toes to look inside the fellowship hall of the Presbyterian church. "Seven minutes!" he shouts to the line that has formed behind him. Thus begins his countdown.
In Slavenka Drakulic's memoir, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, she remembers the first democratic election in Croatia. For 50 years people had been lining up on election day to vote for the Yugoslavian communist party, as if, Drakulic says, the communist party needed to be voted for. But in 1991, Croatia was an independent country and people were free to vote for whomever they chose. She remembers one man passing by the line she was standing in, waving his hand and saying, "I did it this morning," as if it were laundry, just another thing that needed to get done. Drakulic expected the breath of democracy to taste different, but it's not easy to take the stale out of the air when--for half a century--voting has been nothing more than an invalid exercise of validity.
I think about Slavenka Drakulic as I stand in line to vote. I think about what if I grew up in Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina, or would it have been Yugoslavia when I was a kid?
The first time I voted was 1988. My elementary school had a voting machine deposited in the lobby one day and I lined up during lunch to have a go at it. It was tall and wooden, like an old-fashioned phone booth, and when I went inside I got to close a curtain behind me, because I didn't live in The Soviet Union. People are allowed to vote in private in America. The inside was like the cigarette machine that sat beside the juke box at The Waffle House, where we sometimes ate breakfast on Sunday mornings. In the Virgina Slims spot--my mom's cigarette of choice--was George H.W. Bush's name; and in the Marlboro Lights spot--my papa's cigarette--was Micheal Dukakis's name. I didn't know then that Dukakis had worn a silly helmet and posed for a picture in a tank, and that it would go down as the dumbest political move since Richard Nixon refused makeup before his televised debate with the dashing and smartly dressed John F. Kennedy in 1960. What I knew was that my mom called Dukakis a "turkey butt." So I voted for Bush.
I think about my mom, too, as I stand in line to vote on Super Tuesday. I think about telling her when I was a tiny, little girl that I wanted to be President. I think about her telling me no, I'd get shot, just look what happened to Reagan, and Reagan was a good man. I remember my mom telling me, Anyway a woman will never be President of the United States.
Amy steps back in front of me, having now read all of polling place rules on the poster-sized, red sign. I think of saying, "Ma'am! Why are you trying to break in line on election morning! Have you no respect for the men and women that have gone before you to secure your suffrage!" But I don't, because voting makes Amy nervous--the weight of the country on her shoulders. I smile sweetly at her and think gravitas, gravitas and how delicious my Democracy pancakes were that morning.
I think about what "American" has come to mean, and how different that is than the day John Stockton draped himself in the flag after winning the gold medal in the 1996 Summer Olympics. I wonder if "American" will mean the thing it should mean ever, ever again. I do the wonderfully ridiculous bit where I hope.
The man in front of me rocks on his heels, peaking into the voting room. He turns and meets my eyes. And then, he grins. "One minute," he shouts to the back of the line. "Just one more minute."
Last week I entered a contest because Abigail told me to, and I do what Abigail says. The contest was over on Nathan Bransford's blog and it was called The Surprisingly Essential First Page Challenge. I submitted 500 words and went along my way merry way, because, hullo? I have a huge little league basketball tournament going on, and all those Harry Potter books on my shelf aren't going to reread themselves for the dozenth time.
Anyway.
Today I found out I am a finalist!
My First Page is sandwiched between five really awesomer first pages at Nathan Bransford's blog. Maybe, um, if you want, you can go read them and vote for the best one. If you think mine is best, you can vote me me. (Heather! Anne!) But be honest. If you think the other ones are better, vote for them.
Either way, it's good practice for a lot of us because tomorrow is SUPER DUPER TUESDAY. And it's especially good practice for me, because Tyra Banks is the judge. And I have been practicing my signature walk for about six months now.
(You can spread the word about voting, but no campaigning for a particular person. It's against the rules. And The Internets can't vote for someone just because she has a cute dog. If that was the Rule of Voting, Bridget from Girl's Next Door would be president. Which: how awesome would THAT be?)
"This week we are supposed to be sharing with you our Free Pass Lists: an index of five(ish) celebrities we would like to be able to shag without consequence. Unfortunately, I am the first poster on this topic, and I'm more of a one-person-list kind of gal. And that person is sexy not so much on account of celebrity, but sexy on account of intellect and humor and compassion. (I know, I know: boring, pious, gag you with a spoon.) You can tune in the whole rest of the week for talk of nipples and nakedness--which, let's be honest, is the only reason you come here anyway--but instead of telling you the five people with whom I'd like to share my bed, I'm going to tell you the last five people with whom I did share my bed."