Smudged pizza fingers and mismatched socks kept me a few teacups short of the quintessential, pink-princess girlhood. A tower of primary-colored stackable cups leaned wearily as the melodious dings of Mister Rogers’ trolley chirped through retro speakers in the background while I, short-haired and wide-eyed, found easy-to-come-by indulgement through marshmallows that had the tendency to leave mom’s tupperware dirtied with white powder. With aspirations to coast down our carpeted stairs in a plastic hamper basket in a sled-like fashion, it is safe to conclude that the five year old version of myself was unlikely to consider future consequences before executing dangerous ambitions. A copy of Nana Upstairs Nana Downstairs rested quietly on a pastel night stand during nightly vocal concerts in which I sang classical favorites (most notably, “The Cat Came back”) into a vacuum handle before an imaginary audience. The cliché bunk-beds, teddy bears, dress-up clothes, night lights, sipper cups, Tinker Toys, crayon boxes, and pop-up books became the chromatic scraps of my childhood collage. Nevertheless, these youthful delicacies did not match up to the luxury of my understated, overlooked haven: the living room.

The carpet had seen its fair share of spills (grape juice and chicken noodle soup were among the most well-known offenders). The walls had been painted, repainted and covered with pale floral wallpaper. The ceiling fan blades had acquired a buildup of thick, clumpy dust. The fireplace bricks had been marked upon with various crayons and ink pens. The ash-hued recliner had developed a cranky groan as it rocked in the corner. And despite these blatant imperfections, Sunday mornings never failed to arrive with yawning windows that breathed in the fresh aroma of crisp pine as passing clouds created an ongoing cycle of dimness and brightness within.

In the living room, I became a young but avid viewer of “The Price is Right.” The concept of money was certainly an incomprehensible one; but, the rotating cars and household appliances served as the epitome of stimulative entertainment nonetheless. In the living room, I sat with heavy eyelids as Mom braided my hair and secured it with a coordinated bow on early school mornings. In the living room, I created a vast landscape of toy mountains that primarily consisted of stuffed Snoopy’s, child-size grocery carts, half-dressed Barbie dolls, and secondhand Cabbage Patch Kids. In the living room, I discovered true evidence of Santa’s existence through footprints of soot that crept from the fireplace to the Christmas tree. In the living room, I sang, I cried, I danced, I stomped, I skipped, I laughed, I snacked, I played, I slept. In the living room, I lived.

Without a single murmur or complaint, the living room witnessed me transition from one stage of my youth to another; from the plumpish infant with dribble upon my chin and peach fuzz upon my head, to the hazardous five year-old with scrapes on my elbows and grass stains on my knees, from the know-it-all seven year-old with big-beaded bracelets and frilly-blue bows, to the career-oriented ten year-old with oversized glasses and hand-painted sweatshirts. The living room aged with me and eventually became too small for a fast-growing family until ultimately, it was time to leave in search of a larger, more compatible space. Oddly enough, it took me eight years to finally realize the emotional impact that a single room has had on me; and perhaps it will take another eight years to realize the bearing of my current environment. Regardless, the burgundy, mangled carpet and the eggshell-tinted blinds of my childhood living room will always be a friendly reminder of an encompassing past.

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It first became known through the manilla folder, roughly scotch-taped to an aging wall encumbered by a thick alabaster paint and bespeckled with moonlike craters and leftover residue from timeworn adhesive. Complementing nicely the vast, chalky overlay of the cement-blocks, there hung the pile of freshly-copied, pink papers. With a befuddled stare she allowed her eyes to skim apathetically the contents of the page. Her subconscious preparation for procrastination set in quickly, and soon thereafter the paper lie crinkled and neglected amidst disheveled notebooks and broken pencils in an overstuffed book bag. Why should it receive any more attention than that which it was given? After all, an entire summer awaited and more important things need take precedence; for instance, the signing of yearbooks and the last-minute goodbye’s to semi-close acquaintances in the senior class. She certainly did not expect that the comic sans in its manipulative, brevity, would exhale an educational air that spurred initial frustration and eventual empowerment.

The first major works data sheet was a dozy. Naive and freshly-turned sixteen, she sat in her cushioned swivel chair waiting for the brilliance of her words to appear suddenly. They never came. Never before had she been confronted with the heightened expectations of an AP class and first impressions were key. The insertion of a seemingly profound and polysyllabic word here or there was sure to lift an attentive eyebrow even if it’s placement within the actual sentence was, in short, awkward and bizarre. The hours passed slowly with the excessive wiping of a moistened brow and the clenching of tormented fists. Candace completed her very first major works data sheet; six pages of cacophonous clutter that exuded only one redeeming quality: documentation that attempted pitifully to evidence the laborious hours that were put into it.

She soon discovered that these so-called “summer assignments” would quickly transform into yearlong tasks. Yearlong tasks! Two- page papers often left her lifeless and searching for words in the wee hours of the night. This was an impracticality, no, an impossibility, a preposterous scam cleverly plotted to give first-year students a mere case of prolonged jitters.

Her high-strung means of rationalization quickly subsided as Invisible Man... made himself visible. With a vibrant highlighter poised in her left hand, she prepared for yielding gusts of rhetorical profundity, literary devices, and stylistic concoctions which suddenly roused a secret thrill within her, to which she told no one. Why were these symbols so absolutely brilliant? What was it exactly that rendered these sudden moments of proverbial sayings so esoteric? Perhaps, Chinua Achebe’s Thing Fall Apart had left a perpetual, unpleasant taste in her mouth; but, literature was, finally, not half-bad. The keys pitter-pattered invariably until 1:30AM as a computerized document overflowed with the evidence of a naive but hopeful literary pursuit. She searched and researched, and dug deeply into the muddy murk of the text. She relished in her newfound glory, and awaited impatiently, the next late night of literary madness. She received an A... and it was good.

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Who Am I?
I sit here, strangely pondering the most ethical approach to compressing an autobiographical passage into a mere glimpse into my life with twenty minutes of thought behind it. Coming from a background of Southern living in the quaint town of close-mindedness called Waxhaw, I have discovered that I am eager to rid myself of the uncultured lifestyle that drags discreetly behind me at all times. I am the “Sarah, Plain and Tall” of Northwest as I sit in class with beige flats and a naive persona. Incandescent happiness dominates me as I walk aimlessly, refusing to ever show sign of grief for fear that it would let down a certain vulnerability shield. I admire my own work ethic but alas I have not forgotten my days of petty teen idols; the days where algebra homework was shoved aside as I flourished and blossomed into an avid *NSYNC fan. My willingness to share that information makes me an extremely brave soul... or an extremely stupid soul, whichever you prefer. I am Mrs. Lovett. I am uncorrupted, always following the little angel that sits on my left shoulder; I still wonder why I was not simply named Chastity at birth. I am grounded in my morals. I am a qualified actress but a lousy athlete, a dexterous talker but a mediocre listener, an overachiever and an underachiever. I am fond of repetitive antithesis. I am a sap for romantic comedies of the ‘eighties and am still in my hopeful phase, impatiently waiting for an unpremeditated moment that I cannot describe simply because those types of moments are indescribable. I am a musician on a good day, an artist on a good day, a performer on a good day, a comedian on a good day, attractive on a good day, intelligent on a good day, a computer geek everyday. I am anxious to revisit childhood. I am intimidated by the overwhelming intellect at Northwest that surrounds me. I am a mountain-lover who once wanted to chase tornadoes and be an animator for Disney.

What do I want?
I want an endless supply of sweet, aromatic incense and candles. I want Campbell’s potato soup with hot apple cider on a crisp day in Fall. I want to revisit childhood over and over again so I can throw tantrums, play school with a plethora of stuffed animals, wear pigtails, eat without a moment’s hesitation stemming from fat content or caloric values, swim in kiddie pools, wear pajamas with the feet built into them, make messes that I don’t have to clean, take much-needed naps. I want a soundtrack to life that will seemlessly mirror my mood. I want summer to last for a day and autumn a century. I want to drive. I want pumpkin-pie fudge. I want open windows on rainy Sunday mornings. I want my mom to always be around. I want my dad to keep making me laugh with his passive, mellow humor. I want to look like my seven-year old sister with her screaming blue-green eyes and velvet brown hair. I want to be bad, but only a little bit. I want to yell without losing my voice. I want to be a child prodigy even though I’m not a child. I want a crisp log cabin in the privacy of the mountains with a reticent creek behind it. I want a miniature brown bag of boiled peanuts from a quaint mountain store that sells ridiculous items like ceramic aliens and pseudo- moccassins. It is through these selfish wants that I am able to strive for my more highly-esteemed wants of fame. Not a money-filled, paparazzi, ‘glamorous’ fame, but a simple, yielding, theatre fame. I want to be on Broadway and if not that... no, there are no “if-nots.” That’s what I want. I want the heat of the stagelights against my face and the smell of freshly opened curtains. I want applause and laughter. I want to be an actress, and quite possibly a singer and a dancer. I want more than anything, for a humble attitude and an incessant respectfulness, to overshadow and undermine my faults. I want genuine kindness to be the bulk of my personality.

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Through an overt and quick-witted modification of Shakespeare’s traditional quotation, the gelastic Terry Eagleton muses, “Some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness, and some have literariness thrust upon them.” If you had asked me in my freshman year of high school who Terry Eagleton was, my immediate response may have consisted of an impulsive shrug or a crinkle of befuddled eyebrows. Prior to a transcendent eleventh grade English class, my literary knowledge was miniscule. I walked about aimlessly with two rows of braces-plated teeth, unaware of the literary dimension that I had let linger, untouched and neglected. I find it fascinating that I once wrote papers that were saturated in the tenacious goo of platitudes and clichés. I cringe at the displaced image of myself shivering with disgust at the sound of, “Great Expectations.” Certainly, the sophomoric tendencies of young teenagers to hold a nonsensical, unprovoked grudge toward great Literature is expected. However, it is not ideal.

As a child, the shelves of a Strawberry Shortcake bookshelf sat quietly, weighed down by a vast collection of Roald Dahl novels and other well-known fantasy texts (to this day, I continue to hold Dahl’s The Witches in extremely high esteem). Reading had always been something I enjoyed; but, it had not always been a full-fledge, analytical hobby. My quintessential English experience was ignited by the first page of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, a novel of sweet brevity that just happened to be the first of two summer reading books for Advanced Placement English 11. Perhaps it was the vividness of Holden Caulfield’s baseball mitt covered in green marker that captivated me; or, perhaps it was the shear idea that I could go for a full 212 pages without once looking at the clock. Nonetheless, I had found my literary niche.

Month by month, my cognitive database of literature acquired an ample lot of authors, novels, and well-known titles. William Faulkner’s idiosyncratic vocabulary found it’s way into my everyday speech while Don DeLillo’s list-saturated diction crept into my writing. My personal copies of engrossing novels withered with the populous creases of excessively-turned pages and the multitudinous markings of bright pink highlighters. With the help of an accomplished English teacher, I learned to gradually break down the boundaries that once kept my writing detracted by impulsive formalities and pseudo-ideals. In short, I became unaccustomed to the sub par probing of my early English days and, in turn, stepped into the vast world of Literature that I had formerly perceived as intimidating and thus inapplicable to my life.

In a classroom filled with overachieving peers (the majority of them being superior writers, inevitably), I watched my English teacher tower above his jet-black podium. Betwixt his fingers he spun a silver compass that caught brief glints of light with each rotation. While performing this subtle movement, he murmured in an enthralled state, “As stiff twin compasses are two, Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show, To move, but doth, if the'other do.” As a witness of this momentary “hypnosis-by-literature,” I came to the sudden realization that I am more than willing to succumb to the greatness of literature which Terry Eagleton describes. I long for the day when I can utter the words of John Donne without a moment of rehearsed memorization; a day when my likening of a mere stoplight to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” will become second nature.

I am still learning where the commas and semicolons go and I have yet to completely wipe my writings clean of passive voice. But, amongst the haphazard obstacle course of punctuation mishaps and run-on sentences, I have managed to kindle the flame of English passion.

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For eighteen years, my generation has felt the fiery wrath of our elders. The furrowed brows, the shaking heads, the pointed fingers, the exposed veins, the clenched fists, the under-the-breath obscenities, you name it. It is a common tale to which each and every one of my peers, myself included, can attest. I like to call it, “When I was your age” syndrome. As much as I would like to receive some type of immunization so as to spare my future children the misery caused by this grievous disorder, I know deep down that it is an inevitable epidemic which will be sweeping the nation for ions to come.

I sometimes think, “should I apologize for having the world at my fingertips?” It would probably sound foolish and a bit cynical for me to say, “I’m sorry” for being able to watch full-length movies on these compact discs that we call, “DVD’s.” I’m sorry bubble gum doesn’t cost a nickel. I’m sorry cameras show me how the photograph will look immediately after I click the button. I’m sorry I can squeeze thousands of illegally downloaded songs onto a white, rectangular device that fits into the palm of my hand. I’m sorry I can contact all of my friends at once through the devilish instant messenger service. I’m sorry that there are 900 television channels instead of four. I’m sorry that gas-guzzling cars have replaced the luxury of walking to the convenient store with my own two feet, or pedaling upon a shiny red bicycle. I’m sorry that MTV airs laughable dating shows instead of music videos. I’m sorry that the terms “bling” and “fo shizzle” have seeped into the popular American vernacular while the terms, “please”, “may I”, “m’am”, and “sir” have underhandedly snuck out. I’m sorry that teenage girls find short skirts and unsecured bosoms becoming.

Have I gotten your attention? I know what you’re thinking. How dare this naive child mock the inconveniences and hardships of my past? And, you are absolutely right. But, would it alter your reaction to this long-winded list of apologies if I told you that I was being sincere? What if I was really sorry? Certainly, I am grateful for the bulk of these luxuries. However, that does not diminish my genuine regret for overlooking how effortless life has become for my generation. Your youth was simple; mine is easy. Of the two, only the former generates respect, maturity, intellect. The latter has left us with ungratefulness, ignorance, and impatience.

This sounds like a rant of disgust. A rant of disgust is certainly not an appropriate gift for my mother on the one designated day of the year when we stop to recognize and applaud her maternal efforts. But, on this early Saturday morning in May, I find disgust to be the most appropriate emotion in the world. Why? Because my mother has spent the last 6,880 days making sure my life was the very best it could possibly be. This does not include the approximate 270 days of pregnancy which preceded my birth. This does not include the 3,424 days of double-duty since my beautiful sister came into the world. To put it simply, of the 7,150 days that my mother has put forth blood, sweat, and tears to ensure my well-being, I have only given back eighteen days to say, “Thanks, Mama.” Eighteen days that might have ceased to exist had America not so conveniently slapped the words “Mother’s Day” onto my calendar from year to year. Eighteen days in which a Hallmark greeting card and a basket of sweet-smelling lotions and soaps are supposed to add up to the daily drives to and from school, the packed lunches of diagonally-sliced turkey sandwiches, juice boxes and Little Debbie cakes, the kisses on the forehead, the meticulously arranged Christmas mornings, the freshly laundered clothes, the regular purchases of every desired toy, the dance classes, the play rehearsals, the chicken noodle soup and ginger ale. This is an outrage! I have every right to be upset. My mother deserves so much more than a “Bath and Body Works” purchase.

“It’s the thought behind it that counts.” Come now, that’s not true. If that were true, we could spend the rest of our lives giving people blocks of wood for Christmas.

So, I have decided to write something. It’s not really a letter. It’s certainly not poetry. I am compiling some of my favorite life lessons, memories, and so forth. It’s really just a means of articulating my thoughts in a slightly coherent, perhaps, at times, eloquent manner. Regardless of what label we decide to give it, it will never hold a candle to all that my mom has done for me.

GREATEST LIFE LESSON of MY YOUTH
• Ninth grade. My Brian Davis infatuation reaches its fourth year and has yet to dissipate, even a smidgeon. Braces metallically lace my Julia Roberts teeth. A bronzy glow radiates from my freshly dyed hair. My neck and arms are elegantly adorned in recent Claire’s purchases. My boobs are as perky as they come and I’ve finally gotten the hang of this whole “menstrual cycle” thing. I am in high school and thus should be considered a woman fully capable of taking care of herself. And yet, somehow, deodorant usage has failed to find its position in my morning routine.

The end of the school day arrives, the bell rings, and we scatter like lab rats to the parking lot. Mom rolls up in the “Mom’s Choice Vehicle of the Millennium” (aka: the Mini Van). I hop in and immediately thereafter am barraged by a treacherous stench. “Candace,” she says with a curled lip. She is all knowing. Poised, collective, prepared, she inquires, “Did you forget to put on deodorant this morning?” Well, of course I forgot deodorant. Why else would these underarms reek of day old sweat left over from daunting gym classes (and cute boys who make me nervous)? But, because I am fourteen years old, it is absolutely necessary that she not win this argument. In order for me to fill my quota of “errors all teenagers must make to be considered a real teenager,” I must reprimand her for making such a bold (yet truthful) accusation. Denial. Absolute denial. It was not me who stunk up the car; it was sheer coincidence that the essence of body odor filled her nostrils the moment I sat in the passenger’s seat.

“Wouldn’t you rather have me tell you than someone else?” she says retaining her quiet composure.

After much hesitation, I accept it. She’s so very right. She’s always so very right. She’s never not been right, why should I start doubting her now? Of course, it will take me four years before I let her know this.

It should be known that that very incident propelled me to eagerly blanket my underarms in deodorant on a regular basis. Thanks, Mom for teaching me the importance of personal hygiene.

Favorite Memories

• Stroking your arm during nap time. Did hair ever start growing there again or does it remain as bald as ever?

• The first time I shaved my legs. You did it for me. I was absolutely scared to death. I will tell you what, though; my legs felt so soft beneath the sheets that night.

• The 11th grade prom hair disaster. You saved me with your clever mom pleading skills at that hair salon.

• Southern Women’s Show... every year. Brunswick stew, wax hand treatments, coupons galore, free nail polish.

• The morning you told me your were pregnant.

• Helping you with your lines for Chickspeare’s Macbeth in the car on the way to rehearsal.

• Not recognizing you in kindergarten when you came to pick me up after school because of your haircut and perm.

• Crying in preschool when you tried to drop me off. I ran from the teacher. I actually remember it.

• “Your teeth are perfect except for that yellow one right there.” ‘Nuff said.

• Watching my first Broadway Show, “Noises Off!” with you next to that bubbly old man.

• Listening to you read me that gigantic Kermit storybook in bed at night.

• Watching you play Pokémon on the purple Gameboy pocket for hours on end and then discuss it with David Hook on the ride to school the following morning.

• Sleeping in your bed before you got in it and smelling the flowery scent of your hair on the pillows.

• Sitting in your chair as soon as you get out of it; it’s always so warm.

• Getting fireworks with Gump and listening to your story about Dad playing the piano in the middle of the night. “Bang, BANG BANG BANG BANG.”

• Eating my lunch in a bathroom stall at Northwest in 10th grade when I had no friends and wishing I had my mommy.

• Clutching you tight at Lindsey Hemby’s funeral.

• Ian’s bar mitzvah. Those Jews know how to PARTY.

• Your fascination with the scenic beauty of the mountains. “That’s pretty!”

I could go on forever. You are the most beautiful thing in the world to me, Mama. I love you. Happy Mother’s Day.

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