Summer is Here

Day One: Tuesday, 7 May, 2013

I got home a little after 8 in the evening.  It wasn’t a bad car ride – not at all.  I drove for five hours before I had to quit because my eyelids were so heavy.  In the backseat, I didn’t fall asleep right away, but it wasn’t long before I was drifting off. 

Anyway, I got home – and I had leftover pizza and a favorite of mine called “red and yellow bowties” (bowtie pasta with corn, crushed tomatoes, onions, and cheese).  And I stayed up late that night in the living room before I went to bed.

Day Two: Wednesday, 8 May, 2013

I woke up to the sound of the alarm on my phone – which I had forgotten to turn off.  But I bounced out of bed, informed my roommate that I was going to Mass, and got dressed, bright and cheery.  I went to Mass, which was not as thrilling as Mass at Steubie but I didn’t expect it to be.  I went because of my deep devotion to the Eucharist and my determination to have a summer like no other.

I saw some of the Smith family today.  Brad’s non-Catholic parents are up visiting and the younger three except baby Peter were home with them.  But I saw Jessie and Brad and their daughter Anna and baby Peter.  I’m not sure why but I feel slightly intimidated by them.  I guess because I let them use me for so long but I’m now out to change my role, but that role hasn’t been established yet.  What’s more, Brad has an intense personality.  He tends to approach conversations with me as like interviews and I feel put on the spot.  I can’t help but wonder with intrepid intimidation what will happen this summer.

Back home, I rearranged my bedroom so that the two beds were pressed against one another in the middle of the room and my desk was perpendicular with the outside wall.  It makes the room look bigger.

My sister and I did a lot of cleaning that day.  I did a little bit of unpacking and I helped my sister clean her side.  I set up my lamps and cords and such; and there was a lot of sweeping to be done.  The dustpan has taken an extended leave in our room.

At the start of the season and while I was away, my parents did some landscaping.  I was impressed!  They tilled, enlarged my vegetable garden (according to my plans), extended the front path to the end of the house, built a sturdy fence around my garden, and got stone.  My mother also moved the fire pit from its place in the yard to the edge of where the aboveground pool used to be.  The plan is to put down a patio on the sand and then put up the screen house.  Sounds exciting!

Anyway, I raked my bare garden to sort of smooth things over and, well, feel like I was doing something I guess.  It wasn’t really necessary and I don’t know if it did any good – but it looked nice.

Day Three: Thursday, 9 May, 2013

I decided to sleep in because it was dark and I was tired, only to find out that this is Ascension Thursday.  We rushed out of bed only to decide that we couldn’t make the 8 at St. Camilis.  We decided on the 9 at St. Denis.  I must admit I lost my temper.  The elder of my two younger sisters can be a little annoying and high-strung when it comes to daily Mass.  But I shouldn’t have lost my temper.

It rained.  I stayed at my desk, my things unpacked and cluttering up the dining room.  I worked on the language that I invented during my theology class and I decided to start work on a story.

My imagination has been rather dry lately and I have no confidence in my own style.  But I flipped back through the pages of one of my writing notebooks and I came across a sketch I’d jotted down.  Although what I had written wasn’t very descriptive or in-depth, the scene exploded in my mind and my creativity was caught.  With a few detail changes, I could make this work – so that’s what I’m doing:

Beginnings are always hard.  Sometimes they come unexpectedly, and sometimes they haunt and taunt our futures with a deplorable lack of compassion.  But always, always – a beginning leaves something behind.  Sometimes it is childhood; sometimes it is innocence.  Sometimes it is something dreadfully important to us, and sometimes it is something that needs to be left behind; sometimes, it is both.  But beginnings always shut the door on the past.

Elizabeth Rhys’s future was unwittingly expecting a beginning.  Her beginning was rushing toward her as though released from a catapult, whistling through the air with deadly weight and ill intent.  It was a large, routine-as-usual–shattering beginning – the kind that would not allow her, ever again, to return to the time before her new beginning.  It fancied itself as bestowing upon the lass a life such as she could never wish to turn down; but many times after it came, Elizabeth reflected on the direction her life had taken and she bitterly despised the beginning.

Significant to note: Elizabeth was as common a commoner, as pleasant a peasant, as servitude a servant as any serf.  Her mother was a serf’s daughter; her father was not around when she was born.  Her mother married a poor merchant when Elizabeth was three; and Mr. Rivera – as Elizabeth always knew him – came and went as he pleased (he was away on business when each of his two daughters and his son was born).  When he was home, he sneered down on his wife and isolated Elizabeth.  He abused the youthful girl if ever he had reason to, and he assaulted her mother for the slightest provocation.  Of his own two daughters he had the highest regard, and of his son Edmond he expected big things; nonetheless, he always threatened to abandon his struggling family, and at long last, he did.  When Elizabeth was 7, he left and never returned.  He did send one letter, which Elizabeth’s mother checked for money and then promptly burned to keep the fire going.

Then life changed for the better for Elizabeth, who lived a poor, lonely life – shunned by society and bullied by her unbridled younger brother and sisters – until the age of fourteen, when her mother demanded that she must either marry or find some form of employment.  Elizabeth’s distant cousin lived a few farms away, and her brother was an under-gardener at the castle. So Elizabeth’s cousin wrote to her brother, and with his help, Elizabeth left home to work for the royal family.

Her salary was next to nothing, but it was more than what her family had earned before.  At first, she emptied chamber pots and emptied the grates and turned the spit.  By the end of the first month, her fingernails were black and her skin was dry and red.  Her hair, which was already as black as the ebony chest in the queen’s chambers, was like straw and had a dusting of ash.  Her eyes were bloodshot from the cold nights she spent wandering from chamber to chamber, stoking the coals to ensure they didn’t go out before the morn.

Then she met Robert Gregorio.  He, too, had lots of odd jobs.  He was the frail son of a knight who was once good friends with the king’s steward; the king’s steward felt indebted, for one reason or another, to Sir Gregorio, and he took on Robert as a favor.  But Robert was not exactly training to be a steward; rather, he was training to be whatsoever someone needed him to be.  By the time he was twenty, however, (and Elizabeth was seventeen) he seemed to be a sort of butler – doing everything and anything that needed tending and not already being attended to by someone else.  He had the kindest, most generous heart of anyone.

Then my sister had her horse-back-riding lesson, which I had agreed to watch but couldn’t afford to participate in.  Darling girl paid for me!  I loved being back on a horse again, but I wished to just ride.  I got bored waiting still while the instructor watched another rider.  I felt inclined to just nudge my horse out of the narrow opening in the door and kick him into a fast walk and just go in circles until the instructor could attend to me.  It was very frustrating.

Day Four: Friday, 10 May, 2013

Another sunny day!  I didn’t get up for Mass, but I was up before 9 o’clock.  I had breakfast (a practice that still feels weird) and made tea cookies for my mother and her guest who was coming over for tea!  Then I got my brother and my little sister to help me set up the badminton set and my other sister joined us for badminton.  When my mother’s friend had left, she took me, as promised, to two nurseries to get vegetables.  We got pumpkins, watermelon, two kinds of lettuce, cabbage, red onions, celery, peppers, three kinds of squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and rhubarb.  I also planted carrots and bush snap bean seeds, and morning glory seeds on the corners outside the fense.  It looks fantastic!  I’m so excited!

Mom also got me a job at the barn.

Day Five: Saturday, 11 May, 2013

It really doesn’t feel like Saturday.  It feels like Friday.  Perhaps it’s because I got home on Tuesday.

This morning was partly sunny when I woke up.  Knowing that rain was expected, I got up (right before 8 o’clock), and I went outside to spread compost and transplant some daylilies from the back to the long edge of the fence around my garden.  It looks great!  I also dropped some leftover flower seeds from last year in with the daylilies, hoping for some variety – we’ll see!

The rest of the day is rainy.  I’m in a comfy shirt-pajama pants combo, and I did some more unpacking and some reading.  The rest of the day holds more of same, with the possibility of going to a First Communion party.  And maybe Confession.

~Meggy