It’s summer and I indulge myself in long strolls along wide, sunny, ocean beaches. The steady, rhythmic pounding of the waves on the beach and the piercing cries of seagulls fill my ears. Mingled with them, I can hear the rushing whisper of the gentle sea breeze and the faint buzzing of a solitary bee gathering nectar from the beach roses sprinkled over the dune. The sounds seem to fit together in perfect musical harmony: my own private concerto.

The cool breeze soothes my stinging sunburned face and back, even though the salt in the air accentuates its tenderness. The icy ocean water chases my feet and the damp sand grates between my toes when I walk. I spot a pure, snowy feather being tossed about by the wind. When I catch it, I find that it’s velvety and so fragile that it could almost slip through my fingers like quicksilver.

As I sit on the warm beach, a wave of contentment passes over me, and I become lost in daydreams.

The memory of a muggy dusk in the suburbs flashes through my mind—an invincible body taut from exercise, sweat dripping from temples to asphalt. Two years ago—only nineteen—immortal. My legs breezed me past a spot on the road where a bird lay, the life knocked out of it. I paused, startled by this rude intrusion into the sanctuary of my life—graph paper—where everything fit into perfect little boxes.

I walked on, but again paused, thinking of the bird, bothered by my mind’s image of its last moments. I went back to the spot and stared down, not knowing what to do.  I thought, maybe if I looked at it long enough, it wouldn’t be so foreign, so intimidating. Then, I could be the compassionate saint to care for it and put its body to rest. I could take the responsibility of bringing peace to its soul, just like they had taught us in all those years of Sunday school.

I finally got up enough courage to jostle it with my toe. If it were stiff, inanimate, somehow it would become just another object, more touchable. But its legs were still flexible, its body warm. The life oozed out of it and spread itself on the tar. And I stood motionless, saying out loud, “I can’t touch it. I just can’t.” I didn’t want death to ooze out on me, corrode my hands, invade my body, spread over me like a fungus. I ran away breathless and cowardly, seeking refuge in those little boxes. But, I couldn’t outrun the shadow that crossed my conscience.

Now, I wince as I recognize my surroundings. The blue light of the street lamp casts shadows on the walls of my hospital room, and I’m immobilized against the odor of sanitized sheets. Bit by bit, the cancer hollowed me out, dug a canyon inside me that echoes when I scream my despair across it. The disease squatted my body, evicting me, merely a tangential witness to its destruction. In two years, all semblance of life has been sucked out of this pale shell with sunken eyes, bloated cheeks and awkward limbs. I’m waiting for the paralyzing, maddening pain to end. Relief. I’d hoped death would come like this, dark and solitary after too much running. Just a body turning cold, waiting for a familiar bird to raise me on its wings.

It was a beautiful spring day, warm with a light breeze. We spent the afternoon clearing a spot bordering the terrace to plant sunflowers and radishes. My girls donned their sunhats and gardening gloves, and we all worked together to loosen the dirt, clear away the leaves and push the seeds underground. They will diligently bring water to their treasures every day until the promise of new life that they await becomes a reality, like making a wish on a star until the day it comes true. They even sang a song to the seeds to help them grow.

But I rip up the roots of the mint plant that’s invading my garden–mint, a prized herb in Arabic cultures. I lament the futility: the futility of shaping nature to our guise, the futility of bringing order to a few square meters of garden when people are being killed in a war that I abhor half a world away. My conscience is unappeased. I wake from dreams where crawling soldiers in an orange haze wield machine guns, only to see the same dust-storm footage on TV. I am powerless before a world I don’t recognize, and compensate by letting loose my wrath on nature.

At night, like a good American, I fill in the boxes of my tax return, noting in passing that eighteen percent, or more, of the dividend will go to buy more bombs and tanks. I pause to ponder whether I should mark “conscientious objector” on the envelope in neon highlighter, as did my brother at another point in history. When did they amend the Constitution to say “All men are created equal, except for those of Middle-Eastern origin?” Perhaps at the same time they voted to endow unconstitutional emergency powers to the President. Is rampant paranoia keeping everyone from remembering the inalienable rights of the prisoners in Guantanamo? My perspective as an American expatriate in Europe enables me to see a side of the war that is filtered and sterilized on American soil—subject matter for a media event—and as a result, I feel increasingly isolated, uprooted from my native culture.

I am American. But I cannot support a government that camouflages the economic realities of acquiring, in true colonial form, the world’s second-largest oil reserves, behind a charade of would-be weapons caches, weapons possibly furnished by the US at another point in history. I cannot support a government whose private interests will reap the benefits of a murderous war and the reconstruction of a devastated country where the seeds of hatred are taking deep roots. I cannot support a government that ignores peaceful options and proceeds to destruction without evidence in the face of protest from an entire planet. I cannot support a government that triumphantly convoys care packages in front of television cameras to a riotous population of strong, healthy men while it encircles cities, cutting off their water and supplies for days on end, in a strategy reminiscent of the middle ages. I cannot support a gluttonous culture that usurps approximately three-fifths of the world’s resources for only 5% of its population, without a second thought.

So, instead I teach my children about the miracle of life that comes from Yahweh and God and Allah. I teach them of tolerance and kindness. I teach them to hate war and destruction, to hate circumstances that lead people to do evil things. I teach them compassion for all living things, responsibility for those in need, and courage to change the world around them for the better. This is the dream of hope that I have for their future.

I woke up this morning. Shadows of dreams still lingered in my consciousness. I felt my breath quicken and the blood course through my body. The pressure of my weight was firm against the mattress, as if I was somehow magnetized to my bed. While my eyes opened and focused, the first thought of the day entered my head. I had crossed the undefined zone between sleep and consciousness.

My body slid across the smooth sheets, and the cold tile shocked my feet awake. Just for a moment, I felt Life, the excitement of being, like glimpsing some secret of the universe—the same secret known to someone whose spirit never grows old, and who always has a twinkle in his eye and a knowing smile on his lips.

Outside, rain poured down from the bleak world above. As my face rose defiantly to meet the first cool tears from the sky, I woke again, but not from sleep. The rain penetrated much deeper than my threadbare sweater. Each drop fell into a reservoir of serenity and inner strength, washing me clean of my disappointments, my frustrations, my self-doubt. I splashed in the puddles like a child and danced, trying to catch the drops. But, they evaded my grasp, much like the fleeting moment.

Once, long ago, when fairies were still in existence, everything was calm and peaceful. The fairy kingdom was set up in three castes; each of which was headed by a duchess fairy. All of the fairies had a leader named Princess Crystal.

The three castes consisted of the white division, headed by Duchess Snowdrop; the yellow division, headed by Duchess Sunbeam; and the pink division, headed by Duchess Rose-Anne. Princess Crystal was very much loved by all fairies; but in order to maintain discipline, she had to be strict.

One day, all of the fairies decided to take a restful day to go out and have fun in the woods. They danced, sang and had lots of fun.

It was a very warm day, so they decided to cool off by wading in the nearby stream. They went into the stream while they still had their slippers on to avoid cutting their feet on all of the sharp rocks.

When the fairies cam home for the night, their slippers hadn’t dried yet. Princess Crystal was very angry with the faireis for doing such an outlandish act. She told them to hang their slippers on the grass to dry and never to wear them again. That is how the pink, white and yellow lady’s slippers came to be.

She peered through the nighttime shadows at her sleeping daughter in the crib and eased the empty bottle from the toddler’s fingers. The glass was still warm from where the child clutched it for comfort. She inhaled deeply to fill her emptiness with the infant’s sweet odor and begrudgingly backed out of the room, closing the door. Though she was drowning in love for Sylvie, her creation, there was something missing, something she couldn’t quite grasp. Something that hurt too much to think about.

Christine tucked the rebellious wisps of her auburn hair behind her ear as she sat down at her desk to concentrate. Her freckled, oval face strained with intensity in front of the blank page and now that the heat of the August day had passed, she felt a chill invade her spine in the dim silence of her study, away from the din of her husband watching TV.

She had often thought about drafting a letter to her Great Aunt Jeannette, first out of guilt, then out of a desire to know more about her family before it was too late. Aunt Jeannette was the last living of twenty-two children who spent her days, waiting and depressed in a nursing home that was not home, spitting out her Prozac as soon as the nurse left the room. Christine’s childhood memories of her aunt flashed in front of her glazed eyes, as if she were watching a slide show, images of a spirited older woman serving savory pork pies at their Franco-Canadian family reunions every summer. Christine didn’t know if they were her memories or ones she stole from watching shaky, homemade films. Read the rest of this entry »

I can still smell the sweetness of the wild plums that grew in your back yard when we were too young to know that we would not be friends. The tree was so laden with fruit that gravity pulled the branches down to the ground to form the walls of our sanctuary. All afternoon, hiding inside the overgrown foliage, we were content in our cavernous refuge. You sitting on one branch, facing the road, I on another, facing the field. The sweet-tart flesh filling our stomachs, and our conversation innocent. Juice running down our sun-kissed chins, dust clinging to our sticky hands. The fruit was warm from the sunshine and so bursting with promise, the silky smooth skin “popped” when you bit into it.

I sought out your companionship, the boy next door, sandy-haired and freckled in the shadows. My feelings toward you were never enamoured, but somehow it was reassuring to be near someone who shared the same street name, someone who came into the world just seven days after me. A picturesque childhood as seen from the outside, some would say. But your stutter betrayed you. Something kept you from telling. Kept you from screaming your outrage. Made you check yourself on every syllable, hesitant before asserting yourself. Read the rest of this entry »