Jessi's Papers

Mom's have to brag and I guess this is one of the easiest forums to do so. Jessi recently turned in three papers to her english class. Vingnettes. Her teacher was very impressed and told the whole class that if they needed help to talk to her. Here are her papers.

I know Better

Where I live, life is simple. Unless you know better. The big dirt pile across the street that all the kids play on after school looks unremarkable. Until you go closer and realize it is really a space ship, with the cockpit disguised as an old piece of abandoned farm equipment, with danger hiding in the tall grass. Everyone knows that the old boney tree surrounded by morning glory up the road is haunted. And not to EVER go outside at night, because having a wild gully in our backyard brings us closer to some wildlife than we like. Scarier things are out there. Real things…
Sightings of lithe monsters. I’ve seen three myself. Walking up the road on a warm 4th of July night, there were two young ones prancing across our neighbors car. Another time, after a wild, savage wind ravaged our yard and all but destroyed our legendary climbing tree, I was with my grandpa when he pulled me to a crouch next to him and was very quiet. A male mountain lion, with russet fur and yellow eyes slinked past us heading towards its home in the mountains that guard our valley.
Black masked villains will rob you if you aren’t careful. It’s not always them though. Sometimes it’s an out-of-towner. A pine marten perhaps, or a mink, or maybe even a skunk. Deer roam freely on our street, and twice we have had to tread cautiously between my grandma’s house next door and our own because of moose.
My neighborhood is riding our bikes to Fonnesbecks with two well earned quarters clutched in our sweaty palms to buy a soda from the machine. It is swinging on the old, red rope swing in the front yard. It is knowing where the wild plumb trees are hidden in the gully. It is knowing better.

Window


When I was young, my dad would tell us stories, I remember the feeling of comradely as me and my two brothers snuggled up next to him. In that warm safe place he would open a window to another world. A world where life was simple as going and picking berries and fixing water to make dinner. Each aspen leaf would quiver in vibrant detail, the rugged snowcapped mountains stood like arrowheads pointing up against the sky. The alpine firs stand as sentinels over our little valley, and the sound of birds singing made us feel like home…
The call of a black capped chickadee startled me. I looked around the woodsy mountainside where I lived with my father, mother and siblings. Our cabin was about half a mile form the huckleberry patch where I stood. My small, fiber woven basket had tipped when I jerked up and a few of those precious berries, their smooth reddish purple sides almost ready to burst with their sweet juice fell almost in slow motion, the noonday sun filtering through the dense trees and casting long thin shadows on the pine needle carpet, illuminated them as they finally hit the ground and bounced slightly once before coming to a rest. The thick fragrance of the forest filled my lungs as I sighed. The chickadee called again, laughing merrily at his joke, and flew away in a flicker of black and white. The spring tinkled gently. The warm air was making me sleepy.
I yawned and snuggled a little closer to my dad. I would dream of a beautiful valley. A valley made by my father just for me.

Antique

I have a name found in the dusty antique corner, studded with garnet and wreathed in deep purple velvet, held together with aged, tarnished brass buttons. I was named for a rebellious hors woman in the movie “Man from Snowy River” although I am rarely called Jessica. Most people call me Jessi. With and I. It is a little girl’s name. Little and cute, which I guess is what I am, but that’s not how I feel. Everything about Jessica tells me to be responsible. Which, unfortunately, I am not. My name weighs me down like a thick wool coat in the middle of June and stumbles awkwardly off my tongue when I am asked who I am. In a way I am lying. I am not an antique.
My parents considered naming me Rhiannon, before they decided on Jessica. Stevie Nicks, a regal woman dusted with magic and old songs, and smelling of roses, sings about Rhiannon. Rhiannon was the daughter of Heyvedd the Old. She was the Welsh goddess of the moon and of horses, set to marry Gwawl, another God. But she was in love with a mortal king. But unlike most stories, hers is not a happy one. Rhiannon is now considered the guardian of all those who are forced to speak against themselves. Everyone who must repeat a lie so many times, he or she begins to believe it. “She rules her life like a bird in fight...” Smelling only of the fresh cold wind.
Rhiannon became something she was not. I won’t become and antique.