Disappointment

  It’s a fickle thing; that disappointment, however, it seems to be inevitable. They tell us growing up that we can expect to see it throughout adulthood. Being told to expect disappointment and actually feeling it are two very different things. I can’t remember the first time that I let somebody down or likewise when they did it to me, but I can remember several occasions since then where the feeling was alive and well. Recently I seem to be establishing a strong relationship with that unwelcome stranger known as Disappointment. I hear people talk about how everything in their life is going wrong and even though I’ve been there before, I now struggle to understand that feeling. I’m an optimist. After years of living as a pessimist and succeeding at nothing, I somehow slowly changed my outlook on life. That being said, a recent chain of events and several run-ins with my old pal “Disappointment” is now responsible for my teeter-totter relationships with Optimism. Some days I feel that the weight of the world is resting quite comfortably on my shoulders, showing no clear indication of moving on.

  When I was around 10 years old my family moved down South for my father’s job. We moved into a modest house with not so modest fruit trees in the back yard that left their rotten fruit all over the grass, leaving me little room to play in my own yard I quickly ventured out to the front yard. I was surprised to see a not so little girl with fire red hair sitting in the yard next to ours. She was jumping around and talking to herself, which frightened me at first, but fear quickly turned to interest. She spotted me staring at her and she introduced herself as “Jennifer.” “I am 8 and I love animals,” she said. She seemed a little strange to me, but something about her was familiar and I instantly felt like I could be myself. Jennifer’s family cooked HUGE country dinners with fried chicken crunchies, homemade mashed potatoes and rivers of gravy. Whenever I ate dinner with them I could eat as much as I wanted and nobody ever said a word about me getting fat. I was a skinny kid, but for some reason my mother was obsessed with me staying that way. (much to her disappointment, puberty changed my body and petite was no longer a personal descriptive word) Anyway, Jennifer’s grandmother taught me how to cook, sew, and she even made me my own quilt. I went to her house everyday morning and stayed until dark every night. She was easily described as my best friend and we were both upset that when the Summer ended we would no longer be together all day because I was two grades above her.

  Our first day of school, Jennifer was running behind so I went to the bus stop alone. The other kids said hello and we seemed to get along better than I had expected. I watched across the street for Jennifer’s door to open and when it finally did I was surprised to hear the other children laughing. You see Jennifer’s grandmother was a fine seamstress and she always made all of Jennifer’s clothes. There were no labels indicating where they were purchased and that instantly put Jennifer at the lower end of the caste system of our neighborhood. Even though the clothes were quite beautiful she never stood a chance of being accepted. I locked eyes with her and she smiled at me, I heard a voice in the distance say, “look its cow-bell.” Apparently the other kids had noticed that Jennifer was big and they weren’t nearly as nice about it. She walked towards me with a defeated look on her face and as the bus rolled up I made the biggest mistake of my 10 year old life, I walked away from my best friend. That day I received a hard lesson in disappointment, it always hurts.

  I spent the entire school day hoping that when I got back on the bus that I would see Jennifer and I would do the right thing. When the day finally came to a close I saw her on the bus, but she was sitting and laughing with another little girl. I sat alone and when we got off at our stop Jennifer walked home without saying a word. I ran after her and finally in her front yard she said her peace. She told me that waiting until nobody was around to be her friend was not the kind of friendship that she wanted, and I swore to never let her down again. I never did. Jennifer and I played together everyday that year, but we also played with the rest of the neighborhood. She was always a little bit different and I always loved that about her. At the end of that school year her parents decided to move the family to Georgia and saying goodbye to her was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. I was disappointed when she left and even though I made some of the best life long friends from that neighborhood, I will always remember Jennifer as being my first experience of real Southern Comfort. So maybe there’s a bit more Optimism left here after all.

The Storm

     Ever since I can remember I have both loved and feared thunderstorms. I still believe there is something raw and fierce about electricity being forced from the sky accompanied by an ear popping "BOOM!" It makes me jump in my seat and peaks my interest all at the same time. Last night we had another doozie of a storm here in my area and I spent most of the night half awake wondering if there was something I should get up and do to prepare just in case it turned into a bad one. As I sat up in bed watching the rain and wind wrestling in the darkness I thought about the first big storm I had experienced.


  When I was a child living in Florida I used to track storms. The local grocery store chain in my town had "Hurricane Tracking Maps," you could pick them up right next to the weekly sale adds during hurricane season. "How convenient," I thought. When I watched the evening news the weather man would tell me the coordinates of the most recent storm and would match up the two latitude and longitude lines until they intersected and I would mark it with a little red dot. I would then connect the little red dot to the one I had marked the day before and slowly after a few days you could see the pattern of where the storm had been. On the margins of the page I would take note of the wind speed and even though my Mathematical skills were lacking I would figure out the anticipated arrival date/time of the above-mentioned storm.


  I remember the first storm that I tracked. It was a pretty big thunderstorm with treacherous winds, it wasn't a hurricane, but for an 11 year old who hadn't grown up in Florida it was pretty scary. My family sat with me on the floor of our main hallway. I had wanted to be prepared in case this turned into a major emergency. So I packed a bag complete with a flashlight, band-aids, fruit roll ups, and even a pack of Ramen Noodle soup (just in case). My doll Julia sat patiently on my lap held tightly in place with my left arm while my right hand scribbled notes on my tracking map. "This ones gonna be big," I thought. In the distance I could see our front window and through it the long arms of our Sycamore tree waved wildly in the rain. I remember thinking, "If the storm doesn't get us that massive tree is going to fall and kill us all." It didn't.


  When the storm finally cleared and everyone vacated the hallway there was a sense of relief, but also a trace of disappointment. I had wanted to be a part of something exciting, and the storm had fizzled out right under my nose. I guess I had prepared for something out of the movie, "Twister" and since there had been no flying cows (or gators in this scenario) I thought the storm had been a dud. When the skies brightened and the sun shone through the clouds I went out into our front yard and much to my surprise, the yard was littered with tree leaves, palm fronds, and the neighbor's garbage cans. "This had been big!" I rushed around excitedly gathering my neighborhood friends and we all exchanged stories about how we had experienced the storm. It was exhilarating!
  
  Looking back on that first storm I can see how it shaped my views on what is now my life. You can spend hours, days, and years preparing for the storm but when it hits all you can do is sit back and wait until it passes. Even still, the best part about any storm is knowing that you it made it through it, and sharing in that survival with the people you love. This morning the rain clouds floated away and as I made my morning coffee the sun peeked through and shone so brightly through my kitchen window. I stopped for a moment and just soaked in its warmth, and thought to myself, "well if that isn't a metaphor, I don't know what is."