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2000 Essay Contest Winners

    For your on-line enjoyment, Tiny Lights presents the winners the Personal Essay Contest. We hope that you are sufficiently moved by the words themselves to order the contest issue for $3. In this way, you will enjoy the work as it was meant to be presented, and provide vital support to the small press community. Make checks payable to

Tiny Lights Publications, P.O. Box 928, Petaluma, CA 94953
 

First Prize ($200)

A Boy in the Sea
By
Susan Hagen

     We stand around outside the firehouse during our morning break, with hot coffee in paper cups. There are twenty-eight of us here today--emergency medical technicians with local ambulance companies, two EMTs from the Coast Guard, another who works at a professional raceway. Some of the students are full-time firefighters, a few are sheriff's deputies, and the rest of us are volunteers from coastal and rural fire departments throughout Northern California. I am one of only six women, and at forty-three, among the oldest in the class.
Today is the last day of a four-day training to recertify ourselves as EMTs. It's also the Spring Equinox. The skies are clear, the views are spectacular, and down below the firehouse, traffic on the Coast Highway is heavy with people coming out to spend their Sunday at the beach.
From the parking lot of the modest wooden firehouse, we watch a small sailboat take the swells. "We'll probably get called on that one," says one of the local boys, gesturing with his paper cup. The water has been rough and dangerous for the past several days, he adds, and even as we watch, a twenty-foot breaker slams the coastline from the open sea.
A young man from the Coast Guard is talking about his duty at the Golden Gate Bridge. He tells us how he's recovered the remains of several jumpers and fished bodies out of the water that had been lost at sea for days. "What do they look like?" I want to know.
"Boiled potatoes," he says without hesitation, then apologizes. "I know it sounds awful," he adds, "but that's what they look like to me."
Today is a perfect day to spend at the beach; but for us, it's a day to hole up inside the firehouse, studying pediatric emergencies. After the break, we return to the classroom for a review of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. There's no good explanation for SIDS, we know, and nothing we can do. A baby is healthy one minute and dead the next. Halfway through a video about how to handle the call, a young man gets up and leaves the room. Yesterday, during lunch, his wife brought over their four-week-old son. We passed the baby around and practiced feeling for the brachial pulse on the inside of his arm. "How many of you have been on SIDS calls?" the instructor asks. Half the hands are raised.
In the small rural town where I live, ours is a grassroots fire department with eight volunteers and a pair of engines parked in what used to be somebody's barn. We've responded to every kind of human tragedy: vehicle accidents, heart attacks, house fires, even a horse who'd fallen into a well. Five years ago, when I joined the volunteer fire department and went back to school to become an emergency medical technician, no one promised me an easy time sleeping at night. No one said my life would go on as if I hadn't been there to witness these things, hadn't tried to help.
But already I'm credited with helping to save two lives. One of them, a neighbor of mine, still calls me her "angel" when we see each other around town. The other, a young girl with a serious head injury, has written several letters thanking me for giving her a second chance at life.
Just before lunch, the local firefighters are called out to the beach for a water rescue. We watch Kevin and John thrash through the classroom, see them strapping on their helmets inside the cab as the engine pulls out onto the street. Ivan, a sheriff's deputy who works on the rescue helicopter, is also in our class. He makes his way up the embankment to the waiting chopper, where the pilot and paramedic are already preparing for flight. Although this isn't my district and it's not my call, I feel adrenaline surging through me, a tightening in my gut, the instinct to react. I know I'm not the only one in the room who feels this way.
Once the chopper is in the air, the instructor calls our attention to the next video: a two-year-old has been badly burned on his back and buttocks by a pot of beans that's fallen from the stove. The scene is shot live, and the child screams as a voice-over instructs us how to communicate with sick and injured children. Behind me, I hear the soles of boots shifting on the floor, young men clearing their throats. Many of them are fathers with little kids of their own. The child screams as the paramedic holds his tiny hand in her palm and establishes an IV. "David," she says as she tapes the tubing down. "David, it's going to be okay."
There are emergency procedures to learn and medical techniques to employ, but the instructor reminds us that much of what we bring to our EMT work are the tools that we were born with: our eyes, our ears, our voices, our hands. These, in fact, are the only tools I have used on many of my own rescue calls.
The chopper lands on the helipad behind the firehouse as we are finishing lunch. The downdraft from the blades stirs the chips on our plates, and a tornado of paper napkins skitters across the picnic table. Yesterday, Ivan demonstrated rescue techniques from the helicopter. Attached to a hundred-foot line, he plucked two firefighters from the roof of the firehouse, and the pilot set them down gently on the lawn. We were in awe of the precision, the practiced expertise. Everyone envied Ivan's job.
But today we do not envy Ivan. He emerges from the aircraft in a wetsuit, though he hasn't been in the water. The parents were sitting ten feet away, he says, when a sleeper wave snatched two boys from a rock. "The father got the six-year-old out, but the older one... we couldn't find him." An hour at best, he says. An hour in the sea at this temperature, and the boy would die of hypothermia if he hadn't already drowned. That hour was gone.
From the patio behind the firehouse, I hear the call of gulls, the rhythm of the sea like a drumbeat. Last year, six people were sucked into the ocean from this stretch of coastline, including a pair of young lovers and a three-year-old girl. I think about the families of all those people lost, the parents stricken this very afternoon. Even though I didn't respond to the call myself, Ivan's story paints the picture in my mind. Always it's the little details that come to live in my psyche: the torn pink shorts on the little girl who fractured her neck in a trampoline accident; the big, bony knuckles of a sick old man who ended his pain with a shotgun; the boy we found overdosed in an abandoned farmhouse, his swollen purple hands like fists full of blueberry pie.
Despite the fresh loss we feel this afternoon, we retrieve the scattered napkins, fill the recycling bin with soda cans, and spend the rest of the day practicing rescue scenarios: a motorcycle accident, a diabetic coma, a pulmonary embolism, a gunshot wound. Larry, my partner these four days, is closed up inside himself and awkward with the oxygen cylinder when it's our turn to rescue. On Friday, his little nephew died of leukemia, and he's made arrangements to fly to Canada tonight after we take our written final. "We're a very close family," he tells me. "It's hard not being there with them."
The instructor shows another video, this one shot by a news crew at an accident scene in which a car has sheared off a power pole. We watch as the paramedic gets out of his rig and approaches the vehicle, steps onto a live power line, and falls to the ground in seizures. His partner tries to revive him with a defibrillator and manual CPR, but it's too late. "Personal safety is your first priority on every scene," the instructor reminds us. "Every call has the potential to make you the next victim."
Last week, during a rain storm, I responded to two vehicle accidents a couple of hours apart on the same dangerous curve: an elderly man injured in a solo rollover, three people hurt in a head-on collision. The sky was dark, the rain coming down hard. On either end of both scenes, firefighters held up stop signs and took turns waving traffic along one lane. Even so, our lives were endangered by every driver who gawked at the accident instead of watching the road. I know rescuers who've been slugged, bitten by dogs, had guns pulled on them. These realities keep us vigilant on every call.
It's getting late; I'm tired and spent. The instructor hands out our written exam. I worry over the questions, confuse the signs for hypo- and hyperglycemia, can't remember what to do with a prolapsed umbilical cord during emergency childbirth. I'm the third one finished, and of a hundred questions, I've missed only six. The instructor shakes my hand, and I'm certified for another two years.
It's five o'clock, and there are still a few hours of daylight left. I head north through town, and a few miles up the coast, I pull into a parking lot on the cliffs above that long stretch of beach. A Coast Guard cutter is trolling the waters, and an orange chopper flies low over the breaking surf. They're looking for a body now--not a boy in the sea.
I park in an empty spot and get out of my truck, lean against the hood, and look down on the beach. A group of teenage boys plays football in the sand. Picnickers are packing up their ice chests and starting up the trail. Along the water's edge, unsuspecting tourists trust their little ones to a sea that, earlier in the day, had stolen a family's son. Everywhere along this strip of coastline the signs are posted: Danger! Sleeper Waves! Shore Break! No one wants to believe that something so beautiful can also be so deadly.
The chopper flies over again. Soon the search will be called off due to darkness, and tomorrow, deputies and park rangers will comb the shore looking for the body. If the sea is calm enough, Kevin and John will launch their inflatable dinghy and poke around the rocks. A boiled potato, I think. That's what he'll look like when he's found.
A few cars over from mine, the family is gathered together, waiting. Someone new has arrived, and the mother is telling the story.
"The boys are on the rocks," she says in a flat voice. "They're hunting for mussels. Then a big wave comes and it sweeps over them and they're in the water and they're struggling. I'm screaming, 'Swim! Swim!'" She's crying now, as she tells how the father goes in, reaches both boys, but loses his grip on the older one as another wave hits.
"I can't see Steven," she cries. "I see his shoe floating, but I can't see Steven!" She goes to the open back of a mini-van and holds up a wet, sandy boater. "This is his shoe," she says, and she breaks down. "This is his shoe."
The grief that fills this parking lot is my grief, too. What happened here today belongs to all of us who were in that classroom together, whose hopes went up with Ivan and out with Kevin and John, whose arms have closed around parents like these in our own districts, on our own calls. For all our training, for all the skills we practice, sometimes there is nothing we can do but witness the loss, the sudden absence of life, the passing of a child from one world into the next.
Tomorrow my partner, Larry, will grieve with his own family in Canada. Ivan will dangle from the underbelly of his rescue chopper and pluck someone from a cliff or ravine. Others of us will be called to the scenes of accidents, package up the victims, watch each other's backs in the street.
It is the Spring Equinox. The night will be as long as the day. The people knotted together here are wrapped in a package of sorrow they can scarcely contain, and from the center of their huddle, wailing. At some point, they will have to go home, will have to leave their child to the sea. They will have to go somewhere other than here, with that shoe in the trunk and an empty space in the back seat where Steven used to be.

Susan Hagen is a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician in rural Sonoma County, California. She was last year's first-place winner in the Tiny Lights essay contest and was recently published in The Sun.

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Second Prize ($150)


30 AAA
By
Jaime Weiser Love

     The hangers screech across the metal rack. My shoulders reach up to cover my ears.
"This is nice, Aunt Claire," I say over my shoulder.
I hold up a bright yellow sleeveless shift with big butterflies on the front pockets. Maybe the butterflies will cheer Mommy up. I imagine them flying off her pockets and fluttering around her hospital room and Mommy giggling her happy laugh.
"Well, Honey, I think your mommy would like that. You have very good taste, just like your mother... Let's see if we can find a few more, then we'll shop for you."
She pats me lightly on the head with her long manicured hand.
Her touch gives me the willies, each tap screaming, "BRA! BRA! BRA!" I scratch at the place where she tapped. Yuck. I can't believe we're related.
I lean on the rack of housecoats right in the middle of the Misses department. Right this minute, this second, I hate you, Mommy. I mean, great Mom, you have to go and crack up right in the middle of my most important year ever. I need my mom for stuff like this, not spooky Aunt Claire. I mean, she's bald, for God's sake. AL-O-PEC-IA, I know…but it still spells bald. Mommy, when Walt Nunnery tried to play turtle snap on my back and had no strap to snap, well, I felt like a total reject. And when I tried to tell you at the hospital, you acted like you didn't even hear me. God, I hated telling you I've got boobs, Mom, at the stupid loony bin. Mercywood. What a dumb name for a mental hospital. I confided in you, Mom, and all you said was, "I'll tell your Aunt Claire," then shuffled down the hall in your ratty paper slippers.
Just thinking about all of it makes me want to push over this rack of ugly polyester housecoats and go running out of here, back to last year when Mommy and I were in the shoe department buying wet-look go go boots for me and Jen. Aunt Claire's crackly old lady voice starts buzzing in my ears. I wish I could shoo it away.
"Honey, your mommy tells me you've never had a bra before" she says super loud.
Great. Now everyone in the store will be staring at my chest...Try talking a little louder, Aunt Claire, I don't think they heard you in the men's department.
"Aunt Claire, can we just forget it?"
"Forget it?" she says all sweet. "This will be fun!"
She wanders over to the Junior department and waves a handful of bras over her head like a big white "I surrender" flag. She looks like such a dork. I feel like surrendering, right into a miserable pile of twelve-year-old mush. I give in. I don't want to be a teenager, I don't want a stupid ol' nut for a mom, and I DON'T WANT SKINNY, BALDING AUNT CLAIRE SHOPPING FOR ME! But instead I look around to make sure I don't know anyone and follow the bouncing bras.
"Try this one." She waves one that looks like an undershirt with darts at me.
"Oh sure." Geez, I might as well keep my t-shirts.
"I want one with hooks in the back," I whisper, flipping through the tangled mess of bras in front of me.
This isn't how it's supposed to be. I want to be shoulder to shoulder with Mommy, giggling, proud that I am her Jaime, grown up enough to wear a bra just like her. I've only seen Mommy's bosoms when she's hurrying out of the tub or when I walk in on her, and she always covers them up real quick. She must not like them. They look kind of long and deflated, like a party balloon a few days after your birthday. I bet they were big once. I hope I have nice ones like MaryAnn on "Gilligan's Island," not dinky ones like Twiggy. Just big enough so boys will know I have them. Aunt Claire pulls out a lacy one with tiny pouches in front and a little seashell pink ribbon between the cups. I wrestle with a smile. It's just what I want.
"Um, that one's okay."
"Let's go try them on."
Let's? Please God, don't let her come in the dressing room with me! Oh my God, she is following me in! I sit down hard on the little stool inside the dressing room and cross my arms across my chest. I can feel my breasts underneath, so I move my hands down by my belly button. I don't want to think about boobs right now.
"Aunt Claire you don't need to come in with me. I am twelve, you know."
"Oh Honey, I just want to show you how to put it on."
This is NOT happening. Aunt Claire is… taking her shirt off! No, God, please...SHE IS TAKING HER BRA OFF!" I want to disappear behind this Maidenform poster. I can't scrunch up small enough. It is too late. She cannot be stopped. Gripping the mirror, I watch these two ENORMOUS BOOBS come spilling out of her bra. I watch myself watching this in the mirror as she instructs me in the fine art of brassiere wearing.
"First you take the bra, slip it under your bosoms and snap it in front..." She smiles at my reflection to make sure I am listening. I bet her teeth are fake. If she doesn't stop, I am going to puke, right here, all over this sticky linoleum. It will serve her right. "Then you twist it around… And here's the tricky part."
"Wait, wait," she says. "You do it with me."
She might as well have taken out a gun and shot me 'cause I am dead now. Numb. Like those zombies from the "Creature Features," I do what I am told. Now we are side-by-side, bosom by bosom, our bras dangling in front like dance partners waiting for the clench. I can't help but compare my grapes to her mangos. Wow. She is STILL talking, but I am numb.
"Okay...Now grab each cup and simply pour your breasts into them for the best fit!"
She seems very satisfied with herself as her humungous breasts go PLOP into their holders. She gracefully slips each arm through its strap, and turtle snaps the back.
"Voila! Nothing to it."
Nothing to it? I don't have anything to shake in. I pretend that I am my big-boobed friend, Kim Mandel, and hook, twist to the back, shake, shake...shoulder ...shoulder, and…"
VOILA!
I am done! I look up at myself expecting to see dumb ol' Jaime, but instead I see... well, me. Not exactly Gilligan's MaryAnn yet, but definitely not Twiggy either. I have lost the battle with a smile, and I don't really care if my braces show. I tap the little pink bow between my breasts. I think I might be breathing again.
Our eyes meet in the mirror. I guess I do see a resemblance. Aunt Claire looks away, picks up the rejects, and taps her red nails lightly on my head again.
"Let's go show your mom."
This time I don't rub the tap away.


Jaime Weiser Love lives in Sonoma with her husband, Rick, and when she is not busy playing pirates with her four-year-old son or teacher her eighteen-month-old where her eyes, nose, and mouth are, she loves to conjure up the past with her pen. This is her second essay for Tiny Lights.

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Honorable Mention ($50)

Guns and Slugs
By
Sherri Rice

     In Poulsbo, Washington, my high school friend Judy gently plucks slugs, one at a time, off the leaves of her black-eyed Susans. As she removes each gray slimy mollusk, she places it on a white paper towel, then walks to a woodland that borders her back yard. Beneath the fluttering green leaves of aspen, she carefully places the slugs on the forest floor, which smells of cedar and dank compost, and sprouts mushrooms like freckles in sunlight.
"You're the only one I know who would do that," I say when she describes her slug relocation program to me over the phone.
She laughs, and I glance out the window, noticing the lacy pattern my own garden slugs have created on one optimistic dahlia, and I shake my head at what they've done to my last basil plant, currently chomped to the stems.

Not far from a rain forest on Maui, under a row of flowered muumuus in a bedroom closet, my mother used to store an old rifle. In the close damp air of the islands, the iron rusted; the walnut stock separated from the metal, loosened, like old skin on bones. Next to the Remington sat empty brass shells lined up in a box, the frayed label peeling and mildewed. You could barely smell the sweet scent of gun oil on a yellowing soft flannel cleaning rag secured in tight folds across the barrel.
My mother hadn't shot the gun for over ten years. A paper bull's-eye was her last target, and it took more than one bullet before she made a direct hit. The last living thing she shot was an intruder-an alien species-a mongoose stalking baby myna birds who were learning to fly.
My mother was a crack shot in high school. When I was a girl, I liked to imagine her serious gaze, the concentration in her blue eyes as she raised up the rifle, the cold metal, the smooth wood pressed up against her pale skin, her soft red hair frizzing around her thin face. She would stand still then, steady and calm, take aim, and win medals, which I clanked together years later and admired.
In my scrapbook, in an old black and white photograph, a Buick convertible provides a horizon, three chrome circles punctuating its glistening side. In front of a wheel, my mother stretches out on a blanket, asleep, taking the sun. Beside her, a little girl with long straight hair poses proudly. I'm that little girl, and in one hand I hold a rifle pointed up to the sky; in the other, a dead jackrabbit, its long ears clutched inside my tight fist.
The day of that photograph, the year I was ten, my mother let me go hunting with her. Early that morning, before the sun or the neighbors were up, we bundled into her friend's Buick, and drove past Palmdale to fields of lettuce, tidy rows of rabbit temptation, irresistible to the jackrabbits we'd come to shoot.
"You know, your mom can hit a rabbit right between the eyes from over a hundred yards away," her friend told me.
I watched as she downed one distant rabbit. Then she let me try the gun, but when I finally had the opportunity to translate ambition into action, I only managed to nick the ear of one poor jackrabbit, who froze in sheer terror until my mother shooed it away.
It was after I grew up and left home that my mother moved to Maui. Her house, built at the edge of five acres of green cow pasture, lies near a cliff where winter waves spray her window with salty wet patterns. Twenty years ago when I went to visit her there, she said she'd found a new use for the old .22. Standing at the edge of the cliff, we aimed that same rifle, the one I'd used on the rabbit, but now we shot nervous black crabs, picking their bristly bodies off the lava rocks they tried to camouflage against.

"Did you hear about salt?" Judy asks me from Washington.
"Salt?"
"Yeah, salt," she says. "For slugs."
"Oh, yeah," I say. "It makes them melt. Did you ever use it?"
"Once," Judy reluctantly admits. "But I was so grossed out, I never did it again."
"I don't blame you." I say, remembering that I'd dissolved a few slugs myself.

Lately my mother has had a frequent visitor to her fishpond, a black-crowned night heron, a stocky sleek bird whose diet consists mainly of fish. My mother fills her fishpond with pricey Japanese koi, a delectable meal for a heron, an effortless hunt, with the bird idling beside the pond until a fish slithers by. One morning, my mother told me, as she stood watering her ferns on the lanai, she saw the heron flying away with one of her fish in its beak.
"It scattered little orange scales all over the rocks," she said.
"Did you shoot it?" I asked her, picturing a bright orange glitter of scales against the green lawn.
"No," she said quickly. "It's against the law to shoot sea birds."
"Oh," I said. "Well…Did you think about shooting it?"
She hesitated, then answered, "No."

"Someone told me if you put beer in aluminum cans, the slugs will get drunk and drown," Judy says.
"I've heard that, too," I say. "My neighbor had cans of beer all over his vegetable garden last spring."
"It works," Judy says.
"Oh?" I say. "Did you do it?"
"Yeah," she says. "It seemed pretty humane, so I tried it."
"And?"
"Well, in the end I didn't think it was much more humane to drown slugs than to dissolve them."
"Yeah," I said. "I see what you mean."
"So," she said, "I went back to putting them in the forest."
"And now?" I asked her.
"I don't have any more slugs."

"I have something to tell you," my mother said last week when she called me. "And something to ask you."
"Sounds mysterious," I said.
"Well, you remember that old rifle?"
"Yes?"
"It's all rusty now."
"I'll bet."
"I don't want any accidents around here. I don't want anyone to shoot themselves with it."
"Of course not," I said.
"So I think it's time to get rid of it."
"Good idea," I agreed.
"So, here's my plan."
On the other end of the phone, I waited.
"I think I'll just drop it over the cliff. There's a deep place where nobody goes. Do you think that's weird?"
"Not really, I said, I don't think one rifle will do much harm to the ocean."

After my phone call with Judy, I survey my garden. I watch a yellow butterfly hovering over the lavender, and imagine my mother walking out her glass door, scattering rice birds and mynas from the sturdy grass that grows near the sea.
Standing at the edge of the cliff, she stirs the crabs to a panic as her shadow falls across the dark craggy lava. Overhead, two or three clouds shift through the tradewinds; below, the Pacific hammers itself into foam on the rocks. Quickly, my mother looks over each shoulder to see if anyone's watching. She holds out the rifle. The barrel gleams in the sunlight. She opens her hands. She lets go. The heavy gun picks up speed as it spirals down in a silent circular pattern, the last trace of gun oil, the wood stock, the rusting iron, all released as it falls to the sea, breaking the surface with a distant splash, then vanishing, to rest silently, in a dark coral cove.

Born in San Diego, Sherri Rice lived in Hawaii and now the Bay Area. She's had several careers, the latest one piecing together bits of her own and others' lives into assemblages called stories.

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Honorable Mention ($50)

My Shopping Mojo
By
Gwynn O'Gara

     I wish I were spiritual, but I'm not. I'm materialistic. I love stuff. I'd like to think I'm above avarice, but I'm right in the thick of it. I see new things I crave every day. Nothing puts me in mind of this shortcoming like a nice, expensively-printed wedding invitation.
My cousin's getting married again, and unless I want to wear the same outfit I wore to her second wedding, I've got to shop. Shopping can be arduous, but for the good of the clan, I'll do it. I don't want to embarrass the bride when she introduces me to Mother-In-Law Number Three. Clothes may not make the man, but they can unmake the woman.
My needs are simple: I want a stylish outfit whose elements can be worn separately, preferably with jeans. After all, I work at home. And because we live on the edge of a small town nestled among dairy farms, horse ranches and apple orchards, the local style can be best described as utilitarian. Yet I have a weakness for clothes. Although I live in jeans, party clothes carry a lot of juice, as I pin most of my sartorial hunger and satisfaction on them. I enjoy looking at them, owning them, and sometimes even wearing them.
Chalk it up to my genetic and girl-talk heritage. My great aunt was a size 4 who adored clothes and married a man who sold his father's bookbindery to open a dress factory in 1925. Great Aunt Edna bought designers' samples at big discounts and spent hours dressing, perfecting her make-up, hair, manicure, and figure. Fully dressed, she weighed more in carats than in pounds. My mother followed suit, Chanel, if possible, or Yves. St. Laurent. Talk around the tea table centered on the season's collections, the best fur storage, and who looked chic at lunch.
"She looks smart," my aunt used to say of a well-
dressed woman. I love how a word normally used to describe a mind can be applied to an appearance. "Smart" suggest the woman chose well. She used her mind to select what replaced her nakedness. "Look in the mirror with your mind, not your emotions," Edna repeated throughout my childhood. "You may love burnt orange, but does it make your eyes bright and your skin glow?"
The wedding approaches. I get ready to shop with the intensity of a Pomo hunter preparing for a deer hunt. To purify myself, I frequent the gym, spending hours in the sauna, the modern version of a sweat lodge. I fast. I look at magazines and catalogs. I browse the shops in town. I find out who's having a sale. I try my closet. A few times.
The self-hatred ghosts begin their campaign: "You don't have a thing to wear. You're too fat. You'll never find anything." I realize I need to cultivate a positive vibe, and, if possible, have a vision. I fast and sweat some more, then climb a nearby hill. While I look down at the local shopping center, the spirits tell me that if I pray and make proper preparations, they will guide me on my hunt. At once I begin chanting my shopping prayer, part, "Never buy retail," part, "Looking good, feeling good." It's crude but it works. I'm psyched. The spirits will show me the clothes.
My body could use some transformation, too. I exercise. I diet. I spend so much time in the sauna, I almost see spirits. I hypnotize myself into thinking positively: "I'm losing weight at a prodigious rate. The outfit is out there waiting for me..." The shoes could be in Macy's, the jacket in a second-hand store, the skirt in a discount warehouse at one of the myriad malls mauling the county. But it's out there, I can feel it. I chant my shopping mantra, "Never buy retail..." I sing my shopping song, a French-accented version of "I Enjoy Being a Girl!" I visualize a few looks, a few colors. Navy would be nice but the wedding's outdoors in August, so a pale hue would be cooler. And since I'm not at my best all sweaty and sun-burned, a hat is definitely called for.
I fast some more. For inspiration, I twirl the acorns the neighbor girls strung and listen to their music. I scout the nearby shopping grounds, looking for that one article that will germinate the whole ensemble. I will dress according to my destination: jeans, t-shirt, and running shoes to Target and Ross; long skirt and beads to vintage clothing emporiums. These costumes are a form of camouflage and communion so I feel more in the groove, so the saleswomen can relate and actually want to assist me Sales clerks are my spiritual allies on this hunt. They are to be approached with humility and gratitude. They may have the missing piece behind the counter or in a back room.
I plan a day to go to the premium discount mall where I have had excellent luck in the past. I prepare, clearing my desk, cleaning the house, looking at magazines, daydreaming colors. I exercise, sauna, eat lightly that week. I imagine myself looking good. I wash my hair the night before. To inspire elan, I drink special tea, lemon verbena I've grown myself. So French! I go to bed early, in clean sheets.
My breathing deepens and my brain waves expand. I dream my shopping dream where I shop streets that blend Madison Avenue, Milan, Mexico City, London, and Union Square into my own inner city of search and delight. I'm on a treasure hunt, exploring shops overflowing with beautiful things, helped by clever and friendly salespeople, and guided by my mother and aunt, my shopping shamans. When I dream my shopping dream, I know I will have a good shop.
I wake confident and calm. The outfit is mine. The pieces await. Dress, I am coming. Shoes, I am coming. Like a Pomo, I rub a bay leaf on my body to keep myself smelling fresh. Impersonating a well-dressed woman as a hunter impersonates a deer, I dress smartly in a linen sundress and Italian sandals. I know that if I look good, I will attract things that will make me look better. I choose underwear and shoes that will ease trying on clothes. I eat lightly and go.
Instinct tells me to stop at a shop in town where I find a cut velvet t-shirt in pale blue for only $34! My pulse quickens. It will go with that shimmery skirt I bought five years ago. And there's a hat in our hall closet that could work. All I need is a jacket or something to tie it together.
Chewing fennel seeds to keep my stomach calm, I speed to the upscale mall, thinking about an older couple I once saw in Calistoga. They were peering through the window of a wonderful furniture store and sniffing. They looked like they could afford the whole showroom, perhaps to fill their weekend home. But they weren't excited at all. Or enthusiastic. They were sniffing! I hate that. I hate it when people are blessed and don't even know it. I never want to be so rich that shopping becomes a bore, a series of offerings proffered to tickle my fancy as I yawningly make my way from watering hole to resort. When I find something I can't live without, I get excited. My heart beats faster, whether I'm at Cost Plus or Neiman Marcus. I heat up. When something is meant for me, desire, that pushy witch, takes over, and I feel it.
At the mall, quietly alert, I enter my favorite outlet. As I approach the endless racks, beige sweaters and tan jackets start to glow. They abound. They're beautiful. They call to me. They're on sale! They've been marked down three times! I try on four. My enthusiasm reaches the saleslady who brainstorms possibilities and brings me a few items I've missed. My pulse races. My face flushes. Practically panting, I settle on a pale silk cardigan that fits like it was made for me. Miraculously, it brings Audrey Hepburn, someone I in no way resemble, to mind.
I swear the sale clerk charges me less than the finally marked down price. As we leave, I whisper to the threads, "Thank you for giving yourself to me. I'll take good care of you. I'll wear you a lot, try never to get you dirty, and if I do, I'll wash you in Woolite." I'm excited and calm at the same time. And grateful. The Shopping Sprits have come through again.

Gwynn O'Gara is a poet who works with California Poets in the Schools. She lives in Sebastopol with her husband and son and is currently conjuring a spell to transform their kitchen cabinets. Her work has appeared in The Dickens, WestWord, and Tiny Lights.

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