Nola sighed. Another utterly exhausting, yet heartwarmingly fun day was coming to an end. The clock read 6:02 pm and she had just, moments ago, waved goodbye to the last kid still somehow teeming with energy and her significantly less energetic mom. Nola sighed, not because she was tired, though she was. Looking outside at the darkness of the late fall evening filled her with a great appreciation for the working electricity inside as well as the vastness of the universe. She smiled a wry smile at her ability to be so deep after a long day.
As she surveyed the now-deserted room that only a short while ago was bordering-on-but-never-quite-reaching chaos, she felt something akin to satisfaction or fulfillment, but it was hard to tell as she was also quite hungry. Nola just loved these little ones who attended her daycare. When she first started years ago, her mother claimed that she had found her calling, while Nola, even though she thoroughly enjoyed her work, wasn't always quite sure.
Back in school, she had been one of those "most likely" types whom teachers fawned over and fellow students both admired and teased, usually behind her back except that one time when she had sensed their presence and turned around really quickly exclaiming "aha!" The world had been her oyster even though she never quite understood what that meant even after she took up oyster fishing and oyster shell collecting as hobbies. To this day the smell of oysters always makes her feels slightly nauseous.
Despite having so many options in her senior year which was almost debilitating, but not quite, unlike that time when she broke her foot which was actually quite debilitating, she surprised everyone by studying early childhood education and eventually opening up her own daycare. She's learned at an early age that it is much easier to surprise people if you purposely surround yourself with easy-to-surprise people.
Others wondered if she was selling herself short and she kept claiming that she wasn't for sale unless we were talking big money as even she had a price. Others also wondered about her choice of cardigans. While running a daycare appeared to be a perfect match for this fun-loving, yet sensitive, young woman in her mid-20s, in the back of her head she always felt like she should have rolled the dice and pursued her true love, and no, that wasn't referring to her love of games of chance involving dice or the stunning Gill Brooks who lived across the street, though those too.
From her early 20s she'd concealed her true love because she couldn't face the music or the laughter or even the sink without calling a plumber first. Privately she'd always wanted to solve crime or crimes, if one wasn't enough to satisfy the itch. Satisfying itches was one of those things that helped her unwind as well as cutting back on winding herself up which had a very limited upside anyways. She had spent her years in college fantasizing about becoming a childcare provider by day and the catcher of bad people at night and then the president-elect of a fantasy world made up of elves who was slowly bringing down the government from the inside while she slept. But something held her back and she was never quite sure what.
Nola shook her head from side to side, slowly at first, and then faster and faster until she grew tired of it and neck grew sore. She was disinfecting the toys that the kids had slobbered on and shared and then slobbered on some more and just wondering if she was truly as happy as she felt when a certain, key part of her, the desire to solve crimes, lay dormant and unused. Maybe she was too sensitive or maybe she was too fun-loving or maybe it was the precise combination of the two that had her trapped in this world of solely watching and washing children for a living.
Or, maybe, just maybe, her struggles were due to her fear of heights; her debilitating fear of heights. A fear that would be a source of pride, if fears ever could be, which they couldn't. She stopped in her tracks at the front door as she was about to lock up and head home and she looked up at the tall building across the street and shuddered involuntarily. Tops of buildings had always had that effect on her.
In an instant she was taken back to her childhood as she stood there in the doorway of her dimly lit daycare she had build brick by brick from the ground floor all those years ago. True, someone else had actually formed the bricks into a building, and true, there was only a ground floor, and true, she had just turned some of the lights off which explained why things seemed dimly lit, and why she was visiting her childhood as she stood there was a mystery to her. Another mystery. So many mysteries. They surrounded her and kept her up at night; well those, and her addiction to caffeine. All she wanted was to throw off the shackles of her fear of heights and solve them all. She also wanted to buy some ice cream.
She turned back to look at the daycare, knowing that in a few short hours, she'd be back here on Burdett Avenue in the morning. The little ones would arrive once again, and she'd play with them with a joy that naturally emanated from her as she was just such a fun-loving woman. And yet, there was so much more to her that she kept concealed, as if locked away in a small safe hidden underneath her pile of big wool sweaters in her closet. She started to cry and wasn't sure why. If only she wasn't so sensitive. Nola sighed. Time to go home.
Showing posts with label character study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character study. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Valerie
In many ways Valerie was just like every other first-year university student. She stayed up too late, she eagerly attended class, she studied at the library, she joined some clubs and she occasionally thought about practicing witchcraft or learning to string her own guitar.
When she wasn't in class or studying, she could be found at the student lounge talking philosophy and religion with her friends or at the campus pub enjoying a drink and some dancing to ease the stress and sometimes she chased imaginary pigeons with her very real umbrella. Often she was between places as that just happens in life when you don't want to remain in one building all the time and you just have to be in transit. She never quite understood why she had to apologize for that.
She had thought about getting a job, but didn't want to take time away from her studies, so she decided to intern instead. Her lack of understanding of interning endeared her to all that knew her, although most weren't aware that that was the reason they found her endearing and there was quite the list. The list was presently at Dave's house. Her friends were, on the whole, quite unaware relative to the average group of academic-minded friends and they prided themselves upon that. Most university students have hyper-aware friends who analyze and over think every little thing so much so that they would drive her crazy. She remained sane aside from her occasional desire to either emulate or imitate an occupational therapist, whichever was easier.
She spent her time interning at the local accounting firm that she always dreamed of interning at; her parents had been worried about the total absence of creativity and fantasy in her dreams as a child. She was worried too, but only about the impact of consuming too much soy, especially during a cleanse or cleaning her bathroom using soy sauce. As a child growing up, she would walk past the accounting firm and try to see through the frosted windows just imagining the the glee and enthusiasm on the faces of the accountants and their interns. How she longed to be on the other side of that frosted glass and be the envy of the younger generation of accounting-firm-intern-dreamers. She wanted to be the object of someone's envy very badly even if it was misplaced.
When she wasn't interning, she enjoying throwing caution to the wind and when she tired of that, she returned to the glory of her childhood by dressing up as various Disney princesses and characters, especially Mickey Mouse. For years others made fun of her love of dressing up as a male, cartoon mouse, but as time passed, people moved on as they either found other, newer, things to make fun of or they just grew tired of it as it did get exhausting after a while as they were often relentless. It involved the hiring of several personal trainers if it was to be done well. She never quite understood her fascination with Mickey or her desire to "wear" him, and she decided that some fascinations were best left "unsolved" especially considering her credit situation and the fact that she had a term paper due on Friday.
At school, she would sit in class and take notes and then she would go to the library and take more notes, before returning home to take more notes. It was getting to the point where taking notes had become her life and as she the amount of notes grew and grew she realized that they had lost all meaning to her, what little they had started with, which was actually quite a bit. If she didn't have a pressing assignment or test on the horizon, she would return to her apartment, close the drapes and put the Mickey Mouse costume on while she went about her cleaning. She often wished she would be more dynamic and interesting while costumed, but the laundry needed folding and the dust wasn't going to sweep itself up and then there was the question of dinner. And always there was Mickey.
It had been months since she had last seen her dad without a thick pane of glass separating them. She missed her dad - he had robbed a bank and gone to jail. Or more accurately, he had been hanging out with some friends and thought they were going out for lunch only to realize, when it was too late, that they were robbing a bank instead. This sort of thing happened to him far too often, probably because he loved going out for lunch and allowed others to always choose the place. The fact that he just happened to be dressed appropriately for the heist and was carrying what appeared to be a gun with him - it was actually a lighter that just looked like a gun that he had with him as he was playing a recreational pyromaniac in a new community theatre play - didn't help his cause when the police grabbed them.
She loved him and wanted to be supportive of his hobbies, which she was, right up until he decided to progress from ceramics and stamp collecting to armed robbery, because of her absolute hatred of all forms of robbery and because he essentially turned his back on his amazing works of clay right before they were to be baked and glazed. Did he think kilns grew on trees? She really hoped he didn't. She was so angry at him for resorting to a life of crime as so many other lives were available to him at such an affordable rate.
She felt slightly better when she heard his story. He was quite confused when they passed by their usual lunch spot, even more confused when they donned black ski masks and his confusion hit it's highest level when they all stormed in through the front doors of the bank with guns demanding the combination to the safe only to realize that the bank was actually next door and that this store was just full of wigs and wig stands and the most pleasant sales lady they had ever met. His confusion subsided briefly after the bank was properly located as they waited for the combination and then rapidly rose again when they made their getaway. As an actor, he did his best to play the part as you never know who is in the audience, although he was quite disappointed when the lines demanding the combination to the safe were repeated at the actual bank as the first run through was far more realistic and gripping.
Often when she thought of her dad, she thought back to how supportive he was when she decided to pursue interning. Others, specifically her mother and grandmother, scoffed at her attempts to be a full time student as well as a part time intern mostly because they never quite got how to add fractions. Her dad always believed in her ability to balance and juggle and often to do both at the same time as long as she was not anywhere near the docks at low tide. "Docks at Low Tide" was coincidentally the name she had chosen for her autobiography as she believed the title would work on many levels once she dedicated some time to it.
Her dad helped her progress from just pretending to be an intern to actually doing it, all-the-while secretly drawing floor plans and making accurate lists of security details for local financial institutions. Some would say she turned a blind eye to his strange hobbies, while others said that we shouldn't make her feel any more self-conscious than she already does about her eye, which isn't blind, it is just a bit cloudy. Yes, he always helped her, and she hadn't returned the favour.
The lawyers and police confiscated his collection of antique pens and intricate drawings of banks claimed they were evidence, while he said that he had always had a love of floor plans and architecture and how the building that houses the most money were often the least aesthetically pleasing even when you consider how attractive some of the guards looked in their shiny boots and tailored coats. They said that he would rot behind bars and he said that he believed that was highly unlikely regardless of whether bars were involved or not as he bathed on a regular basis and was going to rot anytime soon.
He told them that he'd been used by his friends for his knowledge, while his friends thought they had made it expressly clear what they were doing; even going as far as writing out a detailed, yet simple list of what their plan was and what each person's job was. They claimed he was the mastermind and that he coerced them into it and that they really only wanted to sing beautiful harmonies and the occasional melody. Her father looked like either the biggest fool in town or at least in the top ten, which he found frustrating as he believed the methods for vote collection were totally faulty.
She often got so mad she wanted to scream, but she was usually sitting in class at the university and her professor had a class rule prohibiting screaming unless for the purposes of qualitative research. She also wanted to cry, but the accounting firm required signed written consent for all shedding of tears to be filled in triplicate a minimum of three days prior. She gritted her teeth, behind the huge comical head of the beloved cartoon mouse so that no one could see, but she sensed that Mickey did not approve of being used for such purposes.
She missed her dad so much and wished she could have been there to spend one more day with him. She often sits in the library, trying to study or write an essay, and she sees him outside the bank with his mask on and his lighter/gun in hand. She sees herself run to him to either talk him out of it or to drive the car as she is really quite fast and after making a clean getaway and taking her cut of the money, she would feel better that she saved him; just as he had saved her countless times.
If she could have been there she would have told him that she loved him and they would have gone out for ice cream just like they did when she was a child and he was more child-like. They both grew up so quickly; her because of growth spurts and he because of some discounted lifts he ordered away for. He adorably ordered random, discounted items all the time and she remembered her mother, before she left, off-loading a lot of stuff on him at low low prices that could not be beat.
She loved school, loved her work as an intern, loved her time each afternoon as Mickey Mouse and loved her father. If only she could have one more day with him, or failing that, part of a day, as that was usually all she could handle. She knew he would be free one day and they would be together again. She knew lots of things and others had to often tell her that now was not a good time for sharing. She dreamed of the day when he was released from prison and he would hold her in his arms the best he could as the Mickey Mouse costume was quite large making a normal hug between two averagely-sized humans quite difficult to say the least.
When she wasn't in class or studying, she could be found at the student lounge talking philosophy and religion with her friends or at the campus pub enjoying a drink and some dancing to ease the stress and sometimes she chased imaginary pigeons with her very real umbrella. Often she was between places as that just happens in life when you don't want to remain in one building all the time and you just have to be in transit. She never quite understood why she had to apologize for that.
She had thought about getting a job, but didn't want to take time away from her studies, so she decided to intern instead. Her lack of understanding of interning endeared her to all that knew her, although most weren't aware that that was the reason they found her endearing and there was quite the list. The list was presently at Dave's house. Her friends were, on the whole, quite unaware relative to the average group of academic-minded friends and they prided themselves upon that. Most university students have hyper-aware friends who analyze and over think every little thing so much so that they would drive her crazy. She remained sane aside from her occasional desire to either emulate or imitate an occupational therapist, whichever was easier.
She spent her time interning at the local accounting firm that she always dreamed of interning at; her parents had been worried about the total absence of creativity and fantasy in her dreams as a child. She was worried too, but only about the impact of consuming too much soy, especially during a cleanse or cleaning her bathroom using soy sauce. As a child growing up, she would walk past the accounting firm and try to see through the frosted windows just imagining the the glee and enthusiasm on the faces of the accountants and their interns. How she longed to be on the other side of that frosted glass and be the envy of the younger generation of accounting-firm-intern-dreamers. She wanted to be the object of someone's envy very badly even if it was misplaced.
When she wasn't interning, she enjoying throwing caution to the wind and when she tired of that, she returned to the glory of her childhood by dressing up as various Disney princesses and characters, especially Mickey Mouse. For years others made fun of her love of dressing up as a male, cartoon mouse, but as time passed, people moved on as they either found other, newer, things to make fun of or they just grew tired of it as it did get exhausting after a while as they were often relentless. It involved the hiring of several personal trainers if it was to be done well. She never quite understood her fascination with Mickey or her desire to "wear" him, and she decided that some fascinations were best left "unsolved" especially considering her credit situation and the fact that she had a term paper due on Friday.
At school, she would sit in class and take notes and then she would go to the library and take more notes, before returning home to take more notes. It was getting to the point where taking notes had become her life and as she the amount of notes grew and grew she realized that they had lost all meaning to her, what little they had started with, which was actually quite a bit. If she didn't have a pressing assignment or test on the horizon, she would return to her apartment, close the drapes and put the Mickey Mouse costume on while she went about her cleaning. She often wished she would be more dynamic and interesting while costumed, but the laundry needed folding and the dust wasn't going to sweep itself up and then there was the question of dinner. And always there was Mickey.
It had been months since she had last seen her dad without a thick pane of glass separating them. She missed her dad - he had robbed a bank and gone to jail. Or more accurately, he had been hanging out with some friends and thought they were going out for lunch only to realize, when it was too late, that they were robbing a bank instead. This sort of thing happened to him far too often, probably because he loved going out for lunch and allowed others to always choose the place. The fact that he just happened to be dressed appropriately for the heist and was carrying what appeared to be a gun with him - it was actually a lighter that just looked like a gun that he had with him as he was playing a recreational pyromaniac in a new community theatre play - didn't help his cause when the police grabbed them.
She loved him and wanted to be supportive of his hobbies, which she was, right up until he decided to progress from ceramics and stamp collecting to armed robbery, because of her absolute hatred of all forms of robbery and because he essentially turned his back on his amazing works of clay right before they were to be baked and glazed. Did he think kilns grew on trees? She really hoped he didn't. She was so angry at him for resorting to a life of crime as so many other lives were available to him at such an affordable rate.
She felt slightly better when she heard his story. He was quite confused when they passed by their usual lunch spot, even more confused when they donned black ski masks and his confusion hit it's highest level when they all stormed in through the front doors of the bank with guns demanding the combination to the safe only to realize that the bank was actually next door and that this store was just full of wigs and wig stands and the most pleasant sales lady they had ever met. His confusion subsided briefly after the bank was properly located as they waited for the combination and then rapidly rose again when they made their getaway. As an actor, he did his best to play the part as you never know who is in the audience, although he was quite disappointed when the lines demanding the combination to the safe were repeated at the actual bank as the first run through was far more realistic and gripping.
Often when she thought of her dad, she thought back to how supportive he was when she decided to pursue interning. Others, specifically her mother and grandmother, scoffed at her attempts to be a full time student as well as a part time intern mostly because they never quite got how to add fractions. Her dad always believed in her ability to balance and juggle and often to do both at the same time as long as she was not anywhere near the docks at low tide. "Docks at Low Tide" was coincidentally the name she had chosen for her autobiography as she believed the title would work on many levels once she dedicated some time to it.
Her dad helped her progress from just pretending to be an intern to actually doing it, all-the-while secretly drawing floor plans and making accurate lists of security details for local financial institutions. Some would say she turned a blind eye to his strange hobbies, while others said that we shouldn't make her feel any more self-conscious than she already does about her eye, which isn't blind, it is just a bit cloudy. Yes, he always helped her, and she hadn't returned the favour.
The lawyers and police confiscated his collection of antique pens and intricate drawings of banks claimed they were evidence, while he said that he had always had a love of floor plans and architecture and how the building that houses the most money were often the least aesthetically pleasing even when you consider how attractive some of the guards looked in their shiny boots and tailored coats. They said that he would rot behind bars and he said that he believed that was highly unlikely regardless of whether bars were involved or not as he bathed on a regular basis and was going to rot anytime soon.
He told them that he'd been used by his friends for his knowledge, while his friends thought they had made it expressly clear what they were doing; even going as far as writing out a detailed, yet simple list of what their plan was and what each person's job was. They claimed he was the mastermind and that he coerced them into it and that they really only wanted to sing beautiful harmonies and the occasional melody. Her father looked like either the biggest fool in town or at least in the top ten, which he found frustrating as he believed the methods for vote collection were totally faulty.
She often got so mad she wanted to scream, but she was usually sitting in class at the university and her professor had a class rule prohibiting screaming unless for the purposes of qualitative research. She also wanted to cry, but the accounting firm required signed written consent for all shedding of tears to be filled in triplicate a minimum of three days prior. She gritted her teeth, behind the huge comical head of the beloved cartoon mouse so that no one could see, but she sensed that Mickey did not approve of being used for such purposes.
She missed her dad so much and wished she could have been there to spend one more day with him. She often sits in the library, trying to study or write an essay, and she sees him outside the bank with his mask on and his lighter/gun in hand. She sees herself run to him to either talk him out of it or to drive the car as she is really quite fast and after making a clean getaway and taking her cut of the money, she would feel better that she saved him; just as he had saved her countless times.
If she could have been there she would have told him that she loved him and they would have gone out for ice cream just like they did when she was a child and he was more child-like. They both grew up so quickly; her because of growth spurts and he because of some discounted lifts he ordered away for. He adorably ordered random, discounted items all the time and she remembered her mother, before she left, off-loading a lot of stuff on him at low low prices that could not be beat.
She loved school, loved her work as an intern, loved her time each afternoon as Mickey Mouse and loved her father. If only she could have one more day with him, or failing that, part of a day, as that was usually all she could handle. She knew he would be free one day and they would be together again. She knew lots of things and others had to often tell her that now was not a good time for sharing. She dreamed of the day when he was released from prison and he would hold her in his arms the best he could as the Mickey Mouse costume was quite large making a normal hug between two averagely-sized humans quite difficult to say the least.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
The Juggler
He sat in front of his dressing room mirror overwhelmed with a tornado of strong emotions. For the past 15 years he had been a juggler with the circus and was a veteran of over 900 shows. The grandfather of the circus. Tonight was his last show.
His whole life had been spent in and around the big tents. It was the only reality he knew. He briefly relived the shock of the others when he unceremoniously announced that he was choosing to walk away. The face he saw as he looked into the mirror looked weathered and old. He was old.
It was two hours until the show - his big send off - and he took out his dinner. His wife had made him a succulently baked chicken leg with all of his favourite sides. He closed his eyes and inhaled the wonderful aroma that reminded him of his cozy home and his amazing wife who had stood beside him all these years. It had not been easy for her. He would not have blamed her for leaving. This was not what she signed up for.
He removed his knife and fork slowly and deliberately, savouring every one of his last moments and experiences as each represented years upon years of similar times. He ripped into the flesh of the once proud bird and aggressively stuffed his mouth full of the juicy meat. His tongue darted out attempting to catch every drop of the cooking liquid as if he were parched, alone in the desert.
Again and again he returned for more only to occasionally pause to keep his imagined attackers at bay. Over the years he too had felt the pain of his flesh being metaphorically ripped from his bones by dictator-like owners, vindictive managers and back-stabbing colleagues each trying to get ahead by squashing the vulnerable around them. He had been vulnerable. He had felt pain.
Outside the wind blew and rattled the poles and the thin layer of protective canvas surrounding him. The wind was always there, blowing in and around the circus; popping in and out of crevasses, playfully rousing hair dos and reminding all that it was barely skimming into its huge arsenal of power. He loved the wind and longed for its cold touch and sometimes he wished it would lift him up off his feet and blow him away from this place.
After tossing his scraps for the dogs, he began carefully applying his make-up, the many layers that combined to create his facade, his prison. He smiled ear-to-ear for the imaginary photographers and frowned for the audience members whose gaze lingered after the spotlight had quickly found the trapeze artists or clowns or whatever the crowd yearned for.
Many times he had prayed for the spotlight to remain and for a chance to wow the people. He had a dream where he had boundless energy and pulled off incredible stunt after stunt and was greeted with a stunning and overwhelming standing ovation. He would sign autographs, give interviews, receive bonuses and smile until his cheeks hurt. He would feel wanted and loved and his tears would be for joy for a change.
"Thirty minutes!" the voice barked out snapping him out of his reverie. The harsh return to reality slapped him in the face. The eyes in the mirror stared back at him with the hallowed look of a beaten man. He rose slowly, cracked his knuckles and took a long, knowing look around his mess of a dressing-room. His sanctuary, his safe place, the house for his tormented soul.
He wanted to paint a black and gray portrait of a man full of sorrow and neglect using his face as the canvas. He wanted to juggle with his tormentors egos high upon a stack of carefully balanced furniture pieces only to slip and drop the egos and see them crash into a million little pieces as if they were but porcelain dolls. His cackle would be heard for miles. For years he had bit his tongue and closed his eyes and turned his cheek. The light at the end of the tunnel was finally in sight.
It was ten minutes until show time and his mind drifted, as it often did, to the night of the tragedy. It was so many years ago and yet it felt like yesterday. He felt trapped inside the prison of his own making, wishing he could forgive himself. Others uncaringly comforted him, he saw shrinks, talked to police, and fell, shaking, into his wife's arms each evening. "It wasn't your fault. He wasn't being careful. You are only a juggler." As the final opening curtain approached he stood outside his dressing room; a lone man awash with moonlight, longing for his release.
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