I will pass the moon.

Promises to ninety-one-year-olds are scary things.

“Y’all come back,” Betty pleaded with me for the hundredth time.

She’d made us promise to do so dozens of times by now, me and my five cast mates. We’d come to visit the nursing home where she lived to get in touch with senior citizens because four of us are grandparents in our upcoming play, Over the River and Through the Woods. Once again, I smiled and repeated our promise to come back to visit.

But then she looked at me, her ninety-one-year-old eyes deeply troubled, and added something else. Something that had been bothering her, nagging at her, forcing her to beg us over and over to promise to come back. “Some people come and leave their son or daughter here. And they never come back.”

I smiled as I replied, “We won’t be those people. We’ll come back.”

Inside, though, I was caught off guard, suddenly sobered by the haunting desperation in her voice and eyes.

Okay, remember my “Diapers. Legos. Destiny.” post? I know all you multitudes of rabid followers of my blog are following with every fiber of your strength and eagerly keeping track of every single post, but just in case… That was the one about how yesterday, I was tiny, helpless, toddler-age Jaelyn. And tomorrow, Jaelyn will be newly-grown-up me.

Well today, I have had an equally staggering revelation.

Yesterday, Betty was me.

Tomorrow, will I be Betty?

Just a snap of the fingers back in time, and Betty was barely nineteen—on the threshold of adulthood, overwhelmed with the immensity of life and all its brilliant promise and anticipation. Where I am this instant. Where Jaelyn will be the next.

And now, her nineteen has turned inside-out and become ninety-one, and she’s no longer on the same threshold. She’s come full circle.

I don’t have long to be nineteen.

Today is already almost tomorrow.

I vividly remember sitting in the car as a six-year-old with the knowledge that at eleven years old, I would need to get certain medical shots. I hated shots.

But that’s okay, I thought with relief. I will never be eleven.

Guess what. Eleven came and went so fast that I’m still kind of freaking out about it. And every single year, month, day, hour moves progressively faster, or at least seems to. When I look at somebody like Betty and think, But that’s okay—I will never be ninety-one, I am suddenly overwhelmed. Talk about a freaky déjà vu. Because I was so wrong when I thought that about eleven, and I know I’m even more wrong to think it about ninety-one.

I will never be ninety-one? Swell, Randi.

Try I will never be nineteen—ever again.

This is my one shot.

I only have one chance.

If I blink, I’ll miss it.

I’m not going to miss it. I’m not going to blink. I’m going to aim my one shot at life with everything in me at the bull’s-eye, and I’m going to hit it.

I’m going to shoot for the moon. And you know those cute little journals and inspirational cards that say, “Don’t be afraid to shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”? Well, as a good friend of mine taught me to think, if I shoot for the moon, I’m dang getting the moon. Or even further—as my cousin would say, not if but when I shoot for the moon, I’m passing it.

Big claims, I know. But if I don’t make those claims now, if I don’t seize the day now, I won’t stand a chance. And ninety-one will find me dazed, befuddled, and not prepared. I don’t mean to be arrogant; I mean to live. Really live.

Catch me when I’m ninety-one. Let’s both find out how this story ends.

When Nature Gets Dicey

“Did you see the sunset this morning?” my friend asked at lunch today.

We laughed very hard.

So this blog has to be about nature. Not hard—I love nature. I love sunsets (when they come in the evening); I love wind in trees; I love playing rivers. But the thing is, I don’t really just love to be alone and think quietly in nature. That kind of thing is wonderful, and I do it sometimes, but mostly I love nature because of the adventure it holds. And most definitely adventure with people. Sorry, Henry David Thoreau. No Walden for me, thank you!

Take lakes, for example. Sure, I could sit on the shore of a lake with the dewy grass underneath me and the breeze lifting the ends of my hair, and I could look out at the sun setting in liquid fire at the edge of the water. And that would be nice.

Or—I could climb into a bobbing three-seated inner tube on that lake and intertwine arms with two fellow adventurers, gripping the rough handles with everything in me as adrenalin floods my veins and the boat begins to tow us. I could let the wild spray of the lake rush against me as I fought a war against the raging water to stay on that tube. I’d launch into the air and come thudding back down onto the water’s rough surface; I’d be whipped in great flinging curves that suck, suck, suck to pull me off. Meanwhile, I’d be laughing and screaming and clenching my teeth with my companion fighters. And in the end, I’d be ripped from the tube and crash down against the water, tumbling over myself multiple times with my velocity before finally dropping beneath the water’s surface.

Afterward, I’d be sore and sunburned and shaky and yes, even bleeding. And happy—oh, so happy.

Yeah, I choose Option 2.

Moonlit rivers, whistling graveyards, chalky ravines, rushing whitewater—it’s hard for me to get away from remembering that some of the happiest moments of my life have come to me during adventures through nature with close friends. Some have been simply pleasant, and some have been frighteningly thrilling (that graveyard I mentioned? Oh, yes). Some have scarred me for life. Yes, that’s a joke…I have scars on my arm from one traipse down a river in particular.

And that’s all I have to say on this subject for the moment.

The Nasty Side of Blogging

What they don’t tell you about blogging is the battle behind it. I’m talking about the gut-wrenching, heart-pounding, nail-biting inner battle that rages inside you every time it comes time to post. You think I’m joking. I’m not.

Tell me this isn’t traumatic: in exactly thirty minutes is midnight, the deadline for your class-assigned blog post. You have 1,800 seconds (give or take) until a piece of you, a representation of your skills as a writer, a sample of any potential you hope you have—or lack thereof—will be smeared over the internet for the world to see. Yeah, you just tell me that’s not terrifying.

Your friends know your blog site. Your Facebook friends know your blog site. The entire planet can find your blog site. And in now twenty-five minutes, you will be made vulnerable on your blog site. You won’t be able to hide from anybody.

 You sit in a drama rehearsal, looking at the clock anxiously. Who can focus on a drama rehearsal when there’s a blog due in twenty-one minutes? And the topic—oh, how the topic pressures you. Oh, this isn’t any ordinary blog; it’s a requirement for one of your classes, and it’s got to comply with a weekly topic. So—get this—you have to earn credit for the class and desperately try not to look lamer than a clod of moon dirt to your friends. Possible? The jury’s still out.

You start to sweat in that drama rehearsal as your mind takes you scary places… Say you publish a stupid blog. Somebody reads your stupid blog. Not only do they never read your blog again; they also turn up their nose when your wannabe-writer self finally breaks into the business and publishes a book. But worse, they come across your future book while meandering through Barnes & Noble with a friend, and they tell the friend they know you, the author of this book—and they tell the friend they don’t want to buy the book. So then the friend refrains from buying the book and tells another friend not to buy the book. And then the other friend tells another friend who tells another friend who tells another friend who tells another friend. And your book barely sells because nobody wants to buy it. And then your publisher refuses to take another manuscript because your sales record is so bad. So then you never get a chance to become a #1 New York Times Bestseller.

All because of the stupid blog you published.

If that’s not pressure, I don’t know what is. Man alive, the freaky part about blogging is the part they don’t tell you about—the war you fight to blog without crushing your delicate future career.

And then the clock chimes midnight. Heartbeat hammering inside your chest, you close your eyes, suck in your breath, bring your arrow over the fateful button, and PUBLISH POST.

Once My Name Was Iron Woman

Iron Woman. That’s what my family used to call me. (Incredibly sweet and feminine nickname, I know.) I was Iron Woman because after fighting strep throat a whopping nine times in kindergarten, I never got sick again. It was as if my immune system had fought a death-struggle with any illness above the little nuisance of the common cold—and had won. When the stomach flu—or anything else—raked my house and literally up to all six of my family members fell prey to its mayhem, I’d stand tall and healthy.

“Wash your hands!” people would warn when the wind changed and sick season came around.

Oh, sure, I’d wash them, but I’d laugh inside as I did so. I wasn’t getting sick, and I knew it.

Alas for Iron Woman.

One year, the stomach flu (one illness in particular that delighted in plaguing our house year after year) apparently got fed up with my iron-like qualities. It knew my masterful white blood cells had raised me above its villainous reach, and it hated me for that. Unfortunately for poor stomach flu, there was nothing it could do about me.

Or so I thought.

After sweeping through my family with full force, the stomach flu left that year in a rage. As usual, I’d scoffed in its face, washed my hands before eating, and remained agonizingly healthy. Everything was entirely, hopelessly normal.

Such was the sob story the stomach flu tattled to its big bad brother, the flu. Yeah, you read that right. I mean the flu. No twenty-four- or seventy-two-hour vomiting mess here—think bubonic plague. Black Death. Influenza. It’s not a pretty thought.

Unfortunately for me, influenza took up the case of his poor little stomach flu brother and set out to get me. When I came home one Monday afternoon in November of my eighth grade, I began to feel odd. I imagined I was restless. In reality, I was meeting influenza while the stomach flu watched and laughed.

I remember irritably flopping my history book on the floor that day, unable to focus. My head felt hot. What do you know, I discovered that I was running a fever. Not a bad one, but a fever.

Foolish Iron Woman…it was so unusual for me to actually be sick that I was happy at first. After all, a little fever for one afternoon can be worth the pampering it comes with, if you’re in the eighth grade.

But the next morning, I was still sick. Now this was strange. In fact, I wasn’t just still sick; I was worse. To my own astonishment, I quickly sank onto the sofa in the living room and did not get back up. I didn’t eat (and for stocky little me, that was a huge deal). I could hardly think.

Rapidly, life turned into a nightmare as the flu wreaked havoc in my body. In the mornings, I would hobble out in my pajamas to the sofa to escape my dim room. Then, literally, I would languish on that couch all day long, growing weaker by the minute. Sometimes I lay limp. Sometimes I writhed. My fever skyrocketed to peak at times at over 104°. I’d eat almost nothing all day, knowing I was weakening but unable to strengthen myself, miserable in mind and in body.

Days passed. A week. Nothing got better.

By the time the week mark passed, I had pretty much made the record for the sickest ever in my family, at least among my siblings. Meanwhile, they quietly carried on their lives around me.

Healthy.

The stomach flu laughed harder.

And yet my war with influenza was far from over; a second week of couch-ridden agony stretched out before the nightmare finally began to fade. Even when those two dreadful weeks were over, though, I could hardly function.

A monstrous two weeks behind in school, I tried that third week to begin to catch up. Fail. Though at last the flu had released me from its talons, my recovery was excruciatingly slow and almost as miserable as the two-week-solid illness.

By the end of the third week, I was at last a bit more of my old self—and I do mean a bit. I was very nearly literally half the girl I once was. My body had changed from vaguely resembling a marshmallow to the spitting image of a string bean in a scant three weeks. Almost overnight, my appearance was completely different. I could almost go swimming in my jeans. Though I would go on to gain back a healthy portion of my prior weight, I would never be the same again.

The next year, when the stomach flu washed over our family, I still washed my hands. I still didn’t get sick. But I never laughed at it again.

So much for Iron Woman.

Diapers. Legos. Destiny.

Tonight, the world is shaking.

Across this tired planet that I call home, principalities and powers are stirring, fighting, flowing. World greats are thinking, speaking, pushing. Powerful events are taking place, their effects rippling to the corners of every continent. Big things are happening in the high places of the world.

And meanwhile, I am changing the diaper of a two-year-old.

Oh, children.

I’m not going to lie; I’ve had moments of supreme irritation with the shenanigans of the members of younger generations. They’ve got their quirks and immaturities, to be sure. But the thought that’s overwhelming me as I straighten out Jaelyn’s little pink dress and wrap up her soiled diaper for disposal is not that I’d rather be out in the great battle of life than taking care of her. Instead, it’s that yesterday, I was her.

And tomorrow, she will be me.

As I help Jaelyn up and lead her across the hall back into the childcare room, I realize that what I have on my hands is a bundle of promise.

A person.

I think about who I am, where I’ve come, and all that I have ahead of me; I think about my passions, my hopes, my dreams, my fears, my nightmares. I think of the awesome immensity of life bearing down on me with all its brilliant promise and anticipation as I step over the threshold into adulthood. I think about the burning desire I have to seize the world by the throat, to stand apart, to make a difference. I think about the precious opportunities I’ve had to prepare to take the one desperate shot at life I’ve been allowed.

And I realize that just a breath ago, I was Jaelyn. Totally dependent. Helpless. Vulnerable.

As she sits on my lap and begs me to play my dangerous lap games with her, I look into her laughing blue eyes, and I can see seventeen brief years into the future.

Jaelyn, a woman. Standing on the threshold of adulthood, overwhelmed with the immensity of life and all its brilliant promise and anticipation. It almost takes my breath away to come to the startling realization that that moment is only an eye blink away.

Jaelyn is my tomorrow. The world’s tomorrow.

But now, she’s in my hands. For these two and a half hours, I literally hold the future of the world in my lap.

I look around the childcare room and see the children playing. Today, blocks and puzzles and those evil little mini-Legos that are almost impossible to clean up. Tomorrow, the world.

Oh, I am insufferably proud to be a babysitter. I play patty-cake and I-spy and this-is-the-way-the-cowgirl-rides with the very destiny of this world. It’s a dangerous game.

“Miss Bowwwwwwck,” booms little Joshua. “Can hold, Miss Bowwwwwwck?”

I can’t help smiling as I pick him up and roughhouse with him. He’s tough. Laughing, he lets me turn him upside-down and wrestle with him and tousle his hair.

Tomorrow, Joshua’s going to be a man.

“Hello,” a high-pitched voice reaches my ears from underneath the plastic yellow picnic table in the room.

I look down and see my one-and-a-half-year-old cousin Titus lying on the carpet beneath the table, looking up at me and repeating over and over, “Hello, hello.”

“Hello, Titus!” I reply. “Whatcha doin’?”

Titus’s name means hero.

Foreshadowing?

Oh, I love those children. I love them, their whole generation, even when they’re pushing my buttons to the max and when I’m setting my teeth because what they’re saying—or doing—or playing—is driving me batty.

How could I not?

They are my future!

Tonight, the world is shaking. And part of its future is here in a Red Oak church building in a little childcare room.

With blocks.

And puzzles.

And evil little mini-Legos that refuse to be cleaned up.

Sun Terror (the End of Fun)

“Alfred!” I cried in agony, stretching out my hand to my fellow sufferer. “Help me!”

Even as our fingers neared each other, a frothy wave came crashing upon us, washing us through briny torture, separating us once again. Through the salt in my eyes, I could see Alfred staggering up out of the water, spluttering out, “Bertha!”

I would barely make it to my knees, cough the water out of my lungs, and lunge for him—only to be swept away for the hundredth time. Again and again, Alfred and I fought to reach one another. Again and again, we tumbled in the waves.

Had an observer—a prospective savior—happened upon us on that day at the beach in Oxnard, California, several years ago, he most likely would not have looked twice. He would have kept on, holding his fishing pole or the leash of his dog, and left us locked into a horrendous cycle of brackish ruin, making placid footprints in the damp sand on his way.

Poor doomed Alfred and Bertha.

Why on earth my brother Scott and I chose those names, I cannot say. What I remember to this day, however, is that those hours in the sun playing our self-invented game “Alfred and Bertha” were the most fun I had spent at the beach in (it seemed at the time) my whole life. Oh, how hilariously funny Scott and I were. How witty our games! How sophisticated our senses of humor!

If only we had known what real torture was only hours away, waiting to seize us with true agony.

That night was the fatal night. July 12, 2004.

Like a bottle cap blocks fizz from bubbling over, I wrote in my journal back then (at eleven years old, I was inordinately proud of my figurative language), something blocked our happiness by the end of the day.

We all have horrible sunburns.

The Sunburn I suffered over the next few days well deserved a capital s. Anguish burdens the word sunburn in my mind—because of that Sunburn.

Why do we call it sunburn? That wrathful blanket of searing torment that cuddles the shoulders and the back and refuses to be removed by any hand, no matter how skillful—it seems to me that sun terror or death by sun are better terms for the matter. (Actually, ultraviolet overexposure is pretty good, too.) But sunburn? How cursory, how incomplete, how trivial. No. The truth of the matter is that I almost died by Sunburn seven years ago.

(And Aloe Vera! That sniveling, sneering, lying messenger of false comfort, that bringer of icy stickiness that subsides into sickly warm slime—it doesn’t even deserve a paragraph in this blog.)

You ask, Dr. Montgomery, for a blog depicting something that stopped me in my tracks. In return, I give you the Sunburn.

First there was fun.

Then there was Sunburn.

Bernie Tivanticus, un-Teddy Bear

It almost isn’t fair to call him a teddy bear. Actually, calling Bernie a teddy bear is something like taking a glance at the Great Wall of China and saying, “Nice fence.”

As I fondle this one of my oldest, most special friends, my stuffed bear Bernie, I remember days when I fondled him with much smaller hands. I remember wandering around the house with Bernie comfortably settled over my shoulder or on top of my head—other teddy bears can’t do that—and I remember life as it was when Bernie first came to me, when I was a little girl growing up in southern California. I can still hear the song of the waves in the morning and the crunch of salt under my sandals, and I remember the way the sun used to plunge into the ocean in the evenings with a shower of glittering diamonds that hurt my eyes when I looked at them. I remember the less beautiful parts, too—things like feeling awkward and insecure and in-between and immature—but Bernie never minded those things. He’d keep sitting on my shoulder, calm and comfortable as ever, as kind as if I were one of those perfect girls my age in my treasured American Girl catalogues.

Bernie’s lived a long life, and a colorful one, since those first days at the beach so long ago. When I grew a little older and (in my eyes then) quite a bit more clever, the space beneath my bed became the animal kingdom of Varamath, where all my stuffed animals resided in orderly society despite the dastardly felons who at times attempted to disrupt the peace. (An old, almost unwanted Christmas teddy bear and a cheap stuffed bulldog fair prize were the criminals, if I remember correctly.) None other than Bernie held the position captain of the queen’s guard. He valiantly defended the safety of the queen and the kingdom of Varamath on the whole against villainous bears and bulldogs alike; and in fact, he was so esteemed in that country that he signed the honorable Constitution that I wrote, and the Amendment that came after it. His name at that time temporarily became Tivanticus. I considered myself extremely clever.

Now years have gone by, and Varamath is gone forever (though I still have that ridiculous “Constitution”). My home is no longer minutes from the sparkling Ventura waves. I am an adult. I have grown up and away and out of a good deal that I once held dear—and yet Bernie stays with me. He has survived rakings through my stuffed animal collection for multiple de-junkings and deep cleans and a life-shaking move from California to Texas, and he is not leaving me anytime soon if I can help it. My excuse is that I’m keeping him for my future children, but even I don’t believe that when I say it. I’m keeping Bernie for me, because Bernie is mine and always will be mine.

At nineteen years, am I too old to be unable to endure parting with a stuffed bear? Arguably so. I am probably also too old to keep a stuffed bear in a special place in my closet where he can always look at me and I can always look back at him for a friendly wink, and I am most definitely far too old to bring a stuffed bear onto a university campus to show my friends right after I read them a paper I wrote about him.

But I don’t care. Bernie never was just a teddy bear anyway.

Epilogue

For those of you not in my Writing and Publishing Nonfiction class (ah yes, my multitudes of readers!), this is a very slightly tweaked version of a paper I wrote for the said class, according to a writing prompt calling for a paper about any object that had significance to the student. The day the paper was due, I really did have Bernie on campus with me, stuffed inside my purse; and when I finished my turn reading my paper aloud to the class, I took him out and showed him off. The others in the classroom were generous enough to say awww and laugh with me. Hats off to them!

One final note: please don’t anybody judge me for my un-teddy bear. It is my personal belief (and here I know I’m treading dangerous waters as a nineteen-year-old, but I think most will agree) that we all have our sentimental little memories, whatever form they may take. It took a prompt for a nonfiction paper to push me to reveal mine.

What’s your Bernie?