Week Six Prompts

26. You haven't been there since you were little. Now you go back....

For Donald Edward Bergin Sr. 



I walk through the thick woods, shoving my hands in my pockets. The October air is thick and cold. And yet, the air is so brisk it makes me feel alive. My footsteps are slow, even though if you were to watch me walk to class or down the busy Bangor streets, you'd see that I walk quick and I stare at the ground. Here, I look up, and I walk slow. In a place like Bangor, I feel forced to match the quick pace of life. In Bangor, I wear sunglasses to hide my eyes.  Here, I can absorb everything slowly and with uncovered eyes, like I prefer to. 
I'm far in the woods behind my house. The farm house looks tiny in the distance as I continue down the old hunting path. I pull my hood over my head, and I enjoy the peace and the quiet. 
My bank account balance is negative, my heart aches, and I could possibly be failing a class or two. I'm pushed to my limits by the battles on the exterior of my world, and the interior. 
Walks have always helped me, in many ways. Physically, of course. But mentally and emotionally too. 
The sky is a clear blue, and only a few puffy white clouds float by. The leaves of the trees surrounding me on either side are the magnificent colors of fall; warm oranges, royal reds and bright yellows.
As I walk, I sift through all of the trouble I've gotten into, and I try to organize my ridiculous thoughts. My cat's been missing for a week, and it caused me to cry myself to sleep most nights this week. My job is draining my energy and my patience, and it'd be a brutal lie if I said that I was being paid enough money for what I do. Writing has been hard for me, when it's something that's never been hard for me to do. I'm broke on Friday when I got paid Wednesday. 
It's one of those weeks where it feels like nothing could possibly go worse. 
So I drive home for a weekend, and I take a walk. 
I decide to visit a place that I haven't been to in a long time. 
This path is so familiar to me that I easily wind forward; these trails was where I spent my childhood. 
I cross a small swamp on my right, the way it looks is so eerie I have to stop. 
Tall, thin trees with leafless branches that wind and stretch decorate the swamp. Weeds that were probably as green as emeralds during the summer are now brown and dying. 
I look away and continue on to the place I haven't been to in so long. 
I enter a cleared out field. My home used to be a farm when my father grew up here. I wonder what was kept here. Was it just where the horses grazed? I'd have to ask him. 
The dead grass crunched under my feet as I continued on. Up ahead in a thicket was a bench, a small American flag, and two grave markers. 
When I approached my grandfather's grave, I sat down on the bench that my Dad put here fifteen years ago when he died. Up on the tree above the grave was a small birdhouse that my grandmother made and painted for Grampy. 
I was four when he died, but I remember a lot about him. He had more black in his hair then gray. He smelt of wood stove smoke and peppermint. He loved to drive my grandmother crazy. He'd sit me on his lap and bounce his knees up and down, which I knew probably hurt him, because his hip was useless by the time he was 21 due to arthritis. 
I had always wanted him to live to be older then 63. So young to go. I've always wondered if he'd be proud of me. 
Next to the grave that said 'Don Bergin' was the grave that said 'Shadow'. Shadow was my grandfather's German Shepherd. My mom always told me that Shadow died days after Grampy did, and that he died of a broken heart. Seeing this made me feel better about being so lost without my cat Pistachio. One of Grampy's last wish was to have Shadow placed here with him when he left too. 
Suddenly, the wind blew hard enough to knock my hood off my head. Some leaves that were on the ground lifted in the air and traveled away. I looked above me; the trees that towered over me created a safe cocoon for the place where my grandfather and his dog's ashes were resting. These trees protected this resting place. It was so peaceful and quiet surrounded by all of this rustic nature. 
I used to come here at least once a week to visit Grampy. Whenever I had a question I needed answered, I'd come here, hoping he'd hear me. I didn't want him to get lonely. I'd bring books and read to him. I'd bring one of our dogs to visit Shadow. I used to make it a point to do this; once a week, every week. 
Then I grew up, and everything changed. 
These 96 acres of forests and fields were my safe haven as a child. I never had to go any further then my own backyard. 
Everyone I had ever met who knew my grandfather always said, 'Do you remember your grandfather? He was quite the man'. And I knew he was. He was Irish, a smart ass, he was hard-working, and he loved his family even if he wasn't always the best at showing it. Behind him and his dog's resting place was a huge pine tree, which held my grandmother's birdhouse, that was once a bright robin's egg blue was now a faded gray. 
Pine trees are my favorite kind of trees. Maple trees are beautiful too, but they change and phass. Sometimes they're full, sometimes they have nothing on them, sometimes they're green sometimes they're red and yellow. They are constantly changing, like this world and like my life. 
But pine trees stay the same. They don't change. They stay that same deep shade of green all year round. They never drop their leaves. They're never vulnerable like bare maple trees are. 
I wish life was as predictable as a pine tree.
I pull my legs underneath me on the bench and start talking to Grampy. It's hard at first, but suddenly it starts pouring out of me. How long has it been since I had done this? Years? 
I do this until I tell a story that makes me laugh. I do this until I tell a story that makes me cry.
When the sun starts setting behind the mighty pines of my beloved forest, I tell Grampy goodnight. 
"Goodnight, Grampy." I say quietly as I stand up to leave, "I love you. I'll come back more often, I promise." I smile, "Tell Major Murray I said hello." 



27. The safest place in the world....




Sometimes life scares the shit out of me. Correction, it pretty much scares the shit out of me all the time. 
As I drive to work some mornings, I realize that I could possibly die today. This thought creeps through my mind at least once a day. I'm not sure why. I suppose it's good to be thankful for being alive. 
We humans are at danger everywhere we go. We could catch the next black plague. We could get hit by a bus. Anything could happen. Every day leads up to our eventual demise. 
But there is a certain place where I feel so safe, this inevitable truth doesn't even scare me. 
On Christmas Eve, I snuggle up with my sister and my brother in one of our small bedrooms. We do this every year. Usually, it's the room that my sister and I shared for all of our life when we lived at home. We stay up late giggling, even now that we're all grown. 
When it comes time to wake up, Donny is almost always the first one up. Next he gets Cindy up. Then he has to shake me awake and shake me an additional few, and more violent, times just to keep me awake. I have had plenty of issues as a person, but I rarely have trouble sleeping. 
At the foot of our beds (or at the foot of your sleeping bag, if you're sleeping on the floor like Donny is), we find our stockings full of candy, trinkets and whatever else Mom thinks we'd like. 
It's still dark out the bedroom window, and snow is falling lightly. We sit up and eat some of our candy before waking Mom and Dad up. 
Downstairs, the tree is lit up beautifully. My father picks trees that are too tame for Clark Griswold, so they're always either too tall, too full or not full or not tall enough. 
I took a blanket and sat on the couch and waited for whenever Donny got my parents up. 
It was warm in the house with the wood stove going, and I was wearing my favorite pajamas. 
Cindy came and sat with me. I put my head on her shoulder and waited. As always, Mom said that she'd wake up once we made coffee, so Donny would hurry to get a pot going. Once everyone was awake, we'd sit in a circle and Donny would pass out gifts. 
What's in the wrapped boxes was never very important to me. What always was was the comfort and warmth I felt from being surrounded by the four people who always kept me grounded. Four people whose love was so unconditional, I wondered if I even deserved it. 
I'm a person who wants to be needed. I love my cat so much because I know that when I wake up in the morning, she'll need me there. I love my family so much because I know how deeply they need me. I dream about moving closer to home so that I can be there when they need me. Last year, one of our dogs was hit by a car, and my mother said that my father cried himself to sleep for weeks. She said he caught him punching the wall one night; telling himself that it was all his fault. 
I learned about it in a text message from Donny saying: 


Holli, Abby died. 


That was it. She was my dad's dog, for sure. They had a bond much like Grampy's and Shadow's. He was heartbroken. I was two hours away while all of this happened.  I wasn't able to comfort my dad after he buried Abby and placed a heart-shaped rock over her grave in the field. He buried her under a huge pine tree. He took me to it later that month. 
This feeling of love and content, this unbreakable bond, this is the safest place on earth. 





29. When you finally arrived, it was nothing like you imagined....


I had pictured Timesqure to be the most beautiful place I would ever see. I though it'd be majestic, and breathtaking. It'd be bright in flashing technicolor. 
When I arrived there that day, I was taken aback firstly by the smell. 
It smelt of  hot garbage and body odor. 
Secondly, I was taken aback by how uncomfortably crowded it was. It was far too crowded for my liking. There were homeless people digging in trashcans, and people were yelling profanities. 
Maybe I watch too much Sex and the City, but I had always pictured New York as a glamorous, colorful, fascinating place. When I actually got there, it was dirty and crowded. It was smelly and smoggy. 
I looked back at my Mom, who was buying 'I <3 NY' sweatshirts and T-shirts from a vendor. 
"Do you think Dad would like the black or the white better?" She asked. 
"The black." I said, nodding, trying not to hide my disappointment. 
I also visited Timesquare at night, and it was significantly more enjoyable then. Against the starless sky, the bright moving billboards looked fantastical. It was nothing I could ever see at home. 
The next day, I visited Central Park. 
To my surprise, Central Park was nice. The trees were lush and green, the pathways were generally litterless. The water, however, was an unhealthy color of brown and green. I could tell by looking at it that one swim would give me a terrible infection of some kind. 
I hailed a cab on a busy street in New York; which is harder then you would think. It takes more guts then I have to jump out into that busy street, throw my arm out and yell. 
Overall, I thought that visiting New York City for the first time was an interesting experience. Initially, I was disappointed, but I'm really not sure why. 
I went to the largest city in our country. What did I expect? Clear air like you'd get here in Maine? Tall pine trees? I got what I was gunna get.