Round the Mountain: An Excerpt

I can’t remember when Mom married Ronald, I was only two. But I do remember my real Dad coming around. And how he used to set me on his knee and start bouncing while singing, “She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain” in a Johnny Cash voice. Imagining I was riding six white horses, I’d cry, “Faster, Daddy, faster.” And his leg would jiggle so much I’d teeter before falling off in a heap of giggles.

Once, while rolling around in a fit of laughter I looked past Dad at the popcorn ceiling and noticed a long crack from one side to the next. “Look Daddy, a river.”

His tickle hands halted, and he froze, staring at that crack for the longest time. Then he stood and walked away. Kept right on going out the front door.

Pretty soon after that, I started riding a stick horse.

Dad sang, “We’ll all go out to greet her when she comes,” but he hasn’t greeted me in so long I can’t remember.

I wonder what I did wrong.

Anyhow, once during a visit to Aunt Kay’s when I was supposed to be sleeping, I crept down the hall to listen to her and Uncle Mike rant about Ronald and Mom.

“Just call me Ronny, like Governor Reagan,” Kay mocked.

“Ronny, my ass. He thinks he’s hot shit because he drives a Lincoln and lives in The Estates,” Mike said.

“Did you see her face?”

“Again?”

“She tries to cover it up with make-up, but I know.”

“Asshole,” Mike said.

I knew what the make-up was covering. The same thing our perfectly mowed lawn and etched concrete patio did. The same thing shrouding our windows. Mom was just as skilled at curtaining her face in Cover Girl beige as she was in sewing flawless window coverings.

And we all pretended to believe that the discolorations beneath the foundation were just smears, places she hadn’t expertly applied the make-up.

Like today when I got back from camp.

Yeah, if my real dad was here, he’d kick Ronny’s ass. Lay him flat. Wrap Mom up in his strong arms, (They were strong, weren’t they?) and whisk us away to a place beyond the mountain.

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The previous is an excerpt from my nearly complete novel, Bong Years.

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About Laurie: The author of The Pharaoh’s Cry, Portal Shift, Kidnapped Smile, and Dragon Sky from the fantasy series The Artania Chronicles, as well as the middle-grade Forest Secrets. Laurie Woodward co-wrote Dean and JoJo: The Dolphin Legacy. Her poetry has been published in multiple journals and anthologies and she was a collaborator on the popular anti-bullying DVD Resolutions. Bullied as a child, Laurie is now an award-winning peace consultant, poet, and blogger who helps teach children how to avoid arguments, stop bullying, and maintain healthy friendships. She writes on the Central Coast of California. More about her work can be found at artania.net

Deafening Silence: A Poem

I plug my ears

Against the deafening silence

Of forced isolation

Trying to bar screams from listless lips.

And the discordant phrasing of muted throats.

Have I become so jaded

As to find malaise in my own company?

Need I lament a compulsory isolation

As a petulant child might an elder’s chiding?

Or shall I unplug my ears

And let in the sound of

Birdsong, trees’ breath, and pelting rain?

This sublime orchestra

Invites me to perch at my conga

And accompany these tremors

For this is the time to exalt

And rejoice in

Each palpitating rhythm.

Dark Shame: A Novel Excerpt

Part of me is tearing up right now; this is so hard to write I want to press delete, but because April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and so many have gone through what I have, I decided that it was time to come out about what happened to me. Maybe sometime my story will make a difference for someone.

I was 17 and hitchhiking home from a rock concert when it happened. I know I shouldn’t have hitchhiked, but my teen-aged self argued, You can’t miss the greatest rock concert of the year! You saved for months to get that ticket. Bad things don’t happen to nice girls. Anyhow, you are safe because your are with a boy.

But what power does a skinny sixteen-year-old have against two grown men with gun? The boy was robbed and left in a gutter while I was taken to a shack and…and… and… did everything I could to keep them from killing me.

I survived but for years I have woken up screaming from open-eyed nightmares believing there is someone next to my bed, hands inching toward my throat. When I’m in public and see men that look like my attackers, my heart starts pounding, it’s hard to breath, and I begin to shake uncontrollably searching furtively for escape. Being alone at night is the worst. When I hear the rustling of what is probably some animal in the yard, I imagine an intruder and search behind shower curtains, beneath beds, inside doors to every closet, bedroom and corner of the garage. Some nights these panic attacks have me crying uncontrollably wishing I could crack open my skull and empty the horrific images branded in memory.

I have gotten counseling many times, but for the last two years I have been trying to work through these feelings in a novel. Even though this project brings up a great deal of pain, I am compelled to continue. For some reason I keep going. I don’t know why since I’m crying half the time I work on it.

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter.

“So here I was, a kid certain that someday the light of hippie sun would shine on all our faces as we danced barefoot in meadows. I had so much faith in this dream that I thought if you can really talk to a person, get them face to face, and bare the beauty of your child soul you could soften even the hardest of hearts.

Naïve, I know. But when you’re a kid you see the world through your own eyes. And when you’re high to boot everything is tinged with this soft mist, like an out of focus camera and you trust people, thinking they just want to give you a ride.

Yeah, I never knew people were truly ugly until the night I peered into the tunnel of darkness.

You know, I really thought the face there was just a mask. One I could melt away with my Kodachrome soul.

But I was wrong. And by the time I figured it out, it was too late.”

Ten Tips for Coping With Shelter in Place

As a writer, it is my job to be introspective, to observe, comment upon, and analyze. I feel it my duty to create works that act as a mirror for society, human interactions, and emotion. But Shelter-in-Place is so foreign that I’m finding it challenging to write.

Like many of you, I am fighting feelings of helplessness and depression. I long for human interaction, closeness, touch. I miss patting my friends on the back as we laugh over some silly joke, twirling on the dance floor goofily between hugs, and placing a hand on a gal pal’s arm in comfort.

As humans, we were not built for isolation. Remember that study from your reading in Psych 101? Back in the thirteenth century, the German king, Frederick II, conducted an experiment to discover what language children would grow up to speak if never spoken to. So King Frederick took babies from their mothers at birth and placed them in the care of nurses who were forbidden to speak to them. But a second rule was imposed, as well: the nurses were not allowed to touch the infants. Frederick’s experiment was an absolute failure, because every baby died. Without touch and tender words they couldn’t thrive.

We all need connection. So what to do now when that basic human need is denied us? I have found the following things help.

1) Avoid the news. It will only depress you. Read just enough to stay informed.