It was a dark and stormy night, as I walked the halls of Club Nissen.

A scream rang out.

A man came.

Well, actually, it was a teenager, and I’m the one who screamed, and, truth be told, it wasn’t storming, but it was dark, and I was at home, and I did, in fact, scream. It wasn’t one of those blood curdling screams like in the movie Halloween, it was more like an, eww gross, what the heck is this, sort of holler. But I digress.

It was a dark night. The evening settled in and I flipped off the television and lights. Halfway towards my bedroom, I realized I wanted some water. I wandered back to the kitchen, keeping the lights off, and found a cup in the cupboard, stepped two paces to the left and plunged the glass under the water dispenser in the refrigerator. Leaning my right hand on the cool door, I noticed a gritty feeling; the surface had been cleaned with a dirty rag.

I set the glass on the counter and picked up a bottle of Windex and rag while flipping on the lights. Looking for the offending grime, I noticed, almost imperceptibly, it moved. I screamed—or shouted—or swore in some sort of breathtaking manner.

*&%@#+^$@!

My sixteen year old appeared. “What?” he asked in that sleepy but irritated tone in which all uninterested teenagers respond to their mothers.

“Is that dirt moving?”

“What? I don’t see anything.”

“There. See it? Look.” I pressed the button on the fridge door and the area illuminated.

Hundreds, no thousands, of little minuscule creatures lined the outside of the stainless steel door.

The kitchen, now bright, became a combat zone. Every safe-for-stainless product lay on the counter next to rolls of paper towels.

The bugs would not defeat me.

Little did I know, however, their force would be stronger than my midnight resolve. For two hours I sprayed and wiped and sprayed until I realized I must retreat.

I consulted Google: tiny kitchen bugs; tiny white bugs in kitchen; kitchen door crawling with white bugs. Finally I got a hit. Flour mites. “Very tiny little creatures…soft white body…eight legs, except in the larval stage when it has only six legs.”

These practically invisible creepy-crawlies don’t live long but females lay 800 eggs a day. By morning, my refrigerator was swimming in a swarm of flea cousins.

I called the bug guy. He could be there in the afternoon. Once he arrived, he had no advice. Any chemical he could use would ruin my stainless steel and, he added, “I’ve been doing this for over twenty year and I’ve never seen these guys before.”

My day just went from bad to worse.

Wikipedia told me to starve them to death. I gathered all my food from the kitchen and tossed it into the garage freezer or the trash. Then I discovered the solution to my problem. The little guys with pinkish-brown legs couldn’t crawl through WD-40. It didn’t kill them, but who would have thought a little lubricant would make reproducing so difficult.

Life in the desert is unique. The sunsets turn the mountains to a perfect plum. There are more stars than anyone could count. Coyotes stroll through the back yard at dawn; black widow spiders spin webs in doorways, and rattlesnakes are seen crossing sidewalks. This rough region is an fun place to raise adventurous children.

Our street is a quarter mile long cul-de-sac and filled with young kids. My oldest son is five and he and the other boys love to play in the sand and on jungle gyms. Someone in the neighborhood recently had a birthday and the guests received creepy-crawly things as party favors—perfect for all our critter-loving kids.

“I’ve got this end,” I say as I lift the front of the crib while my friend grabs a Ziplock bag filled with hardware and picks up the back. We are moving it across the street from her house to mine.  The wind shifts and a spray of dust lifts to the air.

“Lookout Mom!” my son shouts as he tosses a rubber snake in front of me.

 “Oh no,” I feign as I hop away from the rubber object.

We begin to carry the crib but stop mid street when her son steps towards her holding a plastic grasshopper. “Oh my,” she exclaims and puts her hand over her chest in mock fear.

The boys run away giggling.

“Okay, go.” We start to move again.

We climb up the slightly sloped driveway and begin to angle towards the side wall of the garage when my two year old runs up to me and tugs at my shorts. “Arrgg,” he screams as he holds out his hand to display a black spider ring.

“Oh, honey, don’t scare me like that!”

He laughs and runs down the driveway towards the other kids.

My garage is used for storage and has never seen a car. There are boxes of papers and photos, bikes and strollers, and lots of toys. I look down to step around some GI Joes and happy meal toys.

“That’s fake. Right?” I ask as we are about to set the crib down.

“What?”

“There,” I point to the concrete.

“Yeah. Look.”

Doubt flutters across my face as my friend bends down to pick up the translucent plastic arachnid sitting in the cleared area. The baggie, still in her hand, brushes the top of the scorpion and it comes to life, arching its back and snapping its pincers. Its eight legs propel it quickly as it races towards us.

We drop the crib and run, our screams mixed with fits of giggles. Life in the desert is unique and I now realize how life-like those party favors really are.

One Christmas Memory

My Christmas memories are like everyone else’s.  Gifts and gatherings, friends and festivities, songs and sermons.  Growing up, I was lucky enough to participate in all of these.

I lived just on the outskirts of the city, in a town called Shillington.  It is a lot like where I live now.  There’s the main drag, schools named after important people, and holiday parades.

My house was the old one at the top of the street.  To the right lay a Jewish cemetery complete with mausoleums and tombstones dedicated to Holocaust victims.  Bordering that was the Protestant cemetery and next to that, another one.  Behind my house, over the wooded hill and down the other side was the Precious Blood Convent.  The Convent had a sign placed randomly in the middle of the woods that read:

If only the birds with the best voices sang,

the forest would be silent.  

That sign inspired me and I felt blessed that I could sing and participate in the local church’s children’s choir.

As a matter of fact, when I was growing up, I aspired to become a professional.  My hairbrush was my microphone and my tennis racket my guitar.

There was only one problem with my goal.  I couldn’t carry a note.

 For church performances, I was often given special roles that involved things like tambourines and bells.  One Christmas service, the children’s choir prepared to sing “Angels We have Heard on High.” This is such a lovely song, and to hear it song by children’s voices is awe inspiring.  But my voice wasn’t the only problem for the choir director.  I couldn’t pronounce the Latin lyrics.

The director worked with me separately and I was finally able to sing with the rest of the children.  This performance is one Christmas memory that I have that is not like everyone else’s.  I now know that I will never carry a tune, but when I hear that song sung today, I sing it like a bird in the forest.

 Angels we have heard on high

Sweetly singing o’er the plains,

And the mountains in reply

Echoing their joyous strains.

  Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year too!

(A story inspired by true events)

From the deepest sleep, I gasp. I can’t breathe. My eyes open and strain to see a hand over my mouth and nose.  As the light begins to filter, I see Kyle standing above me, shaking his head, holding a saw.

“I need your help.” His whisper is urgent.

I notice his cropped dirty blond hair shaved neatly behind the ears; strong, freckled-nose; mole on his left cheek. He looks exactly like me, except for the craziness in his eyes.

I struggle to move his hand and sit up. Above my twin bed sits a row of trophies and medals of all shapes and sizes, photographs of various sports teams, and newspaper announcements of my successes. On the opposite side is his stuff, which is as much as mine.

“What?”

“Shh, you’ll wake Mom.”

Kyle grabs my hand and pulls me out of bed, grabs my clothes strewn on the back of a chair, and throws them at me. I yank my arm and shake it while I silently dress and follow my brother, on tippy toes, carefully over the squeaky bottom stair, to the kitchen door.

“What?” I repeat when we finally walk outside.

I gaze at the short but steep angle of the driveway through the fog of my breath. I rub my shoulders and stamp my feet. To the left of the asphalt sits mom’s car, a 1956 light green Dodge Coronet with white walled-tires and polished chrome fenders.

Kenny, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

I look at Kyle. I look at the saw. I look back at Kyle.

“Why do you have a saw?”

“See the tree?”

I shake my head. Kyle strides over to the driveway and points.

I sidle up to Kyle and look closer at the car. It’s sitting on the grass at the bottom of the hill. We stride down the drive to look at the rear bumper. We lean to the left, look under the car. We lean to the right, look under the car from the opposite angle.

I look at my brother. I look at the car. I look at the tree. The four foot tall, two inch wide dogwood is wedged between the bumper and the trunk.  “Dang.”

The leafless sapling stood straight, its tender branches raised skyward. It had bent with the force of the car’s mass while on a downhill descent, then in an act of defiance, sprung back up, through the gap of the bumper and car’s trunk, heroically, as if to say “ta-da.” I knew this from the dream I had shortly before Kyle woke me. (Mom would say it’s a twin thing.)

“Mom will kill you if it scratched the paint.”

“It didn’t.”

“Maybe we can pick the car up?”

“Kenny, it’s a car not a duck.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Kyle waves the saw in front of my face. “Cut up here, cut there, then pull it out.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Fifteen minutes later, I look at the car now parked in the garage. The dim light from the bare bulb reveals a flawless finish.  “Mom will never know!”

We cautiously climb up the stairs to our room for a well-deserved sleep.

For the second time, I wake from a sound slumber and gasp for air. Sitting up, I look at my brother, who’s doing the same.

“Kylekenny!” It’s a repeated scream that puts ice in our veins. “What happened to my tree?”

The mid-morning sun climbs the crisp Colorado sky.  I kick a rock and watch it roll into a cave.  “Hey, what’s in here?”

The five of us stop and stare at the dark, rocky entrance. “Cool, let’s go in!” my brother shouts after he walks five steps into the cavernous space.

“What’s that smell?” I ask as I cover my nose to block the pungent aroma of stale sewage.

“I think I can safely say something died in here.” My dad points to the dead cow laying against the back wall.

“Doug,” my mom says while placing her index finger on top of her chin and tapping. “Doug,” she repeats, “don’t you think that skull would look perfect in the cactus planter in the front hallway?”

I look at my mom and wrinkle my nose.

Our house, classic 1920 Pennsylvania, sat at the top of a big hill in Shillington. In the late seventies, Mom and Dad redecorated to accommodate a southwestern theme complete with dream catchers, cowboy paintings, and a built in cacti planter box.

“I guess it would.”

I wrinkle my nose more and turn to face my dad.

“Do you think you could get it? We could clean it up a bit, like a conch shell, right?”

My brother, sister, and I scrutinize my parents’ conversation like an audience watching a tennis match.

“Sure. We could do that.”

“Alright, let’s do it.”

Dad, forty and fit, walks up to the beast and grabs the horns. He tugs and begins to twist. While he does, the body turns with the head. He rotates the skull the opposite direction. Again, the giant body follows. He repositions himself and puts a leg on the shoulder of the skeleton and turns for a third time, tongue out, eyes narrowed, chin down. Nothing.

“Teresa, this is stubborn.”

“Hold on, I’ll help.”

Mom, not one to shy away from a mess of any sort, walks over and lies on top the deceased animal. With some more twisting and tugging, the head snaps from the spine sending my dad backwards to the opposite wall.

“Success!” Mom shouts, stands, and wipes dirt from her jeans.

“Okay, Al, you carry this back for Mom.” Dad hands me the head and smiles.

“No thanks!” I say and give it to my sister.

“Alison, gross.” Again, she pronounces gross in a long, exaggerated manner.

“I’ve got this,” my brother smiles and picks up the head from my sister’s arms. “This is going to make the best ‘What did you do this summer’ essay ever!”