nanowrimo madness

This afternoon our family reached a new level of depravity. Sarah and Eyvonne decided to prank Ian. Of course this required complicity from the rest of us Qs.
Ian is one of us who remembers what is probably a past life, somewhere in Ireland, which he insists is call Eyre, in the 1400s.
He talks about castles and wars and the general mayhem of growing up the bastard son of a noble. One of the things he hates most is memories of heads on pikes outside the city walls.
The reason we know that is soon after he came into the system we attended a renaissance festival, thinking Ian would be right at home. He enjoyed it on some levels, like the food, but mostly it confused him. They had an elephant you could ride and he was somewhat frightened of that until we explained what it was and that it was just for fun. Right after that he really freaked out. One of the vendors had a bunch of wig heads on stakes decoratively placed in front of his booth. When Ian saw them he thought they were real.
I don’t think we’ve been to a renaissance fest since.
Anyway, for Christmas one year Eyvonne and the rest of us Qs gave Ian a tiny doll head on a metal rod. Just as a memento. Really. We made a little banner with his name on it to hang below the head.
So. That’s the backstory.
Sarah is studying cosmetology. She has three life size wig heads with which to practice hair color and cutting techniques. Are we getting the picture here?
Ian was asleep inside. We woke him up telling him Eyvonne need to talk with him. As he took ops he got a sense that something was afoot. As he and Eyvonne rounded the corner of the house he saw a “headless’ body laying in front of three heads on sticks. It was great. Just for a moment we had him. It was Sarah lying there with her coat pulled up over her head that got him. Then he laughed.
“The only thing wrong is they’re tongues aren’t stickin’ out,” Ian commented.
Inside and out hysteria reigned. It was great.
It was even funnier was when Owl’s bass player parked hi car right next to the heads and never flinched. He’s so used to the level of insanity around here it didn’t faze him.
I mean come on, wouldn’t you ask? “Hey, what’s with the heads on sticks?” Maybe he was afraid of our answer.
Yesterday when he arrived we were peeling bark off a 16-foot sapling. Just another ordinary day.
Owl and Thunder’s friends were kind of indoctrinated at an early age. Once we had a plastic soda bottle filled with sand suspended from the ceiling over the kitchen table. Given a push it would swing in an unvarying pattern trickling sand, creating the same design over and over again. We ate in the living room for a couple of weeks.
“What is that?” one of their friends asked.
“It proves the earth really does rotate,” I said.
“Oooohhhhh.”
Another time we constructed a 6-foot-tall papier-mâché dragon. Our horses would escape their pasture and wander up to the porch to beg for treats. Our house was a place where anything might happen and frequently did.
No one else’s parents allowed them to skateboard in the kitchen, swim as soon as the ice was off the lake, or finished water battles by spraying a hose through a kitchen window.
Owl and Thunder built shelters in the woods and moved out of the house for a while every summer. I wasn’t supposed to know where they were camping even if I could see them. They no longer existed as my kids. They went feral. I did however notice they still liked chocolate chip cookies enough to sneak in and swipe them off the cooling racks.
The whole prank thing started when they were little. They waited until they thought I was asleep and threw plastic glow-in-the-dark bugs at my bed. I retaliated by short-sheeting their beds.
They curled life-size rubber snakes under the covers at the foot of my bed. I waited in the darkened hallway to lightly touch their bare feet with a feather duster.
Owl turned off the light outside the bathroom door and stood right outside it so I walked right into him. I put life-like fuzzy mice in his dresser.
You get the picture. April Fools Day approached performance art at our house.
This Halloween Sarah and Mer unrolled six rolls of toilet paper festooning Owl’s bedroom. He rigged up a buzzer to Sarah’s closet door. It went off a 1 a.m. when she and I were the only ones home.
“Q, help!” she shrieked. “There’s smoke alarm going off! Help!” She was practically dancing in my bedroom door.
I woke up laughing. “Owl gotcha,” I managed.
Life’s short. Have fun.
Laughing can cure damn near anything.
We hold onto that when we hit a dark night of the soul. Those still happen to us. They don’t make us feel suicidal anymore. We know there is laughter waiting for us just over the next ridge. We just need to stay safe until we get there. Getting there can be hard. In the fall we still get more than melancholy. Part of it is the shorter days. So we work under a UV light. Sometimes we overdose on light and then we can’t sleep. We get wound so tight we can’t concentrate. Never overdose on UV rays. It’s worse than caffeine.
And we still have flashbacks. I suspect Pleiades is having them but I can’t talk to him so I don’t know that for sure. He doesn’t seem inclined to talk much to anyone yet. It’s a waiting game.
I complained about feeling exhausted today.
“He has trouble falling asleep,” Eyvonne said.
“Who?” I asked missing her point.
“Notastarsystem,” she said. “He has a hard time relaxing.”
I put my head down and groaned. How many times do we have to go through this before I remember the drill? Newbies almost always have sleep problems. They are also typically the last with ops or awareness as the rest of us falls asleep. It’s an especially common pattern for a protector. The ordinary noises of the night resonate right through them. The responsibility can feel overwhelming. Going to sleep feels like abdication of that responsibility.
Eyvonne says Pleiades startles awake numerous times before he eventually falls into a deep sleep. Passing trucks, the dog whining in his sleep, Owl dropping a shoe on his floor above our ceiling, the phone ringing. Anything can prompt him to alert.
At one time such vigilance served a purpose, giving us time to escape from our bed and hide or switch to avoid knowing what was happening. To newbies it still feels like that could happen.
Eyvonne falls asleep stroking his back so he knows she’s still there.
“It’s all right. You’re here with me.” She repeats again and again.
At some point he’ll begin to know that’s true. Then we’ll have something to work with. It’s making me crazy that I can’t talk to him. I’ve got to figure out why this is happening. I know in my gut nothing will get better until we can talk.
A long time ago el heard a baby crying nonstop inside. No other Q could hear the baby. Only el. It nearly drove him crazy knowing there was a l’ilone alone and uncomforted outside the system. He searched everywhere. He found places we didn’t know existed or had forgotten long ago. But he couldn’t find that baby. Stonebaby found her.
Once he understood what was making el so sad he told Eyvonne he knew where the baby was. She asked him to pick the baby up and comfort it. Stonebaby did. He cuddled her and brought her into the light and warmth of the system. He even conjured up a bottle and fed her. We wept with relief.
But Notastarsystem isn’t an infant. His memories are far more difficult to unravel, his needs harder to meet. If only we knew what his needs were we could at least help.
I can sense what he’s feeling when he’s nearby. But since we turn and walk away from each other whenever we meet I’m not making much headway on that front.
The thing I sense the most from him is a heaviness of heart. Sadness. Like he’s carrying a burden he can no longer bear alone. He’s come to the right place. Maybe when he builds up enough trust with one of us or with Eyvonne he’ll let it go.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot