A house without walls

Seventeen years.

Today is the anniversary of the death of my mother, Susan Mills. She was 50 when she passed away. I was just shy of 16 at the time, beginning my sophomore year in high school. It came as a shock and not at all as a surprise when it happened, like death so often does. She had been sick for two years, in the ICU at the hospital in Chicago for the past two months straight. Surgeries, brain damage, recovery, relapse, surgery, infection, and now, finally, almost mercifully, an aneurysm.

I was daydreaming in Algebra class when the school office sent someone to get me. It was a beautiful day outside. Sunny and warm but smelling of autumn. I knew immediately what had happened, without being told. I remember glancing at a friend as I walked out of the room. I remember the look in her eyes, which must have been reflecting back the dread in my own.

That moment is crystal clear and yet there's a lot about that period that is incredibly fuzzy when I actually try to dredge it up. That is, I can only guess, how the brain tries to protect itself from psychic damage after something so disruptive occurs. It's like a scab and then scar tissue over a wound, or bricks in the door to a room you don't want to go into anymore. But the thing is, so many years later now, I want to remember. Every second. Because now I find that I can't recall the sound of her voice, and sometimes even her face goes blurry, and I only have old, time worn photos of her to bring things into some semblance of focus again.

She has been gone from my life now for longer than she was in it. So this all makes sense, is all logical, is how time and memory tend to work. Time doesn't make something like this less sad, but it does give you more context, more experiences to hold against or next to it. Time makes the Terrible Thing one of many important life experiences, not The Main One. And that helps.

So I'm not looking to re-experience or wallow in her death. What I want, more than anything, is to be able to more fully celebrate her life. I suppose it's a little morbid to take the anniversary of her passing as a good time to do that, but I'd rather use the date for that than to mourn all over again.

My fellow members of the club will understand. We are an organization founded on both dark humor and hope, after all.

What I remember of my mother is a warm heart, a stubborn nature, a love of teaching, singing, casual piano playing that was limited to about three or four regular songs ("Theme From Love Story" was a particular favorite). She liked Neil Diamond and Mannheim Steamroller and Kevin Costner and thought Lars from Metallica was cute. "Gone With the Wind" was one of her all-time favorite movies. She wore sweaters with Scottie Dogs on them and was the most adorably stereotypical elementary school teacher you can imagine, in a lot of ways. She drank too much Coca Cola. She wanted to lose weight. For Halloween one year she dressed up as Sonny to my father's Cher and they sang "I Got You Babe" at a church talent show. She held me in her lap while I cried angrily over getting my first period. She liked to bake, and made incredible desserts. I blame her for my insatiable sweet tooth. When she was little she used to help her older sister sneak booze into her dorm by hiding it inside her doll house. She didn't punish me when I pushed my older brother down the stairs one day (he had it coming). She did punish me when she caught me canoodling with the neighbor boy. She and our shih tzu, Mitzi, were best friends. She made her own greeting cards. She sewed her own outfit so she could accompany me on my Civil War reenacting weekends. She always wanted to put me in dresses but generally let me choose my own, tomboy-tastic outfits anyway.

This is all a drop in the bucket, of course. I know almost nothing about her life before I was born, about what she was like as a friend, as a human outside the context of being Mom. That is my biggest regret, really--that I never got to know her once I'd grown up and become a little less self-absorbed. I think we would have had lots of differences, but many things in common, and that she and I would have gotten along pretty well even when she didn't entirely understand the shenanigans I was getting up to. I think she would have made a delightful and stubborn old woman.

But anyway, I've learned not to spend too much time on "what ifs." Unless you're writing speculative fiction, they're generally no good.

If my memory is a building with many rooms, I think of it like the Winchester Mystery House. Some of it connects, makes sense, has a clear through-line and plot. In other places there are staircases and doors that lead nowhere, and entire hidden rooms with no way to access them, no light inside. Maybe, like Sarah Winchester, we build these rooms as a way to run from restless memories, guilt, depression, sadness, all the things we're afraid to confront because we fear they will consume us entirely.

As the years go by, I find myself more and more interested in taking a sledgehammer to the walls. Creating an open floor plan. Opening windows to air out any stagnation. Letting more light in, having it all mix together. Even when it hurts.

It's going to take considerable work, I know. But I have to try. She would have wanted that for me. We have that in common.

Madison Crazy

I can't help feeling a bit like an evangelist when people from out of town ask me why I like Madison so much. My answers tend to turn into long, drawn-out sales pitches with an inappropriate amount of detail and enthusiasm for how casual their initial interest likely was. But I can't help it, I love this damn city. It's the first place I've ever lived (and I've lived in several different cities/states...but no city-states, alas) that actually feels like home.

And after over 10 years of residing in this liberal lakeside paradise I feel fairly well qualified to expound on its particular quirks and stereotypes.

Which is why I had to laugh to myself today when I pulled up on my bike to the UW Credit Union ATM out front of the Willy St. Co-op - and there I was (already fulfilling several Madison archetypes myself), surrounded by:

1. The old guy who plays bluegrass guitar and busks,
2. A little girl making friends with a middle-aged fella and his shaggy German Shepherd, and
3. A not-entirely-right-in-the-head gentleman ranting at what I can only assume was an innocent bystander just trying to eat his late lunch about imperialist wars in Libya and Blackwater conspiracies and things of that nature.

The sun was (finally) shining, birds were singing lustily in the newly budding trees, and everywhere people on bikes were zipping around doing errands like me. After a long, few weeks of rainy, cold, gray weather it takes only a few seconds of sunshine to compel every good resident of more northern climes to come outside in droves.

The impulse can all too often lead to some craziness, as well.

Continuing on my errand route I made my way to Schenk's Corners for the post office in the corner store. When I arrived there were three firetrucks, several police cars, a huge crane, and a clutch of firefighters all gathered around the Chase Bank on the corner. I asked the store clerk what had happened. "Someone took the turn too fast and crashed into the bank building, right into one of the pillars," he explained. Not only that, but the force of the crash actually knocked over the pillar, causing its capital to crash through the car's windshield and into the passenger seat. Thankfully, there was no one sitting there and the driver was apparently all right.

Much of the neighborhood had come out to gawp (I did, too) at the totaled car and toppled pillar. Earlier, apparently, many of them had come to see if they could help. I took a moment to be grateful that no one was seriously hurt, and to marvel at how fast the car must have been traveling to not only get through the barriers that block off the front of the bank, but to completely upend one of the stone pillars.

Maybe it was the springtime crazies clouding the driver's better judgment. Maybe they'd had a bad day. Maybe they just shouldn't have been driving. Regardless, I love that I live in a city where your neighbors generally give a crap about what's going on around them/each others' well-being, are friendly (for the most part*) with strangers, and are a little more comfortable with everyone's eccentricities. Madison ain't perfect, but it's my kind of getting there.

*The gentleman who swore at me while I was working today would be the most recent exception to the rule that I've encountered.

Well hello there, winter

A good ol' Oklahoma panhandle snow storm is blowing its way through Wisconsin today, dumping something like 6-10 inches on those of us in Madison and generally making a mess of the roads. Area school kids lucked out with a snow day, but most of us poor working fools still had to make the choice between making the trek to our various jobs or missing a days' pay.

Being the stubborn, hearty soul that I am, I opted for the 15-mile drive to work. It wasn't fun, but we made it (the decided lack of other cars on the road probably helped).

This is exactly what I suspected would play out when I went on a very pleasant walk last evening through the first, calmer part of the snow system. Since school snow days filled with sledding and hot chocolate are sadly a thing of the past for me now, I decided that it was a good chance to get out and enjoy myself before mundane responsibility set in the next morning. Camera and tripod in hand, I headed out into the neighborhood, passing a few people walking dogs lightly dusted with white, eventually making my way to Circle Park. I set up and took a few pictures near the powder covered merry-go-round, then strolled down to the lake and back.

Other than the ever-present distant rushing of cars out on the main roads, the only sounds were the falling snow, geese out for a paddle on a patch of still exposed water, and the occasional peal of laughter from two young girls who were building a stumpy little snowman nearby.

People's Christmas lights reflected everywhere, casting a warm glow across the accumulating snow, and here and there I caught a quick glimpse through a front window into a cozy living rooms and kitchens.

A good pair of boots, a warm jacket, gloves and hat, jeans, and my natural internal furnace kept me warm as I went - and I couldn't help but feel extremely grateful that I was so fortunate as to be able to really enjoy such a walk. And it was good for my mind, which I think has lately been a little more overloaded than usual with various issues of varying degrees of importance.

Sometimes a nice walk through the snow is all it takes to shake that off, though. What does it for you?

My own private Lord of the Flies

I'm going to tell you a story.

Sorry, I'm feeling a touch nostalgic.

It's the early 1990's, and we find ourselves in the midst of a newly booming suburb about 40 minutes west of Chicago. Everywhere, corn fields and streams are being bulldozed to make way for identical fairy rings of bland, Barbie Doll houses. This once quaint river town is quickly transforming, its outer reaches spreading like spilled water on porous paper with the construction of big box retailers and chain restaurants.

In the middle of one housing development, a band of adolescent children have begun to take advantage of the sudden proliferation of dirt hills, trenches, cast-off bits of wood, and rocks. Gleefully, they begin to build ramshackle forts and huts within these side effects of progress, using the battlefield-like terrain to wage petty wars of harmless fun against rival groups of kids.

Me and my two best friends--Alicia and Dave--were one such tribe. Only three in number, we still considered ourselves a force to be reckoned with. In the side yard of Dave's house, just across the street from where Alicia lived (I, the odd one out, lived some distance away in the church manse, a small house blessedly surrounded by trees instead of muddy fields), new houses had yet to go up, but space had been cleared for the purpose. This meant several large heaps of dirt and rocks, plus scattered pieces of wooden boards and pallets that practically screamed at us to be used as building materials.

We were powerless to resist. Spending countless summer hours outdoors, toiling in the dirt, we eventually built a fort in one such mound. It had an inner cave area, with ledges on top protected by packed dirt parapets. From it, we could keep an eye on the next nearest band of ruffians, who had dug into a dirt pile just two yards down.

From our fortified perches, we kept an eye on one another, wary that, should we leave our fort for any amount of time, our enemies would rush in and attempt to seize control. We stockpiled throwing-sized dirt clods, stick swords, a few small rocks, and--perhaps our most prized possessions--a mound of discarded, mutant-huge, rotting vegetables from a nearby garden. No joke, these turnips and such were gigantic and stinky, ie: perfect.

And so, when the assault finally came, we were ready--or so we thought. A handful of boys and one girl, all a few years younger than us but bold as barbarians, came charging down from their hill, intent on taking our fort.

Dirt clods and giant vegetables flew threw the air, accompanied by war cries and the occasional yelp of shock from being hit. We stood atop our ledges and lobbed with all our might, confident that we would prevail.

I was kneeling to pick up a particularly large and decomposing turnip when everything went south. Something obscenely hard and painful thumped into the back of my head and knocked me clean over. I tumbled down the back side of the mound. At the bottom, clutching the quickly forming lump, I bent over and picked up the offending projectile. A dirt clump with a huge rock clearly embedded in its side.

Oh, the line had been crossed.

The unspoken rule of the suburban battlefield was that no real pain was to be inflicted, no actual rocks thrown--only dirt and vegetables and insults. But there was no way my attacker hadn't noticed the stone lodged into his dirt bomb, I thought. I called dirty pool.

It wasn't the most tactically sound plan ever, but my temper took over. I ran out from behind the hill, empty-handed, looking for the offending kid. Most of them were distracted, busily trying to scramble up the dirt and toward my two friends, who had continued their defense in my absence. One of the older boys, though, was still standing at its foot, clearly looking for good pieces of dirt to throw. Jackpot.

I rushed him, shoving him sideways onto the ground before he knew what was happening. I could have punched him in the face, or kicked him in the groin, or any number of things to pay him back for the rock to the head.

Instead, at that very moment, one of their mother's started calling them in to dinner, and the atmosphere changed in an instant. Two of the attackers--siblings, apparently--turned tail and ran back toward their house, yelling something about it being pizza night. Alicia and Dave started chatting with the remaining kids about some upcoming street hockey game.

The distraction provided enough time for the kid I had tackled to push me off and scramble back to his feet.

"See you later!" he said and then trotted away. As my fugue state slowly subsided, I stood and brushed dirt from my clothes, still smarting from the knock I'd taken. But I was glad that things had gone as they had. I didn't really want to beat anyone up. The rock in the dirt was probably an accident, or just a poor but not malicious choice.

Whatever, the important thing was that we'd maintained control over the fort.

Three days later, bulldozers came and destroyed the dirt mounds and began laying the foundations of several new homes. We had to go further and further away to find dirt fields and mounds on which to play, until eventually the whole subdivision had been filled in by houses and small parks. Even the nearby stretch of woods, where we'd built a sprawling tree fort, was cut down to make way for more development.

Some of us turned to garage bands and elaborate scavenger hunts to pass the time. Others went for less wholesome activities, of course. Eventually we all moved away or drifted apart. But sometimes, even today, I still rub the back of my head and think about how silly we were, and yet, how terribly human. Mostly, though, I think, man, that kid was a total douchebag.

Don't be That Guy (or Girl)

I went to see My Brightest Diamond perform this weekend at the Orpheum Stage Door Theatre here in town. I was there both because I really enjoy their music and because I was reviewing it for 77 Square. And while I generally had a good time and thought the musicians did an excellent job, there was one exception.

You know the one. That ridiculously drunk and/or high individual in the crowd who decides that the show should be about them, and not the band on stage.

Oh yes, there's one at every show. Somehow, too, I have the unfortunate ability to always end up right next to them. It was a girl this time, about three people to my left, and she was rip-roaring drunk from the beginning of their set to the end, when someone finally, mercifully, pulled her out.

Experiencing That Person at a show is an interesting study in sociology, both for how that individual acts and why, and also for how the people around them respond. Most of the time, especially at quieter shows like this one, the prevailing attitude seems to be one of passive aggressive annoyance. If she'd been at a metal show, she'd have been drowned out by the music. A person causing trouble at a punk show would have been rewarded with an elbow to the stomach or a boot to the junk.

In our case, though, passive aggressive annoyance reigned. During any break between songs, or just a particularly quiet section of music, she'd blurt out things like "Thank you for coming to the Orpheum Stage Door Theatre! Wisconsin loves you!" and "You are the best singer of 2008!" as though she had been hired to provide running (if painfully dull) commentary. And through all of this, there were two people who I was pretty sure were friendly with her, and they too failed to do anything to get her to stop.

It wasn't until the final song of the night--a particularly mellow and heartfelt piece--that the crowd began to actively shush her. And her reply? "They want me to shut the fuck up!" shouted really loudly.

I guess I just don't understand the mindset that leads to this kind of attention whoring. Even at my drunkest (which, admittedly, doesn't happen very often) I don't feel compelled to yell out inanities in the middle of shows. There are plenty of drunken fools who can keep quiet and/or be relatively inoffensive in public. So what leads that select few to show up and attempt to fuck things up for everyone else? And why must there be at least one at every g'damn concert I go to?

I'm tempted to start treating all of these situations as though they're punk rock shows.

But I end with this: Please, please, for the love of all that is good in this world, don't be That Guy/Girl. No one is there to see or hear you. At best, you tick off a whole crowd of people who will secretly hate you forever. At worst, you get kicked in the junk. Why risk it?

Love of a season

The weather this past weekend was about as idyllic as it gets. With the fall colors in southern Wisconsin striving for their peak, temperatures wandered up into the high 70's and the sun shone brightly over a few scattered clouds and a quiet breeze. Naturally, one is all but compelled to spend a great deal of time out of doors when such weather presents itself.

Me and the fella, so compelled, suited up and headed out to do some mountain biking in Waterloo. As we maneuvered our way around roots and rocks and killer obstacles we're not yet awesome enough to tackle, we couldn't help but be constantly marveling at just how gorgeous everything was. The trails wind through acres of land on the side of a large mound/hill that's covered in most places by a combination of pine and deciduous forest. We passed through brightly colored sections where the sun burst through the canopy and sent rays of light down onto the leaf-strewn floor, and other spots where the light breeze shook free a shower of dead pine needles that then drifted down around us.

Seriously, it was almost as though someone had planned it.

After working up a good lather, we headed out to the Eplegaarden to pick out a single pumpkin for future use as a jack-o-lantern. The joint was, unsurprisingly, jumping, as parents and children and giddy college students swarmed the apple orchards and pumpkin fields in a hunt for seasonal produce. We found a slightly more out-of-the-way field where the selection was less picked over and found a specimen that met our exacting standards: no insect holes, a good long stem, and at least one side with a good surface for carving.

It was hard to watch the sun set at the end of Sunday knowing that such a perfect weekend was unlikely to roll around again at least until next year. "I want to bottle today and keep it around forever," said the fella. And I couldn't agree more, but I'm thankful to have been given such a lovely Indian Summer at all. Autumn is my favorite season, but my love for it is always tempered with the knowledge that fall tends to be the most mercurial of seasons, and that once it's done, there's a long winter to get through. Even so, I can't help but love this time of year: the brilliant colors in the trees, the harvest, Halloween, that crisp bite that seeps into the air, caramel apples, pumpkins, and warm kitchens that remind me of being small.

This coming weekend I'll be traveling to Columbus, Ohio for the tenth annual International Drag King Extravaganza, and I'm hoping that the weather will cooperate for daytime excursions to explore various parts of a city to which I've never been before. Will autumn be as spectacular there as it is in Wisconsin? Is that even possible? I admit I'm a little biased toward the natural beauty of my adopted state, but I'll do my best to keep my eyes, ears and nose open to the different--but I'm sure perfectly nice--sights, sounds and smells of fall in Ohio. After all, autumn beggars ought not be choosers.

The one-man-band is overrated

I suppose "one-woman-band" would be more accurate in my case, but anyway...

This is the last time I will plug my show, I promise: Saturday, July 26th at 8:00PM, get your butts out to the Majestic Theatre in downtown Madison for the rrrreally big sheeew - "Hot Mess! the best in Midwest drag kings and burlesque." It's just $10, anyone 18 years of age and older can get in, and I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

To say that organizing, producing and promoting a show of this size pretty much all on your own is a bit exhausting is, well, the understatement of the year. I honestly didn't know what I was getting myself into when I decided to undertake this little project. I'm kind of glad I was clueless, though, because then I likely wouldn't have gone through with it.

You see, this whole idea got started late last year after I had the great pleasure of attending and performing at the International Drag King Extravaganza in Vancouver, Canada. I'd never actually done any drag king performance prior to that, but through my sister and a group of her friends in Chicago, I was asked to take part. I'm so glad I did, too. I'd always wanted to visit Vancouver anyway, and though it was to be a whirlwind weekend tour, I didn't want to miss out on my chance. Plus, the wildly diverse and creative bunch of people at the event were amazing and friendly. The acts were spectacular--there was so much talent on display, and it came in all shapes, colors, and sizes.

Basically, the whole thing inspired the hell out of me. I wanted to bring our own act back to the Midwest. I started kicking the idea around, and in the process I met the Mad Kings, Madison's own drag king troupe. They'd been stuck out at a dimly lit club venue for their performances, and I began to think of combining some of their acts with our own into a fun, small show--finding a better venue to showcase their stuff in the process. But then I went to Milwaukee for Kingstock, and I saw the Miltown Kings perform. "They should be part of my show, too!" went my fevered brain.

And it was at that critical mass that my plans started growing like crazy. If we had people from Chicago and Milwaukee coming, Madison needed more representation! I'd seen and enjoyed Cherry Pop Burlesque before, and happened to have a passing acquaintance with one of its stars, Olive Talique (aka the lovely Angela Richardson). I went ahead and popped the question, and a few of them agreed to participate in my hairbrained scheme. After that, I added Foxy Veronica's Peach Pies, another local burlesque style group, and my dear friends Irma & DeeDee to the line-up as well. Now we just needed a good venue.

My first thought was of the Majestic Theatre. Recently rennovated into a really classy space with good lighting and good sound, I thought it might just be the exact right fit for what we needed. I worked up my sales pitch and went in. Amazingly, possibly improbably, they agreed to let me, a relatively unknown quantity, rent the space for a Saturday evening. After my initial wave of joy had passed, I realized that I now had the somewhat daunting task of filling up a 600 capacity theatre.

Gulp.

But this was important. I had a fantastic line-up of incredibly talented performers ready to come out and strut their best stuff. I wanted to make sure they got the audience they deserved. But a good PR campaign ain't easy, especially when you're working out of your own small pockets. So I called in favors, made my dollars spread out as far as they'd go, and worked my networks as hard as I could. I was a PR machine. I'm really hoping that all of that work pays off tomorrow night, but regardless, it has certainly been quite the learning experience.

The biggest lesson in all of this, though? Delegate. Doing nearly everything on my own was not, perhaps, the best course of action. My health and mental well-being have both suffered noticably. I think the only thing that saved me from complete meltdown was assistance from a few good friends, who graciously agreed to design our posters for free, house some of the out-of-town performers, and serve as lines of contact with others. God bless them, every one.

Now I've done pretty much everything that can be done prior to the day of the show. Tomorrow we run a dry tech, cross our fingers, and then rock. Come Sunday afternoon, I expect to be curled up in a ball somewhere, nursing a bottle of rum, and thinking of nothing but sweet, blissful sleep (if only--I have to move apartments next week).

Thanks, Sarah

And now for something completely different.

I don't normally make a habit of posting personal essays, but in the end, I write about what's on my mind. So, take it or leave it, I guess, and have a lovely day.


Anyone who knows me is likely to tell you that I am a little...obsessed...with Sarah McLachlan. Honestly, being that I’ve never actually met the woman, I’d say it’s more accurate to say that I’m obsessed with her music. That’s the truth of the matter, really, plus it sounds a little less, well, creepy.

My love affair with her music dates back to some unremembered time in 1995 when my older sister bought Solace, McLachlan’s second album. This was followed in short order by her purchasing Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, McLachlan’s more recently released third album. Every morning before school, I’d awake to the sound of my sister singing along to one or another track while she showered. And every morning, my groggy, prepubescent brain would say to itself, Emily, you should find out who this is, because it’s really fucking good.

Finally, I asked, and sis made me a tape copy of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy that would soon be getting frequent play on my Walkman. I listened to it on the bus to school. I listened to it when I rode my bike around town. Terrified of singing in public, I nonetheless took to memorizing every lyric to every song and belting them out when I was sure no one was around. I was in love with this album. It was perfect from beginning to end, like a well-orchestrated symphony, and its themes seemed both timeless and extremely relevant to me.

I’m sure this was only magnified at the time by my boisterously chaotic hormones, but even now, I hold fast to my assertion that it’s one of the greatest records ever.

I was an awkward looking teenager; a tomboy who played the drums, loved softball, climbed trees and had boys for best friends, one of whom I also secretly harbored a perfectly serious crush on. This, my soundtrack for all of the angst that this entailed, stayed in my Walkman for days on end.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, my mother got sick. The illness turned into something I could barely wrap my head around, something that dragged out into years of surgery, rehabilitation, more surgery, brain damage, and yet more surgery. My older brother and sister were away at college, so my father and I were left to take care of her. There’s no resentment there, just fact. Still, it was a lot. Music turned into the one thing I could always escape into when things got too complicated. Sometimes that was my raucous punk band. Sometimes that was donning my headphones, disappearing into my tree fort and staring up at the sky and just listening.

Sarah McLachlan’s next major record, Surfacing, came out in July of 1997. Just a few months prior, I’d discovered an online mailing list of Sarah fans who called themselves Fumblers. The magical and sometimes bizarre world of the internet was still somewhat new to me then and the idea of an international, easy-to-access fan club and information hub was extremely exciting. I promptly joined and learned about the formation of Lilith Fair, about various Sarah b-sides I’d never heard before, about concerts from long before I’d discovered her, about other artists, about how to refer to her by her first name only.

I went to Lilith Fair that summer when it stopped in Chicago. It was me and my sister and a few of her friends. They’d all gotten tickets for the lawn, but my sister and I had scored pavilion seats up front. We stayed back on the grass with our friends for most of the acts, but when it came time for Sarah to take the stage, there was no stopping us. We took our places up front and were promptly lost in reverie as the music began.

When she played “Hold On,” we couldn’t help but get a little misty-eyed. It seemed all-together too timely, considering the situation with mom. During the chorus to “Witness,” several red glow sticks appeared throughout the crowd: the Fumbler’s bat signal to recognize one another at shows. They were out there. And then, when it came time for the traditional sing-along to “Ice Cream,” I had a moment. It was sort of transcendental, I guess, this feeling of awe and of being part of something huge and wonderful. Or maybe someone nearby was smoking something special, but whatever. This whole stadium of people was singing these lovely lyrics back to the woman who’d penned them. It was almost overwhelming, that sound. And it made me want, more than anything, to have the chance to do something similar, to stand on stage and make people feel something, anything good, with music.

It would take years to get at all close to achieving that goal, but that was the starting line.

That fall, just over a month into my sophomore year of high school, my mother finally succumbed to her lengthy illness and passed away. I can’t explain what that was like, except to say that it sucked. It really, really sucked.

In the mental haze that followed, I sent a brief email to the Fumblers, explaining what had happened and why I would likely be incommunicado for awhile. There was an immediate outpouring of support from the list, something I hadn’t really expected from strangers, but there was still more to come.

On the morning of my mom’s memorial service, I awoke to my dad standing in the doorway of my bedroom. He had the most impressively gigantic basket of flowers clutched in his hands and he was chuckling (which was good, because none of us had done that in days).

“Who is this from?” he asked, incredulous. I sat up in bed and examined the little card buried beneath layers of foliage.

It said: “From the Fumblers.”

I nearly cried, of course. These people hardly knew me. And wait a minute, how had they gotten my address, anyway?

As luck would have it, the answer was far less unnerving than it might have been. One of the secretaries at my father’s church, which was just a parking lot away from our house, was good friends with a woman on the Fumblers mailing list. This woman had simply asked for the address at the church and then had the flowers forwarded on. This was also how I got my second Fumbler gift; a book, called Motherless Daughters, that ended up helping a great deal with getting me through it all (which is saying something, because, as a general rule, I don't like self-help books). This woman, too, had lost her mother, and the book had come to her at just the right time as well.

I wish I could remember who she was, because I’d love to send her another thank-you now, even so many years later.

And maybe it’s weird, but someday I hope I get the chance to thank Sarah herself, both for making the music that’s seen me through so many good times and bad, and for providing the impetus for people like the Fumblers to come together and generally be awesome. I’d be lying if I said I also didn’t secretly hope to someday get the chance to jam with her and her band. A girl can dream, right?

In the meantime, I have the music. I also have the good example set by a musician who has given so much to promote and fund charitable organizations, good causes, and fledgling musicians alike.

I’ll likely never be half the musician that Sarah McLachlan is, and no matter what my id might pretend otherwise, that’s not really what I’ve ever wanted. I’ll find my own path through music and through life.

Regardless of the outcome, though, I’ll have an excellent soundtrack to see me through it, and I’m grateful for that.

The Tree Forts of Our Lives

Long, long ago, in a land not so far away (the far western suburbs of Chicago, that is), there lived a young girl called Emily (that’d be me) who loved, more than anything, to spend her days outside, exploring and hanging out with her friends.

Summer, fall, winter and spring: every season had something to offer. When the snow came, the plows followed, and they pushed great heaps of snow into small mountains behind my home, and I’d dig and pack and scrape them into ice fortresses. When the snow melted it formed rushing rivers in the gutters and trenches of my neighborhood, and I’d wade through them pretending to be an intrepid explorer, crafting small boats from tinfoil and sailing them through the rapids. In the summer, when school was over and there were no other obligations, I would team up with my friends to build tree forts all throughout town.

One fort went up in a tall, skinny pine tree in my front yard. Another was built in a nearby forest preserve. But the crowning achievement, a collaborative effort between a whole gaggle of local kids, was built in the most perfect tree fort tree ever, in the woods that lined the bike path separating an old subdivision from a vast wasteland that would soon be a new subdivision.

Me and my two best friends stumbled onto the initial construction of the fort one day early in the summer. Someone had built a very solid platform into the strong, supportive branches of the tree. We approached the thing in awe, admiring the sturdy design and thrilling over the future building possibilities inherent therein. And since the fort was on public ground—nestled into a thin strip of woods between the path and the new subdivision—it was, according to the unwritten rules of neighborhood kids, fair game.

Nearly every day that followed saw me and my two friends returning to work on the fort. In addition to our own additions—walls, ceilings, rope ladder, a pulley system for hauling things up the tree—we could see that others were also putting work into the thing. It was shaping up to be the very best fort in town, and it needed a name that reflected its glory. The three friends played on a cul-de-sac league street hockey team with an undefeated record, and so they decided to name the fort after the team: Fort Black Cat. The name was fierce, sleek, and totally rad: they loved it.

Some days, when my two friends were otherwise occupied, I would go to the fort on my own. Sometimes I’d work on it, adding a support board here or a spy hole there, but sometimes I’d just lie down on the floor of the first level (for there were three levels, you see), Walkman playing Bjork’s first solo album, eyes trained on the canopy of leaves and the blue sky overhead. I’d think about all sorts of things: the crush I’d had on my best friend for so many years, new songs lyrics for our punk band, how much junior high sucked and how much I looked forward to college, whether my mother would ever get well again, and how cool Sarah McLachlan and Ian MacKaye were.

Your typical rambling thoughts of an adolescent tomboy, I suppose.

I looked forward to those days as much as I did to the days when me and my friends would hide in the branches for hours, working, spying on passing cyclists, and waging guerilla warfare on other nearby forts.

These other, far less glorious structures were sprinkled all along the path. Some were the sole domain of the kids whose backyards they sat in. Others were similarly operated by a collective. None were as magnificent as Fort Black Cat. There was one fort, however, that had attained its own sort of mythical status, one not earned for its strategic location or expert construction, but for something that held far more power over the teenaged mind. It was known only as the Porn Fort, and its walls were covered with clippings from various pornographic magazines.

We had first discovered the Porn Fort quite by accident. We were out exploring the woods, looking for bits of trash that might be useful for our own fort, when the foreign base loomed up in front of us. It was two “stories” tall and built almost completely free-standing, one side simply leaning lightly against a very put-upon looking tree. The bottom floor was empty and unremarkable, save the small ladder that led up through a hole in the ceiling that let out into the top floor. It was a bit of design genius: there was no way to see the interior of the top level from outside, you had to climb up through the hole to get there, and as your head rose through the floor, your eyes were suddenly inundated with the fort’s impressive gallery of filth.

It would have been a far more popular place to visit had it not been for the foul tempered shitheads who watched over it like pubescent hawks. They were high school freshmen, and therefore far more imposing a foe than any of our fellow middle school peers might have been. So it was that our first visit to the fort was our last, both because its owners happened upon us gawking and threatened to kick our butts and because, about a month later, someone’s parents found out about it and tore it down.

But what did we need the Porn Fort for, other than to assuage our curiosities? We had Black Cat, and no other fort around could match it.

By the time summer came to a close, our fort had become the crowning jewel of tree forts, a real work of tree fort art, born of blood, sweat and a few tears. We were so caught up in the initial euphoria of the thing that, at first, we hardly noticed that it was becoming less fun just to hang out there. Building it had giving us purpose and drive, but now that it was finished, what more was there to do? We could sit inside and watch the bulldozers in the nearby field as they prepared the way for the new housing development. We could play cards, scare off other kids, and have little picnics. Eventually, though, the initial luster wore off, and as the school year began and then progressed, we just forgot to go out to the fort at all.

When winter had come and gone, and spring was beginning to drown the world in melt water, I realized how long it had been since I’d gone to check on the place and decided to go back. I rode my bike to the hidden path in the tree line, followed it over the low mound of dirt and into the clearing under the tree that held the fort—only there was no tree, no clearing even. The bulldozers had cleared the woods on that side to make way for the backyards of the new homes that had suddenly sprung up there. The fort was gone.

High school came and went with its usual combination of drudgery, drama, good times and bad times. My mother passed away. My band broke up. We moved to another state entirely and I started all over for two years before leaving yet again for college. I never built another tree fort, but I always thought about it. I still do. And someday, maybe when I have kids of my own or maybe just for my own shits and giggles, I will build another tree fort. And I will give it a totally awesome name, like Fort Skull or Fort Puma or something. Still, I’m not sure anything could ever live up to Fort Black Cat, and all the memories associated with its time. I’m not sure that I mind.

…for D. and A.