one day this will all change

When we were little, Mark was going to marry Jenni Bolton. He loved Simba from the Lion King, and gogurt, and macaroni and cheese. He played with his Legos, and Playmobil guys before that; he had a rocket-ship comforter on his bed, and his closet (then and now) overflowed with toys and clothes. The drawers on his dresser are broken and off-track after years of slamming them or overloading them with old clothes, which is ironic, because he hates shopping and logically shouldn't have that many clothes.

In elementary school, he used to put rocks in his backpack to make it heavier, so it felt more like a big-kid's backpack with books inside. He used to give away his money to his friends. A few years ago, he loved pennies and collected a big jar of them.

We did the plays at church together. In 4th or 5th grade, we did "Good Kings Come in Small Packages," or something like that, about Josiah, and Mark was Josiah, and I was the narrator/cook. He was good; as good as elementary school kids can be after practicing for a week during the summer. I can still picture him, a little boy on a big stage throne.

Either his door or mine had to be replaced when, during one of our knock-down-drag-out fights, he rammed the prow of his big action figure Peter Pan pirate ship into it. The door on the bathroom got replaced, too, after one of us tried to beat it down to get to the one hiding inside. We cussed at each other, using the few cuss words we knew.

We used to push the couches together in the family room to watch movies, so they made a couch-boat, and we would pile pillows and comforters in until it was as comfortable and soft as possible. He hated watching Disney princess movies. When we first got cable, when I was in 7th or 8th grade, we spent the summer watching Sonic the Hedgehog, Men in Black the cartoon, and something about Egyptian gods on the WB. All I remember is them saying "By the power of Ra!" and turning into something more indestructible.

Mark has a skateboard (or two) and a trick bike stored away in our garage (or did we sell them at a yard sale?) For most of growing up, he didn't find anything he wanted to stick with. He took piano for a week; played baseball up until 5th or 6th grade, soccer for maybe 3 years; he took trumpet lessons in middle school, then a few guitar lessons in high school.

He hated school, and I hated the way he acted when it came time to do homework. My parents bought him a PlayStation 2, and I told them to their faces that it was the worst decision they'd ever make in parenting. I believe I was right; without video games, he would have spent a lot more time with his friends and family and in the outdoors, and without the string of more advanced game consoles that came after the PS2, he would never have been able to play Call of Duty for hours at a time.

When I got to do something, Mark had to do it. Didn't matter that I was older. If I got to stay up and watch Friends, Mark had to, too. If I got to stay home sick from school, Mark wanted to, too. And the reverse - I still haven't forgotten this; in Disneyworld in 5th grade, we wanted to rent a 4-person bike/carriage thing. But Mark was too little to help pedal, so we didn't get to do it. Then when I was in early high school, Mark got horseback riding lessons and I didn't, even though I'd wanted them forever. My parents said he didn't have all the things I got to do - piano and soccer and drama. I said he didn't stick with any of them, and it wasn't my fault. I was angry at that practice for so long.

I was angry at so much for so long. I was angry at how he treated my mom, how he didn't care about his schoolwork or responsibilities at home; angry at how he refused to do his own dishes or clean his own room or put away his own damn video games. I was angry that he dropped everything to hang out with his high school girlfriend but couldn't be bothered to come to church with us.

How many years did I waste being angry at my brother, instead of trying to be compassionate, to be understanding, to help him succeed when he was struggling? How many years did I spend hating him for being the opposite of me, for having different priorities?

I want to go back and change it -- yell less; include him more. Fight less; laugh more. Belittle him less; tell him I loved him more.

He's a good kid, he really is, even though he still gripes about having to do his dishes and has to be reminded 7 times to even bring them over to the sink. He's funny and caring and fiercely loyal and generous to a fault. He's a freakin badass and could kill you with his thumb, and it's a good thing our knock-down-drag-out fights ended when they did, because if I'd tried to fight him after he started working out with the Marines in high school, I would've ended up with broken bones. He knows military history, knew everything you don't want to know about guns even before he joined. He's smart; didn't like school, but now he wants to be a history teacher, maybe.

I want to be able to call him about my current Sons of Anarchy episode. I want to be able to text him about the silly/embarrassing things our parents are doing. I want to drag him up onto the couch next to me to take dumb photos on my PhotoBooth. I want to practice jiujitsu moves on commercial breaks. I want to buy more Mike's Hard for him, and sit downstairs feeling like rebels when Mom&Dad are upstairs asleep.

Oh, how I'm going to miss my brother for the next 7 months (no more than 7 months; no, not a day longer, because he'll come home; he has to come home). Why do we have war? Why? It's not his war; it's not any of these kids' war. Mark still looks like a 16-year-old kid; he has no business carrying a gun and going into battle.

All my life I been waitin' for
I been prayin' for, for the people to say
That we don't want to fight no more

One day this all will change
Treat people the same
Stop with the violence down with the hate
One day we'll all be free and proud
To be under the same sun
Singing songs of freedom like

One day, one day, one day
One day, one day, one day

One day, God. Make it soon.

Love always,
molly

a very present help

Today was the deadliest day yet in Afghanistan for US troops.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015841246_afghan07.html

Mark is set to deploy there next month. My almost-20-year-old little brother who still doesn't wash his own dishes.

Psalms 3:3 But you, Yahweh, are a shield around Mark,
Mark's glory, and the one who lifts up Mark's head.
3:4 I cry to Yahweh with my voice,
and he answers me out of his holy hill.


Oh Lord, protect him. Protect us all.

Love always,
molly

imagine all the people

When I was little, I envied my brother furiously for his imagination.

Well into middle school — maybe even high school? — I could hear him in his room, his voice pitched in battle as his Legos or action figures fought for dominion. He built elaborate scenes with the Legos, worked out why this group was warring with another; everything down to the last detail.

I watched this, scoffing outwardly even as I despaired inside. Why couldn't I get myself into that dream world? I remember literally forcing myself to play with some plastic figures — Disney characters, my favorites, even if I didn't play with them often — and making myself do their voices and trying to make them interact. I believe I threw them down in frustration when I realized that I couldn't get past the fact that it wasn't real. I had Barbie, too, but while I enjoyed all her outfits and accessories, she wasn't really talking to Ken and never would be.

As I grew up, I had to admit that I had some imagination; I could write, couldn't I, and that took something. Poems and beginnings of short stories (though never ends) came fairly easily as I moved through late-high school and college.

And now I find where all my imagination was hiding, what it was waiting for, and I'm wishing I could've swapped with Mark and played with those stupid Legos instead.

I've covered cops&courts a handful of times now for the paper here in Yakivegas, and I do not like it. I can't see it, as my coworker told me he does, as "words on a page." These are people; that was a real little girl who had her pants pulled down by an uncle who molested her; that was a real man who drowned in his backyard pool when going out for his evening swim; and that was a real 17-year-old boy today who shot himself with a shotgun after his older brother died last week.

Maybe all those years of watching every crime TV show on USA Network are finally catching up with me. But although it's getting easier — death, it seems, bothers me less than violation — I still can't turn these crimes into words on a page.

Today, for instance. I got to work and got passed a story on an apparent homicide that happened outside a school. A teenage boy, shot in the head; close-range so they couldn't identify his face. Then in the afternoon, the coroner says it hasn't been ruled a homicide or a suicide. Then we look up his name, see if he's in our archives, and we find his 25-year-old brother died last week, apparently of non-suspicious causes.

My unstoppable imagination supplies the details: I picture the 17-year-old brother, sobbing around his house while his family tries to console him, tell him that his brother's in a better place now. Or maybe he was silent, sitting in his room and not saying a word, just utterly convinced that the world had ended. I picture his siblings' fruitless attempts to reach out, to reach him, to let him know that he was not alone and that things will get better one day.

This was the first time it's really hit me how selfish suicide is. I picture his parents — robbed of two sons in less than a week. I picture the weight of grief on them as they try to hold up the remaining four siblings. I picture the numbness. I picture what my parents would do if something like that happened — and try to force it from my mind.

And the fact that my work, the very reason I'm forced to learn the details of these cases inside and out, may be worsening the problem makes it feel even less worth it. We didn't name the suicide victim, but the slimy TV news reporter did, and now that family has to put up with shame and questions on top of grief. People will be shaking their heads and saying, "That poor boy, if only the family had been there for him," when really the family must have done all it could.

Do I make it better, when I tell these people's stories? Do I make it worse? Most of the stories I do, especially now in education, are positive; people respond wanting to help, wanting to make a difference, or they respond with nothing and at least don't tip the scales one way or the other. But when I bare someone's personal life for all to see — even my criminals, when I post details of their police reports that will now follow them anytime anyone does a Google search — what good does it do?

Never fear; there's no danger I'll give up the reporter thing. I still love it, aside from a few brutally graphic police reports, and I'm not apt to give up anytime soon.

I just hope it's making a positive difference in the world. That's all we really have, isn't it? To leave the world better than when we entered and hope we're remembered kindly, if at all.

Love always,
molly

team harry

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 hits screens in two hours. Today I interviewed a 16-year-old girl who arrived at the movie theater at 5:30 p.m. yesterday - that's about 31 hours early. She and her friends have been staging Horcrux scavenger hunts, wizarding duels, a Triwizard Tournament....5 years younger than me; they were in 1st grade when the books started, and Harry Potter is still a big enough part of their lives that they'll wait all day on concrete.

This is so silly - I'm admitting that; I admit that this melodramatic, wistful blog post about fictional characters is dumb and sappy and unoriginal - but I so wanted to ditch out on work and just join them there. Watch the first Harry Potter movie, when they were all such babies, and talk about our favorite parts of the books and exclaim over spectacular plot points.

Because it's not just some dumb kid series - these books really did shape our childhood. I came on board a year or two late; I remember reading the first 3 in 5th grade, lent me by a classmate to whom I am forever indebted for getting me into the series in the first place. I loved the 2nd book, mostly because I'd wanted a pet snake for ages and imagined how cool it would be if I were a Parseltongue. I wrote out the warning posted at the entrance to Gringotts and put it on my bedroom door, hoping to ward off any intruding little brother.

Then that first agonizing wait for the 4th book to come out, and then actually reading the Goblet of Fire - it really was a turning point in my growing up. I remember the point when Cedric dies - so casually, so lacking in fanfare or acknowledgement; just "Kill the spare," and he's lying spread-eagle on his back a few yards away. I slammed my book shut and threw it across the floor - I remember curling up on the couch in my family room, sobbing as if my heart would break, because people were not supposed to die like that. It just didn't happen in the kids books I was used to reading. That grew me up, at least in my story sense.

Then I remember putting off reading the Order of the Phoenix because my next-door neighbor & best friend said it was depressing (Sirius is his favorite character) and I couldn't handle any more depressing. And I remember finally reading it and kicking things as I growled inwardly at Umbridge. To this day, I don't think I've ever hated anyone more than her.

I remember reading the Half-Blood Prince while we were in Scotland for the drama festival - it had come out a month earlier but I had put it off for some reason. I borrowed it from Dylan and raced through it as we stood in line for plays all over Edinburgh. I remember the cobblestoned street beside the sidewalk I sat down on when Dumbledore died and I wanted to cry but didn't want to do it in public. Dumbledore died! That wasn't supposed to happen, either.

And I remember the last book - my favorite book - came out on the last night we were at Seaside in Oregon after I graduated from high school. My education is stacked with Harry Potter milestones. (Haven't forgotten, either, the magazine page that got passed around my AP Lit class of Daniel Radcliffe in Equus. He's too pale, and the whole thing kind of creeped me out, but still intriguing.) We drove through Portland on our way home, and stopped at Powells - it had been 2 years then since I'd read the 6th, and I was hazy on Horcrux details, so in an aisle filled to bursting with Harry Potter books, I asked two strangers to remind me what happened. I love fellow book nerds.

I was not to be pulled away from that book for anything that day. I read it the whole car ride home, then wrenched myself away from it to go to a winery that evening with Mrs. Maldonado, where she'd brought me to listen to some poet (I'm afraid I was even less gracious to that poet than I would have been under normal circumstances; still, even under normal circumstances, I'm pretty sure she sucked). I couldn't stand it for long, so she actually let me drive her car back home, where I raced through another 100 pages before going back to pick her up. And I finished by midnight that night, because I never would have been able to go to sleep anyway.

I remember running into Mary Crow the next morning in the parking lot of my church, exclaiming over the Narnia-like scene when McGonnagall calls the statues to life and they go tromping off to protect the school. Mary stayed up finishing it, too; I remember she said she was about to give in and sleep when she turned to "The Prince's Tale" and couldn't stop. "I KNEW Snape loved Lily! I KNEW it!" she cried.

And there's just something magical about the series, nothing to do with the spells and enchantments. There's something magical in growing up with the characters, in maturing as they mature, in facing greater challenges in real life even as the fictional villains turn darker and harder to vanquish.

And now...now we have to say goodbye to the series again. I was never attached to the movies; I'm a purist, and I hated the way things got left out, even small details, so I stopped watching after the 2nd. But I went to part 1 of the 7th movie this fall - at 3 in the morning the night it came out, sitting next to boys who thought Hermione was hot and kept making comments to that effect. It was so well done - they used all that lag time in the Horcrux search to just take the characters to beautiful parts of the world with sweeping vistas and lonely horizons. That movie pulled me in, attached me again.

But this is the end. All those posters - "It all ends July 15" - really, it does. No other series has spanned so much of my lifetime, or captured so much of my imagination, save Narnia, and that's in a different category for me.

No, Harry Potter is in a category all its own. And this end of it all - I tear up reading reviews, for goodness' sake; I'm going to bawl at the actual movie this weekend - but it's fitting that after all those Harry Potter milestones throughout my childhood, the series is over and the characters must move on just as I'm leaving behind my safety-netted existence and pushing off into the world of independent adulthood.

I find myself resenting the idea that in a few years, the new generation is going to have a different series that they're devoted to - that they'll claim is better than any other. We all know they'll be wrong.

Oh, how I wish I could just go back and be a kid again, reading these books for the first time. I miss that wide-eyed wonder.

Love always,
molly

surrounded

God is good.

I started keeping this blog when I left for Spain, and it seems that it's mostly been a journal of transition since then. Of moving to new places and finding new niches and making -- and leaving -- new friends.

Throughout it all, God has shown his faithfulness in the people he puts in my life.

I was going to write earlier about this being the easiest first week I've had anywhere, mostly from the job perspective. When my editor first told me he was going to acquiesce my request for a higher salary (look, I negotiated like a grown-up and got my demands met!), he said it was because he'd talked to my references and felt confident that I would be able to learn fast and "hit the ground running." As soon as he told me that, anxiety kicked in -- what if I DON'T hit the ground running? What if I take weeks to get used to the pace and the community and the newsroom? High expectations mean for certain disappointment!! and so on, as I am wont to do in these situations.

But this week, I started to think that maybe I finally have a handle on this journalism thing. I stayed until 7:30 on my first day, chasing down the numbers to accompany my story, which appeared on the front of their B section on Tuesday. On Tuesday, I wrote two stories -- both of which were A1 above the fold on Wednesday. My story on Wednesday, with the photo, took up most of A1 on Thursday. And my fourth story for the week came out on the B front today. Minimal edits, and I felt satisfied with the work I'd done.

So yes -- best first week of a job ever. While I had some downtime, I wasn't bored and didn't feel useless; at the same time, I wasn't overwhelmed by the information I was expected to take in. Could it be that I'm becoming a real-live reporter?! wowza.

While work was great, though, there was still a twinge of loneliness. Nothing too severe (read: no crying); I talked on the phone with lots of friends, cooked my own meals, watched my favorite movies, read Nancy Drew and lay by my pool. But there was no human interaction outside work, and the people there didn't really go out of their way to talk to or befriend me. So I was really banking on First Pres to be a friend-locator.

As far as friend-locators go, this one's pretty magical.

Went to church at 9:30 this morning; it was VBS Sunday, so quite different from normal service, but I was still able to track down Tyler, the college/career director for the church and a former Ghormley staffer whom I remembered from my middle-school camp days. He invited me to the college/career age dinner & Bible study shindig at his house this evening, and I went -- not without first driving past his house twice, wondering if I really had the guts to go barge in on a group of strangers, but barge I did.

It was amazing. Sure, there was initial shyness, but I soon got over it and into good conversations. People think the reporter thing is cool (though they automatically assume they have a PR "in", sigh) and I told my story about seven times, but that was OK. Met people I recognized as campers from my Ghormley days; met people who speak Spanish and rock climb and hike and listen to Eddie Izzard and make inappropriate jokes at the wrong times; met people who felt familiar after knowing them for five minutes.

God shows his faithfulness by putting me in the midst of people I need to meet. Seattle, Spain, Port Townsend, Santiago, Olympia and now Yakima. Can't get away from 'em.

This is going to be a hard home to leave.

Love always,
molly

just ahead

Well, that last post was a bit melodramatic and depressing.

I mean, yes, graduation is still anticlimactic and brews a good deal of uncertainty, but I'm not as disparaging as that post feels. The future is exciting -- it always is. I hate change, but as a good friend has often told me, it makes the world go round.

And besides, moving to Yakima isn't that big a deal. It's close to home, and not too far from Seattle. Loved ones reside in both cities, and history is bound to repeat itself in finding me solid relationships in Yakima. I've been very blessed in that so far. God followed me to Chile, and I'm sure he can find Yakima, too (even if it is kind of the middle of nowhere). And he's shown his faithfulness in the good people he's put in my life, to come alongside me and feed my extroverted spirit. There's always loneliness, but it's never been forever.

I've been thinking recently about all the parents I have in the world. So many people have stayed with me and supported me and encouraged me and offered wisdom and guidance throughout the years -- I wish all young people could be as fortunate as I am. My host mom in Chile Facebook-congratulated me on graduating, and when I visited my landlord-turned-hostdad in Olympia last week, he gave me a big hug and reminded me that he adores me and that I'm always welcome in their home. How do I find these people? How do they find me? Very, very blessed.

Then there's the teachers whom I still visit when I go home, who shaped me and put me on the path to becoming the writer and thinker I am today. I had such great teachers. Maybe someday they'll make a movie about them, like Dead Poets Society-style. They deserve it (just not the ending....yeah.)

Anyway. Just wanted to make sure no one thought I was a whiner all the time. Only sometimes, and I try to remain delightful while doing it.

One step closer to grown-up land...

Love always,
molly

looking ahead, looking behind

It's been four years since I graduated from high school.

Time has flown. College was amazing, full of unique experiences and opportunities, and I feel like I missed out on rejoicing in all those. It went so fast - it's been almost three years since I went to Spain, a year since I was in Chile, six months since I was even a student.

What stands out to me most right now is how much I haven't grown. I've backtracked. Self-esteem and self-respect took a huge dive in Spain and have been beaten back down on a fairly regular basis whenever they start to grow again. I think I was stronger, more secure, when I walked out of the Tri-Cities Convention Center four years ago than I am today.

I wrote a poem back then - silly things, those, and I feel silly saying it, but I still have them all tucked away on my computer - about my Peter Pan birthday party. "breathless, as we were, on the cusp of adulthood," I wrote. Graduation was so exciting in high school; I was breathless then. There was so much leading up to it - senior barbecue, final projects, college acceptance (and rejection) letters, senior sensation, the Willy awards; all working to build anticipation and giddiness. And then the senior party right after it, where we exulted our accomplishment and ran on an adrenaline high until 3 a.m. Everyone was in one place, everyone was celebrating, and most of us knew where we were headed next.

College graduation is anticlimactic to the max. I got done with classes in December, so even being on campus feels uncomfortable and somehow illegal, like someone is going to see me and point and say "Hey, you're done here, what are you trying to pull?" The ceremony itself today - no rehearsal for it, nothing personal; we wrote our names on cards, handed them to the speaker as we walked up on stage, and he read them off as we proceeded past. Not even in alphabetical order. It was as if no one cared whether it went smoothly or happened at all, or whether we even showed up. Saturday's giant ceremony is going to be even worse - they don't even read your name off. That's the only one my parents can make it to, and what's it going to be? I'll be just another silly-looking black hat in a sea of thousands of students. They won't even be able to distinguish my face from up in the bleachers.

I want it to be a bigger deal. I graduated with honors (I think) from the University of Washington - that's still a big deal, right? I mean...I guess it's what most people I know have done or are doing right now, so it's not really a stand-out accomplishment, but I still want people to be excited about it. Mostly, people are dreading standing around waiting for the ceremony to start, or worried about parking and traffic.

I know that I'm lucky to have a direction and a job after this. Yes, it's in Yakima, and everyone makes fun of it, but at least it's a job. And in my chosen field, too. That's more than most journalism grads can say, I think. But I want to be excited about it. I was excited when I was working for the AP; I was excited in Chile; I was excited at the Seattle Times, and in Spain. I want that feeling again. My friend took a picture of my today after graduation, standing in front of the "Department of Communication" sign in the COM building in my cap and gown. I've got this great, slightly cocky smile on my face, like "Yeah, I pwned that, now let's see where else I can kick butt." I want to feel that feeling. I want to be on the cusp of something, something exciting and worthy of my attention and enthusiasm. Instead, I feel let down, somehow.

Seattle's feeling less and less like home. Olympia's not home anymore, and Richland doesn't feel quite right, either. Where am I going and what am I supposed to be doing now?

Love always,
molly