The Janitor's Daughter

          My mom used to take me to work with her during the summers. They needed an extra set of hands since Karen went to Massachusetts every year, and I needed a summer job if I wanted to even think about that biology degree. I would meet her at the office as soon as I was done with my waitressing shift Tuesdays and Fridays, and the rest of the week we went over together in the old VW Beetle that Grandma didn’t drive any more.

          The people who worked at the office were friendly – we usually met as Mom and I were coming in and they were going out, and they’d always wave hello as we passed. I got to know the ones who worked late a little bit – Jeff was the one who always left blue ballpoint pens on the table in the conference room; Linda insisted I take a Jolly Rancher from the little glass bowl on her desk; Shawn had a picture of his two-year-old stuck upside down on his computer (his son had put it there himself and wouldn’t let his daddy fix it). The second-shift warehouse guys were the ones I knew best, though, because they were always around when Mom and I came by after the office closed for the evening. Toby listened to 99.3 while he worked. He’d sing along to every song, even if he didn’t know it, and somehow it always sounded right. Aaron always asked me about my summer reading, and if I was having trouble with a book he could steer me in the right direction. Darren collected postcards from different places, so my sister and I would send him one whenever we were on vacation.

          Jim had been the supervisor as long as I could remember. I can still hear his voice booming between the aisles.

          “Hey there, Katydid, how’s it going?”

          He’d called me Katydid ever since I was little, chasing grasshoppers one day at the company picnic. At five, my interest in  a baseball game didn’t last much longer than an inning. It was more fun to scare up bugs from the grass on the hill next to the stands. He’d caught one for me and showed me its wings. Now, if I’d watched carefully enough, I could describe a bird to him and he could tell me what kind it was and imitate its call just by its color and the way it flew.

          I met Kate the summer after I graduated from high school. She was Linda’s neighbor – summer help, just like me, brought on while Sarah was on maternity leave. She’d gone to the high school on the other side of the city from mine, so I guess if I’d had some over-the-top school spirit we’d have been rivals to begin with. But I didn’t, and we weren’t.

          Usually, I didn’t see Kate when I was at work. She was only there on Wednesdays and Thursdays, anyway, and even then our paths didn’t cross often. I was most likely to run into her on the way in or out of the bathroom or when I was working in the break room, but the only time I was sure to see her was when I came through the office collecting the trash.

          She wore short dresses and flawless makeup, and her hair was almost too perfect for the summer heat outside. Kate didn’t look up from her computer when I came by. She was the office intern. I was the cleaning lady’s daughter.

          I think I must come from a long line of janitors. My last name means “custodian.” Grandpa told me it was in the “guardian” or “caretaker” sense, but those were just other words for “janitor” in my mind. And that was what I was – caretaker of the bathrooms, guardian of the cleaning closet, and just a substitute at that.

          It wasn’t bad, though, as far as summer jobs went. The work wasn’t too hard except when gross things got tracked into the warehouse or the coffee exploded (how else would it have gotten on the walls?), and it paid pretty well for a teenager. I didn’t have a formal dress code to worry about, the people were nice, and for the most part I worked on my own or with Mom. The only time I really minded it was when I emptied Kate’s trash. It made me feel somehow inadequate when I came by in my t-shirt and shorts, dragging the garbage can with sweat clinging to my back and my ponytail undoing itself no matter how tightly I’d put it in. The warehouse boiled over in the summer, even the bathrooms Mom and I went out there to clean.

          “Hey there, Katydid, how’s it going?”

          Kate and I never said much to each other. I think the extent of our conversation was her response to my asking if she had any recycling or excusing myself as I reached past her to grab the trash can beneath her desk. There was something about the way she held herself that told me we were different sorts of people, and even if I was a talkative person I don’t think we would’ve had a lot in common.

          “I hear you’re headed off to college soon. I thought you might like this to take with you, since you won’t be hanging around here anymore.”

          I wasn’t much of a book person, but this one was an exception. It was a glossy softcover Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America. The paintings were beautiful, and among them was almost a full page dedicated to screech owls. “Those eat katydids, you know,” Jim had told me, eyes twinkling, when my ten-year-old self had declared them my favorite. I’d told him it was a good thing I liked them, then, and we’d both laughed.

          “You’re welcome. Let me know how things are going, hey?”

          August was just about over when I punched out for the last time. I left my ID on Linda’s desk like I did at the end of every summer so she could file it away until the next year if they needed me again. My picture smiled up at the ceiling above my name in bold letters: Kate Kastellan.

          I still have that field guide Jim gave me. I take it down from the shelf every now and then, sometimes to look up a bird and sometimes just to feel the worn spine and remind myself of the man who taught me to love birds and scribbled the black ink across the title page.

          Keep flying, Katydid.

          I don’t know where Kate went after that summer, I think to some university out of state. Sometimes I wonder if I should have tried to be a little more friendly. I’m still not an outgoing person, and we were definitely very different people. And yet, I remember that one day when I caught a glimpse of the screech owls on her desktop background, and I have to wonder if, maybe, we might have had a little more in common than just a name.

Blue and White

          I live in a world of blue and white.

          I was born in white and raised in blue. My first name is Blue and my last name is White, with Sky squished somewhere in the middle.

          I grew up a stone’s throw from a vast, deep blue edged with soft, wind-stinging white. The warmth of the white coated my feet after I dipped them in the cold of the blue.

          Blue stretches above me and white floats across, sometimes rushing, sometimes raining, sometimes faking us into thinking it’s actually grey, only to vanish later into the blue with a wink and a nod.

          In school, we painted messy blue into oceans across a glossy background white, and I stared down at the puddle on my page and wondered how to turn it into a sea so my ship could sail on.

          I fill the white spaces amid thin lines of blue with words and numbers and sentences and equations, with thoughts and dreams and hopes and quiet, unspoken wishes that peek out from between the lines.

          I come from a land where shards and shades of blue meet trills and trails of white, deft and delft and I dance on blue and white in wooden shoes.

          I walk toward a land where I touch blue and white, twirling my tzitzit between my fingers and feeling the reminder that I am royal, a priest, called to be a sign and a symbol of He who made me in blue and white.

          There is white beneath my fingernails and blue in the green of my eyes. I wear blue on my hand and white on my wrist. I clothe myself in blue and wash myself in white, and blue and white cover me at the end of the day when I close my eyes and rest.

          I come from a world of blue and white, and blue and white is the world where I am going.

The Storyteller

My first college essay. How exciting. I had to write an autobiography for IDIS 149, aka Prelude. This is it. I should note, though, that Creative Writing was not my only favorite high school class – there are several more that I loved just as much, if not more, but didn't lend themselves to the purpose of the essay.

          My favorite class in high school was Creative Writing. It was a one semester course, and it was one of those classes a teenager would be actually willing to report to every morning at eight a.m. As much as I loved it, the class didn’t come without its challenges. I tend to be a rather meticulous person, and I like to make sure I follow the instructions given. If I have another idea or want to do things a little differently, I ask.

          “Is it okay if I don’t follow the instructions exactly?”

          Ms. Arda, our teacher, answered without missing a beat. “This is Creative Writing! Stop following instructions!” She paused to smile at the four writers who sat around our table. “But, if you don’t know where to go, follow the instructions.”

          In Creative Writing, instructions were more of guidelines – there to give us a place to go when we were lost but not to hinder our quest for creativity, or rather, our quest for ourselves. Creative Writing told me that who I am is worth exploring, that only I see the world as I do. I write, Ms. Arda taught, because my story is worth telling.

          Stories and writing have been a part of my life ever since I was little. I learned how to read early, and from then on reading became my favorite pastime. In our house, instead of being told to turn off the television and go read a book, my siblings and I were told to put down our books and go play outside. I knew my favorite books backward and forward, and I had my own library card in elementary school. Reading programs at school or the library were simple – I read more than the required amount anyway. Stories were my treasures; they were and still are a part of who I am.

          That love of stories eventually led me to writing. My two best friends and I were among the very small selection of middle schoolers who chose to play pretend at recess instead of racing to get in line for four square. Our three nameless characters went on adventures to save our imaginary world from impending evil, borrowing from our favorite stories as we went. As we moved from elementary to middle school, our world began to stabilize. The vague locations became specific settings; our characters gained first names, then last. One of my friends started writing our story, leading the other two of us to write it along with her from our own characters’ perspectives.

          My first foray into the world of writing was, to say the least, terrible. Over the next few years, that story would go through draft after draft, some of which were improvements, most of which had more plot holes than they had plot, and none of which got past the second chapter. Even so, that first story of my own was important to me. It became a part of my story. Like the books I read when I was little, it became a part of who I am.

          If middle school was where I first discovered that I was a writer, then high school was where writing grew into something I loved. My first high school class was English 1, coincidentally taught by Ms. Arda, who would later teach me Creative Writing. Through that class and the English classes that followed, my teachers encouraged me. I began to write more outside of class. I attended Calvin’s biennial Youth Writing Festival as a freshman and again as a junior, organizing the group myself the second year so that we could go. I took Creative Writing. I submitted work to Scripta, our school’s annual art and literary publication, every year of high school. I participated in National Novel Writing Month twice and completed my novels both times. I actually enjoyed writing and revising most essays.

          Then, the spring of my junior year, I took the ACT that included an essay. The writing section was scored out of twelve points. When we practiced in class, I earned a ten. On the actual test, my score was a six. Seven or so months later, I took the SAT with the same result.

          I’ve said before that my writing is a part of who I am. Those essays were standardized, the prompts were dull enough that I don’t even remember them, and I didn’t have enough time to put in the work I usually give to my writing. Even so, those failures are a part of me. I’ve succeeded and failed in many places, both within the realm of writing and without, and they’re all a part of who I am.

          While my writing is only a part of who I am, it’s also something that seems to connect all these different parts of me. I would not be the person or writer I am today without the people who have encouraged me along the way. My family, friends, and so many others are essential characters in my story, whether they provide me with instructions or remind me that it’s okay sometimes to let them slide out the window. This story isn’t one that I can walk alone. As a human being, I am meant to be in community. We all have our own stories, and we are all a part of a larger story that we walk together – God’s story. My writings, my story, and my very self are founded on Him. They, and I, belong to Him and are in His hands.

          I still have that first story I wrote back in middle school. A few drafts of it are scattered around amidst the old files on my flash drive; the one on my computer is hardly recognizable as the same story that I began in elementary school and put to paper a few years later. In some ways, this draft isn’t very different from the others – I like to think it’s an improvement over the last one, though it still has plot holes and it still isn’t past the second chapter – but that’s okay with me. I haven’t touched it in a long time. Maybe one day I’ll make it better, patch up the plot holes, and finish it. Like the others I’ve written, that story is a part of who I am, and I am a child of God. His story – and as one small part of it, mine – is one worth telling.

God Even Uses Candy Conversation Hearts

          Sometimes, life is a bummer.
          It’s like when you open a box of those candy hearts (the ones that I’m told taste like cardboard and sadness where there should be unicorns) and the first one that falls out is orange, your least favorite flavor, and says “miss you.”
          But then again, sometimes the next one that comes out is yellow, your favorite, and says “love you” on it, which kind of makes you smile at the irony, if you compare it to the last one you got.
          That is, until you promptly proceed to drop it and it falls beneath your dresser with the dust bunnies and you can’t find it for the life of you, and all the while you look ridiculous down on your hands and knees searching for this stupid candy heart beneath your dresser.
          And then, of course, just as you’ve given up, told yourself this is dumb and begun to get up off the floor, you discover it’s bounced out from beneath your dresser, and you couldn’t find it because you were looking for it where it wasn’t.
          Funny the way these things work, isn’t it?

Child of the King

It's been suggested to me more than once that this is chapter one. I've thought several times about turning it into a full-length novel, but I don't have the inspiration now, and I think it stands alone all right. So, someday. Maybe. Anyway, it's some kind of fantasy setting, but I really don't know anything about it myself beyond this. Written for Calvin College's Youth Writing Festival. Unfortunately, I don't know the exact date it was written, but I'm pretty sure it was some time in February.

          “Come to me, my Child.”

          She froze, her legs trembling beneath the outstretched skirt of her handmaiden's dress. She could not move, could not manage the words that she knew she must speak. It was as though time had ceased, the crowd holding its collective breath, and she, bent in the delicate pose, several paces in front of them. She could feel the disappointment of a thousand hopefuls radiating behind her like a sigh of a fading sun.

          “Come to me, my Child.”

          The words each one so longed to hear had been spoken for her; why could she not take up their sweet offering? Each of them had come for that reason, to hear those words, to be the one, the Child. They were ranged behind her now, each with his or her private thoughts, dismay, anger, envy, loss. Why? Why not me?

          She also wondered, silently, in that space of a moment, why? Why me? They all wondered. Why such a lowly servant girl? Why? How they had all wanted it, longed for it! The chosen one was not one of them, not the beautiful, rich nobles or proud, strong citizens, but a handmaiden. A handmaiden who was even too tall and slim to be a proper maiden was the chosen one, the Child.

          “Come to me, my Child.”

          Five words, five simple words that they had all so hoped to hear. They were words that held power and meaning, words that could bring joy and responsibility and could cure poverty and despair. The people had travelled from distant reaches of the kingdom in the hope of hearing those words, only to be disappointed by the choosing of a humble maid.

          They traveled every year for the ritual, and every year most left in regret. They had made the journey in anticipation of the ritual every year, as long as anyone could remember. It marked the coming of age of all who had turned sixteen in the past year and the choosing of the Child.

          “Come to me, my Child.”

          She had never indulged in the fanciful dreams of the other girls, to wear the elegant gowns of the rich, to have her red-gold hair trimmed to sweep her shoulders, to be treated as one of the Royal Family. She had never thought of change to the dress of a handmaiden, to her hair coiled in its braid on her head that marked her as a commoner, to being shown her place as a servant of those above her. She had never hoped to be chosen to enter the service of the king as the others had dreamed of.

          They were called forward, one at a time, a tedious process that would take hours, even days, just to be presented to the king. The name was read, then a bow or a curtsy and a nod in return was all. So it was for all but one. The one to whom the words were spoken, the one who would join the ranks of the Royal Family and govern the kingdom.

          The man had read her name, one of the ay-rens and arr-ens that everyone tried. She had taken the careful steps forward, one, two, three, four, then lowered herself into the graceful curtsy, head respectfully bowed. She had waited for the nod, the signal to rise, return the four steps to the crowd, and await the choosing of another. It was not so.

          “Aeren.” The one word held her in shock; he, the king, had spoken to her, had said her name. He had pronounced it correctly, the graceful, flowing aye-rin that she had thought only she knew. “Come to me, my Child.”

          She knew what the ritual required of her; she knew what she was compelled to do. She wondered what would happen if she simply refused, turned back to join the crowd and wait for the choosing. She was certain it was not allowed, for the privilege that was granted to one young man or maiden upon that day was irrevocable. Unalterable. Unchangeable.

          Slowly, she stood, brought herself up to stand on unwilling, unsteady legs, and raised her head, only slightly, as all those her age had been taught. She knew the response she had to give and knew she did not want to give it.

          “If it pleases my king, I will come.”

          The words slid softly from her lips, yet they seemed to reach every corner of the spacious throne room. She did not believe she was worthy of this honor; she was merely a stable girl who spent her days in the midst of animals and manure. She was not dressed in the fancy gowns of the rich, but the simple garb of the servant. She had not been taught at an expensive school, had not learned more than how to read and write. But she was chosen.

          She walked forward, exactly seven more steps as she had been taught, and performed the curtsy again. Five more steps brought her to the foot of the throne. Four from the crowd, seven to the curtsy, five to throne. Sixteen paces that were the longest moments she could remember, sixteen paces that were watched by the entire kingdom, sixteen paces that reflected on sixteen years of life.

          The king stood and descended from his throne as he had when she had watched many times in years gone past. This time it was she who knelt before him to take on the responsibilities of the Family. He placed his hands on her shoulders, either side of her bowed head, and she knew as he spoke that this was what she must do.

          “You are a Child of the king.”