First Light

The weight of the last straw landed like a brick squarely between my mother’s shoulder blades.  It seemed she had discovered by brother hiding in a corner of the pantry, pawing through her pocketbook with grimy hands, her change purse securely clenched in his teeth.  I heard the slap all the way in the sunporch and he began howling like a cat in heat as she snatched him by his shirt collar and dragged him across the kitchen floor.

Little bastard!  she shrieked, Thief!  I’ll teach you to steal!

My grandmother, who had come tearing down the stairs, now stood stoically while her own daughter took a mallet and slammed it down on my brother’s hand – once, twice, three times in all – very nearly twisting his arm off and breaking four fingers.  This elicited a fresh wave of hysteria and I wouldn’t have been surprised if a fourth blow had been directed to his jaw – in all honesty, I was hoping – but Nana intervened, relieving my mother of the mallet just as she raised it again and shoving her aside.  My brother crumpled, sobbing and cursing both of them, scuttling like an injured crab toward the doorway but Nana was faster.  She caught him by his good hand and hauled him roughly to the sink, then holding him fast, reached for the bar of soap.  He spit, he struggled, he kicked and lashed out but in the end he still had four broken fingers and a mouth thoroughly washed out with soap.

I hate you!  he screeched, I’ll kill you both!  I’ll set the house on fire!

I ‘spect you would, Nana said grimly, But it ain’t gon’ be tonight, my lad, ain’t gon’ be tonight.

She barked at me to fetch her adhesive tape and popsickle sticks, then at my dazed mother to get up off the damn floor and pull herself together. 

Be still, boy, she snapped at my brother, one more cuss word and I’ll cut your tongue out!

There was, finally, something in her tone that got through to him and he stopped struggling and was mostly quiet while they makeshift splinted and tape his fingers.  Nana took her little bottle of 222’s from the high shelf in the pantry and had him swallow two of the codeine laced pills, then they laid him out on one of the sunporch couches.  She and my mother took to their identical window chairs and settled in.  One or the other would be up all night watching him.

There’ll be no more mischief tonight, Nana warned him, Mark my words, boy.  I ain’t above shippin’ you home to your daddy come first light.  Your stealin’ and cussin’ and fire settin’ days are done.

My mother began to whimper and my grandmother shot her an unmistakably angry glance.

Mind me, Jeanette, she said quietly but with an undertone of menace that I rarely heard, I’m done with this.  We ain’t gon’ talk about it, not one more word ‘ceptin this.  Either you straighten him and your own self out and I mean quick, or I’ll send you both packin’ in one helluva hurry.  

My mother, lower lip quivering, nodded and kept staring out the window.  I wondered what, if anything, she was seeing.

I mean what I say, Jan, Nana said a trifle more gently, I ain’t gon’ have no more of it.

Dawn came and with it, a sort of resolution.   My brother admitted to trying to steal money for cigarettes and made a mumbled apology.  My mother said she regretted losing her temper and breaking his fingers.  It was clear to me that my grandmother didn’t believe either one of them but in the interests of peace, she sighed and decided to let it be.

Actions speak louder than words, she reminded them, Best you  both remember that.

One of the things – good and bad – I learned from my grandmother is there are some wrongs that can’t be righted and some bridges are best left unrepaired.  Decades of time and distance haven’t changed my feelings about my family even though I may understand them a little better.  I rarely think about the fact that somewhere in the world I have two brothers – as far as I know anyway – and reconciliation has never crossed my mind.  Nana also taught me the value of a low profile and how to keep it.

First light sometimes brings a new day but sometimes you just have to pick up where you left off.

Fresh Out of Fairy Dust

The problem was I was fresh out of fairy dust.

The woman in the doorway was my height – barely five feet – and about the same from side to side. She shifted her considerable bulk to give me a decaying smile and took a step toward me, hauling her little two wheel wire grocery cart behind her.  I was so startled, she almost got past me but then I recovered enough to ask if I could help her.

Wanbemodel, she slurred at me through a whiskey haze, Plussize.

I blocked her way and she glared.

Lemme in, she muttered.

Don’t think so, I said firmly, we don’t have anything for you.

All three dogs suddenly came tearing down the stairs behind me.  The noise was deafening.

Shall I let them out? I asked.

Bitcsh! she spit-lisped at me and waddled off toward the open gate.

Clearly, the solution is a new supply of fairy dust.

It would grant every wish and answer every prayer, heal everyone in ill health, protect all homeless and abused animals, resolve hostilities world-wide, detoxify our food and water supply, neutralize stupidity and racism and make short,fat women fashion ready runway models.  We would just need to keep it out of the hands of politicians, the obscene big banks, all health insurance companies, the medical industry and the religious zealots.

Yep, I’ll get right on that.

Power to the People.

To and Fro

Standing on the front porch, I watched the fog lifting and burning off with the morning sun.  The valley slowly came into clear focus and soon I could see all the way to the end of the dirt driveway and then all the way to the horizon.  The only sounds were the far off birds in the apple trees and the more distant ringing of cowbells.  It was my last day on the farm for that summer and oh, how I wished I could be in two places at once.  As anxious as I was to get back to the island and the ocean, I didn’t want to leave the peace of this beautiful valley and the comfort of this old farmhouse.  It’s hard to put into words because while I have fewer memories of the old place – having spent the better part of each of my summers on the island –but there was somehow more childhood there.  The island caught in my throat each time we arrived but the farm was more real.

The two houses were as different as their occupants.  The farm was made up of small rooms, some a little shadowy, all mostly cluttered.  It had a clearly old fashioned feel to it, like hard work and early mornings. It was old and creaky and muted and there were lots of books and dark corners.  It was easy to imagine it filled with children, sleeping two to a bed and growing up in hand-me-downs.  Happily enough, it stayed in the family.

The island house was wide open with big, sunny rooms and walls made mostly of windows.  The furnishings were bright and colorful, the rooms always filled with light and kept scrupulously neat.  It was clearly a summer house, never intended to be a year round home and it felt like an escape.  Sadly, it was sold for taxes a dozen or so years ago – a process that was carefully kept from me, one I’ve long suspected was my mother’s last attempt to get even – sad to say, one that worked all too well.

The two families were not close – they barely kept up with each other’s goings-on beyond an occasional exchange of Christmas cards – each was quietly and reservedly critical of the other, mindful I suppose that any obvious display of contempt would be found out or worse (perish the thought!), repeated.  Everybody seemed to walk the narrow line of hypocrisy, usually but not always with a smile and a pitying, tolerant shoulder shrug.  Each might’ve found common ground and a way to get past their differences but summers were short and the rest of the year they were in separate countries.  No one on either side cared enough, I decided early on, all they ever shared was grandchildren.

For the most part and as far as I remember, only my mother and daddy managed to slip between these two worlds with relative ease.  Each appeared to be comfortable in the house of the other as long as they didn’t stay too long and as I grew up I can remember thinking that the families were distractions, something to focus on when they were together and help keep them from looking too closely at each other.  But then I was a romantic and imaginative child, fascinated by the workings of the adult world and the undercurrents I seemed to sense all around.

Meanwhile I went from the summer house to the farm and from the farm to the summer house, a part of me always wanting to be where I’d just left and come September, missing both dreadfully.

That hasn’t changed.

Ghost in the Garden

After sunrise, when the fog was still hiding in wispy corners and before the factory whistle had even sounded, Ruthie and I crept down the stairs, past the sleeping dogs, and out the back door.  We were headed for the other side of Uncle Willie’s back pasture where the cows rarely went and the grass grew wild and free with rabbits and wildflowers.   Not far past where the open field gave way to a patch of woods, there was a path that led to into the trees and at the end of the path, a small stone house with a thatched roof sat in a circle of sunlight.  It was here that Miss Sherise, Miss Clara’s younger and very solitary sister, lived and tended her many gardens.

It was hard to imagine how two sisters could be more different.

Bless my soul, I’d heard Nana say, If them girls bein’ kin don’t beat all.

Oh, ay-uh, Aunt Pearl had agreed, Like night and day.

I allus did like Cole Porter, Aunt Vi, half asleep and near to dreaming had added and Nana and Aunt Pearl had exchanged amused glances.

Apart from an ironclad (some said stubborn) self-sufficiency, there was precious little linking the two women except for blood.  Clara – sort, squat, plain-spoken and solid as a rock – was out and about often, usually chatty and collecting all manner of friends, active in the Baptist church, always welcoming and willing to lend a helping hand.  Sherise, loathe to leave her little plot of ground, was tall and slender with an almost ethereal aura.  She always wore a hooded white linen robe and went barefoot no matter the weather and on account of being born a mute, was sometimes rumored to be a flower-gathering ghost.  She grew all manner of herbs in brightly painted window boxes and kept a neat row of tomato plants in pastel ceramic pots sitting by the door.  Clara was earth tones and neutral, substantial and predictable.  Sherise was primary colors and flowers everywhere, a sprite who followed rainbows.  She was also a weaver, keeping a half dozen sheep for their wool and shearing them once a year, turning wool into fabric and fabric into apparel and throw rugs and skeins of colorful yarn for knitting baskets all over the island.  To Ruthie and me, sheep shearing sounded different and exotic, well worth the risk of stealing out on this misty summer morning.

When we reached the stone house, the fog was still burning off and Miss Sherise was walking through the wildflowers, a woven basket over one arm and her white robe flowing behind her.  She looked not quite real, I thought to myself, a trick of the light and the still hanging remnants of the fog, I knew, but even so I couldn’t help but think that she looked like an apparition, like the spirit lady Frenchy Comeau used to see, all glowing and soft edged.  When she heard us, she turned and gave us a beaming smile, pointing to the sheep and making scissor gestures with her free hand.  We nodded and she beckoned us closer.  She wasn’t young anymore, I realized, but there was a timelessness to her that I’ve never forgotten, something that came from the inside and had to do with a life of silence and isolation – or so I imagined anyway – but romantic illusion or reality, she was, standing there among the flowers, the absolute essence of beautiful and for a few breathless seconds, I felt frozen, as if I’d suddenly grown roots.  It wasn’t until Ruthie pinched me that I came back to myself and stumbled forward.

What I remember most clearly is the sheep, how they stood so patiently, calm and clear eyed and somehow knowing that no harm would come to them.  Sherise’s hands were agile, moving swiftly and gently over their thick fleece coats in short, precise strokes.  She would finish each one and give them each a light slap on their hindquarters and they would trot off, kicking their heels in a kind of dance, proudly high stepping through the patches of flowers.  Ruthie and I collected the wool in scratchy burlap bags – surprisingly heavy, we thought – and toted each to the finishing shed.  It wasn’t the great adventure we’d hoped for but it was a good way to spend a summer day and when we were done and washed up, Miss Sherise had cold milk and freshly made gingersnaps ready.  When we headed for home, we each had a brown paper sack of vine ripe tomatoes, two shiny, new quarters in our jeans and a good feeling.  We left Miss Sherise as we’d found her, gliding through her gardens with a basket on her arm, picking flowers and looking just a little magical.

Kitten in the Hood

Shattering the peace of a late Sunday afternoon, the kitten careens around the corner at breakneck speed, loses her footing on the linoleum and skids like a hockey puck into the bottom of the refrigerator.  Unfazed by the indignity of the landing, she recovers quickly, scrambling to her feet with an indignant squeak and setting her sights on a new target – the previously sleeping tabby, now in full alert mode. Forewarned is forearmed and the elder cat watches the kitten’s stalking approach intently.  When only a few feet separate them, she gives out a malignant hiss, defiantly arches her back and lets loose with a blood chilling cat scream.  I imagine it’s the feline equivalent of “Bring it!” and the kitten – young and wild as homemade sin but not stupid – feigns a sudden disinterest and smoothly changes direction.  It’s like Nascar meets The Wild One and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the tabby thinks she’s Marlon Brando.

The kitten spends the next several minutes racing from one end of the house to the other with no obvious goal except mild mayhem.  The older cats watch from respectful distances, none inclined to join in or interfere.  Perhaps they’re remembering their own frantic kittenhoods, I think, or maybe they just find it entertaining, it’s hard to tell since their faces give away so little.   Inevitably the kitten gets bored with these solo, enthusiastic sprints and makes a final run culminating in a fatal error of judgement when she detours under the dining room only to crash very nearly head on with one of the black cats.  There is a ferocious, fur-flying but mercifully short battle and then they go their separate ways.  Not long after the kitten returns, strolling casually across the room as if she hadn’t a care in the world.  She curls up next to the sleeping dachshund  and calmly begins to knead his exposed belly.  He wakes enough to notice, gives her an affectionate nose nudge and laying one shaggy little paw across her neck, goes back to sleep.

The sun goes down and the day’s last light is fading fast.  There may be madness and chaos outside but for a little time, there is peace here.  It won’t last as long as I’d like – to paraphrase Robert Redford, the kitten has “the attention span of a lightning bolt” but you take what you can get when you can get it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Owls in the Choir Loft

Miss Lavernia and her colony of cats lived quietly in a remote section of woods beyond Lighthouse Point.  It was said, although discreetly and usually not above a whisper, that she had been born into witchcraft.

She was an overly tall stick figure of a woman, gangly and uncommonly awkward with steel wool hair and hard eyes.  She moved slowly, barefoot and with a distinct limp, the hem of her plain black dress often dragging in the dust.  Sometimes she carried a broom fashioned from corn stalks, sometimes a makeshift crutch.  A regular herd of cats was always at her heels and more watched from the unpainted porch.  Yellow eyed owls with massive wing spans lived under the eaves – they had been known to carry off children who didn’t mind their parents, Nana assured me – and although I wasn’t sure I completely believed this, Ruthie and I had seen pictures of great horned owls in one of Cap’s nature books and we decided to respect the possibility.

Miss Lavernia rarely left her little patch of land but sometimes we would see her hunting herbs or gathering firewood up into her apron or bent over in her desolate plot of garden.  We never approached her – Nana had also warned us that the old woman could hear butterfly wings as far as a mile away – but would watch from what we hoped was a safe distance, always listening for the flutter of an owl’s wings even during the daylight.   Sometimes she would stop what she was doing and look around, peering intently in our direction as if she knew she was being watched and giving us both the ungodly shivers.  Once she actually put down her hoe and took several steps toward us and  though we were both foolishly curious and determined children, we ran in terror like a pair of blind field mice.  When Ruthie snagged her collar on a low hanging branch and started screeching that the owls had her, it nearly stopped both our hearts.

I wouldn’t like to think,  Nana said with a frown as she painted our scraped knees and elbows with iodine, that you’d been somewheres you wasn’t allowed.

It wasn’t a question – not exactly anyway – and while neither of was brave enough to meet her eyes, we were both smart enough not to confess unless pushed.  She found her mending basket and sewed Ruthie’s torn shirt and we studied the floor while waiting to be dismissed. 

What I would like to think, she finally said, is that you both know it ain’t fittin’ to spy on folks.

My heart sank at this and I heard Ruthie swallow hard but Nana just sighed and sent us on our way. Feeling a little shamed and way luckier than we deserved - now that we were out of danger on all fronts, both feelings would pass – we shuffled out.

Curiosity killed the cat, she called after us, I b’lieve I’d keep that in mind, girls.

We absolutely meant to but children have short memories and the idea of a witch among us was so deliciously tempting it soon became irresistible.  When the story of our encounter with Miss Lavernia came back to us, as all such stories do, it had grown considerably.  It hadn’t been a branch that had snagged Ruthie’s collar but a low flying owl with talons and evil yellow eyes.  Miss Lavernia hadn’t been working in the garden but rather burying bodies.  The cats were all accomplices, the herbs for wicked spells and we were doomed.

When bits and pieces of this reached my grandmother, Ruthie and I were unceremoniously plucked from the playhouse and tossed into the back seat of the old Lincoln. 

Trespassing and spying!  Nana scolded, Killer owls and witches!  I declare, I never heard such nonsense in all my born days!  Why, Lavernia Pyne and I’ve been friends for fifty years and she’s no more’n a witch than the man in the moon!

Ruthie and I cowered and began to cry as we realized where we were going.

Waterworks ain’t gon’ do you a bit o’ good, Nana continued coldly, You’ll both apologize and hope for the best or I’ll tan your hides into next week!

But Nana, I protested through a flood of tears, You said the owls…..

You just never mind ‘bout anythin’ I said, my grandmother snapped, Reckon we’ll sort that out later. Right now you best be thinkin’ how to say you’re sorry!

But then her knuckles on the steering wheel whitened and she veered the old car to the side of the road and stopped.  She slowly turned to face us, looking surprised and suddenly a little sorrowful.

I said the owls carried off bad children, she said and closed her eyes, her chin sinking to her folded arm, And you believed me.  There was silence in the car and for a moment I thought there might be a glimmer of hope.  Then she sighed and beckoned us into the front seat.  Lavernia, she began, is a private person and she don’t much like most folks.  I said that so’s you wouldn’t be botherin’ her and that was wrong.  So.  She paused, turned the key in the ignition, gave us a weak smile.  So, ‘pears we’ll all be apologizin’, don’t it.

And so we did. 

We found Miss Lavernia on her front porch with a lapful of kittens, hardly the picture of a witch.  A single small barn owl slept peacefully in the shade of the roof and the window sills were littered with cats.  Nana took both of our hands and led us – still a little reluctantly – up to the old cabin and as we each stumbled our way through an apology, the old woman in the dusty black dress shaded her eyes and smiled.  Then my usually prideful and stubborn grandmother explained that she’d planted the idea in the first place,  So you see, Vernie, I really feel like I’m to blame more’n the children, she said unhappily.

No need, no harm, Miss Lavernia said with a dismissive wave of one bony-fingered hand, Worse things in this old world than witches and Lord knows I’ve lived long enough that gossip don’t bother me none.

But now, them owls…..she added with a meaningful glance up at the shadowy eave and the silent, sleeping barn owl,  Well, you never can tell what mischief they git up to.  They’s independent minded creatures, I reckon and you know, girls, I jist cain’t do a thing with’em. 

It wasn’t near as thrilling as what we’d imagined but it was as near to witchery as we were going to get.  The plain fact was that up close, Miss Lavernia looked less like a witch than a thin, tired, wrinkled old woman.  Her flesh hung on her elderly bones and her smile sagged slightly on one side of her mouth.  When she spoke, her voice was raspy and cracked with age, her hands so parched and frail they seemed translucent.  It seemed as if a strong wind – never mind an owl – might’ve carried her off without half trying. 

Frances Lavernia Pyne passed on the following winter.  At 94, so The Courier reported, she had been one of the oldest island residents and had no known surviving family.  She’d been known for her kindness to cats, the obituary read but there was never a word printed about the small, silent owl everyone saw in the choir loft during her funeral or later at her grave.

Is it true?  I wanted to know when I heard.

Praise the Lord, my grandmother said and winked at me, and pass the whiskey bottle if it ain’t.

Which like witches and so many other childhood mysteries, was no answer a’tall.

Sunday Supper

Sunday supper was on the table when I got home – rare steak, mashed potatoes, peas - the only thing that ever varied was the vegetable, sometimes it was carrots or lima beans.  My mother sat in her usual place at one end, my daddy at the other.  I was on time but only by a whisker and I knew immediately that it was too deadly quiet.  My mother had clearly been crying and my daddy was wearing his stone face.  Each of my brothers was sitting still as a statue, eyes down, hands in their laps.  In the time it took me to shed my jacket and slip into my place, I mentally retraced my steps, trying anxiously to remember my day, worrying that I’d been caught at something I’d already forgotten doing.  Or that another surprise search of my room had turned up something that shouldn’t have been there. I couldn’t shake the premonition of a coming disaster and prayed desperately that whatever had happened had to do with my brothers and not me.  And that whatever was going to happen would be over quickly.  I got the first wish but not the second.

After clearing the table, I was sent to my room but both boys were ordered to keep their seats.  I breathed a sigh of relief and headed upstairs without protest or questions but even with my radio on and my door closed, the noise carried.  It seemed the school had called because both brothers had skipped the previous Friday and my parents had been at odds for three days trying to decide the best course of action. That I’d seen no signs of discord between them was a small miracle in and of itself, I thought, or possibly I’d become so accustomed to the tension that I didn’t notice anymore.  At any rate, the boys now confronted with their behavior, chose solidarity and lying.  They both insisted they’d been in school all day, categorically denying that they’d skipped and vehemently accusing the school of being out to get them.  As a defense, this turned out to be a poor choice, elevating the truancy by lying was in my opinion, just plain stupid, and it wasn’t long before the raised voices became a shouting match. 

Watch your mouth!  my mother screamed.

Go to hell!  My brother fired back.

There was a thud – a chair being overturned, I was fairly sure – and then the sound of hard plastic against glass – the Corelware was going to take a beating tonight, I thought to myself – and then the unmistakable and too easily recognized sound of a slap.

Go to your room!  I heard my daddy thunder and there was a pitiful wailing, another crash of furniture, then a scramble of footsteps and finally a door slamming so hard it shook the walls of my room.  Round One appeared to be a draw, I decided and just as a precaution, checked that I’d locked my door and then upped the volume of my radio.  It didn’t happen often but now and then these things would spill over and I didn’t want to be sucked in by either side.

Round Two took place in the living room – unfortunate, because I could hear every word through the heating vent – but it was strictly between my parents and it went on for hours.  She seemed to be alternately for beating them senseless or shipping them both off to a military school (I freely confess my heart beat a little faster at that suggestion) while my daddy mostly kept his calm and advocated for an extended grounding, suspension of their allowances and maybe a little counseling, (although for whom wasn’t exactly clear).   Predictably, they reached no solution or agreement except that for the foreseeable future, both boys would be driven to and from school and literally checked in by the transporting parent.  How precisely this would insure that they both stayed put for the entire school day was something of a mystery – my daddy dismissed her suggestion of ankle monitors as something she’d seen on her soap operas – and she caustically snapped that it worked for prisoners and other delinquents.  He actually laughed at this and she instantly broke into fresh caterwauling.  It didn’t take long after that for the focus of the argument to shift to familiar ground, the tired old You Don’t Love Me/You Think You’re Better Than I Am routines that I knew by heart.  The front door opened and roughly closed, the station wagon started with a roar and pulled out of the driveway in a cloud of exhaust and my mother dissolved in a fit of tears and frustration.  Round Two was over.  I wasn’t sure who to declare the winner but was grateful that there would be no Round Three this night.

With the house finally quiet, I said my nightly prayer – more a promise to myself, really, that if I were ever foolish enough to marry, Please Lord, don’t let me have children – and then read myself to sleep with my latest Black Stallion novel and Bobby Rydell singing in my ear.

Butterflies in the Park

She was sitting alone on a bench in the quiet side of the park, an old black woman – enormously and nightmarishly fat – wearing a faded yellow sun dress with a matching bandana and a pair of house slippers.  Every inch of her was misshapen and swollen and decayed-looking.  In one hand she held a fistful of sad looking daisies and in the other a bible, even from a distance I recognized the black leather cover and the gilt edged pages.  As I got closer, I could see she was crying – weeping, actually – her shoulders heaved with each ragged breath and now and again she dabbed at her eyes with a remnant of a mucous-y handkerchief.  Passing her by would’ve been the simplest thing I’d done all day but I found myself slowing down and then stopping.

Ma’am, I said cautiously, Do you need some help?

She raised her head to look at me and I saw that her eyes were puffy and red rimmed.  A thin streak of blood ran from her nose to her upper lip.   She shook her head almost violently.

 Are you sure? I asked and took a small step closer. 

I’s fine, she said clearly and it was something between a hiss and a reproach, Mind yo’ bizness, girl.

 I wasn’t sure what if anything I’d expected but being snapped at wasn’t it. 

Yes, ma’am, I said hastily and stepped back onto the walking path, Sorry I bothered you.

The late afternoon sun shimmered through the trees as I finished the first lap and started the second.  By the time I reached the bench again, she was gone.  It was hard to believe she could have navigated out of the park in so short a time and without my noticing – it’d have been like overlooking a large yellow blimp – but there was no sign of her.  When I straightened up from splashing water on my face and neck at the water fountain, I could’ve sworn I saw a flash of yellow in the little patch of trees at the edge of the street but when I blinked and looked again, it was gone.  I walked a little slower, cooling down and cooling off, and twice more saw a sliver of yellow – once by the footbridge and once on the far side of the playground – each time when I looked again, it was gone.

Imagination, I told myself, Heat and sweat and old eyes, but I still felt a tiny thrill of eerie as I walked toward the street in the direction of home.   The innocent late afternoon had turned gently to early evening and the lengthening shadows seemed to have a shivery undercoat of something not quite right.  I stopped at the entrance to the park and took a final look behind me but there was nothing even remotely out of the ordinary – trees and empty benches, children and dogs, walkers and runners and strollers – it wasn’t until I turned back around that I saw the ragged piece of yellow fabric snagged on the black iron fencing.   When I reached for it, the breeze carried it off.  I blinked and it turned into a butterfly.

Earth is a place of limited illusions ~ Ryan Formanes