Page 4 of Through Quick and Quinn
It was a Saturday afternoon and we were covered in the dust of my new sidewalk chalk, a birthday gift that Dad somehow sensed I needed without me even knowing it. After eating lunch that day, we headed to the oasis to put the chalk to good use, creating flowers and sun rays of every shade. Before I knew it, we were tracing our hands and our feet, doubled over in giggles at the nonsense we were drawing.
“Your mom is going to have a conniption fit,” he laughed. “Look at your pants.”
I was covered, my white shorts a canvas of dusty colors. “Hurry! To the grass!”
We scooted and rolled, patted and shook, but we erupted in laughter when we quickly realized that our clothing would not survive unscathed, especially now that we had added grass stains to the mix. The giggles finally came to a simmer, and I just laid there on the grass with a grin that felt larger than my face. So happy, so content. The sun wrapped me in a blanket of warmth, and I closed my eyes to take in all of the senses of the oasis: the smells I had come to love, the feel of the damp grass on my skin, the sound of the pool filter creating a magical melody with the soft snores of my dad relaxing nearby.
A majestic blue dragonfly whirred by, so close to my face that it startled me. I allowed my attention to follow it, watching the way it danced about, zooming around invisible corners and unexpectedly stopping to hover. At one point, it landed on a blade of grass directly in front of me, almost as though it was greeting me. Time stood still for the dragonfly and me as though we were the only beings on the planet, simply taking each other in and—at least on my part—appreciating the presence of the other. I was afraid to move, afraid to break the connection with my new, sublime friend. I was as still as an eight-year-old could be, that is, until the link was shattered by something completely unexpected.
It was the sudden shrill of horrific screams coming from inside the house.
For some strange reason, I felt that if I ever had the courage to go back out to the oasis, my dragonfly would be there waiting for me: An impossibility that I chose to believe throughout the rest of my time in that home. I later learned that dragonflies symbolize change and the ability to adapt to it, a significance that was not at all lost on me. Over the years, I saw my majestic blue dragonfly countless times but only in my mind’s eye. I somehow inherently recognized that he was with me that day, and at that exact moment for a reason, and I was hard-pressed to believe otherwise. It was a bizarre comfort I depended on from that point forward, without fully understanding it.
I was also hard-pressed to understand what happened that day. Or why.
The piercing sound of agony was coming from the fathomless depths of my mom, holding the lifeless body of my three-month-old brother.
Quinn:
Years of Tears
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome took Troy from our family during his afternoon nap that July. For ages, I struggled to comprehend how SIDS was even a thing. My ill-fated parents had already lost two children to miscarriages after I was born and before Troy crossed to the other side. The devastation was incomprehensible.
For three harrowing years, my parents suffered through every possible emotion as they rehashed the most dreadful day of their lives. They repeatedly tried to bargain with God and the universe, knowing that they did everything by the book. Troy was sleeping on his back on a firm mattress, sharing the space with absolutely nothing. As much as they wanted to, my parents never snuggled up with Troy to share the bed and they never allowed toys in his crib. The room was even set to the cool temperature suggested by all the parenting resources. Making sense of what happened was an impossibility, and yet they tortured themselves as they struggled to understand.
There were times when my mom and dad clung to one another. I would see them hugging so tightly, burying their heads in each other’s chest to muffle the sobs, to muffle the begging, trying to release the unimaginable pain. Some days, I felt like I was intruding when I would happen upon those moments and I would hide in my bedroom, but more often than not, the wave of despair would take me as well. I would wiggle my way to the center of their huddle and we would rock ourselves back to a calm state, chanting words of encouragement. Those were just for me though. My parents never actually felt encouraged that time would heal the wound they shared.
Unfortunately, there were other times, too. Times that their inconceivable anger would be unleashed through howls of blaming rhetoric that could be heard even above the sounds of smashing glass and overturning furniture. I made myself scarce, retreating deeper and deeper into my bedroom. Escaping through books, music and art, I sleepwalked through those few years as our family tried to heal. Some days, I would run away to Terabithia, yearning for our own oasis that was merely steps away. I longed to forget that my baby brother was gone, and I ached for the version of my parents that I so desperately missed. Those escapes may or may not have been a healthy way of dealing with my emotions, but my parents appreciated that method of mine over the music technique. Those were the days of blasting angry punk rock in my room and thrashing about while screaming lyrics that I barely knew, let alone understood. I felt relief after these therapeutic sessions of sorts, having wailed to the point of physical exhaustion. It was clear to me, though, that the times I withdrew to my bedroom to draw were the times that I truly allowed myself to mourn. Pages upon tear-stained pages of sketches, illustrating all that was absent and all that caused my heartsickness. Those were the days I skipped dinner and found myself sleeping on a pile of paper and pencils, waking up to see graphite smeared on my cheeks.
My biggest escape of all was school, although the year I was in third grade was consigned to oblivion. It was the following school year that Mandy came into my life and, to be completely honest, Mandy helped save me. I later found that to be ironic, however, since she was also the one who tried to destroy me.
Quinn:
Oasis, Abandoned
My parents somehow managed to claw their way out of those first few years without Troy. Surely time heals wounds, like they all say, and I was sure the countless hours of individual and family therapy sessions helped them along as well, but the selling of the house undoubtedly played a monumental role in the shift back towards normalcy.
I struggled with the idea of leaving my childhood home, but even as a preteen, I inherently understood that it was what my parents needed. So, the summer before sixth grade was spent packing up the only spaces I have ever known, a conflicting experience to say the least. On the one hand, I was excited to move into the new house. It was a quick walk from Mandy’s house, and my soon-to-be bedroom was larger with an attached bathroom. To be expected, though, there were so many parts of me that did not want to leave. That became explicitly clear on the day I needed to pack up anything from the backyard that I wanted to keep.
With a pounding heart and eyes brimming with tears, I ventured out into the oasis for the first time since that fateful day. Guilt overwhelmed me as I took in all that I saw: an abandoned garden that was once full of experimental surprises, now full of hardened, dry soil; two ragged dolls left in the sandbox, disintegrating slowly to their demise; a neglected pool begging for attention; and dull, dead grass baking in the relentless sun.
Buckling under the shame and collapsing to my knees, I shook with the seemingly endless sobs that gushed from my body. I realized in that moment that Troy wasn’t the only one who died that day. The oasis did, too, except I was the one who killed it. I abandoned it. I deserted it. I cursed it with a long, painful death. To see my paradise like that, knowing that it was the sibling that cradled and cared for me throughout my younger years, realizing that it was then too late to make it right, filled my soul with a profuse amount of guilt and regret.
I allowed myself to grieve for what seemed like hours, vacillating between sobs and apologies, both of which were instantaneously silenced by something that sounded vaguely familiar. I instantly recognized the nearby high-pitched hiss of a dragonfly’s wings and looked up to see one dancing about. I nodded at the brown dragonfly, knowing it was right; things were definitely about to change, whether I had the ability to adapt to it or not.
Quinn:
Three Simple Words
My upper elementary school years were a blend of pointless spelling tests and flashy science experiments devoid of any curricular content, but my blossoming friendship with Mandy somehow dwarfed the annoyance of the routine at school and helped me to forget my sadness at home. If we weren’t trying to control our maniacal laughter over our MASH results during silent reading time, we were cheering each other on at Double Dutch during recess. We were attached at the hip, with everything from planting silly notes for each other in random places in the fourth-grade classroom, to trying to hypnotize each other at sleepovers throughout all of fifth grade. We were together constantly, never tiring of one another. It was an incredible feeling to know that I had a friendship so reliable, one that I could count on for anything at any time. We didn’t just wear the matching set of necklaces that read, “Best Buds” when placed side by side; we often talked about what it meant to be besties. Countless nights were spent in giggles, but also in all seriousness, as we imagined meeting our future husbands who surely would also be the best of friends, which naturally meant that it would make sense for us all to live together. We planned our lives and never doubted that we would spend them accordingly. Of course, in our innocent youth, we didn’t consider all that life could throw at us and how unexpected our responses could be, but we figured that out quite quickly when my family moved into the new house.
My mourning came flooding back with a vengeance. It was one thing to lose my brother when I was eight, but that household move also created a shift in our family that I ended up struggling with off and on for quite some time. My physically present mother became completely absent during some of my most formative years. My mom was burying herself in her work, trying to push her way through the days in all the ways that society deemed appropriate, while leaving me to navigate the tricky waters of adolescence without her.
My mom went back to work my sixth-grade year, just after we moved. She was a teacher, and the best kind of one, too. She dedicated herself fully to the classroom and all of the fortunate students on her roster. Dad would smile through her constant rambling at the dinner table, whether it was regarding her research (“Did you know that there is much controversy surrounding the idea of a student’s attention span? Some researchers say that children can only attend for two minutes longer than the number of years of age, but others say that students should not be expected to listen to new information for more than ten minutes at a time!”), her daily stories (“You wouldn’t believe what that Maxwell did today! Imagine, coming in from recess to see my entire desk covered in Post-it Notes! Here, look, I took a picture!”), or her frustrations with administration (“How is it that some people who couldn’t last five minutes in the classroom are making such important decisions about how we teachers run those very same classrooms?”). Dad was glad to see my mom moving on and plunging forward. I wasn’t. Often times I would feel jealous of her students, and even her administrators. They got the best of her—the passion, the drive, the love, the anger. When it came to our house, her emotions ran at the surface level. All we ever talked about was the schedule, the carpool, the grocery store, the weather.
I spent much of sixth grade at Mandy’s house, but my resentful anger towards my mom kept creeping up and bubbling over, making our friendship much less enjoyable. Mandy wanted to practice putting makeup on each other’s faces and stay up late watching romantic comedies, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to have fun anymore. To put it bluntly, I was ticked off. I wanted Troy back, and I wanted my mom back. And I wanted to play in the sandbox with my dad.
About halfway through that school year, I exploded. My family was sitting at the dinner table, yet again listening to another story about one of my mom’s precious students, when something triggered me. It was the look on her face. It was the look of a proud mother, eyes brimming with joyous tears and a smile full of love.
