A Wish for Ashley

When I was a kid, I envied my friends for their families’ Full House-esque holiday traditions.  I found their cookie parties, visits to grandparents’ houses, personalized stockings and mini-tree lighting ceremonies fascinating, quaint and freakishly wholesome.  Our family has never been one for formal tradition.  Why have a sit down meal when you can arrange the food in a disorganized buffet, resulting in a beautifully chaotic do-si-do as you help yourself to ham, potatoes and a roll only to have to circle back to the start of the display in order to obtain butter and gravy?  However for our lack of grace and social decorum, we make up for it in laughs and foolish innovation.  Our holiday traditions may never be featured in a wholesome Hallmark movie, but they do prompt me to celebrate my family members in a most genuine way.

Holiday Tradition One: The Nutcracker

Historical Background: Growing up, Kayla and I danced in the Nutcracker every year.  Mice, soldiers, party children, snowflakes, flowers, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Flowers, candy canes… you name it, we danced it.  Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without those familiar bars of music, costumes and dancers pirouetting across the stage. 

A Normal Family Tradition:  Attending a professional performance of the Nutcracker each holiday season.

Our Whacked Out Version of the Tradition:  Attending a professional performance of the Nutcracker…but before doing so, going out to dinner.  We get dolled up in dresses and impossibly high heels, eat at a nice place… and then proceed to walk over ice and snow for 25 minutes+ to the theater.  Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without feeling our toes go numb, nearly wiping out multiple times and laughing at each other’s unfeminine scurries and shuffles as we attempt to move quickly and stay upright. 

Enacting the Tradition in 2009: Last night, Kayla and I relocated to New York City (from Boston) for our annual Nutcracker outing.  Different ballet company, same ridiculousness. I don’t recommend running/shuffling/inappropriately stumbling 10 blocks in a tight satin pencil dress that doesn’t allow for more than a 7 inch stride. 

Invitation: Ashley, if you ever join us for our Nutcracker evening, I’ll give you my arm.  I can’t guarantee you won’t bite it, but I can guarantee that if you do, I’ll go down with you.

With love (from Kayla’s couch in New York),

Audra 

Growing up, I hated being tall.  As a ballerina, being tall meant I got placed in the back for every dance performance.  Being tall meant having to play a boy in every production that our dance school put on.  Being tall meant having to dance by myself for Royal Academy of Dancing examinations, because we only had three in my exam group instead of four, and the other two girls were of non-mutant height.  I may be 12 years old and 5 foot 7 but I can dance, damnit! I was bitter.

That was until September of 1997.  The start of Nutcracker season at Londonderry Dance Academy. I lived for Nutcracker season. The long rehearsals.  The costumes.  The missing 8 days of school to tour New Hampshire elementary schools and perform.  The lunches on tour days- at Burger King!  Oh, I lived and breathed it.  I was thrilled to learn that my class would be Snowflakes that year and we would dance snow in both casts.  No boy and girl roles.  A lot of circular choreography.  Despite my height, I could be assured that I would not need to tuck my hair under a pageboy cap and I would not be stuck in the back of the dance for the whole performance.  Lots of stage time.  This was going to be the Best. Nutcracker. Season. Ever.  We were two weeks into rehearsals when my dance teacher, Mrs. Mullen, asked me to stay after class.  I was worried.  Did I do something wrong?  Was she going to bump me from Snow and make me pull on some knickers after all?  My stomach knotted up.   And then it happened.  “Audra,” Mrs. Mullen said in her lilting British accent, “would you be able to come to rehearsals with Kayla’s class?  We’re short one Flower and you’re tall.  You would be great.”  WHAT?!  My sixth grade self felt like she grew a foot taller right there. I was invited to dance with a class two years older than mine? I was going to be in the same dance as my older sister? I would get to play Snow and dance in Waltz of the Flowers in the same show?!  I was beaming.  And I stood up straighter.  I’m tall and I’m a Flower.  Check it. 

Kayla’s class welcomed me to their rehearsals like I was some kind of pet.  I relished it.  I was placed in the front.  Opposite Kayla, in fact, dancing a Flower in Cast A.  I was outfitted not in a vest but in a beautiful new tutu dress.  I studied the more advanced steps with great intensity.  I made Kayla practice with me for hours on end at home. When full run throughs started, I was dead set on being a great flower, knowing my class of snowflakes would be watching me. Wondering.  How did the tall girl get to dance with the older kids?  Run throughs went great.  Mrs. Mullen nodded her approval.  Kayla told me I did well.  My fellow snowflakes who so often were placed in front of me were jealous to see me in the front of Waltz of the Flowers. Call it the Tall Girl’s Revenge. 

Our first week of touring started and it was magical.  On days that Cast A was touring, I loved dancing in Snow and then running back to the bathroom, changing into my flower tutu and returning to dance for a second time.  On days that Cast B was touring, I performed as snow and then snuck backstage to see the second cast of girls dance Waltz of the Flowers, taking mental notes as to how I could improve my performance.  We were halfway through the second week of three-a-day school performances when- on a Cast B day- Mrs. Mullen came running into the dressing room.  “Audra!”  I turned. “Danielle’s sick.  I need you to be a Flower for today.”  I nodded- Mrs. Mullen was not someone you would ever dare question- and went to retrieve a flower costume.  I was pinning the pink flower crown onto my head when I pulled a Cast B flower to find out where on the stage Danielle usually danced.  “Oh, she dances where you do on stage left Cast A, but on stage right. She’s your mirror image.”  I froze.  My mirror image?  Meaning every step I knew… I would need to reverse?!  “Um, where are we in the show?” I asked in a whisper.  The girl stuck her head out in the hallway to try and catch the oh-so-familiar music.  “Russian,” she pronounced, before walking away.  I couldn’t breathe.  Flowers was two dances away.  I had 6 minutes to figure out how to do every intricate step I had painstakingly studied for three months on the other foot.  6 minutes few by.  It was a blur when a girl in a matching tutu grabbed my arm, said “we’re on!” and hurried me to the stage. 

Waltz of the Flowers is the longest dance in the Nutcracker.  The piece is six and a half minutes long.  I made it through 3.5 of them without incident, forcing my brain to instinctively step on the left foot when it wanted to step on the right.  To turn to the right diagonal instead of the left.  I began to calm down a little bit as I got to the point in the dance where all the flowers kneel and the Dew Drop fairy performs her solo.  On the next count of eight I need to stand up, turn right no wait, make that left.  Yes I need to turn left and then we do the criss cross.  I went left, circled around and waited for the familiar count that signaled I needed to meet my mirror image partner in the middle of the stage and cross in front of her. Pique, pique, chasse, pa ba bourrie, BAM!   I slammed into my mirror image flower and we hit the floor.  The auditorium of elementary schoolers made an audible gasp. 

I’m told I got off the floor and kept dancing.  I don’t remember anything after hitting the floor.  You see, in dance, you’re trained from the moment you learn stage directions to know that in a criss-cross situation, the girl coming from stage right always crosses in front.  It’s like Newton’s First Law of Motion for dancers.  I knew this law, but I defied it when I failed to register that on that day I was coming from Stage Left.   I knew the reason they had this law in place- to prevent mid-stage collisions like the one I had just caused- I knew it.  And when it was important, I forgot it. I might have been the tallest Snowflake, but I wanted to shrink to the size of one of our first grade mice for the rest of that afternoon.

It is only appropriate that last night I took my Little Sister to see the Boston Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker.  I had been so down all day yesterday- not just about the Ashley false alarm, but because of the fact that, when it mattered, I forgot the Law Of A Wish for Ashley I set for myself at the beginning of this project: don’t get your hopes up until she’s actually in front of you. I defied the Law I knew I needed to live by to avoid the kinds of disappointments that would make me liable to give up. Yesterday afternoon I wanted to give up.  But when I picked up my Little Sister (a girl I mentor who is celebrating her 11th birthday today- Happy Birthday, Adonia!!!!) and walked her into the theater and watched her eyes grow huge as she took in the costumes, the music and the dramatics of the Nutcracker for the very first time… I remembered the magic.  The feeling of putting on a costume and a crown and feeling so confident and graceful.  The feeling of Mrs. Mullen pulling me after class, and making me feel proud that I was tall.  The feeling of keeping up with the older kids and feeling like I could do anything.  The Nutcracker isn’t about Laws.  A Wish for Ashley can’t be about Laws.  As a great person in my life just emailed and reminded me, it’s about the journey.  Costumes, days off, fast food lunches, collisions and all… if that’s where Will is guiding me and Ashley is taking me, I need to be there.  And stand tall.  Because I am. 
 
With love (and visions of sugar plums dancing in my head),
Audra

 

 

Found the girl’s Myspace page.  Based on the pictures found there… it looks like we need to file this under Major Coincidences and Disappointments.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t upset.  I need to call it a night.

With love (and a feeling of defeat),

Audra 

Last night an A Wish for Ashley-er sent us a lead.  A name. Address. Phone number. Picture.  It looks just like her. She looks just like my Uncle Will.  The birthdays match.  This girl is in Connecticut.  

My mom is convinced we’ve found Ash.  Kayla compared the picture to our Ashley at age 7 pictures and my Uncle Will’s picture and said she ‘has a feeling’ its her.  Tara brought reason into the conversation, cautioning us to bank on this girl being our cousin.  I’m all over the board.  

Last night I went to bed 150% sure it is her.  This morning I woke up with a pit in my stomach, feeling like maybe this is just one of those huge coincidences.  An unrelated girl in Connecticut who shares my cousin’s birthday and just happens to look just like my family.  I’m terrified that this will be a false alarm. I’m scared to believe that hours after asking for it, my miracle has been delivered.  Will, please give me a sign that she’s the one.  Please.   Have you brought our search to an end?

With love (and a head full of ‘what ifs’),
Audra

Throughout the country, Americans gathered at retailers yesterday to celebrate the unofficial holiday of Black Friday. Over the years I have celebrated this day of misguided holiday-induced judgment by trampling customers in pursuit of Power Rangers and spending hours on the sidewalk of a Best Buy… but those are stories for another day.  Last night, Tara, her Boyfriend and I commemorated the occasion not by hitting up a mall, but by striving to celebrate the day in the purest fashion: going out to acquire a Christmas tree. 

I was intrigued when my mother tasked me with coordinating the Christmas Tree and Decoration Acquisition for Tara and Erich of 2009.   My only prior experience with tree acquisition and décor has been limited.  There are no family tramps to the tree farm to saw down a tree and strew the tree in popcorn strings in our home.  Oh no, my mom is of the OCD I pick the tree, pick two colors of ornaments (Christmas of 2008 featured the black and white motif- all gifts not wrapped in Mother Approved black or white wrapping paper were not allowed under the tree) and decorate the tree on my own since I don’t trust you not to put two ornaments of the same color too close together generation.  Mind you my mom’s tree is always beautiful… but not so much kid (or 25-year-old) friendly.  So when she entrusted me with an envelope of cash and instructions to make sure Tara and Erich used it to introduce the Christmas spirit to their LA apartment yesterday morning, I didn’t want to let her down.

We set out last night to a formerly abandoned lot a few blocks away from the apartment, equipped with “sap friendly” clothes and an SUV that just screamed ‘tie a Christmas tree to my roof!’  All was going wonderfully: we picked a tree in under 8 minutes, and it was tied onto the roof within another five.  We celebrated our success with a stop at a frozen yogurt place on the way home. 

As we turned into the drive of Tara and Erich’s apartment building, my over-thinking mind turned on. “Hey, do you know what the clearance is of your parking garage?”  I asked, moments before we turned the truck towards the structure.  “7 feet” Erich read from the posted sign.  We all did quick calculations… and proceeded down the ramp into the underground garage. 

Turns out, the clearance of the garage is 7 feet…. but the clearance once you subtract the directional signs and pipes is, well, much less than that.  Perfectly selected tree nearly wiped out the signage of the apartment complex and perhaps the steam pipes as well.  Tara and I dissolved into giggles when the SUV finally pulled over and Erich got out, horrified, to see the tree was about to take off part of his roof in addition to a sign. 

Mom, you’d be proud.  The tree is properly proportional, and not yet decorated in popcorn strings.  The car may be a bit scratched up, and the parking structure has probably seen better days, but I think I have proven my tree acquisition skills.  However, for the record, I think I’ll pass from taking on this dangerous challenge again anytime soon.  Though, Ashley, if you want to join me for some misguided holiday-induced judgment sometime soon, I can promise you a good (and almost vandalism-free) time.

With love (and smiles as I head out for another day with Tara!),

Audra

 

 

 

I’m running on fumes.  Rather, 7 cups of coffee and two handfuls of goldfish, but you get the idea.  However even after logging 9 hours in a car and 6.5 in a plane in the past 48 hours I am wired.  Why? Because I just surprised my oldest sister in Los Angeles!!!!!! How did I end up here?  Let me rewind…

So Tara, Sister One (my consistent guest blogger- gold star!), has this bad habit of running off to warm climates when the thought of a New England winter enters her mind.  That’s all well and good- I support my sisters in all their endeavors and blah blah blah- but fact is, she ends up missing all of us a lot.  Call it lack of entertainment, withdrawal from my mom’s famous cream cheese macaroni dish or, dare I say it, love… she runs away and then gets very sad to be removed from the rest of us.  Oh yeah, and then there’s the fact that we miss her too. All in all, it leads to many sad phone calls…

Two months ago, Sister One’s boyfriend propositioned me.  Ok get your head out of the gutter.  Not like that.  He’d fly me to LA to surprise Tara if I would be up for coming and showing her some love.  Even with my aversion to hugs and all acts infringing on my personal space, I’m not an idiot.  Free trip to LA? To see my big sister?!  Count me in!

It’s been hard keeping the secret from her.  Yesterday I nearly cracked.  When Tara called us as Sister Two’s house (my favorite suburban couple hosted their first Thanksgiving yesterday.  Say it with me now!: awwwwwwww) she sounded so, so sad.  And it hurt me. I don’t like my family members hurting, especially not if I can do something about it.  So I decided that I could either blow the secret I had kept for 2 months or I could pass the phone as quickly as possible to the next family member.  3…2…1…. “well, I miss you!  Here’s Kayla!”   I passed the phone… and tried all I could to get my sister’s sad voice out of my mind.

When my alarm went off at 4:30am I rolled my stiff body (ever driven 4 hours stuffed into the back of a Honda coupe?  No?  Well, I don’t recommend it) out of bed and psyched myself up for flying. I felt like night of the living dead as I stumbled through security, straight to the Starbucks kiosk and then to the gate and then decided I must be experiencing the afterlife during the 6.5 hour flight during which the pilot kept apologizing for not being able to find “pockets of smooth air.” However, I snapped awake when I stood on the curb outside the terminal and watched my sister experience heart failure when her boyfriend pulled up to the curb and Tara registered that I was not, in fact, her boyfriend’s friend Josh, and was in fact, Podge, live and in the flesh.  There were many tears.  And hugs.  I kept my end of the proposition.  And hugged back (with both arms). 

It’s my first official visit to the west coast and while most of the weekend will be devoted to sister bonding, I’ll certainly keep my eyes open.  Not just for celebrities… but for potential Ashleys.  Who knows, maybe my cousin has a bad habit of running off to warm climates at the thought of a New England winter…

With love (and YAY- T-T and Podge weekend!!!! excitement),

Audra

 I did it.  Ok, no I didn’t do it- didn’t find Ashley- but I did do the other big It.  I made and submitted my ‘video plea’ to Troy. The Locator.  Now don’t go clicking around this website for this particular video diary- I’ll save you some time: it’s not here.  There is no good reason you could possibly give me to see my ridiculous self filming a plea to a complete stranger and sounding like a mad person in a process.  No, no, you’ll have to be pacified by written pleas.  Let’s not get greedy now.  

What led me to this position?  First, your emails.  Many of you sent kind, insightful emails that helped me to form more comprehensive Pro and Con lists.  Your commitment to our search was at once warming, inspiring… and a reality check.  You guys have logged hundreds of hours and me, well… I’d rather not know… searching for Ashley and pursuing leads, and while we have successfully ruled out thousands of girls… we still have not found the One.  Second, my mom.  We had a long discussion last weekend about this Locator business and she made me think a lot about a number of important things.

I’m not someone who asks for help easily.  When someone closes a soda bottle too tightly- “Podge Proofing’ it, in my family’s speak- I would rather wrestle the 2 liter bottle on the kitchen floor than call out ‘hey can someone help me?!”  However with the number of hours that have gone into this, the thousands of visitors to the website and the hundreds more we’ll reach over outreach events the next few months… a little more direction is welcome.  Add to that some new, reliable information that is both helpful but also extremely frustrating (more on this at a later date), I figure if The Locator specializes in locating, he can locate an unlocateable girl.  Right?  

Who even knows if Troy will pick our case.  I tried my very hardest on the video but well, nothing is certain and well I’m a pessimist.  Perhaps Troy will check out this website and read this blog and if so, Troy, PLEASE HELP ME!  Please help us.  Perhaps you are inspired by a challenge and I can tell you that based on what I learned today, this is an incredible challenge.  But if you are able to overcome it and find the One Ashley I’m looking for, I will never ever ever question your locating abilities or reality show again.  Ever. That’s a promise.  And the whole reason I’m here, writing such things like a crazy person, is because I don’t break promises.  

With love (and a shout out to my favorite Locator… pretty please help us with a cherry on top?),

Audra

Growing up, I was always fascinated yet baffled by my mother’s complete inability to sit through a movie.  Regardless of the genre, length of the movie, presence of captivating actors or power of the plot line, she would nod off, get up and start cleaning or otherwise completely tune out the action on screen.  As a middle schooler I, on the other hand, went to the movies at least twice a weekend and could happily sit through any film and be entertained.  When I turned 24 though, I inherited my mom’s disease: movie-induced ADD.

Nowadays, very few movies can keep my attention.  I try, I really do, but I swear there’s sleeping powder falling from the ceiling of any movie theater I step into.  When I luck out and there is no sleeping powder… my overactive brain kicks in.  Check lists run through my head, along with anxieties, and the next thing I know the credits are rolling and I’m telling my fellow moviegoer ‘oh yeah, I agree.  The movie was good.’  

However there is one movie that no matter how many times I watch it, I can pay attention to it.  Ok, I can do way more than pay attention to it: I can be completely captivated by the plot, music, characters and message.  I wish I could tell you that movie is some notable classic, a renowned piece of cinematic history.  Instead I have to tell you that the best movie in the world, is, in fact, Lilo and Stitch.  

What is it about Lilo and Stitch that can always engage my 25-year-old brain and bring me to a happy place?  Well for one, Stitch is like my long-lost twin.  As many of you know, I only act as Audra in day to day life, because at home and amongst friends I am Podge (or Paahjj, according to my late Uncle Will): a semi-human, kind of alien creature.  Podge, like Stitch, often communicates only in short, non-phonetic syllables.  Rahhh, ehh, mrah and erm are among the most popular.   Podge, like Stitch, doesn’t eat real food; main staples of Podge Nutrition are coffee, chocolate and cheddar goldfish.  Podge, like Stitch, can’t swim- it’s a part of her chemical makeup.  It’s really not possible.  However, most importantly, Podge and Stitch share a common, ruling principle.  One that brings a smile to my face each time I watch the movie and hear Stitch’s high pitched voice articulate it: “Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”

Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. Ashley, that means you.  Wherever you are, know that I never left you behind.  Wherever you go, know that you won’t ever be forgotten.  

With love (rah),
Podge  

The holidays are coming up and I won’t be home for them.  As a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas last year.  That holiday season I learned a lot, and as my sister, there are lessons I want to share with Ashley.

I have lived away from home since I was 13 when I decided boarding school was the place for me.  The place I might find myself.  (I was wrong.  It didn’t happen there.)  However, I hate being cold.  And I am ALWAYS cold.  So I said goodbye to Massachusetts, goodbye to New Hampshire, and hello to Florida.  (Every time I move to a new state I wonder if Ashley is nearby.)  I was there for 3 years.  The weather was gorgeous, it was a beautiful community, and I could see myself “settling there”. (Gasp! Yes, even Miss Dreads Suburbia thinks that way sometimes.) But a piece was still missing.  I went home for December last year because I needed to reset, feel that unconditional love that I mentioned in my last blog, to figure out the next step.

Will was there when I woke up that first morning.  It was grey outside, there was 3 feet of snow on the ground, I could hear the wind howling, and my mom told me to stop by the training studio for coffee when I got up so I needed to motivate.  Instead I walked downstairs, got some cereal, and sat with my butt on the stone outside of the fireplace and didn’t move from there all afternoon.  Will came down and sat with me.

We spent a lot of afternoons like that last December.  Me looking out the window perplexed why ANYONE would want to live in the tundra when there are places that only require a light sweater for the restaurants with their AC turned up too high.  He laughed at me and with me, talking about fishing when the weather got nice for 2 weeks out of the year.  We talked about him visiting me in the next warm place I lived.  In my living room I found what was missing in Tampa.  Understanding.  He didn’t sugarcoat life.  In the mornings when he made his way to the kitchen I would ask, “How are you feeling?” He would respond “Like shit.” with a smile.  We talked about how tough life is sometimes.  How easy it is to get lost along the way because sometimes you don’t always know where you are going.

He made it okay that I did not fit into the traditional mold.  It was okay with him that I wasn’t sure I wanted the dog (I’m allergic), the cul-de-sac house, the picket fence (they are cute, just not me), the adoring husband (ok, I want that now), and the 2 kids.  He also was the only person in my family that liked my country music.  I guess because like the TV show Cheaters that he watched with my mom and Audra, cancer isn’t so bad compared to the person in the song who lost his pick up truck and found his wife sleeping with his brother that shot his dog.

I miss him so much.  And for the record, not all country songs are so depressing.  My Uncle Will spoke to me in this one the other day:

"Hold your head high.
Don't ever let them define
The light in your eyes.
Love yourself, give them Hell.
You can take on this world.
You just stand and be strong
And then fight
Like a girl…
Oh, with style and grace
Kick ass and take names.”

From Will I found the strength to see the next step for me was California and realize I might never find myself in the way that people say, but that’s okay.  What I CAN do is fight like a girl with style and grace and maybe learn some more along the way.  I also need to eventually embrace the tundra as my home.

Dear Ashley, you might not know where you are going or if you are ready to see my family again, but from my cheering section to yours, just fight like a girl and laugh about it along the way.  It’s what Will wanted for all of us.  Part of the mold or not.

(And if you are the second 1⁄2 black person in the world that enjoys country music, I love Sugarland and am willing to switch my stilettos for a pair of cowboy boots any day.)

All you need is love,

Tara