P4+ELa+Grand

Ch.One The Home I Liver in Now I have always lived in the house that I live in currently. Two and a half years before me my brother came home from the hospital to this very house. The four of us have lived here now for nearly sixteen years. The house that I live in is my home. Things may change inside and out but the comforts do not. As my brother and I have grown up so has our home. The swing set has been given away and so has the Eagle’s Nest fort. New curtains have been put in the kitchen windows; new flour tiles have been set. We have a new microwave, refrigerator, dishwasher, and dryer. My dad has recently replaced the windows; he also wants a new bathroom. We got new carpet after a flood from the bathroom pipes. My house have been painted I don’t know how many times, both inside and out. My dad is always changing the flowers or the bushes or both. The backyard was once one-third cement for the longest time, and then my dad wanted all grass. We have dept the olive tree in the front of my house for all the years we have been here. A sad dad for me was when my dad decided to take out the Jasmine bushes so he could repaint the house. The beautiful smell at night and during the summer is now gone. In its place are ugly red flowers. My mom and I don’t like them at all. They’re too low to the ground and they don’t press up against the bottom of the front windows. The windows in my house now slide they don’t crank, but now there’s all these window pains. I don’t really like change so my room is dept mostly the same. True, I don’t have little bears on my walls anymore or a corner hammock of stuffed animals. This would make up my baby room. Now the walls are pink like an Easter egg, my bed is floral, my carpet is tan and my stuffed animals are now on or near my bed. My house is usually quiet unless my brother and I are fighting or my dad is watching football while I’m trying to watch a movie. My house is cozy and “lived in”. It is just the way I like it. Ch. Two Hairs My family all has different hair, we have hair that is all our own. My dad’s hair is short and thin with no fuss. His hair is like a transparent paper cap sitting on his head. It is a blonde feather ball. My brother, Alex, his hair is thick and full of style. His hair is like my dog Brinkley’s after he has been drinking from a hose, all shaggy and misplaced. It is a suave shag carpet. My hair, my hair is thinner than my mom’s and fuller than my dad’s. My hair is plain and boring like a math problem. Mom says it is a head of spaghetti. My mom. My mom has hair that is thick and wavy. Mom’s hair is like a small pretty bush with leaves of gold and brown. Hen I was a little girl her hair was long and full, it had little curls that looked like root beer candy barrels, that smelt like cinnamon and rose peddles glossy shampoo. Now her hair is cut short with no curls but still a beautiful auburn lion’s mane. It smells like pepper and sugar now, now, if you bury your nose after kissing her cheek.

Ch. Three Age Brains & Humor

Three things divide my world. The first is age. At school, at church, in my home as well. Your age is important no matter how tall you are. At school, we are divided up by what grade we are in, special privileges for those that are seventeen. Nothing wrong or right about that. At church, there is K-5th, Jr. High, High School, and Big Church.. When I walk by Big Church I feel so young, then I walk by Da Island, which is K-5th grade and here I feel old. After that, I walk across the field of Sowers Middle School past the Jr. High team, still feeling a bit old. Finally I am there, I am with my high school group. It makes me sad that we are always separated this way except on holidays. We are all one church yet we keep braking off again and again until we say good-bye. The second thing that divides my world is brains. If you get good grades and you’re in AP, you are considered smart. Most of my friends are in AP Euro, AP English, and Pre-Calculus. The more brains you have the better teachers you get, sometimes. Another way that brains divide my world is my brother. He is always getting A’s and B’s but he hardly does any work. My parents expect high grades from him and get really mad if he does not, but from me normal grades are fine. Both of these things can make me stressed thinking that I am not smart enough for my friends and too average to keep up with Alex, not that I would want too. Just sometimes, I think my world is judging me when it is really myself. The last way that this world of mine is classified is by humor. If you got it you’re in, if you not well you might be lost. You see my friends have this unwritten scale that puts us in ranks, the funnier you are and the better you take their harsh jokes, the higher you go. Last year I was in the gutter, the pit of all the jokes, this year I am higher but I don’t do the mean joking. I don’t really like how my friend’s and I do this but no one seems to mind. It is competitive and at times annoying but we stop our dry humor if we see it is hurting some one. This is how it is and I would not have any of it any other way.

Ch. Four My Name

My name Elizabeth has a Hebrew origin. It means God of plenty. My mom, who is like a bird with out song, and my dad named me. Most of my friends call me Liz though. Some people call me Lizzy. My Grandpa will sometimes call me Eliza or Liza. I like that about my name, there are so many different nicknames, I never get bored of hearing the same thing. In the Bible Elizabeth was patient and grateful. That is why my mom liked this name. My name is yellow and bright like sunshine. The only time it is gray is when I’m in trouble. It is like the number seven, elegant and nice to say. August is a shining time to say my name, warm and sweet the way mama says it. Like the song, Hey Jude, my name is long and fun. Wind chimes that play on a windy day, which is what my name reminds me of. I always think of old literature and the 1500’s when I think of my name or see it written. All shimmering and pretty like a spider’s web.

Ch.Five Mary & the Garden

There is this one lady down my street named Mary. I used to always think her house was just ugly and that that’s all it was. Yes, her house is unkempt with huge flower pots buried underground with all orange flowers of different size and shape and with her house painted all different colors not knowing which one to choose, but it is also life and the chaos that the rest of us choose to hide. It is her way of expressing herself. Once or twice a year she comes out and rearranges the pots and the plants. Occasionally you can see her driving her old beat up black truck, I pray she is driving safe. Sometimes around June, you can see her male friend. One time he came to help her move in or out a fridge. I remember when I was in elementary my mom, my friend Zack, my brother, Nick, and I ; we all went over and swept her side walk and pulled out one third of all her weeds. I can remember another time when kids from high school came on Earth day. I think it was, and did some gardening then. With out Mary our street would not be the same; I pray that God will bless her nearly every single day.

Ch. Seven Together by Music

No one at school knows that my brother and I are related unless they think hard about how we have the same last name. The other way they find out is if they are in my class and a teacher asks me if I have a brother named Alex La Grand and at that point, I say yes. No one knows that when we were little our faces were shaped the same or that our eyes both sparkled when we found out we were going to the beach. The one thing that seems to connect us in that weird older brother little sister way is the music that we share. Granted we both like some stuff that is different, but we both like Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and all that other classic oldies Rock n’ Roll. He listens to it more frequently then I do but my dad chose me to go to the Paul McCartney concert. We both like it because in the back of our minds it reminds us of sitting in the back of my dad’s old brown truck going on a camping trip listening to only K-Earth 101.1 FM. That’s when it all started and that is what keeps us connected now.

Ch. Twelve People that U-turn People make u-turns down our street all the time. My mom, dad, brother, and I, we always ask ourselves, “Why?” My mom says she thinks they meant to get on the freeway. My dad says they’re all just lost, no one knows where they’re going. But really it’s because they’re from out of town and don’t know their way around. Sometimes I get sad wishing I were out of town. Sometimes I am mad at them because they are dumb and don’t know where they are going. Other times I think and wonder where they came from what are they looking for, what was it they thought they would find down here, what did they do while they were in this city. There must be something exiting that I don’t know about, because there is not mush to do where I live. Unless of course you happen to love donuts that you have your picture with your son up on a wall with a crisp piece of construction paper behind it. That might be fun for some people. Sometimes when I see those people making a u-turn down my street as I am watching TV, I get really excited and can’t wait to go on a family trip in July.

Ch.Fourteen Asthma be Gone

Ever since I was a little girl, my Grandpa would have bad asthma attacks. He would cough and cough and finally he had to have his own room to sleep in because the coughing would keep port grandma up. When I was eight or nine, my Grandpa got a machine to help him breath, only for a few hours at a time. When this happened I remember how the talk of him leaving us within the next year or so. I was ten and Grandpa was still alive. In January his asthma attacks and bad coughing suddenly stopped. His body was in shock that winter when his wife of fifty years abruptly died. To this day my grandpa’s health is fine, no more heavy coughing no more asthma attacks. It is not my grandpa that keeps my grandma awake any more at night, it is the other way around.

Ch.Fifteen My Dad & the Rain

In Costa Mesa, there are not enough rainy days. Days where you can look out of the car and on the window see rain dropsy dancing. Not enough days of staying in at recess because the grass is too set from the rain last night to watch a movie in class. There are few nights when it rains so hard that it sounds like a million little drums on the patio roof. When it does rain so hard that we have to stay in and watch the rain dance and hear the drums, my dad and I we love it. We will stand under the patio and hold out our hands for the water to hit them and feel cold like quickly melted ice. We stand and stand. We don’t talk we just listen. We listen to the rain and the wind and I listen to sky as it too plays the drums or the loudest violin.

Ch. Eighteen Preschool

I can remember a few times when I thought something was going to be one way and it turned out another. There is one though that sticks out in my mind the most, the first day of preschool. As I was on my way there, walking through the ally and around the corner, I held my mom’s hand tight. I was scared. Scared the teacher was going to be mean, scared I wouldn’t make any friends, and scared I just wasn’t going to like it. I remember my mom walked me into the school to the front of the classroom and helped me pick out a cubby. She got down to her knees and told me to be brave, nice and good. She told me that everything was going to be fine and that I would be able to make a friend. I didn’t believe her, I wanted to but I didn’t. I asked her to stay but she said she had to go to work. I said, “That’s OK I’ll go with you,” in a sad quiet voice. She said I couldn’t come but she would be here right when I got out. She hugged me tight and I didn’t want her to let me go, I didn’t want to let her go either. She opened the door and sent me inside. Then she was gone. I didn’t look back; I only looked at the kids that were already in the room. I saw the teacher and she looked back at me. I think I was late. She told me to come, come and join the class. I sat down in the big circle that they had already formed on the floor. I looked around and pretty much every one was as scared as I was. One girl stuck out to me thought. She looked sad, cared, a excited all at the same time. It was incredible. Now it would be a lie to tell you that I remember how we met but she became my dearest and closest friend. All I know is that by the end of the day neither of us were afraid of school from that day forward because we had each other,. Our moms picked us up at the same time, right on the dot as school let out. My mom says that my new best friend, Kelsey Ann, ran up to her mom and the first thing she said was, “Mommy get that girl’s number!” So, a play date was set and we had great times at school from there on. We were joined at the hip. There was never a sentence I heard from my mom of where I was going without hearing “Kelsey and Elizabeth”, or “You and Kels.” I expected the worst from preschool and got the best, I got a best friend.

Ch. Twenty-Two My Mama Who is Now Brave

I have only seen my mama cry hard once. My mama doesn’t like to show grief so when she does it is bad. About noon on January, 7th, 2001 is the one time that I have e seen my mama cry hard. We were sitting on her bed and she got a call from grandpa. Her eyes were starting to water and she bent her head down. She hung up and set down the phone and as kindly and as quickly as she could she told me that her mother, my grandma, the one that cookies tasted the bet and had tight gray curls my grandma that I loved the best, that she was dead. For the first two seconds I was strong and I held her and let her cry but then I fell apart and we cried together. My mama cried real hard that day. I cry now about every other month and she is there to be strong as a rock for me. It is so brave of her. I could never do it. I love my mama who is brave like a lion and strong like a rock.

Ch. Twenty-Nine The Tree that was My Friend

When I was in 4th grade, I use to tell my friends that the tree was my friend. There was a big tree at California School. It was surrounded by grass; my friend and I would sit under it after school, but close by was the black top. I called that tree my friend then because it did not judge it and me gave me shade. My friend and I came up with good songs and wrote them down under that tree. We told each other our juiciest secrets and shared laughs under that tree. But, why I really called that tree my friend is like why Esperanza called the four skinny trees outside her window her friends, I felt sorry for that tree. It seemed so unhappy, stuck by black top and a sandbox where its roots could never grow. I pasted by it the other day, on my way to Moon Park. The same tree standing at the same height with the same black top. I felt like I could still relate to that same tree, in that same place that should not be. Upset that the tree had not grown; I walked on. One day I know the tree will be gone and in its place a new slide. I will look and feel sorry for it then. I will straighten up and fight harder for the tree that had no room to grow that gave me shade that helped me think that watched me play.

Ch. Forty-Three A House of My Own

A house of my own, all my own. What a dream, a nice house, a blue maybe tan house, one that has little pink flowers and a rose garden. One with big windows that slide up and down, with white shutters. The door will be red or perhaps lime green. There will be a small brick chimney with a few white and charcoal black bricks, along side the red. The backyard will be big with a small little pillow, one with wicker chairs that has floral print of pink, blue, and yellow. There will be another rose garden with oodles of different colors. I will have a black Weber grill and a red Weber BBQ. It simply would not be a home without wind chimes and a hardy wooden swing. On the inside of my house, the one all to myself, all I want is a place to write and read, a big bed with light blue lace, and a medium sized kitchen with stools and a china tea pot, that's royal blue. That’s all I need.