REVISED: ESSAY AND COVER LETTER 2: MIND THE GAP

Essay: Mind The Gap (MindTheGapRVEdit)

Orange.  Blue.  White.  Lots of white.

I can’t keep track of them anymore.  Our morning tea time has been reduced to nothing more than a marker of passing time.  Her skin seems more wrinkled than it was yesterday, her age evident despite a thick layer of makeup.

“A professional student, huh?  We had one of you in the family before,” she says, her piercing blue eyes fading quickly.

I smile as the words slip off of her tongue with a distinct British inflection, allowing myself to travel back to the foggy skies of her childhood that she has painted for me time and time again.  The scent of lavender hand lotion rises into the air as she grips her cup of English tea, hands shaking ever so slightly.  She smiles.

“Yes Grandma, I know,” I reply, simultaneously returning her smile, concealing a sudden rush of tears.

I am going to look just like her one day.

We have the same eyes.

—

Just a few years earlier, we had stepped off of a plane and walked the streets of Liverpool together.  We spent the first day photographing my brother in front of statues and dropping into pubs for mid-afternoon shandies.  Our apartment for the week provided views of bright red double-decker buses flying down Stanley Street on the wrong side of the line; further outside, the evening mist rose over the River Mersey, leaving what lay beyond the shoreline a shadowed mystery.

The three of us collapsed into a pile on the couch that night, our stomachs greased with fish and chips and beer, our cheeks rosy and aching from hours of irrepressible laughter.  We slowly drifted towards sleep, allowing ourselves to be lost in thought as drunken voices rose up from the streets below, muddled with the waterside wind that rushed in through open windows, fading into the soundtrack of the night.  Suddenly, Grandma sat up and looked right at me, her face pained with concern and confusion,

“Where are we, Cait?”

That was the first time it happened.

—

She hides the orange ones.  They make her nauseous, she says.  She hides them only to forget how they make her feel.  She then places them in the appropriate lettered bin for the next week.

Over and over again.

Orange.  Blue. Lots of white.

—

It’s been hours since we sat down.  My thumb rolls over a stack of quarters as I eye my opponents up and down.  I decide that my pile is the biggest.  A grin spreads across my freckle-scattered face as I run my hand through my tangled mess of red curls, trying desperately to lay my hair flat like hers.

The cards start to fly again and I gather mine into a pile.  They are still too big for my hands and it takes me much longer than my grandparents to hold all five at the same time.

“The Queen and what follows.”

Another grin, bigger than the last one.  This game is my favorite.  It makes me feel more English, more connected to her.  She catches my eye and winks across the table, carefully setting the rest of the cards in the center of the table.

I want to be just like her when I grow up.

—

I will never forget the blue of her eyes.

Even in the old sepia washed photos that line the crackling walls of her home of fifty years, they stand out from the others.  They are pure, honest and always smiling.

Even when she can’t remember what she is smiling about.

—

It’s Wednesday.  Danny pulls up in front of her house, beeping his horn lightly as he drums his weathered fingers along the dashboard; a most charming escort, he has already called a few times this morning to make sure she knew what day it was.  I watch from a distance as my grandma emerges from the front door, dressed head to toe in her Sunday best, and greets him with a warm smile.

Her beauty is timeless, flawless, well preserved.

I wrap my scarf tighter around my face, trying to remember every detail of the scene being played out before my eyes.  The royal blue of her church jacket.  The reflection of the winter sun on her pearl earrings.  The excitement on her face to be taken out to the senior club at this time every Week.

She remembers.

I set this memory with the others.  Grandma standing next to a dashing young American in uniform who would one day bring her home with him.  Grandma perched behind a row of siblings, the oldest and strongest of the lot of ten.  Grandma caught by surprise dancing at a family wedding.

Her smile has never changed.  At least that part of her never fades.

—

My hair will turn white like hers as I get older, because that’s what happens to redheads.  The strange thing about us is that the gene skipped a generation and, out of four grandchildren, I alone was born with her distinguished auburn locks and light eyes.

The thought of my mind fading to white is absolutely terrifying.  It runs in the family, too, you know…

—

“It’s a shame that this one is a lesbian.  She’s got such a pretty face.”

My heart stopped at the injection of conversation into our mindless afternoon ritual of talk shows over tea.  I take a deep breath and exhale slowly as I feel the blood begin to race to my cheeks.

“She likes women, Grandma.”  The statement, just barely audible, escapes my lips, traversing the length of the couch and fading into its woven threads as the room returns to silence.

“But she could have such a nice fella. I don’t understand.”

A lump in my throat rises as tears begin to fill my eyes again.  I become suddenly grateful that the blinds are blocking any trace of the afternoon sunlight, casting shadows on the shame plastered across my face.

A round of justifications fires through my mind:

She’s just set in her ways.

Things are different now.

But why bother?

She doesn’t know.

I’ve never told her.

She won’t remember anyway.

—

Orange.  Blue.  White.  Lot of white…  Tan.

There’s a new color in the bottle this week.  We read the dosage together before the weekly sorting begins.  My pulse heightens with the placement of each pill.

“I have to get to class soon.  Do you need anything?”

A lie. A reason to escape, to clear my mind.  I finish my last sip of tea and start to pack up my books.  Our eyes, mirror images, meet over the worn kitchen table.

“A professional student, huh?  We had one of you in the family before.”

 

Cover Letter (MindTheGapCL2)

Dear Reader,

I had a very hard time revising this essay.  I had taken so much time and effort to choose every word and phrase in the first draft that it seemed like I would be taking away from the raw emotion of the essay to revise it hard.  One thing that I did bring out in the revision was specific word choice that would relate to the main themes.  For example:

Draft 1: “Her smile has never changed.

At least that part of her is still there.”

Draft 2: “Her smile has never changed.

At least that part of her never fades.”

By relating this back to the idea of memory fading, pictures fading, people fading, I feel that I made a more concrete statement rather than just saying what is there.

I also took small words out here and there, making the writing more efficient and to the point.  I thought about changing the order of the paragraphs, but found the confusion between time periods to cause the reader a certain level of intentional disorientation.

Thanks for reading!

Hutch