Faydra Stratton

Non Fiction Sample 1

In an effort to drum up some more freelance magazine writing opportunities I've been writing short personal articles.  For example:

Husbands! We Love ‘Em, But…

When Mars weds Venus… Entering the marital galaxy.

The last time I almost killed my husband occurred on the Lord’s Day, after church.  Most Sunday mornings I have to arrive to church early because I sing.  These mornings I take my husband’s truck and he arrives with our son in my car (that’s better than swapping out the car seat). Leaving my husband to wake, feed, and dress our child is scary enough (you never know what the kid will be wearing and many Sundays our son arrives with a tidal wave of a hairdo because Dad didn’t bother to locate the brush), but recently I learned the truck itself can be a danger.  My husband knew I’d be driving his truck that morning, but did he bother to warn me that he was out of gas?  Uh, of course not.

I made it to church fine, but after church when I was driving downtown to meet some girlfriends for lunch I felt an unusual shaking that caused my eyes to check the gages.  I was nowhere near a gas station, so I decided to keep going, counting on making it there, and then, when we finished, getting a few miles up the road to fill up.  But no such luck.

While looking for a parking spot I ended up on a hill, and then I ended up rolling back down that hill.  The truck gave up in the middle of an intersection at the bottom.  I attempted (in heels) to move the truck, but quickly abandoned this idea, choosing instead to flick on the hazards and rustle up help.  Two men pushed the truck to a curb, I phoned my husband to come with gas, and then I walked the rest of the way to the restaurant.

Husbands! We love them, but…

            I have heard women complain that their spouses have selective hearing, but my husband also seems to have selective blindness.  Him: “Honey, where’s the mayonnaise?”  Me: “Fridge door, bottom shelf.”  Him: “No, I looked there.”  I then proceed to show him the mayonnaise in the fridge door on the bottom shelf. 

My husband can do a masterful job cleaning the dishes but be utterly blind to the crumbs left on the kitchen counter and table.  Because I love and vowed to stay married to him in spite of his peculiar disabilities I have accepted that my husband can only prepare food if I locate his ingredients, and that he can clean up, but his capabilities are limited by his male blindness disease.

There is side of me I don’t listen to as often as I could, this side of me is a humble woman who recognizes the parts of her own personality that prove equally frustrating and annoying to the man who vowed to love me in spite of my own quirks.  There’s my, Sweetheart-I-tried-one-thing-to-fix-the-computer-and-it-didn’t-work-so-stop-watching-your-favorite-show-and-get-in-here-NOW disease I sometimes get (also known as selfishness and impatience) or my, Yes-I-just-left-to-get-the-mail-but-I-habitally-lock-the-door-so-COME-LET-ME-IN (also known as weirdness and impatience).  But enough about me… 

A lot of men steal the sheets but my husband has the audacity to do this and then blames it me! He insists I should hold my side of the sheet, or he offers up a theory that I give him the sheets in my sleep so that I’ll have something else to fuss at him about.  And he’s being serious!

About five year’s ago on our wedding day the pastor joked (and warned) that we had no idea what we were getting into.  I didn’t know this meant that every time we got in the car we’d argue over which route to take even if we’re only going to a restaurant down the street or that my husband would irritate me by asserting his opinion on how I should cut onions.  (Augh, the joys of marrying an engineer…) 

There are many days I look at my husband and realize I accidentally married a space alien.  Sure, I’d prayed over my decision to date and eventually marry him, but I guess love prevented me from finding God’s human best for my life, and I ended up with my guy, who seems more like a cosmic experiment, sent to test the limitations of this unsuspecting female.

But I’ve accepted my fate.

The next five years will undoubtedly prove interesting.

Novel Excerpt - 3

Where I Stand

When you’re a child you can only imagine your life one way – the way it is at the age you’re imagining your future life.  All my childhood stories include Kim, so I always imagined my stories with Kim would continue -- that we would grow older but stay together.  Someday we would live side by side, our kids playing just as we had, an endless cycle of friendship.

I never imagined I could lose her.  We haven’t lived in the same neighborhood since I was thirteen and she twelve, but we always managed to stay in touch, cross paths.  We used to call ourselves mermaid sisters, so I always thought that no matter how far apart we grew, we would always be swimming in the same sea, forever connected by the memories and waters of Horseshoe. 

I took for granted that this would always be so, that I could swim back in Kim’s direction at will, that she’d be there waiting for me like a stored attic treasure abandoned until a rainy Sunday’s wave of nostalgia brings it to the light of day, if only for an afternoon.  It’s been six years since I’ve seen Kim, at least four since we’ve spoken. Every year I’ve sent a Christmas card and once or twice I’ve received one from her.  I had no reason to believe she’d disappear, that when I wanted her, she’d be gone. 

Justin proposed during my second year of grad school when I came down for Christmas break.  I called Kim to let her know but was only able to leave messages.  Justin and I had been engaged for three months when he came to Montana to visit me during my spring break.  We’d set a wedding date for August but were still at the beginning stages of planning and had thousands of remaining details.  Making decisions for a Florida ceremony and reception while living in Montana with absolutely no help from my still work-obsessed mother felt impossible. I started joking about eloping. The follow-through I blame on hormones. 

The line Justin and I had drawn for the physical part of our relationship continued to be pushed further back with each overnight visit. During his stay we’d planned a three-night camping trip, but I had no idea how we’d spend three nights in a tent together without giving up completely.  The night before the trip we lay in bed kissing.  My shirt came off, then my bra, hands were up, then down… finally I pulled away. 

“Let’s get married tomorrow,” I said. 

Justin stared at me. “Are you being serious?”

I nodded, reaching for my clothes.  “This camping trip can be our honeymoon.” I smiled and kissed his cheek, holding my top across my chest.  “I’ll let you go all the way if you make an honest woman out of me.”

“We’re going to Italy on our honeymoon.  I’ve already booked the tickets.”

“We can still have the reception and the Italy honeymoon as planned but let’s change the wedding date.”

“My family might kill me.  You don’t want a dead husband.  Let’s just kiss.”  He leaned forward again and tugged at my shirt.  I pushed him away.

“We could buy the rings in the morning, grab some witnesses, get married, and then go camping.  If we get married, tomorrow night you can make love to me under the stars.”  This was an exaggeration.  There was still snow on the ground, so we’d be seeing the stars through the mesh top of my tent.

“We’d cancel the ceremony in August?”  I could tell he wanted to give in, but was still working out the details in his mind.

“But still have the reception.  A celebratory party.”

“My mother might have a heart attack.”

“Blame it on my divorced parents.  Say the details of pleasing everyone was getting too stressful for me.”

“Then you could move in with me this May as soon as you got done with school.”  Additional benefits of my proposal were slowly occurring to him.

“Exactly.  I won’t have to spend the summer living with my mother.”

The fact that the next time I’d be coming to Florida I could move in with him for good sealed the decision in Justin’s mind.

When we returned from our camping trip I started making phone calls to announce our elopement.  I called Kim but her roommate answered and said that Kim was out with her boyfriend.  She gave me Kim’s cell phone number, but rather than dial it I continued down my list.  Christie needed to know she wouldn’t have to fork down a deposit on a bridesmaids dress after all.

Justin returned to Florida and began house shopping.  I grew busy polishing my thesis, a collection of short stories.  I decided to write out the explanation of our impromptu wedding in a card I sent Kim.  I still didn’t hear from her, but later when I mailed an invitation for our reception, Kim mailed in her RSVP affirming her attendance.  I looked forward to getting to see her again, but the day of the party I was so busy with the other two hundred guests that I didn’t notice Kim hadn’t appeared.   Her absence finally occurred to me while on the plane for my second honeymoon.

Before the reception, I’d been busy with the party details, then the Italy trip: Venice, Florence, an afternoon in Sienna before heading off to Rome.  Ruins, Piazzas, and Tartufo. After the honeymoon, I was able to settle into the role of a young bride as I’d always imagined it should be.  I worked to decorate our home, visiting antique stores and novelty shops for special touches, even ordering a stained glass panel from a local artist to hang in our living room window.  I subscribed to home magazines and tried new recipes. We settled on a church and discussed getting a dog.

During the day Justin went to work and I stayed home to write.  I published a poem and continually sent out the stories from my thesis collection with no success.  In that first year of marriage I received one phone message from Kim who said she was in need of travel advice. In love, she and her new man were planning a trip to Europe. I called her back but never got through, not even to a machine or voice mail.

For our second anniversary I gave Justin a card with a baby on the cover.  Inside I wrote, “Love of my life, let’s make a baby.” 

After that I went off the pill. As I entered into this new stage I again, wanted to let Kim know.  I’d misplaced her cell phone number, but I called her home number without success.  I called off and on for a month and sent a few emails but never got through. My emails were returned with failure notices.  Mysterious. I still didn’t want to admit that I also found it alarming. 

We couldn’t conceive.  The problem wasn’t with him.  Or with me.  We just inexplicably couldn’t conceive.  I wondered if I couldn’t get pregnant because of Kim or the shell or other lingering Horseshoe darkness. Perhaps there was a second curse, a curse on the daughters.  We couldn’t bear children.  Kim had already miscarried once and now I couldn’t conceive.  Was there a cruel twist of fate that the girls who’d uncursed the boys hadn’t managed to save themselves?  I pushed the thoughts aside.  Justin and I decided on fertility treatments. 

I became so wrapped up in the business of getting pregnant, I lost track of everything else, all of my friends, save a few women at my church I relied on for support.  I prayed away my fears and kept hidden the surfacing questions. After swimming in those waters.  Am I tainted somehow?

Twelve weeks into a stable pregnancy we made the news public, but I still couldn’t get a hold of Kim.  My letter explaining the news, detailing our struggles came back to me.  I grew alarmed.  Panicked.  It seemed like an ill omen.  I tried not to let my thoughts give way to superstition.  Christians aren’t supposed to put stock in that sort of thing, but I still had unnerving suspicions. 

And now, five months into a stable pregnancy I see my life as a beautifully spun web, connected delicately to all that I need to sustain me, but an important cord has been severed for which I could suffer deeply.  Justin blames my moodiness on the pregnancy, assures me that Kim would surface.  She’s probably moved and would call soon with new contact information.  My head believes this, but my heart worries. 

When we were little we’d compete to see who could swim underneath the water the longest amount of time and when we’d finally relent we’d come up gasping for air.  I’ve done all the laps I’m able and I am exhausted. 

Novel Excerpt - 2

In Alabama

            It’s funny that I can look back and remember the phone book and the pizza and the making fun of the Alabama boys, but I don’t have a clear memory of when Kim’s family drove down the driveway, turned left onto Horseshoe and then made another left onto the main road.  Did I even watch the sad procession?  It seems like something I should remember, her final wave, our one last conversation and maybe even a hug that morning.  Unless I was at school, fidgeting in my desk, staring at the clock, only able to imagine the moving van, waiting for the clock’s hands to turn to the numbers of when Kim said they’d be leaving, picturing her dad and Nathan in the white van and the girls with Kyle in the mini-van, Shelly probably crying, and Kim acting disinterested, as though her parents’ decisions didn’t really affect her, probably reading a magazine, or pretending to.  That was the beginning of her pre-teen attitude with them.  It hardened fast. 

            I can see it all without having seen it at all because I knew the Carsons better than they needed to be known.  I could have slipped into the role of any family member and played their part. 

            Things got better and worse for Kim that day, and our stories are mostly separate from then on.  I didn’t expect that then.  A mermaid sister couldn’t just swim away like that.  Then again, it’s a big ocean with some very strange currents. 

            Kim finished out her seventh grade year in Alabama and sent me regular letters plump full of new names and events.  There were girls at her new church, boys across the lake in her neighborhood, boys and girls in her classes.  She wanted to start track in the eighth grade and maybe she’d join school choir or church choir or both.  Now sure, the very first letter she wrote me she’d written in the van on the way up to Alabama and all it talked about was how much she already missed me, how mean her parents were, how stupid Alabama was going to be, appropriate stuff like that.  The next letter was about the house; she liked it enough but it wasn’t nearly so “perfect” as her parents made it seem; the pool was smaller and she said her room was an ugly shade of peach they hadn’t yet repainted.   But by letters three and four the new names and new activities came pouring out. 

            My dad was able to use his frequent flier miles to book me a flight so a few weeks into summer I flew up for a visit.  Mrs. Carson and Kim and Shelly came to the airport, which was almost an hour drive from their house.  Mrs. Carson said she was so happy their “other daughter” had finally come up to visit, and I thought this weird, not really like her to say that.  Maybe she’d already taken on some of that southern hospitality.

I don’t think Kim took a breath the whole ride home.  All she could talk about was who I had to meet and all we’d be doing. She was especially excited because her youth group was having a pool party the next night and then I could meet Chad, Kim’s crush.  Chad was going to be in ninth grade so next year they wouldn’t be at the same school.  “I gotta catch him now!” Kim said which didn’t seem like a very Kim thing to say.

            We pulled up the driveway and Rascal ran to the van and stood barking at the door until we got it open.  She started licking my hands when I went to pet her -- a good welcome.  Nathan and another boy opened the front door. 

“He’s one of our neighbors across the lake.  His brother is my age, but they’re real spoiled.  I don’t like ‘em too much but it’s fun playing their video games, and they have their own canoe and a paddle boat that we get to use whenever we want,” Kim told me.

We put my stuff in Kim’s room, and she was right, it was way too peachy, made worse by the fact that Kim had a pink bedspread.  Her mom made us grilled-cheese sandwiches, and then we went swimming.  I was glad we went swimming before meeting people or anything like that because I liked it just us being us.  I wanted to meet her friends and go on the paddleboat, but most important was seeing what had stayed the same in spite of all that had changed.          

Novel Excerpt - 1

Mermaids and Towel Beds

            Sun time during summer time meant pool time for Kim and me.  I always put on my favorite one-piece that I could only wear to Kim’s because according to my mother it was too old to wear in public.  I loved that bathing suit in spite of the fabric snarls along the bottom from all the times I’d sat on the concrete and scooted along or into the pool, but even I acknowledged the tenuous abilities of the thread holding the side seem together. If the seam finally tore, revealing a small circle of my white skin, it would be ok if Kim saw.  Mine and Kim’s bedrooms were only separated by a road, and we were like sisters.

Kim had a sister, Shelly the Snob, and a brother, Nathan the Brat, but I didn’t have anyone, so it was good Kim and I were close in age and we both loved water.

            When we were in Kim’s pool we played pool games.  Sometimes we placed plastic diving rings the colors of Lifesaver candies onto our ankles, and we made it so our legs stayed together like tails.  We were mermaids.  Mermaids lived in the deep-end because it was more challenging to swim where your tail couldn’t touch. 

We had other games for when we weren’t mermaids, when we had our legs.  Often we’d compete.  Who could get across the pool fastest while hopping?  Who could swim faster doing the butterfly? We liked to see how long we could hold our breath, swimming back and forth and back and then only halfway because that was as far as we could make it without air.   We invented relays with instructions such as: swim to the middle of the pool, touch the brick (or ring or toy), hop twice, go to the shallow end, stand on your hands for five seconds, swim underwater to the deep end to collect four pennies without coming up for air...

            And we played the common games such as Marco Polo, which everyone knew how to play.  Kim and I changed it though yelling whatever we could think of.  Sometimes when Kim was “it” she yelled, “Strawberry,” and I called back, “Shortcake” and sometimes I’d yell, “Peanut Butter” and she’d say, “Jelly.”  It was fun but Nathan didn’t get it. He always said “Polo” no matter what we called out first.

            As it grew later, we made lawn chairs into houses and laid down towel beds.  We had tea parties with plastic cups and pool water and made jokes about Shelly and Nathan who weren’t old enough to live under lawn chairs and had to live in the plastic house whose roof was a lot shorter than when they got it a few Christmases back.  In these houses the sun set over us and we were sisters and there was no road separating our towel beds and laughter.

       I miss those days.