Science in Progress Final Draft

The Love of Mitochondria

His dark brown eyes look into my own of a lighter hue.

Light bounces in, and its signal is accepted by photoreceptors. This will be sent to the brain to be processed.

He touches my hand.

Receptors send a signal through the peripheral nervous system. An electrochemical signal responds, stimulating cardiac muscles. Shorter repolarization of action potentials produce premature heart palpitations.

My heart beats rapidly.  

Simultaneously an electrical signal is sent through the nervous system in the form of action potentials into the T-tubule of muscle cells. This promotes the release of calcium into the sarcomere of a muscle. Actin and myosin can now interact with one another, producing a muscle contraction.

My hand reaches for his.

ATP floods into the sacromere and binds to the myosin head. It frees itself from the actin filament. The muscle relaxes.

My hand relaxes in his.

The yellow, brown and orange sand "steps" lies beneath our feet, the massive open expanse of eroded sandstone above our heads. Our mouths gape at the breathtaking view: miles upon miles of green trees planted in the mist of brown and sandy ridges. The grey clouds cover what could have been a blue sky. After a couple of miles of hiking in Hocking Hills, foraging our own path through the cold mud and slightly frozen ground, awkwardly walking in a single file, refusing to take his hand for support, slipping down the hill and being covered in mud, silently running out of things to say, we have made it . . . Old Man's Cave. . . He is holding my hand. . . . We have survived.

Our first date.

~

Companionship has been ingrained into our brain by society and religion. We need love to live as 1 Corinithians 13:2 says, “if I . . . understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” There has always been a need for a union of two.  It was only through marriage of Adam and Eve that God created us in his image. We need another individual to live with, understand, sympathize with, cherish, and love until our dying days. We need someone to be with us through sickness and through health. We need someone to bring out the best in us. We need someone to make us complete.

~

Compatibility was not what I had at all thought about when I came to college. I was too busy, too focused on my goal to get a double major, do well in school. I needed to focus on my studies; I did not need a guy to be a distraction. And while I did sincerely believe in Christianity, I was sick of the idea of relationships . .  . women being submissive? Eve always getting the blame for the fall of mankind? Really? Didn’t they both eat the apple? Did they not both fall? Were they not both tempted? I went to bible study but kept my tongue when relationship issues sprang up or a guy went about submission of women. That was the last thing I needed – a guy telling me what to do.

That is not what I found with Tyler. We both lived on the second floor of Perkins that year; both were biology students and Christians. He was a part of the group of friends that I began hanging out with. He was the brother of a fellow trombone in the Marching 110. We met in Shively when I had been looking for a place to seat and eat after band practice – both Sarah and Sara, who I usually ate with, had meetings that day – and he offered me a chair. Soon we began studying together for the exams.

Over winter break, he started sending me texts. Before, I received the normal group text, “Hey, dinner in 10 minutes? Meet in the lobby,” but now it was the genuine, “How’s your break going?” or the more intimate, “Do you like Mannheim Steamroller? I could get tickets for us to go? . . .You could call it an early Christmas present.” Unfortunately, that never happened – I had to leave to play in the New Orleans Bowl.

I still remember the evening in December when the lunar eclipse happened. We had been talking about it for days and developed this plan that we were both going to watch it at the same time. So around 2 am, I stealthily snuck out of my room and down the stairs, grabbed my phone and camera, and made my way outside. The snow was wet and cold against my fleece pjs until came up with the brilliant idea to sit upon another winter coat. There I talked to Tyler on the phone for about an hour while watching the lunar eclipse. Most of the time it was silence or non-sense talking or giggling or shivering. And while Columbus had been cloudy that night and he really did not see anything, still we shared that experience together.

~

Humans seek each other for stability. We follow the elements that make us. Unless the element is an unreactive, very stable noble gas, such as Neon or Argon, most elements can only find stability in another. They react so that they become more stable, more complete.

Biology furthers this need for relationships in the idea of procreation. A life form must be able to grow, metabolize, respond to stimuli, adapt and reproduce. – It was one of the reasons why it was so controversial whether a virus is living or nonliving; it does reproduce but relies on the host to be able to do that. – It is the idea of reproduction and diversifying the gene pool for better survival that underlies attraction. We are attracted to a person that will better pass on your genes and through pheromones, we find this compatible individual. It was also this idea that led my Evolution professor to conclude that the lack of pheromones, covered by deodorants and perfumes led to the higher rates of divorce and break-up.

~

Tyler and I would grin and roll our eyes at each other when our professor would go on with this theory of attraction or his insistent belief that individuals should not shave, wear deodorants or really anything that civilization had forced upon us. Not wear deodorant? Not bathe? Eek! Not shave my legs . . . .okay, that is all good for winter months, but even then . . . it becomes too prickly and dry. Ugh.

Three months had passed since our first date and five since that lunar eclipse. We could now laugh at the awkwardness of that day in February. The day that he had brought me a huge velveteen Valentine’s heart filled with at least 50 Hershey chocolates. I shyly had blushed and given him his birthday gift – it fell on Valentine’s Day – of books from his favorite mystery author Agatha Christie. Then as if nothing had happened, we had gone back to doing homework. We were both logical and should not let emotion be shown. We kept with our normal routine; Ashley, the girl who had a huge crush on Tyler and followed him around like a puppy dog, still came over to study and Tyler still walked her back to her dorm around midnight. Or how on that day, I had broken down crying to Sarah, wondering that because Tyler walked Ashley home every single night, he must like her and how he could give me chocolate. (I swear I am not that stupid.) Or how that day, Sarah consequentially yelled at him, and he came clamoring over to my room with the confused “What did I do” expression. Or how that day finally ended at 1 am with,

“Well, do we want to be more than friends? Would you like to go on a date with me?”

Our friendship grew. We were there for each other. In texting he was the first person I talked to in the morning and last person that I wished good night. I was the first person he would text to let me know about good or bad news. I was the first person that he would come to bounce an idea off on school, or a dilemma. He was my best friend.

It was a symbiotic relationship.

~

Mitochondria have two membranes surrounding its matrix and its own set of DNA - which is believed to be passed down from our mother's mitochondria in the egg. Theoretically, this is all because the mitochondria once existed as bacteria and were engulfed by the larger eukaryote. In exchange for protection, it broke down pyruvate into ATP, which the cell could use as energy to maintain itself and our body. Our muscles could use that to contract and move. Our heart can use that energy to beat. As basic as water and food are to us, we need our mitochondria to break down that food into energy. We need that energy in order to live.

We need our symbiotic relationships.

~

We need love. 1 Corinthians 13 dictates that “Love is patient; love is kind . . .  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Song of Solomon 8:6-7 states that “love is strong as death . . . Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.” No matter how frustrated I could get with Tyler’s obliviousness, I still loved him. No matter how much I frustrated him with my long “soliloques,” he must have still cared for me.

~

I still had not told Tyler that I loved him. A year had passed since we had first started dating. I had been thinking about saying it for about three or four months, but I was not sure how to do it. I wasn’t even sure how he would react. Was he supposed to say it first? Was this how a guy felt on asking out a girl? The anxiousness of rejection but hope for acceptance? All I knew was that I wanted it to be special. Maybe when we were walking in Hocking Hills? Maybe a night at Emeritus Park? Under the cherry blossoms during April? Sure I could wait another two months . .

 Instead, it had just slipped out. We were cuddling on my paisley teal and white bedspread, watching a movie, but I could not remember the movie at all. I usually fell asleep, especially if it was that horrible movie “SSSSSSS” or “Snakes on a Plane.” I would let Tyler pick and tried to stay awake, but normally fell asleep. Anyway, all I remember is waking up. The movie had already ended, and he was snoozing beside me. I then ruined it with, whispering in his ear, “I love you.”

“What?” He opened eyes, but I am still not sure if he heard it.

I looked at the bed spread. “Nothing.”

“Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:7)

~

But we did love each other, I think. We endured the good and bad times together. He hugged me during the liver failure and later death of my aunt during finals week of Winter Quarter freshman year. He offered his shoulder when I heard the news of my grandma's death finals week of that Spring Quarter. I helped him with problems of dealing with an insecure ex-girlfriend. I was there for him when he was anxious about grad school, his majors, his indecision for a Double Major in Math, a minor in Chemistry, or his frustration in not having work summer of Sophomore/Junior Year. We were there for one another as two individuals in love or in symbiosis.

~

            In an ideal world, mitochondria generates energy. Our cells work. Our body is maintained. Yet our life is not perfect. We age. Our mitochondria generate reactive oxygen species, or oxygen radicals through the pumping of hydrogen in Complex I and III of the Electron Transport Chain. If not removed, these build up in the cells. They act as a toxin and promote decline in cellular function. As our cells degrade, our bodies break down. We age.

~

The words reverberate as we sit on the teal bedspread a couple of feet away from one another.

I have known for a month that they are coming. Maybe longer. The busy schedules, the lack of communication, the infrequent texts, the distance in living, the fact that he goes out to lunch more with his other friends than tries to find time to spend with me, the fact that I am way too busy with school, work or band to care, the fact that he is drinking more than I would like, the fact that I am angry with him and will not share why, the fact that we are changing . . . growing . . . All of this acts as ligands, or signals. My receptors should have accepted them and prepared.

"I just don't think this is working out."

~

 Instead, I imagine that this was probably something that hydrogen would say when leaving its NADH in the mitochondria. It flits away across the inner mitochondrial membrane. It probably had a jolly time with NAD, but it has to leave. It needs to cross the membrane to create the proton gradient to force ATP to be made.

I wonder what if the cell had said that to the mitochondria. Would we still be living? Would we be as big or complex? But what if it had been a faulty mitochondria? Overloaded with too much food to generate ATP? What if it produced too many ROS? Was I a faulty mitochondria? Had I let too much work and school overload me, not providing enough for this relationship? Had I provided too much? Too much that the cell was overwhelmed? That had the body aged too quickly? Degraded too soon?

~

I walk him out of the front door, down the grey/white stairs and to his car. We hug. The  freezer soon finds me: strawberry ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate. My roommate Siri turns on the light. I see the disgusting concoction. I see her worried eyes. I am sad. I am anger. . . . I am . . .  relieved?

~

            It is times like these that it is hard to have faith. Some days I felt lost or confused about where I was going. Would I be able to call Tyler a friend?  As Christians, we are called to love everyone, including friends or acquaintances or ex-boyfriends. We must love those that we are still trying to not to be angry at, forget and forgive. Yet it is times like these that we must love. We must have faith.

As much as 1 Corinthians 13 dictates about the consistency of love, it also states, “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” It shows that we do not know what will happen. It shows that each experience has a purpose that we may not understand, but we must have faith. It gives the power and strength to be independent. The faith to accept whatever your life will. That maybe you will find someone and maybe not.

~

Science also offers strength.

Hydrogen eventually diffuses out of the inner membrane space of the mitochondria and into the cell. Eventually it finds and binds to some other element, most likely oxygen. There it becomes more stable and remains with that element until eventually it will leave again and bind to something else again.

Or that maybe the mitochondria did not need the cell or the body . . . That it could have lived without the cell, it could have been independent and strong, remained single. In that case, would it not have been known as mitochondria . . . would it not be a microbe? A bacteria?

~

He sits down next to me in class. He asks nonchalantly about winter break, about all the months since October that I have not seen him. He laughs at some stupid joke or woe that I share about work. He shares his drama with his roommates in the apartment. I express my sympathy. We do not mention the _________. It does not exist. It did not happen; we were not in a relationship. Neither of us were in love. Neither of us were mitochondria, neither of us were hydrogen with oxygen or NADH.

No. We are bacteria. That are single-celled and independent. That just happen to live in symbiosis.

Science in Progress - Proposed Research

Preface: 

This work is not in its complete format, but just some prewriting/brainstorming for my final essay in this class. Overall, I want to look at relationships through a scientific and possibly religious lens, and below contains a selection of that. Enjoy and please let me know what you think and what I can do to improve this! Thanks! 

Caution: Below contains the information of controversial dangers: love and relationships. 

 

Hydrogen and Mitochondria 

His dark brown eyes look into my own of a lighter hue.
Light bounces in, and its signal is accepted by photoreceptors. This will be sent to the brain to be processed.
He touches my hand.
Receptors send a signal through the peripheral nervous system. An electrochemical signal responds, stimulating cardiac muscles. Shorter repolarization of action potentials cause the heart to contract more frequently, producing premature heart palpitations. Simultaneously an electrical signal is sent through the nervous system in the form of action potentials into the T-tubule of muscle cells. This promotes the release of calcium into the sacromere, which binds to the troponin on an actin filament. Actin binds to the myosin head and through a powerstroke, contracts. Over several sacromeres, the entire muscle contracts.
My hand reaches for his.
ATP floods into the sacromere and binds to the myosin head. It frees itself from the actin filament. The muscle relaxes.
My hand relaxes in his.
The yellow, brown and orange sand "steps" lies beneath our feet. The massive open expanse of eroded sandstone above our heads. Our mouths gape at the breathtaking view: miles upon miles of green trees planted in the mist of brown and sandy ridges. The grey clouds cover what could have been a blue sky. After a couple of miles of hiking in Hocking Hills, foraging our own path through the cold mud and slightly frozen ground, awkwardly walking in a single file, refusing to take his hand for support, slipping down the hill and being covered in mud, silently running out of things to say, we have made it . . . Old Man's Cave. . . He is holding my hand. . . . We have survived.

Our first date.

Companionship has been ingrained into our brain by society and religion. Since the beginning of civilization, marriage has been an upheld institution. But even before that in Genesis, there has been a need for a union of two. It was only through marriage of two individuals that God created us in his image. Since the days of Eden, we have needed another individual to live with, understand, sympathize with, cherish, and love until our dying days. We need someone to be with us through sickness and through health. We need someone to bring out the best in us. We need someone to make us complete.

 I want to say that T and I had that perfect compatibility. We both needed companionship and both enjoyed the company of each other. Both biology nerds - I mean, majors - we could revel in the biology jokes or nerdy pick-up lines like, "If I were an enzyme, I would be DNA helicase so that I could unzip your genes" . . . haha, it is funny, right? Anyway, we would laugh at that.

We could complain in the hardships of our anatomy lab, dissecting the pig that he had named after the king in One Thousand and One Nights. We studied physiology, evolution and chemistry together. We suffered through organic chemistry together, through the good and bad days and exams. We borrowed each other's books: micro, cell bio, genetics, physics. We both discussed and agreed on religion together as he was Catholic and I Protestant.

We both supported one another. He hugged me during the liver failure and later death of my aunt during finals week of Winter Quarter freshman year. He let me cry on his shoulder when I heard the news of my grandma's death finals week of that Spring Quarter. I was there for him when he was anxious about grad school, his majors, his indecision for a Double Major in Math, a minor in Chemistry, or his frustration in not having work summer of Sophomore/Junior Year. We were there for each other. In texting he was the first person I talked to in the morning and last person that I wished good night. He was my best friend.

It was a symbiotic relationship.
   
Mitochondria have two membranes surrounding its matrix and its own set of DNA - which is believed to be passed down from our mother's mitochondria in the egg. In many aspects it acts like a bacteria or prokaryotic cell, existing in our own eukaryotic cells - a fancy name for complex cells with organelles, organization and which typically exist in multi-cellular organisms like us -. Theoretically, this is all because the mitochondria once existed as bacteria and were engulfed by the larger eukaryote. In exchange for protection, it broke down pyruvate into ATP, which the cell could use as energy to maintain itself. It converted pyruvate into acetyl CoA to be generated into the Citric Acid Cycle to make coenzymes. These coenzymes NADH and FADH2 supply the protons pumped through the inner membrane of the mitochondria and generate electrons through the Electron Transport Chain. This proton gradient forces the creation of ATP. Hence, it creates energy. As basic as water and food are to us, we need our mitochondria to break down that food into energy. We need that energy in order to live.

We need our symbiotic relationships.
 
 In an ideal world, mitochondria generates energy. Our cells work. Our body is maintained. Yet our life is not perfect. We age. Our mitochondria generate reactive oxygen species, or oxygen radicals through the pumping of hydrogen in Complex I and III of the Electron Transport Chain. If not removed, these build up in the cells. They act as a toxin and promote decline in cellular function. As our cells degrade, our bodies break down. We age.

The words echo through my head. I have known for a month that they are coming. Maybe longer. The busy schedules, the lack of communication, the infrequent texts, the distance in living, the fact that he goes out to lunch more with his other friends than tries to find time to spend with me, the fact that I am way to busy with school, work or band to care, the fact that he is drinking more than I would like, the fact that I am angry with him and will not share why, the fact that we are changing . . . growing . . . All of this acts as ligands, or signals. My receptors should have accepted them and prepared.

"I just don't think this is working out."

 Instead, I imagine that this was probably something that hydrogen would say when leaving its NADH in the mitochondria. It flits away across the inner mitochondrial membrane. It probably had a jolly time with NAD, but it has to leave. It needs to cross the membrane to create the proton gradient to force ATP to be made.

I wonder what if the cell had said that to the mitochondria. Would we still be living? Would we be as big or complex? But what if it had been a faulty mitochondria? Overloaded with too much food to generate ATP? What if it produced too many ROS?

Was I a faulty mitochondria? Had I let too much work and school overload me and make me a faulty mitochondria, not providing enough for this relationship? Had I provided too much? Too much that the cell was overwhelmed? That had the body age too quickly? Degrade too quickly?

Religion helps perpetuate the societal ideal for the perfect companion. It speaks against adultery. It mentions that the husband must love the wife and the wife the husband. It upholds the purity before marriage, that marriage is sacred. But it does not dictate on how to know how many people you will go through to find that "perfect someone?" It does not give a magical rule that you will "date seven people, marry, have two children, a dog . . .

And it is not supposed to. Rather it gives strength. It gives the power and strength to be independent. The faith to accept whatever your life will yield. That maybe you will find someone and maybe not. Maybe you will be the ideal mitochondria, or maybe hydrogen . . . 

Hydrogen eventually diffuses out of the inner membrane space of the mitochondria and into the cell. Eventually it finds and binds to some other element, most likely oxygen. There it becomes more stable and remains with that element until eventually it will leave again and bind to something else again.

Or maybe a faulty mitochondria . . .

But maybe the mitochondria did not need the cell or the body . . . Could it have lived without the cell? Could it have been independent and strong, remained single? In that case, would it not have been known as mitochondria . . . would it not be a microbe? A bacteria?

 He sits down next to me in class. He asks nonchalantly about winter break, about all the weeks that I have not seen him. He laughs at some stupid joke or woe that I share about work. He shares his drama with his roommates in the apartment. I express my sympathy. We do not mention the _________. It does not exist. It did not happen; we were not in a relationship. Neither of us were mitochondria, neither of us were hydrogen with oxygen or NADH. No. We are bacteria. That are single-celled and independent.

That just happen to live in symbiosis.

****Note: Since this is a work in progress and just a flushing out of ideas, I apologize for any choppiness. Please let me know what I can do to improve it!!! : ) Let me know if there is any scientific terms I need to clarify, or if this is just too much! Or there is something else you feel that I need to address! Thanks! Also note, I don't want this to be too depressing - T and I are really good friends.

Warning: Sad Side-effects

Preface

This is my revised version of the second essay. It focuses on Dementia and my observations of it through my grandma. I hoped to replicate the gradual progression of the disease. This is extra; so do not feel obliged to read it, but if you do, I would love to hear feedback on it! Thanks! Hope you have a lovely day and weekend! : )

 Declining Dementia

            Her attentive bright brown eyes gaze straight into mine. Her smile exposes laugh wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. Her short wavy white hair frames her face against her cleanly pressed white shirt and navy blue capris. She stands in front of the lighted red brick fireplace. One hand by her side, the other embraces the hand of her husband, who grins his rare smile straight ahead. She rests her head against his arm. The camera flashes.

            It had been September of my freshman year of high school. My parents and grandparents were throwing a farewell party for my sister, who was leaving for Cameroon in the Peace Corps. In the kitchen my grandma helped assemble appetizers with my mom as Jessica answered the questions about Africa that Granddad asked, and I talked to Grandma about English and high school.

            “How’s your crocheting going?”

            “Good.”

            “Jessica, how’s English going? Do you like your teacher? What books are you reading?”

            “It’s fine. . . . He’s fine. . . . We’re discussing To Kill a Mockingbird.”

            My dad called us over to the family room with camera in hand. We were going to remember this day. We would be able to send pictures with her and maybe use this as the family photo for Christmas cards. We lined the four of us together, took one with my grandparents and my sister, and then one with just my grandparents.

The photo sat on the table across from her white bed. The windows were decorated with shamrocks, and Valentine’s Day cards lay on the windowsill. I closed the door and returned to my grandparents and parents at the end of the hall. In the wheelchair, Grandma’s brown eyes appeared tired and glassy, the way a child’s eyes are when sick with the flu. Her wrinkled white top stained with brown food and wet drool matched her disheveled white hair. She mumbled non-coherent words and kept her head down against her shoulder.

For a couple months before that fall of my freshman year of high school, my parents had suspected that Grandma had dementia. This was not the first time that she had confused me for Jessica or forgotten small little things: her favorite books, birthdays of her grandchildren, dates of main holidays or even how to crochet. She had always been very astute, the constant teacher and observer. For her to forget something was not normal. Initially we ignored it, assuming it came from some stress that we didn’t know about. That it was just our imagination.

Still her memory dwindled. Every Sunday we drove to their house in Stow, Ohio. My mom and I would listen to her teach us about how the Writer’s Cup for Golf was really a reunion of international writers. We would watch her read underlined passages from her favorite books like Rebecca or The President’s Wife, or her magazine about Ireland. We would watch her struggle over words or phrases. We would see her constantly washing the dishes, stuffing buckeyes into her pockets, or hide pens in her favorite drawer. We heard her forget my cousins’ names. We saw her not recognize me, my mom, or my dad.

Sometimes she would merely confuse my mom and me for each other. Often we became relatives that she knew growing up in Plymouth, Ohio. She would share how her mother was doing, or how she had run that day and hid in the fields to read a book. We were her college friends, hearing the new gossip from a night of bridge. Or about her new beau, Ken, and how she did not know what to think of him, an engineer, her brother’s friend, just so tall with the Scandinavian  blonde hair and blue eyes. We were her concerned friends in Akron, visiting her after the delivery of her fourth child Christopher while her husband was in Africa for work. She would laugh as she related her fear in the hospital or the expressions that she received from the nurses as a woman without her husband, giving birth to a child. We were her colleagues in BPW, Business and Professional Women, and she would recount how her English students were doing at Stow High School. We were the nurses or some friendly strangers, and she would lie about how her husband was not taking care of her. She bemoaned about how she needed to leave this place, how he didn’t understand her.

Good days would follow bad ones. Some days she would correct the grammar of an article. Or she would write in the margins of a book, “Good job! That was a great point.” Or she would sit down next to me, pull out her yarn and begin teaching me a stitch. Those days, she recognized who I was. She would ask about Jessica in Africa. She would turn to my Dad,

            “Chris, what is happening? What was your father saying?”

            It was those days that made the bad ones seem like nothing. To catch a glimpse of Grandma, the way she had been, made us laugh at her mistakes on the bad days. They made us forget about her dementia. They convinced Granddad that she was not losing her memory, that she could get better.

            As those four years progressed however, the bad days outnumbered the good ones. She would frequently stumble on passages, angrily closing the book half way through reading. She would come downstairs, wearing capris in the winter or Halloween clothing during December. She would cry more often and complain about Granddad more. It was hard to not ignore this decline; yet, Granddad desperately did. He hung onto anything that he believed would bring back his beautiful bean chéile.  

            He had set up a St. Patrick’s day dinner my senior year of high school for that exact purpose. For years Grandma had celebrated St. Patty’s day with a huge family dinner; she normally made the traditional corned beef, cabbage and soda bread. She always wanted to remind us of our Irish heritage, something that Granddad desperately desired to prompt Grandma to now remember. So my mom followed the family recipe for the food; we set the table and decorated the house with green shamrocks. We dressed Grandma in green and white with her favorite Celtic cross. We gathered around the table and after prayer, began eating. Everything seemed normal; everyone was cheerful. Grandma was complacently there, quietly eating the food that my dad spooned onto her plate.

Soon, however, she became upset as her hearing aid squealed. She winced in pain and cried out. My dad and Granddad tried to console her but to no avail. Dinner was interrupted. My mom and I led Grandma to the next room, hoping that new surroundings would distract her from her present distraught. Somehow, eventually, she did calm down, but we did not continue dinner. We left that night, realizing that she would have to move into a nursing home.

Granddad, however, did not agree. It wasn’t until she fell and ended up in the hospital that he was forced to comply. I was a freshman in college when my parents told me the news. That winter break as the heavy snow flakes fell onto the windshield, we made our jaunt to Briarwood Nursing Home. They warned me what to expect, but I will never forget the stale stench of dry urine that infiltrated the nose as stagnate air stifled the body. The insistent beeping of the door that sounded, complementing the ever present wailing and screaming. The bright fluorescent lights. The twenty elderly patients in wheelchairs, all lined up in a row with their backs against the white-washed wall and in front of the hospital-like reception desk. How their white balding heads sagged, leaning against their shoulders.  How some eyes were shut and mouths open as they snoozed; how others stared straight ahead, their eyes glazed over. How at the end of the wheelchairs, Grandma joined them.  

As my parents nonchalantly discussed the week with Granddad, I kept fidgeting, crossing my legs and uncrossing them that day. The coach seemed rigid and uncomfortable; its red upholstery looked old and torn against the putrid pink wall. Across from us, Grandma continued to gaze downward, isolated from the outside world. She seemed inhumane, lifeless, too drugged to even move due to her list of medications. Meanwhile, the nurses would stop and chat to one another. They did not inquire after her or even greet Granddad, who came every day. They were too busy to care. It was the modern version of an insane asylum, except rather than electroshock therapy, they had resorted to medication. That day I left angry and frustrated, determined to not journey back to that nursing home every again. Back at school, I tried desperately to forget the horrid conditions in which my grandma was living.

Spring Break, I found myself staring out the ugly nursing home windows onto the garden’s bare frozen ground. I was pushing Grandma’s wheelchair around the circular hallway so my parents could peacefully converse with Granddad. Her head drooped onto her shoulder as we rolled past the peaceful and happy pictures of pasture land and hills.  Nonchalantly I chatted about college, my biology classes, my boyfriend, anything that I thought she would have liked to know about in the past. Rather, she placed her feet down on the floor.

“Grandma?” I knelt down to face her. “We need to keep going.”

For minutes she ignored me, and we stood there in the middle of the hallway. Patients obliviously passed. It was not until my dad came around to check on us that we began to move again. Unsure how to really react, I settled Grandma next to Granddad and took my place in the middle of my parents. The rest of the visit continued in that awkward fashion.

I left feeling a sense of freedom. Fresh air. The cold froze my senses, numbing my emotions and pain. As my parents and I walked toward the car, the snow/rain mix fell to the ground, washing the hideous building. It attempted to hide the grotesque truth behind a blank slate, the clean beginning. It allowed us to forget the reality of the situation.  It acted like a new tradition from an old foundation: an insane asylum for the elderly. It took care of Grandma, because we could not.

Yet it could not hide that history forever. That Spring, Grandma contracted a series of illnesses, including pneumonia. In the hospital room beside Granddad, I watched her small frail body that disappeared behind the white sheets live through oxygen tanks, feeding IVs and who knows what else.  Her combed white hair fell against the pillow and her shoulder, and her eyes peacefully remained shut. About two months later on June 5, 2011, she passed away.

Whenever I meet anyone that knew my grandma, they gently pass their condolences and reassure me that she is in a better place. They sympathize with the family, understand how awful her conditions were, and how she is not suffering anymore. For months, my parents convinced me that I needed to accept the conditions – the nursing home and hospital – that she had lived in, accept her death, and accept her disease. Acceptance is hard, though. For a while, the only way to accept that was to picture her before the disease.  To remember her before dementia engulfed her, and she lost her memory.

If I do not remember her during the disease, is it possible to properly mourn her death? Yet if I depict her during dementia, is that properly remembering her life?

 On June 12, 2011 – what would have been her 82^nd birthday – a wake was held in honor of her. The next day the coffin lay under a white tent, above the lush green grass and beside the huge dark hole. The sun in the beautiful blue sky with fluffy white clouds baked down on us as we in black made our way toward it. As I touched the dark brown box, I remembered her brown eyes, her brightening smile and her beautiful white hair.

I remember her that September day in high school and Easter in the hospital. I remember her as the intelligent, constant teacher; I remember her as the declining child-like patient. I remember her as the person that encouraged Jessica and me to read, love our heritage and history. I remember her teaching me to crochet. I remember her forgetting what to say. I remember her not knowing who I am. I remember her as someone whom I loved.

             

Informal Response:

Sorry, I forgot to post/publish this post on Friday!

Didion 

Didion's essays "Goodbye to All That" and "In bed" remind me of Fitzgerald's "The Crack-Up" as she admits to getting sick of New York City and having migraines. Like Fitzgerald, she is blatantly honest about sometimes being broken. For example, when she turned twenty-eight, she says that, " Everything that was said to me I seemed to have heard before, and I could no longer listen. . . . I hurt the people that I cared about, and insulted those I did not. I cut myself off from the one person who was closer to me than any other. I cried until I was not even aware  when I was crying." It is this honesty that increases her intimacy with her readers. The statements that she uses to describe her emotions seems universal, which heightens the universality of her situation. But more importantly, she adds the specifics of not being able to sit at Grand Central, hearing from people receiving advances from publishers, and not going up to Madison Avenue to people watch, which validate her universal point.

Another aspect of these essays I really enjoyed was her voice and style of writing. There was the honesty to it, but also a very "story-like" style. She tells you how everything happened and addresses the reader directly, which increases this story aspect to it. For example on page 684 of "Goodbye to All That," she mentions, "You see I was in a curious position in New York: it never occurred to me that I was living a real life there." She then explains what she had imagined about her situation. To share where she started feeling depressed and broken in New York, because she had stayed in New York too long, she claims, "I could not tell you when I began to understand that." This direct address makes the story "flow" better and also increases the intimacy with the reader even more.

Rodriguez

 Rodriguez also draws the reader in through his honesty, personality and voice in the essay. His essay "Late Victorians" intrigued me as he sets up in juxtaposition of the rigid, traditional Victorian ideals through the houses and acceptance, love, and celebration of being gay. He begins this very interestingly with the idea of St. Augustine, the saint that addressed inherent sin from Adam and Eve and as Rodriguez said, that humans should be unhappy, because unhappiness is a sign of immorality. This beginning sets up the juxtaposition and also shows a little about him and his dilemma to believe this ideal. He explains why at the end of the essay, he remains seated on the hard pew. It also corresponds with the rigid Victorian houses that represented the rigid and narrow-minded moral family setting of that era. He makes this point of view unique in how that house symbolized having multiple generations living under the same roof. The interesting contrast he then sets up is that families have gravitated toward the one floor houses or the one generation house while men without families or children began buying and living in these Victorian houses.

Throughout this essay, he then brings in interesting and entertaining anecdotes about his living in such a house. That with his personal experiences and observations, he then recounts the naturalness and celebration of gays seen in San Francisco. He recounts this blunt juxtaposition to describe what he sees but also his own dilemma, which is shown in the end of the story. Through these interesting tales and honest accounts, Rodriguez really captivates the reader throughout the entire essay. I thoroughly loved this work.

Pop Culture

The Fairy Tale Ideal

Note: this is a revised version of this essay!

She lies on her bed, sleeping and waiting. She stares from the tower, hoping. She watches the world, wondering. She learns the etiquette of a princess, preparing. She upholds her family duty by marrying. She cleans and takes care of seven “children,” obeying. She accepts her prince charming, her life finally beginning.

From the time I began creating my own stories, fairy tales captivated me. I loved imagining myself in their world: the ever expanding forest where white, sparkly velveteen unicorns roamed, beautiful ladies wore medieval dresses shaded with dark green or royal purple and braided hair that went to their waist, knights in reflective silver chain-mail that glowed in the bright yellow rays of the sun went on adventures, and mysterious gray-stoned castles with secret passage ways and towers to see for miles around existed. I loved the idea of having adventures there. I loved the idea of meeting one’s true love and everything being so simple. The idea of having a happily ever after. The idea of knowing what the future held.

            She is one who is expected to be meek and mild. She must obey her family’s wishes. She is Mulan, who must bring honor to her family through marriage. She is expected to bear children, be a beautiful wife, and act as the gracious and graceful hostess. She must be obedient to her father and husband. She must be on the good graces of the matchmaker. She must not let her family down.

          She is Belle, the inventor’s daughter valued for her beauty. She must be obedient to her father and the Beast. She is expected to be complacent to Gaston. She is expected to marry Gaston, because he is interested in her. She must be pleasant and loving to both the Beast and Gaston. 

            Fifth grade I can still remember falling into the stereotypical ideas of a girl and relationships. I was meek and quiet. I was still taken in by the romantic but simple happy ending of a fairy-tale, but I saw my knight in shining armor with Dan, one of the most attractive and popular guys in my class. He played trombone right next to me in band; the only time it was cool for football players to descend into music geek realm. He had sandy brown hair and baby blue eyes – have I ever mentioned that I am a sucker for guys with blue or green eyes - and he was a little muscular and less pudgy than the rest of us fifth graders.

            I am not really quite sure what I imagined would happen between the two of us, except maybe going on a date. Maybe we would go to a movie, hold hands? He would open the door for me? He would say something adorable, like, “You look extremely nice.” and I would blush? He would ask if I wanted to hang out with him some more, and I would say yes? All I really remember was imagining him as the perfect guy for me. I did not even really know him. 

            “Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

               In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft initiates the argument that society by treating women as inferior to men and as dolls or play things only perpetuate this expectation for women to value their beauty and worth over intelligence. She argues that women need to be treated as rational creatures and view love and marriage through a more logical stance and with an equal footing. She argues that this societal expectation of keeping women inferior only yields negative effects for women and society.

The rest of fifth grade and sixth grade I obsessed about my appearance more; my baby fat was finally turning into curves, and I was having an early growth spurt. I was convinced that I needed to keep this shape and forced myself to eat more slowly and less, like I saw my friends doing. My lab group constantly compared what our weights were and how to keep them down as seen in Seventeen and People. One time, Dan’s friend offered me an extra sandwich, and my scarlet face boiled with anger. I assumed that he was giving it to me, because I ate a lot and was fat. I did not want Dan to think I was that. So I ate less. I tried to talk to him more, although it always ended with me turning bright red in the face. Still I dreamed that we would sometime go out. I would write poetry, imagining us together. I clung onto the fairy tale ending. I clung onto the societal expectations of waiting and finding the perfect guy.

“Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship.” (Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of a Woman)

Returning to class from recess in fifth grade, I was standing behind Dan.

He turned around. “What’s your favorite football player?”

“Um . . .” I did not watch football, did not understand it and had no fascination with it. But I still wanted to impress him. “I think they are all pretty good. . . . I am huge Browns’ fan.” Not really.

            “What did you think of the game Sunday?”

            “Oh, well, you know. . .” My face flushed a deep red, which my class had become accustomed to whenever I answered a question that the teacher had addressed toward me.

            “They lost.” His friend Andy had turned around, laughing.

            “Oh, that’s awful.”

            Belle abandoned societal expectations. She did not accept the marriage proposal of Gaston despite familial (her father) and societal pressure. Rather, she politely pushed him out of the door into the mud and set his nasty and muddy black boots on the steps. Against her father’s wishes, she sacrifices her own life to stay with the Beast so her father can go back into society. She defies the Beast’s commands from the beginning as she refuses to eat dinner with him and then explores the forbidden West Wing in the castle. She maintains her love for books and reading. Throughout the movie, she remains true to herself. 

            Somewhere along the path of “finding true love” my obsession with Dan and fairy tales faded. Maybe it was the fact that one of my “good friends” had accused me of being an awful friend since she also had a crush on Dan. Maybe it was the fact that I needed to move on after she had asked Dan to the dance. Maybe it was the fact that I had been officially kicked out of the “popular group.” Maybe it was the fact that everyone else was changing and I still remained my imaginative, romantic self. Or maybe it was the fact that I was growing up, becoming less dependent on fairy tales, realizing that a crush or daydream is not love, and searching for women empowerment. Either way, my dream of a shining knight vanished. 

            “It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men” (Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of a Woman). 

Toward the end of middle school and throughout high school, I became almost bitter with the fairy tale ideal. I thought it was too simple. I did not want to adhere to societal expectations of being meek and quiet. I did not want to wait for some guy to take pity on me to ask me on a date. I did not need a guy as a distraction. Consequentially, I gravitated toward the strong female leads in books. I loved the retelling of fairy tales, where the princess saved the prince in the end of the story. I idolized Queen Elizabeth I – maybe due to the fact that we shared a namesake - who though “a feeble woman,” used her intelligence to lead a nation into the Renaissance and defeat Spain, the strongest country at that time. In reading Ella Enchanted and the other fairy tale parodies, I saw women that did not wait for their princes and ended up saving the day. In the classic novels I read about Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor from Sense and Sensibility, all rational human beings that did not let love blind their judgment. I wanted to be like Elizabeth Bennett, who was witty and outgoing, and fell into love without expecting to. From all of these women, I wanted to emulate their strength, intelligence and determination.

Mulan also rejected societal expectations. She could not be who society wanted her to be. Running away and saving her father from enlisting in the army, she dresses as a soldier and learns to fight the Mongols. She fails the test of the match maker and yet passes the test of being a soldier. She saves China and the Emperor. An entire nation is at her debt. All because she did not adhere to societal expectations or wait for a man. No. Rather, she went on an adventure. She discovered herself and stayed true to that.

“Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtuous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual” (Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of a Woman).

            Now when I think about fairy tales, I do not get angry at the simple happy ending. I do not become bitter that society expects a woman to be submissive and wait for a man. Although there are plenty of examples where woman do wait for men, not all princesses are defined entirely by that ideal. Rather when I think about fairy tales, I focus on their complexity and their strength. While being quiet and meek, some defy societal expectations. They go on adventures. They read. They save their families and nations. They represent strong female characters, similar to a Jane Austen heroine, Jane Eyre, Queen Elizabeth I or even Mary Wollstonecraft. Still these princesses find love. Both Mulan and Belle stayed true to themselves and were loved because of who they were.

            She ignores the judgment, knowing. She reads, understanding. She explores, adventuring. She meets her equal, a prince charming. She accepts his hand, her life continuing.