Author: Lauren Mirs

Speaking in Tongues

My dad has this supersonic connection to sandhill cranes. It started a few years ago, when he didn’t even remember their name. “What are they called again? The storks” he’d ask me.

He’ll be in his kitchen or living room in March or November when all the windows are closed and the storm windows are down, in the middle of a story, and suddenly he’ll stop and say, “The cranes are out.” Everybody gets quiet, listening. “I don’t hear anything,” I’ll say. He opens the front door, and as we walk out, he points to a tiny cluster of spots in the sky, and I hear the cranes’ distinctive, ricketing call.

He can also imitate their trill really well, which is kind of a bizarre sound for a person to make. It’s like he understands them and can innately speak their language.  

Sometimes, morbidly, I think I already know what I’ll remember about people after they die. I know I will think of him every time I hear a sandhill. I already do.  

Photo: cranes near Kearney & Gibbon, NE

Preservation Hall

If you’ve never been to Preservation Hall in New Orleans, you should go. The venue is about the size of two living rooms. Half of it holds the band and seating, which consists of cushions on the floor plus a few benches. [I was lucky enough to get a seat on a bench when I visited.] The other half is standing room only, with people crowded in like sardines. There are no microphones, no amps, no speakers. The time I went, before the band started playing, the employee who had taken our entrance fee came in to announce, “Everybody, turn off your phones. Put your phones away. Put your cameras away. For the next hour, it’s going to be a roomful of people enjoying great music.” The music is so close and immediate. Nowadays, it’s a rare experience.

A Tiny Red Wagon Story

When I was a kid, Rachel lived in the house behind ours. One summer, her mom planted too many zucchinis, the classic garden story. By late summer, the zucchinis had grown massive from staying on the vine so long. Her mom picked the fruits and loaded them into Rachel’s red wagon, then sent us out, carting the wagon from door to door, trying to give the zucchinis away. Most people had the same problem we did and had no use for another zucchini. Some neighbors, trying to be nice and make conversation, asked if we were sisters. We lied and said yes. One old man seemed delighted to hear that we were giving away free zucchinis and took about four gigantic ones. I remember thinking, there is no way he is gonna use all those. But what do I know? Maybe he baked seventy-five loaves of zucchini bread and lived off of them all winter.

Winnie the Who?

My friend Stephanie from high school went to college in another state. Before she left, we were talking and somehow got on the subject of Winnie the Pooh stories. She revealed, “I don’t like Christopher Robin.” “Why not?” In my recollection, he had never done anything polarizing. “He’s a putz.” I had never heard anyone use the term putz as a noun, so I didn’t realize she meant “He’s a doofus.” I had heard the term “putzing around,” so I figured she meant that he was a slowpoke. Defensively, I exclaimed, “He had these leg problems!!” She didn’t know what I was talking about, so I explained that he wore leg braces. Well, after she went away to school, I looked through the books and found that I had remembered it wrong; one story mentioned him wearing a back brace. I didn’t bother to mention my discovery. When Steph came back to visit, she showed me photos from her semester, including a Halloween party she had attended. She handed me a photo of a guy wearing walking shorts and a sweater, holding a helium balloon. “What are you supposed to be?” She’d asked him. Wouldn’t you know it? “Christopher Robin from Winnie the Pooh.” She told me that she asked him, “Aren’t you supposed to have these leg problems?”

Whoops! Sorry, Steph!

Haven’t We Met Before?

I’ve never been out in public, seen another person, and felt like I was looking in the mirror. However, I can’t count the number of times people have said things to me like, “You look so familiar,” “You look just like someone I went to high school with,” “You look like someone I used to work with,” “Are you a professor? You look like a professor I’ve seen” [I’ve never been a professor], “You’re Amber’s older sister, right?” [I don’t have a sister], “Did you used to work out at Gold’s Gym?” [I didn’t used to work out at any gym], and even “How’s the pregnancy going?” [I wasn’t pregnant, and I don’t think I looked pregnant!]

A man staying in the same hostel told me with a heavy accent that there’s a woman in Germany who looks like me. “Her name is Anna.” It’s gone global!  

When a cashier guessed, “Jennifer?” then told me, “Oh, you look like this lady that works at Dollar General,” I was tempted to drive to Dollar General and ask for Jennifer, just to see what she looked like.

I’ve had the same mind-boggling conversation with a few business owners. It goes something like this:
“Weren’t you in here last week?”
“No, I’ve never been here before.”
“Are you sure? You look familiar.”
“This is my first trip to _______ [name of town or state]. I just got in last night.”
After a moment of reflection, they’ll decide, “I’m sure it was you. I recognize you.”
How can I prove that I wasn’t there?

The strangest occurrence happened when I was working in the Registration office of my community college. A woman came to my station and told me right away, “Oh my God! You look just like my sister-in-law, Linda, who died!” What do you say to that? During the transaction, she kept making comments about it. “Oh my god- you look so much like Linda.” Near the end, she whipped out her phone and took a picture of me, then texted it to her daughter with the message, “Who does this look like?” A minute later, she showed me the screen with her daughter’s reply: “Aunt Linda.”   

I got to thinking about my doppelgangers today. They must be decent people. I’ve never had anyone turn angry when they thought they recognized me. In fact, I seem to get asked a lot in public, “Excuse me- will you take our picture?” The other replicas of me out there must not be camera thieves, either. To all the people running around who look just like me: Before you do anything crazy, keep in mind that it isn’t only your reputation on the line- it’s mine, too! And I’ll think of you.   

The WOW in Powwow

My mom used to work at an art center on an Indian reservation. In addition to selling art made by Native Americans, the center offered classes in making birch bark baskets, beaded bracelets, fish decoys, and other traditional crafts. While I was visiting, a young local man came into the shop to browse. A higher than average percentage of people I saw on the rez wore American Eagle Outfitters t-shirts, and he was one of them. It was never a plain AEO shirt with just the brand name or logo; the designs always involved soaring eagles. I wondered if AEO realized the appeal that their shirts might hold to the Native American segment of the market. Anyway, in chatting, the guy told us that he was a fancy dancer [a showy Native American dance]. It was even part of his email address. I wondered how many American white guys would put the word “dancer” in their email address, let alone the word “fancy.” And how many of them would boast to strangers that they danced? 

Nearby, an outdoor arena held weekly powwows all summer. I attended a couple with my mom. The emcee would explain the meaning behind each dance, and then a group of dancers would demonstrate. A couple times each night, the emcee would call out “Intertribal!” which meant that everyone, including the audience, was invited to participate. Those of us who didn’t know what we were doing basically did a stilted version of walking in a circle, but there was an elated feeling of camraderie, being a part of the drumming, the singing, alongside others dressed in colorful regalia: jingle shell dancers, grass dancers, fancy dancers, and butterfly dancers. We were lucky that the community was willing to include us. Going to see a powwow by itself could have been cool- watching the spectacle, learning something, and eating fry bread- but there’s nothing like experiencing an event to make an impact.  

How Quickly They Forget

In August, I bought a tent. I set it up in my dad’s backyard to test it out. My first night in the tent, around 2 a.m., I noticed the walls glowing. Maybe the neighbors have flood lights pointed at their lawn, I thought. During breakfast, my dad mentioned, “It’s almost a full moon.” I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE MOON. It hadn’t even occurred to me as an option for the source of that mysterious light. I had even considered UFOs. Horrified, I realized how badly I could use some communion with nature. I want to breathe fresh air. I want to feel the wind and the rain and the sun. I never want to forget about the North Star.  

It’s All There in Black and White

There’s something about a flower that makes me want to take its picture. Sometimes I feel like a horrible friend: I’ll visit a person I haven’t seen in years, and I don’t take a single picture of them- or their kids, or their family, or us together, or their pets… Then we stop at a park or botanic garden and out comes the camera.

Don’t you love black and white? Instead of the focus being on a flower head or its vivid color, suddenly everything becomes just a shape. A shadow possesses as much substance as the object beside it. You become the maestro of an abstract composition. Beauty appears in surprising places: the crook of an elbow, a doorjamb, a hairbrush. Literally seeing the world in black and white is a good reminder that beauty is all around us; we just have to notice it.

Photo: a dozen roses

Chopin’s piano
rambling through autumn woods
the thought of old friends