We’re driving up to Marquette, a college town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for the beginning of my freshman year, something no other Vargo has ever done in the history of the Vargos. As we drive, I grow more ashamed with each passing mile marker. My father is old and we are poor and I am 18, trying to reinvent myself in a place I’ve never known.
Maybe, like my mother, I am not as afraid of fear as I thought. Because, right now, every part of me wants a storm I can stand before.
The brain is a funny thing. Well, my brain is. Hilarious, really. In my fear, my neurons forgot the commands for putting on flip-flops, but they could formulate the thought: I hope the newspaper will mention the lovely golden hue of my cadaver.
On Eid-ul-Azha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, I knew no one in Nashville. I decided to wear my white shalwar kameez to commemorate the festival. What else could be done?
She was the person in the world who cared the most for me and the one person whose love would be unchanged by my mistakes. Her embrace was the warmth of acceptance, and without it, I feared I would break.
Nothing illuminates the beauty of the average day quite so brilliantly as the fear that the average day has vanished indefinitely — maybe for always.
