A ten-sided wave has formed around Saturn’s South Pole.
Imagine that. Imagine being in the center of that.
Never mind. Don’t imagine that. Because if you do, so do I and I’ll be sick. Technically, Saturn’s South Pole looks like a vortex of death anyway, but still…
I imagine Odysseus and the sea opening up to swallow him.
My teacher walks over and looks down at my open pages. She closes her eyes and smiles. Then, they’re alive and tell me more than her words do as she speaks of the tempest seas. She gushes with excitement over the journey I’ll go on with him.
She was right.
I didn’t grow up with Jonah going down the fish’s belly. Sure, I’d heard it, but not in the way I saw it through that voyage – the one back to Ithaca. The one that would take me through the cyclops’ eye and thread me like a needle through the Sirens’ song.
Though, it didn’t come easy.
What’s more, I didn’t achieve the goals that were most important at the time.
I don’t remember which prize caught my eye. They all looked good. Like Christmas morning. I looked at the picture on the flyer to remind myself of my options, counting my eggs before they’d hatched.
Each day I slogged on with the book I struggled to understand, I’d lower my expectations, crossing off certain options inside my mind. As if I was scratching them out on the flyer with my pencil till the lead smudges on the side of my hand.
I felt like I needed to take notes.
What’s that? Is that a person or a place or … ? It’s a name! I know that! It’s capitalized. I say it like evidence to prove I know what I’m seeing. Because middle-school me was in over her head.
I remember it now.
My long hair is hanging on either side as I rest my head between my hands, templed over my book. I squirm. Switch positions. Twist myself to the side and flip my hair to one side.
I want to earn a lot of points in the Accelerated Reader program.
Part of the reason I chose The Odyssey was because it would earn me a huge amount of points, but also because I was angry.
It was slightly above my reading level.
I don’t understand everything, but I understand enough. It’s the hardest I’ve ever struggled to finish a book. And it took me so long that it cost me the contest.
I could have logged more points by reading easier books.
The librarian made me feel ashamed of myself the first time I walked up with “baby books” in my hands. Maybe that was the first time I learned not to compete. That, sometimes, it costs you something.
Though, I don’t regret reading it. How could I?
And in reflecting back, I’ve caught so many hilarious new insights, like why I always identified with the hero, not the heroine.
Of course! I held the sword with Odysseus then… I shouted to his men with his voice, calling them back to their senses. I fought with him, alongside him. From within him.
I remember reading a few sentences and staring out the school bus window, imagining what I’d read happening in the fields and yards and rocky mountainsides we passed. Inky figures blotted out the landscapes.
Later on, they made a television special about it. Before that was Saturn’s South Pole painted across that one kid’s chain-link fence, inside the confines of my mind.
I remember the disappointment in myself for not pushing forward fast enough. Yet, I knew I needed the time between passages to process what I’d read. My bubble-wrapped imagination had never before seen the things that were being described.
I’d place my finger on the page to hold my spot while I incubated. My vacant stare would drift by the passing scenery as I thought of what I’d read.
Think, think, think.
The words, the worlds about which I was reading…
Back then, it was a magic school bus, and it sailed along on the rings of Saturn. Now, it returns in that ten-sided wave.
I recognize it, like something I’ve seen before.
Then, I smile and blot out the landscapes once more.