2011!

Welcome to the new year and the 3rd quarter of school! Many exciting things happened last year and the first half of the school year and there is more to come. Last year, the beginning of high school was stressful and I was afraid to speak up to be heard. Since then, school has stayed stressful but I have taught myself how to manage everything. I have learned how to take such a large work load and take it one step at a time rather than all at once. I have also joined chorus. I have wanted to do this since I was little, but I never had a good voice. I still do not, but it sounds nicer than it did before, and it makes me happy. I have made great strides this year and I will continue to make more. In English we are ending A Midsummer Night's Dream. This will be the first Shakespeare play that I have read so finishing it will be a great accomplishment. After we finish that up, we will be reading Into the Wild. This is a true story. I'm curious to see what it is about because when I was in sixth grade we read The Call of the Wild by Jack London, which was excellent, but I always got these titles mixed up. I wonder if they are similar. I shall soon find out.

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The Dolphins, Bono, and CPR

A couple of months ago, I had a dream that my friend Meg and I had gone to the boardwalk at night. This was more like a boardwalk that was on a pier 100 feet above water. My friend and I heard that Bono was down the boardwalk. We left the line that we had been standing in for a ride or something and started our walk down the boardwalk in order to find him. We had our arms linked but if I bumped into her then she would be forced to continue in that direction until I pulled her back. I was unaware that it was up to me to stop her. The first time this happened I pulled her back and the second time I thought she was just being stupid and she then ran off the pier while dragging me along. Needless to say, we were both now in dark waters surrounding the pier. We franticly swam to a low pier that people used to get on boats and such. When we got there, there was a shark cage in the water. We used the cage to stand on. Then a dolphin appeared. I had a bad feeling about the dolphin so I told my friend that we should get out of the water. Then more appeared. “Look! There’s more!” She said. I climbed out of the water and when I turned around to help her out, she was gone. The shark cage had sunk some because the dolphins were standing on it too. I looked out into the dark water and I couldn’t see her. I ran around the miniature piers until I found her. Her limbs had turned flat and lifeless, like a flat hose. I scooped her out of the water and ran clumsily to an upper deck where there was a man fixing his boat. He came over and began to help me. I don’t remember if my friend lived or died. I feel like she lived but I remembered thinking “why hadn’t I done CPR when we were on the lower dock.  We also never go to see Bono.
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Character Sketch Essay

Jessica C.

Honors English Purples

Mrs. Zurkowski

January 14, 2011

Character Sketch

“The Nature of Jade” by Deb Caletti

            “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/ And sorry I could not travel both”.  Robert Frost wrote this famous poem called “The Road Not Taken”.  The speaker has come to a cross road in his life “And looked down one [road] as far as I could”.  In life, everyone comes to a point where they are presented with two opportunities and they must choose one.  A person can only see so far into the future situation to see where choice will take them.  They will either take a leap of faith or continue in the monotony.   In “The Nature of Jade” by Deb Caletti, Jade chooses to take a leap of faith instead of pleasing everyone else and this makes her a more courageous and independent person.

Jade DeLuna is a senior at Ballard High School.  She deals with problems that many teenagers deal with: tons of homework, stress, relationships, and family problems.  Jade’s problems go deeper because she has an anxiety disorder, a family that is being torn down the middle, and a boyfriend with a baby.  She likes to stay in her comfort zone and this causes her to initially refrain from taking chances and stirring up trouble.  She is a good role model for her brother.  She tries to stay out of trouble, she is in AP classes, and she is there for him whenever things are bad.  Lastly, she enjoys watching elephants.  She lives a few blocks away from the zoo in Seattle and she keeps the live webcam of the elephant enclosure on her computer.  She volunteers at the zoo and that is how she meets her boyfriend, Sebastian.

Jade first sees Sebastian from her webcam with his baby boy Bo.  She constantly thinks about him and checks the webcam hoping to see him on her screen.  One fateful day after volunteering at the zoo, they meet and start dating.  On one of their dates, Jade goes to Sebastian’s houseboat where he lives with his grandmother, Tess, and Bo.  When she arrives, they go fishing and  Jade completely falls in love with Sebastian and his family.  From the moment Jade steps into the houseboat, Tess immediately gets up close and personal.  She takes Jade, Sebastian, and Bo out onto the boat. In the boat, Jade begins to feel anxiety but is relaxed.  She can tell that Tess is just as strong as she is frank.   Even though Tess has never met her, she can tell who Jade is and she has confidence in her.  She makes Jade feel comfortable and she loves the relaxed rhythm around their house.  Jade says, “I was spending as much time as I could over at the houseboat.  Sometimes with Sebastian and Bo, sometimes with Tess and Bo, and sometimes just Bo.” (223). When Jade had spare time she went to see them to escape her life.  Sebastian and his family were a secret that she kept from everyone.  She was in a different world and no one could change that.  She then says, “My anxiety – I sort of stopped noticing I had it.”(223).  When Jade is with Tess, Bo, and Sebastian, she knows that she can get through life because there is something worth holding onto, her life has purpose now, and that purpose is to be there with them.  She also overcame her anxiety, something that had haunted her for years. She had put an end to her fears holding her back.  She leapt into a dangerous zone of uncertainty with her relationship with Sebastian and keeping this relationship unknown to everyone.

Jade likes to help and please others but sometimes she loses sight of which is more important to do and that she has to please herself as well.  Jade’s mother did not want Jade to go to a college out of state because she would miss her.  Her mom knew when she left for college, she would be grown up, and like any other mother, she wanted her little girl to stay little forever.  Jade interoperated it that her mother would not let her go to an out of state college at all.  One day in a session with her psychologist, Abe, Abe said to her, “You were going to consider applying to other schools.  How’d that go?” and Jade replied, “Mom’ll freak if I go out of state.  And it’s expensive.” (43). Jade was so afraid of making her mother angry, she did not want to even consider leaving Washington.  Abe talked her into at least applying to a college out of state.  Jade found her dream college, University of Santa Fe and one afternoon she got an acceptance letter.  Unfortunately, Jade’s mother was unaware of her application and she got to the letter before Jade did.  Jade’s mother was furious.  She found out about Sebastian and then a secret that Sebastian had told Jade, was out in the air.  This secret had been what brought Sebastian to Tess’s house instead of his parent’s.  Jade’s mother took the secret and took the information to the authorities.  Sebastian could be put in jail and have his son taken away.  Jade alerted Sebastian and told him to flee. And he did. She thought she would never see him or Bo or Tess again.  She knew that she could do nothing about what had happened so she sadly continued the cookie-cutter life she was in.  She started at the University of Washington for a while, until one day she got a call from Sebastian announcing that they would be moving to Santa Fe.  Jade knew at that moment that she had to go to college there.  “It is a coincidence. A big coincidence. Maybe big enough that you could call it a sign.”(284). She told her mother, and her mom said, “Jade, you need to go.”(284). Jade still was seeking some approval from her mother but at the same time, she knew that she could finally leave her home.  She had learned a balance of pleasing others but making herself happy at the same time. She had also learned to have faith in her mother to see past her selfish love of Jade and do what was best for her.

Jade’s family was dysfunctional.  Her father worked and came home and retreated to the basement.  Jade says, “He stays in the basement all evening, working on his train set, something he’s been building for a couple of years now,… If he goes downstairs, you don’t bother him, or rather, it’s just pointless to try.” (28). Jade’s mom is the epitome of a stay at home mom.  She helps the PTA and does the cooking, cleaning, and housework.  Because both of them are so busy, there is not much communication between Mr. and Mrs. DeLuna.  Jade’s mother was caught cheating on Mr. DeLuna one day.  There was a fight between her parents when Jade’s dad first found out.  Then there was a lot of silence that Oliver compared to a “Narnia” book where it was “Always winter but never Christmas” (242).  Jade’s father moved out of the house and one day Jade comes home to see Oliver and her mom in the backyard with all of Oliver’s old sports equipment hanging from trees.  Oliver had been forced by his father to play sports and now that he was gone, Oliver got rid of the past.  Jade learned she did not have to hang onto the past; she was free of that and could move on; she had a weight lifted off her shoulders.  By Oliver’s refusal to let the horrible past, make his future terrible, Jade learned that her future was in her own hands, not in the hands of her past.

By the end of the story, Jade has learned how to handle her anxiety, her past, and how to make herself happy while caring for others.  She learned how to live a pleasant life.  After she started spending time with Sebastian and his family, she says, “During that time, I had stopped feeling the way I had for a long while – like a hamster on one of those wheels…I had always felt like I was being chased…Now I wasn’t looking over my shoulder or trying to see the future, living for some other time.  It was just now.”(227-228). Jade also learns to manage her happiness when her parents were fighting.  Her and her brother left while they were fighting and got breakfast (166). They made light out of a bad situation and spent time together. Jade has grown from experience and become stronger and able to change and perceive situations differently so she can be happy as well as others.

She grew in a relationship with her mother.  Jade had no trust in her mother.  She did not think twice about keeping Sebastian a secret from her mother, and she did not think twice about lying about it either.  When Jade finally did tell her mom, she reported Sebastian; but Jade still had a bit of hope in her mother, and she told her about Sebastian moving to Santa Fe, and Jade’s mom told her to go there. Jade could trust her. She learned from that moment that a bit of courage and a leap of faith could take her a long way.

Throughout “The Nature of Jade” by Deb Caletti, Jade is transformed because she learns how to live a life that is more meaningful and happier than a constant, ‘hamster on a wheel’ life. Deb Caletti was trying to tell the reader that life is boring and frustrating if you does not challenge the monotony and take chances.  Through her experiences with her family and Sebastian and his family, she has seen that going through the motions of real life will not hold a relationship together.  Sebastian’s family lives in the moment and they are a close family. Jade’s family runs through life in a blur; and they have fallen apart.  The moral of this story is to find the balance in life so that you can be happy and make those around you happy.  As Robert Frost would say, ‘choose the road less traveled by’, and challenge the monotony.

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