Cascades of laughter fell over our lake, drowning me in family, and I was found sitting on our old porch swing and getting orange dye from my Cheetos all over my taffeta dress (that I had fought so hard to wear). With the fading sun, and my ever depleting desire to be hugged by aunts and uncles I barely knew, (even now, they seem to be blurs of descent), I realized that I would soon have to abandon my swinging sanctuary to eat cake with my cousins. But for now, I wanted to read to myself, reusing old sentences and tones in my head to amuse my thirst for the unspoken word (I had yet to know that escapes through the written word would later save me from many an unwanted family reunion), so I was introducing myself to F. Scott Fitzgerald for the third time this week, before our imaginary lunch of smoked salmon, peach and cucumber finger sandwiches was interrupted.
"Hey kiddo," 
Sitting beside me and having his knee travel in his Parkinson's circles, my grandfather smiled at me, despite my concurrent levels of anxiety, he always managed to calm me. And scare me. I still don't know why this was a favourite feeling in my childhood. 
Making signature squeaks that my family had learned to recognize as a "Hello, how are you?", I drifted my eyes from my white shoes to our gravel driveway filled with sedans I had sat in the backseats of for many long trips through the Ottawa Valley. 
"Doing pretty good, glad you and your dad could come visit." 
He shot me a smile, and patted me on the head, 
"Come help me blow out the candles later, yeah?" 
Rising out of the porch swing he walked across the yard of people gathered for his 65th 'birthday bash', after my grandfather's visit I was able to perk up a bit. Wandering around the trailer, patting my purple dress, furthering my fantasies to be an old Hollywood star, I spoke "big words" to myself, the words that sounded beautiful, and made myself feel like a beam of intelligence and fame. 
After my slow blinks and twirls of independence, I kicked my pearly white flats against the trailer tires, imagining that the combination of my shoes against the tires looked like a dog's mouth (after seeing this, I jumped back in fear, of course. Dogs are disgusting, terrifyingly horrid creatures, and I've never been able to really get over that idea). 
The clammy lake air floated over my unbrushed hair, filling me with a sense of calmness I doubt I've truly had since, I was grounded within my family; safe. But, I just can't deal with that many people, can't listen to all their noises. Loud laughs of a humour I never understood, obnoxious chewing noises and the impending questions of where my mother was after the divorce and if I agreed that it was her fault. I could never truly handle what large family gatherings meant outside of my head.
Jumping off the stump of the tree beside the trailer, I saw that my grandfather was waving me over to his space beside the pine trees that smelled of clean, country air, and campfires ignited year after beautiful year. Standing beside him and his birthday cake, being held against his long tan trousers and having all of my cousins envy me, I felt loved. Safe beside him and his arthritic, carpenter hands, I felt like he understood. He knew why I needed to be alone for hours, understood that me hiding in my bed with my Hillary Duff CD and my Canadian Tire walkman wasn't the strangest thing a child could do, after all, his trips to the red Dodge with Mr. Johnny Cash were how I learned that I wasn't the only one who saw sanity as something to protect from the waterfalls of noise that my family so often managed to burst with. 
"Ready?" 
Blue eyes reaching their inheritance, I helped blow out the swirled rainbow candles on the cake and my grandfather gave me a pat on the back before I was whisked away by my father to stand before the stump I had just been playing around (looking back on it now, I see why my father did what he did, but back then, it seemed like he had just ripped me from a familial tie that I thought I would never have because of my parents' failed marriage).
"Why did you think you could do that?" 
Using the voice I had only heard when I was playing hide and seek in superstores, my father held both of my then stick thin arms. Tears rolling down my face, the words didn't seem to make their way through the barbed wire fence of my slow growing attempts at adult teeth, my tongue betraying me like the weeds I hated stepping through next to our decaying dock, "slime-ing" around the apologies and confusion that seemed to stay stuck in my collarbone, sitting on my lungs and crushing me from my melodramatic inside. 
"This is his birthday, not yours, Violet, why would you do that?" 
Through my sputtering mess, I told him what my grandfather had told me to do, how it wasn't my idea, he had asked me, 
"He asked me to, heask meto, hehasdkddameto..." 
My father left me crying, slumped on the carcass of the maple tree, staining my lavender taffeta dress and pretending that the tears looked so dark against the near silk because I was wearing mascara.
I wasn't crying because of a birthday cake, no, I was like a starlet, crying over everything I had the chance to obsess over, like other Hollywood stars and an empty bank account. 
Speaking in my head with the big words I would read in books like The Great Gatsby, all day I had narrated my life with the most of my vocabulary, to me, being a fresh faced starlet meant you had to speak very eloquently, and always think that way too. So, now I was narrating my own tears. Imagining I was laying across a chaise lounge I furthered my 1920's movie star fantasies, hopefully when my father returned he would see my diamond tears and oil spill runs of mascara, and he'd apologize. What had I done wrong? This party was horrid and grandpa was the only one who could make me smile that day, and now look, I'm back to being with my own thoughts and my hatred of noises and being touched today. 
Using my white patent dog teeth, I kicked the trailer and fell on my pale, bruised legs and decided that the lawn of pine needles was safe, the ground was safe, I was close to roots of my family, but I didn't have to be touched by them anymore, didn't have to hear them anymore.
Closing my starlet eyes, my father came to me, with more Cheetos and apologies on his winds, and I was brought back to being a 6 year old girl again, I said goodbye to Hollywood and told my father I forgave him, of course.