3) The Princess Travels Through The Eye Of The Storm (Desiree Rivers Thomas) (Prose / Bio) Poem by Otradom Pelogo

The day's tumultuous events caused Poreris to drift back to when his niece, Desiree, was a little girl, and remembering her Uncle, Bill; her dad's brother who would come over and visit. One day while she was lying on the bed watching television, he walked into the room and began to talk to her. Just before walking into the room, he pulled a Laura Bush biography of the shelf with the intentions of having her read a few pages for him, simultaneously trying to create an atmosphere and cordial pattern of picking up a book when she has free time, on the weekends when a child thinks, and should think that it's time to forget everything that happened academically, and without a doubt during the summer when most things will discretely fade out through the osmosis of a long, hot, relaxing vacation.

Her grandmother had a small bookshelf at the end of the hall way, about two or three shelves of books; each of a different genre; half that her Uncle Bill put there himself after reading, from Poe, to Melville, to an autobiography of the former Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Colin Powel, who once said how ironic it was that his dad never owned a gun, yet his son becomes head of the most powerful military in the world; to Hillary Clinton a modern day female activist, former first lady and senator of New York. At that moment, also trying to show by example, how to take the time and have reading becoming an entertaining event as well as an academic one, and thus he had also brought with him and was in the middle of a fourteen hundred and fifty page novel by Victor Hugo; Les Mieserables, though right about at the halfway point he said that he wished that he had either taken a speed reading course or had bought the abridged version. And Condoleezza Rice, which he was telling a young lady named Shay that he met in Atlanta one day while passing through, whom he had a chance to have supper with one evening, that just halfway through the autobiography of her, Condoleezza Rice, that it had made him dizzy; she, as they say, has been everywhere and done everything, from a professor at Stanford University to Secretary of State; coming from a small conservative Christian family, and becoming a diligent female role model. He would have given her it to read, but he was only halfway through and refused to let it go.

Desiree would remember him saying that 'He wasn't certain how they; kids viewed time, and how they saw it in relationship to the future; their future'. They say that they have no true concept of time, or that was the teacher's way back then of explaining to us of how we sometimes seemed oblivious to the controlling of fate and manipulation of our destinies, the dreams of being teachers, firemen, doctors, lawyers and politicians attained rather than hoped for.' She would hand him her progress report card, and it had mainly A's and B's, which he would say, 'That's great'.

At her age, and probably in the same classroom that she was now sitting in on a day to day basis, about thirty years ago, he ran down those same halls, and since the outside of the building had not changed very much, Poreris could precisely imagine seeing them there and literally speak of her and her cohorts walking back and forth from class to class and even stopping for lunch in the cafeteria, and could also remember what the inside of Othello Price's office, the head principle, looked like, unfortunately from being more truant than academic, though he was certain that he left the academy with a B average. And thus most likely from that point, although not having graduated from a university, though he may have had about a couple of hundred credit hours from different schools and universities, and was still in the process of thinking about attaining a degree in some field between then and retirement, thus believing by that time in her life as it was in his, the pattern of having the ability and desire for learning, should have begun to become somewhat of a fixed foundation; though at that moment he had more of a conviction to a stern work ethic.

There was also an autobiography about three hundred pages long, which was of George W. Bush; the president. And his wife about two hundred pages long, so he grabbed it; the one on his wife, Laura Bush; a light paperback, with vital information from a cultural to a political perspective, by a female role model, and thus Desiree began to read page one.
Because the First Lady was a librarian, a teacher, and had also formed and chaired a reading program, it was probably written to capture the attention of the youth as well, something that could easily be assigned as a reading project by either a teacher or parent. Therefore there were only a number of words that she needed help with as he sat there listening to her read aloud. He did the same with The Little Princess, one of the first books that he had bought her that he eventually read himself, thinking that he should not only buy them books, but just about read every page of each one that he had gotten them, and enjoy it equally as much.

TV is educational, the radio can equally be as informative as entertaining, and sitting down with a good book somewhat helps make a complete and healthy mind, though the lack of seeing them not as often enough with the latter is what prompted his interest in how they; Desiree and her brother, were doing academically. He would say, ' I guess if you do good in school, and not do the latter of the above, reading as much as possible whenever the opportunity presents itself, it should be a forced extracurricular home chore'.
'Desiree, you are eleven years old, born June the 26th 1992, and I was fortunate enough to see you as a new born infant even before leaving the hospital; and seeing you over the years as your dad's only baby daughter, and only three years younger than your brother, and seeing y'all, who up until recently, looked almost like twins, talked alike and acted alike, though the only difference is due to the stronger will of biology that separates the two of you at the moment as you mature into young men and women.'

And while sitting there listening and thinking about the last eleven years of her life as an uncle and friend, he began to notice how she had become taller, as she held the book in her hands. He first noticed how long and slender her fingers were; only a few days earlier, he had made her brother hold up his hand against his; at fifteen, he was just about as tall as his Uncle Bill and her fingers were just as long although more slender, and stopped her in the middle of reading and placed her palm against his and told her that she would probably be a doctor or a lawyer; that's what people use to say to those whom had unique hands.

Then he began to notice how much she had grown; he had always said that she and her brother had that athletic physique, thus noticing her legs, then arms, listening how she read while in reverie of the past eleven years that he had known her, then realized, or had noticed as a father would notice, who works, and spends more time seeing that everything is secure and happy, after mom, brother sister and friends, that his baby girl has already begun to blossom into a young lady; and still like that father, left at the moment, too speechless to say anything about it without having to admonish himself for not noticing it earlier, though he has heard it a thousand times, that one day it just happens, accepting that it happens even to those that you love, then stopping to realize that standing in the eye of the storm, there is a maturing beautiful young lady.