Like nothing I'd known before, until I knew it better

People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?'  I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing.  Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better.  But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning. -Sarah Erdman

In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened. 

One:  I relished in the fact that June was over.  Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month.  But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions. 

Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists. 

Three:  I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana.  My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.

Four:  I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland.  Or the malaria pills I’ll need.  Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.

(Sidenote:  However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)

For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming.  Or perhaps even kitsch.  You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart.  You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts.  You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one.  Working in higher education has its perks.  This is definitely one of them.

For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore.  And that’s okay.  I understand.  I’d hate me too.  But I can’t help but talk about it.  And think about it.  And find ways to weave it into stories.  I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.

I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up.  WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!?  I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all.  It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.”  Jesus.  I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too. 

I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been?  Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”

And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that.  And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy.  Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me.  Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world.  Or think I have something intelligent to say.  Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me.  In reality, I know it’s just you guys).

I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad.  My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst.  I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be.  I started writing.  Tons of it.  Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism.  When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit.  And the fan.  And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan. 

When my parents divorced.  I wrote.
When my siblings got married.  I wrote.
When I graduated high school.  I wrote.
When I had my heart broken.  I wrote.
When I lost myself.  I wrote.
When I found myself.  I wrote.
When I lost myself, again.  I wrote.

You get the picture.  So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”

So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote.  I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe).  But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another.  From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences.  We learn.  We grow.  We change.  Amen, hallelujah.  

Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer.  I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world.  That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account.  What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support.  Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments.  Someone who can sense silent words, too. 

But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you.  Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public?  Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself?  I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow. 

Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read.  It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand.  To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them.  Crying and cursing all the way out.

And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it).  It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa.  No.  In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story.  With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences.  I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage.  No.  It was more a whisper.  A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize.  A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.

An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open.  And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing.  And finding deeper roots. 

And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there.  The way people live.  The culture.  Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music.  And struggle.  And community.  And pain.  And beauty.  How communities celebrate together and mourn together.  How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food.  How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock.  How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves.  How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be.  How little we know about the rest of the world.  How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”.  And what this all means to me.  In my heart.  In my life here in Baltimore.  In my work with urban youth.  In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.   

Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all.  This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”.  Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it.  Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change.  Learning how to be uncomfortable.  Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble.  Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.

Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it.  The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies.  The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure.  Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore.  Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses.  The adventure of it all.  The realness.        

In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday.  And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful.  Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up.  Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time.  Something that I can’t seem to quit.  

I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means.  I’ve felt it.  I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa.  She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it.  Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced.  She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”. 

She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences. 

People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?'  I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing.  Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better.  But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning. 

I’d make one quick change to this statement.  I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it.  And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do.  And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.

Don't Talk to Strangers

I’m a pretty intuitive person.  Maybe it’s the storyteller in me, but I love to listen to other people’s conversations.  I think it might drive some of my friends nuts that I’m almost always double listening, but I can’t help it.  I take the way a person holds themselves, the way a stranger’s mouth wraps around her words, the silent messages she sends with her eyes, hands, body, and the tales she chooses to tell out-loud and I wrap it all into a story; an existence that I believe I’ve cracked in five minutes or less. 

I guess some people would call this being judgmental.  But trust me, the stories I conjure up aren’t always bad.  Granted, I prefer the ones where I determine someone is having an affair or I overhear bits and pieces of domestic spat and I determine in a matter of moments whose side I’m taking and why.  I’ve probably watched too much television in my lifetime. 

But I also decide lots of wonderful things about people all the time.  Like when I meet someone and I can just tell between the way they hang their laughter at the end of a sentence and the way their eyes light up when they tell a story that I’m going to love them.  Or when an accent touches my heart—a deep, southern accent with long drawn-out vowels and indiscernible consonants.  Reminds me of home.

Perhaps I notice these people because I genuinely like people.  I like the mess they make.  Even when life is riddled with despair and one piece of bad luck after another, people still do incredible things.  Really beautiful, poignant things still happen.  And even when it’s not pretty, it is often funny, instead.

I think it might be why I like kids so much.  Kids are just like adults, minus the learned traits of bitterness, political correctness, and racism.  Have you ever spent much time on a playground?  Have you ever watched the way these little people interact, before they’ve been taught not to like someone for the way they look or before they know its inappropriate to make honest, bold statements like: “You’re fat in your belly” or “Why do you have hairs in your nose?”  Once we’re grown up, we learn to only discuss such matters as fat bellies and nose hairs in doctor’s offices or in closed bedroom doors once we’ve secured the person to whom we’re about to disclose such outrageously controversial information through marriage vows (or the promise of such vows).

It’s wonderful.  Children go around playing whatever game comes to mind, regardless of how absurd, with whomever they find available for the game, making up rules as they go and proudly, boldly declaring statements that have a high chance of being entirely false.  They don’t hold back on what they want—what they like and don’t like and what they actually want to do.  And when proven wrong, they giggle at the irony (even though they can’t define that word just yet).  Or they spontaneously burst into tears, which is perhaps an even more honest response to the shit life hands you.  How many times a day would you love to either a) laugh at something inappropriate until you fall in the floor or b) burst into irrational, big, fat, salty tears over something silly?  I’d average in at about 15 times, most likely.  On a good day.

But people are funny.  I love the way we all layer in on top of each other.  I find it fascinating in places where there are no barriers—no restrictions on the kinds of people that travel to and from a place.  Places like grocery stores, hospitals, train stations, and airports.  At some point, we all gotta use these places.  Everyone from the schizophrenic middle-aged man to the elderly couple to the emo tween.  People from all walks of life uncomfortably settle in with each other, standing in lines or clumps waiting for something to happen.   And this is when the people listening is at an all-time premium.  These spaces make some people so uncomfortable that they’ll say and do ridiculous things, sheerly out of nervous discomfort.

Recently I’ve spent some time in airports and hospitals, and each time I’ve been struck by this same idea.  We’ve created all these spaces in our lives where we’re surrounded by the people who make us feel most comfortable.  We choose where we live, where we eat, where we work, where we go to the bar or out dancing.  It’s pretty unlikely that we’ll consciously choose a place for any of these activities that makes us uncomfortable—unless your yogi has told you to do it as a part of some bizarre meditative practice. 

So when we get into these spaces where we didn’t choose our company, some people flip out.  Some people carefully mask it with fake smiles and short, artificial small talk.  Some people I think are truly immune; unmoved by such shifts, perhaps because they’ve spent too much time in spaces like this, or perhaps because they simply don’t care.  But others are visibly uncomfortable.  Looking around the room casting glares and judgments, holding nothing back from their cold stares.

Coming back from Charlotte several weeks ago, I was standing in baggage claim in the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, I was up to my usual shenanigans.  Traveling alone is perhaps the best opportunity for listening to other people’s conversations.  I’m not distracted by trying to listen to the conversation I’m actually in—I can just listen, unabashedly, to others.

The baggage claim is taking a very long time.  I steal a quick glance around the room.

The couple I sat next to was returning from a vacation in the Caribbean.  They couldn’t stop touching each other.  They were older and so in love.  It was so nice to see an older couple like this clearly still loving life and confident that they’d made all the right choices along the way (even though I’m sure they didn’t always feel right at the time). 

A young girl in her early twenties, far too over-dressed for flying, was on her way home to see someone for the first time in a while.  Maybe from college?  Maybe she ran away to join the circus and was trying to return, looking freshly dressed, so that they’d all say, “You look amazing!  The circus did wonders for you!”  She fidgeted in her high heels and kept looking at her cell phone.  Perhaps wishing someone would call her.

There was a newlywed couple, so young and so J.Crew pretty.  They were fidgeting with their backpacks, practically just unloaded from last semester before being filled up for their honeymoon, nervously touching their new rings.  You could almost sense the fear they had about coming back home and giving this “just married” thing a go. 

An older, upper-class couple stood uncomfortably towards the back, hoping no one would look at them or worse, touch them.   They had their matching monogrammed totes between their legs and she clutched onto her Coach satchel like it was rare water in the Sahara.

A young man stood eagerly by the belt, unashamed to have his self-help-genre book How to Win Friends and Influence People tucked under his arm.  He rocked back and forth on his practical, black loafers.  I was pegging him as a young store manager of some corporate chain with aspirations of getting an MBA and being a CEO.   

The unfit mother of three fed her kids a happy meal, her loud, whining kids who needed anything but high-fructose corn syrup, salt, and fatty fried food.  She loudly asked them to shut-up when they started crying and the older, upper-class couple physically turned their bodies away while shaking their heads quite visibly.

A kind, middle-aged woman stood near me.  We chatted about how long it was taking and how miserable it is to fly these days.  She had a soft face and a sweet voice.  I assumed she was a nurse or maybe a teacher.  Or maybe the really nice administrative assistant at an attorney’s office.  No ring.  I’m guessing no kids.

This.  This right here.  Is just a five minute wait at a baggage claim.  Such a small part of a day but with hundreds of interactions, unspoken words, and physical exchanges.  So much to learn about the world around us in just five minutes with strangers.

I laugh inside because I think how many times a day we navigate spaces like this.  And how we teach our children to become indifferent.  To be cautious of strangers and to stay alert.  To place our monogrammed totes between our knees and hold onto our purses with death grip.  How we teach that it's rude to eavesdrop and to stare.  How we teach not to point or laugh.  Or to be honest with the things we really think.


I laugh, uncomfortably, because our purpose in these messages isn't evil.  We want to teach our children about compassion and acceptance and how not to be cruel, but unintentionally we teach another kind of cruelty.  By creating rules for unruly spaces.

And the livin's easy...

I normally don't post a lot of pictures and not a lot of words to my blog but today may be my exception.  For the last few weeks my roommate and I have been trying to make our house an even better home by overhauling the backyard.  For any of you who live in a rowhouse, you know what a challenge this can be.  At max, your yard is about 8 feet wide, and if you're lucky you get about 20-25 feet of depth.  Many of these old rowhouses have porches and garages and weirdly shaped additions and trying to make the yard into something functional can be a challenge.  Plus, the dog thinks this part of the house is entirely hers.  Down to the bees.

I was told a few years ago (although I couldn't tell you by whom because my brain just isn't as functional as it once was) that the small, charming backyards of city rowhouses are really all you ever need.  This person reminded me that even when you have acres and acres of land, you find you spend all your time in one small section of the yard.  I think this person might have been trying to make me feel better (because I sure remember using every inch of those acres growing up).  But there is something special about these backyards.  Small fences divide our homes and we truly share our yards with the entire block.  We see each other at six am with our morning coffee and at midnight with our wine glasses.  We know what each other's dogs sound like and we pay attention when things move or furniture is rearranged.  I know this would drive some people crazy, but I kind of love it.  Just another charm for me.

Plus, Cara and I are lucky.  We have gardeners next door.  In fact, our neighbors on our left have lived in their house for almost 65 years and have been gardening everyday since they moved in.

Talk about competition.  Every day I find something new blooming in their yard and they've already got the biggest tomatoes I've seen yet in anyone's garden.  Our little puny clover grass and concrete walkway was making me depressed every time I went onto our deck.  I begged the wife (aka my roommate) to do something about it and one morning she handed me a hand-drafted plan of our new backyard.  It would require a lot of building and releveling of the soil and pulling out of the existing grass, but she assured me that for under $300, I could have a yard I'd actually want to spend time in.

And she was right.  And on budget.  And I think we've done a great job as newbies.  I'm slowly finding my green thumb and Cara has been able to release her inner lumberjack.  Lacking 65 years of practice and despite the fact that we're mere renters (so we don't want to sink any real cash into this DIY project), I think we've done a splendid job.  Also, did I mention how great it is to live with a real-live handy-woman?  I mean, this girl is amazing.  If I were a lesbian, I'd so marry this woman.  Hell, I might marry her anyway.

Check out our her project (I'd like to claim more of it, but it just wouldn't be right):

Step one:  Beg, plead, and bribe roommate to build you raised beds for your flowers, herbs, and vegetables.  Fill with organic garden soil and bat guano (from Dr. Earth) and plant the shit out of those flowers, herbs, and veggies.

Step two:  Ask roommate to frame patio square and level the ground and soil.  Remember to ask sweetly and offer to make sausage biscuits.

Step three:  Ask roommate to put down gravel and sand and level it all with this handmade rake (and again, remember to offer to make cocktails and dinner).

Step four:  Sunbathe on the deck while this all goes down.  Don't forget sunscreen!  Try not to look guilty when Cara comes up for a break sweating and dying of thirst.

Step five:  Figure out how to convince the dog that the new hole for the patio isn't a sandbox, litterbox for the alley cats, OR a mini-beach (warning: this step involves bribes and treats)

Step six:  Lay pavers, fill with sand, and layer the mulch.

Step seven: Plant rose bush for good luck.

Step eight:  Invite over friends for a BBQ and make sure the patio is dance-proof.  Play James Brown.  Serve corn.  (Yet to be completed).

First major DIY project of the summer: COMPLETE.  Just in time to sit outside and sip mint juleps.  Thanks, wife. 

And no, you can't have her.

Old Soul Mama with Swirly Notebook and Sense of Humor

This past semester I took a graduate course in personality development.  It was an interesting course—mostly based in educational psychology—but interesting for teachers and future teachers, and certainly something very useful for anyone going into the field of education.  One of the first assignments in the class was for each of us to give ourselves a rough assessment of our own personality.

Who do we think we are?  How do others see us?

These are vastly enormous philosophical questions that require hemming and hawing—and the picking up and jostling around of an expensive glass of bourbon on just a few the rocks.  And wafting.  Lots of wafting (ever noticed how this makes you look more philosophical?)

Every time someone asks me this type of question I get that sinking feeling in my stomach like the one I get when I’m at a conference and all of the sudden I realize we’re about to be asked to play an icebreaker…with strangers.  Or worse, when I’m at a baby or bridal shower and it’s all chips and dips and BAM!  A game.  No, I do not want to guess what kind of candy bar has been melted in that pamper.  And I particularly have no interest in wrapping myself in toilet paper to design a “wedding gown”.  Sorry.

But when someone asks you to verbally describe yourself in front of others, you freeze.  All the things you know about yourself and have spent so many years learning (and so many sessions in therapy verbalizing) go out the window and you stand with your mouth ajar and make the noises of a teenager in a pop quiz in History class, ”uhh…umm...like, whatever.” 

Of course if we had had an entire week to do this assignment—we’d be in a different blog.  We’d all write the things we really think about ourselves, edit it down with a critical eye, read it out loud to someone who wouldn’t judge us for our outright self-righteousness before removing the lines that make us sound like utter assholes, and submit a short, well-written succinct piece on who we are—and we’d all look like great people.  And let’s be honest, despite our best efforts, we can’t all be great people.  Things like genetics and shitty situations happen.  Turns out, shitheads, unfortunately, are unavoidable.  Biology is a bitch.

So needless to say, I struggled with this one.  I looked around the room as the teachers in the room did what teachers do best.  They make lists.  Beautifully written, short, well-organized lists that described their qualities.  Quickly and quietly.  Over here in “experiential learning land”, I’m all over the place, doodling in circles and trying to make my list happen (and wishing I had crayons).  I’m over-interpreting the prompt and taking my questions to a deep place that I’m not sure our professor really asked for.  I just took it there; because this is what happens in my brain.  Sometimes I just want the goddamned list to happen.  Maybe I’m cursed with an artist's brain (but no real artistic talent).  Lists turn into doodles which turn into ideas that I think will make great tattoos, or the start of something that will be a great story.

I sketch a scaffold in the corner of the paper while thinking—I’m….uhhh…I’m funny?  And I’m….uhhh….someone….people like? Hell.  I don’t know. 

I let the doodling brain take over.  As the concentric circles spin wildly out of control, I think to myself, “Well, for as long as I can remember my nickname has been mama.  This probably says something about me.  So I’m maternal.  And I’m like a frickin’ fifty year old trapped in the body of a 27 year old.  So I’ve got an old soul.”   30 seconds left…

“Uhh.  I’m funny?”

So, buzzer dings (hypothetical...no one actually uses a buzzer in grad school).  I’ve got: Mama, Old Soul, and Funny.   I’m good enough.  I’m smart enough.  And doggonit, people like me (thanks, Stuart Smalley).  Gee.  I sound like a real crowd-pleaser.   With a notebook full of twirls.  And a hearty dose of SNL quotes.

But didn’t my $150K education give me some depth?  And haven’t I learned something with all those trips around the globe?  And haven’t all those kids I’ve worked with for the last decade taught me something about myself and the world?

Surely I’ve got more than “old soul mama with swirly notebook and sense of humor.”

The thing about quantifying who we are means that we must also qualify who we are.  And we carry so much judgment in our labels—in our –isms and our sexuality and our hobbies.  Being gay or straight looks like something, as does being a parent, or being a laborer, or being an athlete.  We have images in our heads of who these people look like—white collar, blue collar, immigrant.  We’ve already put faces on names.  And sometimes who we really are isn’t someone who we’re willing to say out loud.   And even when we’re willing—sometimes it isn’t safe.

What if who I am makes you think less of me?  What if being honest with myself makes me less likable—less successful?  These are questions people struggle with everyday, on a thousand different levels, over a thousand different variables.

In one of the many houses I’ve called home since living here in Baltimore, I found myself living next door to someone who was a registered sex offender.  I was immensely creeped out by him and found him to fit every single stereotype I’d ever had in my head about what sex offenders look like.  At some point in our neighbor-ship, however, I began to realize how sad he was.  How he was forced to wear a wicked label.  Everyone from the mailman to anyone with the internet could know his story—his dark, sordid past.  A life I’m sure he never asked for.  A sickness no one wakes up wanting.  And while I struggled with legitimately feeling bad for him, I carried a sadness for him that I couldn’t quite name. 

Because these words we use to describe ourselves can be powerful.  And the way others interpret these words can be equally powerful.  So my list didn’t happen. 

I couldn’t think of words that described what I did for a living without somehow taking away from the stories of the people I work with.   I couldn’t think of words that described my friends and family without somehow stripping away what makes them so amazing—so unique.  So beautiful.  I couldn’t think of words to describe the way I feel when I first wake up in the morning or when I hold the hand of someone I love or when I feel rain on my face or the way it smells when I kiss my baby niece on the sweet folds of skin on her legs.  I couldn’t find words to describe the way West Africa has transformed me and how I still find the hair on my arm stands straight up when I hear really good bluegrass music.  The way the arch in my back gets tingly when I’m in love and my palms get slippery when I’m nervous.  The way some boys still give me butterflies in my stomach, and how I secretly hope they always will.

The way I worry myself to sleep at night over things like words I wished I hadn’t used or situations I wished hadn’t happened.  How sometimes I care too much even when I pretend to not care at all.  How I still make bad choices, despite all my access to good ones.  How I feel guilty when I don’t walk the dog and how I sometimes stay out at lunch for too long, and I’m consistently late to work (even though I’m consistently there for 2 more hours at the end of the day).  How I get upset when someone thinks I’m someone I’m not—and how I get even more upset that I’ve let it upset me. 

It feels like there are too many things to try and fit in a list.  Too many years of experiences and stories and people to cram into a 30 second list of “who I am”.  I have scars alone that could take days to explain.

So my list, “old soul mama with swirly notebook and sense of humor”, maybe isn’t so far off after all.  I can fit a lot of me in those words.  And I think it's the start of something that will be a great story.

Commencement

Sitting in the scorching hot sun on Friday, watching one graduate after another cross the stage, it struck me that I’m starting to feel old.  Now for all you sensitive 40 and ups out there, don’t get your panties in a wad.  I’m not implying that I am old, thus making you older.  I’m not that stupid.  I’m merely making a suggestion that with each passing year, I’m reminded that I am beginning to make my entry into the serious-we’re-not-joking-it’s-really-real world of adulthood.  I have friends with wrinkles.  And back problems.  And babies.  And divorce lawyers.  It’s weird.

I remember what it felt like that day and how amazing it felt to walk across that stage.   The excitement, the drama, the sadness.  Here I was in the cozy womb of my wooded college campus, among the people I considered my best of the best, and I was being asked to leave.  Graduate.  Pack up.  Move on.  I had spent four years laughing and discovering and growing and falling over stupid and accomplishing and throwing up from too much vodka from plastic containers and hiding in nooks of shadows of trees and gazing at stars and writing papers all night and pretending to tap dance down brick pathways and grieving and stumbling into new selves and former selves all while thinking “what is the self?”

For some people, college is this obligatory stamp on their path.  Four years (or maybe five) of requirements and probably too many parties and maybe the place where you met the person you married.  Or maybe you busted your ass to get through, working full-time just to get the degree.  This piece of paper that is supposed to somehow transform us.  Make us more hire-able.  Better employees. 

But for others, college is this space of discovery.  A chance to pause the rest of the world and completely absorb yourself in your own years of 18-22.  It’s like four years of padded walls and access to all the fingerpaint you could ever want.  Oh and Cookie Crisp.  And chicken fingers.  And the goal is to still come our hire-able and a better employee.  But maybe with some deeper, more philosophical thoughts on hand.

That’s how I remember college.  A journey.  A road.  A space of discovery.  A chance to figure out me.  Who I was and why I cared.  And why anyone else might ever want to, too.

I remember asking myself questions I’d never thought to ask before.  I remember trying to catch it all—all the things that were happening in my brain and in my ears and in my knees and in my eyes.  Trying to cram it all into my heart and my brain and my memory banks; horrified someone might steal this slice of life I’d stumbled across.  That I’d lose access. 

I remember all the tragically sad things that happened and how I thought there was no way my heart could ever find its pieces again.  And then finding those pieces, and emerging a bit more hardened and perhaps more wise. 

I remember laughing so hard I thought I’d die.  And reciting movies from heart.  And meeting women who changed my life—strong, courageous, hilarious women who taught me how to be a woman.  How to fight for myself.  How to love myself.   My girls.

I look up at the windows that face the lawn of commencement.  I think how many mornings I’ve woken up facing this lawn.  How many mornings I’ve been here.  With the sun on my face.  And all the things that have happened between all those sunrises.

This is home.  For nine years I’ve called this place home.  After being out in the real world for a few years, I came back to work here.  As a grown-up.  As an adult.  But I feel like one of the lucky ones, because I know what happens here.  I know how it feels.  I’ve felt it in my heart and in my hands and I’ve danced with it at night and I’ve rolled around with it in the rain.  I’ve tasted it on my tongue and I’ve taken it out on walks.  It’s not something anyone can ever put a thumb on and almost everyone tries to name it.  Each year a new student commencement speaker has the enormous task of trying to find words that describe this thing that happens here.  And I watch her catch her breath.  And it is there in her voice.  This thing we all know about.  This thing we cannot name.

There are days when I question why I ever came back to work here—this charming alma mater of mine.  Like anywhere, we have our own fair share of the dramas.  And I hear the others whine and moan and talk quietly behind closed doors.  Perhaps they don’t know.  But I do.  I know what happens here.  And I remember.  And those moments remind me why I’m here.

As I listen to the names, one after another, I look up to the window where I spent my freshman year.  And my eyes wander over to the window where I spent my junior year.  And I smirk because I know things about these walls.  And I look out at the lawn.  And I’m feeling old, but happy.  Missing my girls.  Knowing they'd be sitting right here next to me, in something terribly chic, clapping for people they don't know.  Because we know how it feels.  We know what happens here.

Lemonade

When life hands you lemons, don’t you sometimes want to shove those lemons down someone’s throat and walk away? With no guilt or conflict of morality or ethics getting in the way?

I get that I’m supposed to be all kinds of positive about when shit happens, because, shit happens.   It just does.  In the order of the world, there has to be a balance of good and bad, and I guess life was getting too good (although, I’d like to ask the universe: can life ever be too good? Really?  Are we sure about that answer?)  And as my uncle told me so kindly earlier this week, “you had a yang coming with that steady flow of yin…”   Yeah, yeah.  Whatever.

Earlier this week I was jolted out of my precious slumber by the sound of a horrendous crash outside of my window.  Hazily leaping out of bed to the window, I looked down to find that another car had indeed crashed into MY car.  Out of the 30 she had to choose from on our block, mine was her victim.  Well, mine and two others.  But mine not only got hit, it got CRUNCHED.  And mine was the last one she hit, thus receiving the biggest blow.  And I parked under the street lamp the night before, because I had come in late, and so the street lamp had also aided and abetted in the crunching of the OTHER side of my car.  Epic crunching.

Due to the fact that it was 5:45 am, I was all kinds of confused and disoriented and didn’t quite understand the extent to which I had just been handed lemons.  Smiling, and still trying to wake up my brain, I didn’t think to be outraged or hostile.  I didn’t think to challenge the police when they failed to provide me with any of the driver’s information.  I didn’t think to ask for her driver’s license number.  This was all promised to be in the police report—the police report I would be able to claim in 5-10 days for a cost of $10.  I didn’t think this was outrageous.

Now, almost four days later, my hostility is setting in.  Especially now that the young girl, driving alone on a learner's permit at 5:45 am, is MIA, her insurance plan was cancelled months ago, and the police appear to have “lost” parts of the police report (the only document that contained her information that we need in order to seek justice), I’ve poured the lemonade down the drain.

The lemonade is gone.  I’m looking at a preliminary (I repeat, preliminary) damage report that rounds in at about $6,500 worth of body work (thank god for comprehensive collision insurance).  I’m trying hard not to get hustled by the “industry” that is car insurance and collision repair.  And I find myself totally overwhelmed with it all.  I’m wondering if my car will be totaled—something NO ONE seems to want to tell me—and I’m also wondering if it means I’m gonna have to buy a new car this week (and if so, what do I buy?  Can I even afford a new car?)  I’m driving a crappy rental car that drives like a sewing machine on wheels that smells like ass covered up with air freshener.  And I’m preparing myself for this to go on for another couple of weeks until official decisions are made and repairs can be done (or not).

I’m wondering if this girl, now being hassled by my insurance company and my neighbor’s insurance agencies, is even going to face ANY penalties.  It doesn’t appear that we have any kind of grip whatsoever on the situation, thank you very much Baltimore city police who wanted to rush cleaning up the scene/writing the report so that they could end their shift. 

And everyone keeps saying: Look at the bright side, you weren’t in the vehicle.  No one got hurt.

What the fuck is up with everyone’s love for lemonade?  I know y’all aren’t this positive on a regular basis.  This is why I live on the East Coast.  I live for our perpetual cynicism and negativity.  Live for it.  Please, for the love of god someone say something snarky.

The only thing that has kept me together this week has been the overwhelming amount of anxiety I have about all the homework I have left to finish before my last two classes of grad school this semester.  I fear that come Tuesday morning, I might just dissolve into a big mess in the carpet and poor Cara (patient plutonic wife and roommate that she is) is gonna need to scoop me up and put me in front of a marathon of Always Sunny in Philadelphia with some Red-Hot Cheetos.  And possibly a Quaalude and a vodka tonic.

I got a feeling it won't be pretty, folks.

So thus far, my solution for today has been to bake a cake and to read some scholarly journals (that by noon I need to have synthesized into a well-thought out thesis).  By 7:30 this morning, I was highlighting to the sexy hum of my stand-up mixer, faithfully beating the shit out of some cake batter.  Using my beautiful, shiny, red KitchenAid mixer is like the equivalent of getting high.  It’s totally my heroin.  I also have plans to go buy some plants today and to get my little organic urban garden bloomin'—plans I had last weekend but ended up botching thanks to cold natty boh's and a really, really hot sunshine.

Today, I will blissfully ignore the fucking lemons.  I will NOT look at new cars online (which gives me anxiety).  I will NOT look at my 8 page preliminary estimate from the body shop (which gives me anxiety).  I will NOT call my insurance company or check my online claim for any details (which gives me anxiety).  Today I will do my homework.  And maybe throw on a shirt-dress, some high heels, and some red lipstick.  And maybe I’ll vacuum.  Or make a soufflé from scratch.

Here’s hoping a healthy dose of domesticity (and intellectual discourse) will brighten up my weekend.  But don’t expect lemonade if you drop in.  We’ll be serving bourbon, only.  And no more positivity, people.  It's making me nauseous.

Me Big Chief

On Saturday night I took the opportunity to use my sunburn as an excuse to stay home on a Saturday night and do homework.   (You know, the sunburn I got while I was making myself walk the dog, which turned into running into college buddies, which turned into watching ultimate frisbee for a few hours without sunscreen, which turned into drinking a couple beers in the middle of the day, which turned into an exhausted sun-burnt nap, which made me wake up cranky and incapable of social activities, which made me ignore any and all of my said social engagements in exchange for a quiet night at home).

And because I don’t nap (I’m like a freak of nature with the sleeping), this 45 minute slip into a REM cycle apparently made me incapable of rational, intellectual thought.   Realizing my research paper on Erich Fromm, the tantalizing German Jew psychoanalyst who I’m sure has amazing things to say, was NOT going to happen, I caved and did what all grown folks who work full-time while in graduate school do: REPRESS FEELINGS OF GUILT ABOUT NOT DOING HOMEWORK ON THE ONE NIGHT YOU HAVE FREE AND PROCRASTINATE.

Instead, I ordered a pizza and decided to park my happy ass on the couch with the dog and catch up on the new HBO show Treme.

I’m an admitted David Simon stalker admirer.  I pretty much watched the entire series of The Wire over a series of a few weeks and found myself so involved with the characters that I still refer to them on a first-name basis as if they’re real people in my life.  You know, Stringer Bell? Lives down the block?

The invention of the television show on DVD really did wonders for my social life.  At one point, I was so involved in watching the entire series of Six Feet Under that I began thinking I might actually be in an episode.  Every episode of this show starts with someone dying in some kind of freak accident.  I’d be walking down the block and envision a hammer being accidentally dropped from the top floor of the building and then in my head I’d cue the opening music and flash forward to a view of my own tombstone.  Thank God I finished that series before I developed schizophrenia.

And don’t get me started on the L-Word.  I think I actually craved lesbian drama in my life just because I felt so entitled to it after watching all that melodrama betwixt the ladies.  Which, for the record, is never drama ANYONE should crave.

Okay, back to Treme.  (Sorry, I’m over-caffeinated).

I had the chance to meet David Simon through my job last year and almost urinated down my pretty little dress with excitement.  And he, in person, is just exactly what I suspected him to be: slightly neurotic, totally depressing, and simultaneously one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met.  You know how you meet people and you just know they’re smart?  They got that pretty talk and yuns know they can ‘cipher good? Yeah, well.  He did.

So when I heard David Simon would begin working on a show about post-Katrina New Orleans I started emotionally cumming all over myself.  Because, you know, us geeky liberal arts college graduates LOVE television shows that blur the line between fiction and fact—especially when it involves things like sexuality, racism, and poverty.  I’m getting chills just thinking about all the cultural and sociological implications I’ll inevitably try to sneak into a classroom discussion someday.  Sidenote: We also love reading the Atlantic Monthly and pretending to be smarter than everyone else.  And posting clever, biting, intellectually snarky comments on each other’s Facebook pages, ESPECIALLY when we get to reference our favorite NY Times op-ed columnist as if we know them personally (umm, duh, Gail).  And of course wrapping it all up by finding a way to connect it all to some obscure Always Sunny in Philadelphia scene.

So here I am on a Saturday night watching this new show on HBO about New Orleans.  And the storyline isn’t great—it’s fairly predictable.  I see all the usual suspects—about half of the cast from The Wire (which is like running into old friends with guns) and I’m trying to get used to their new character names and disconnecting them from their darker, more addicted (and definitely better armed) Baltimore alter-egos.

But there is this music.  And the second line gets warmed up on the screen.  Without warrant, my feet start tapping.  And I notice I can’t help but rock my hips.  And my head starts moving.  And I’m not even thinking about it but I’m shifting around to wiggle my little (okay big) white girl ass around like I got some rhythm.  And before I know it my head is in a million places at once and I’m flashing through all these moments.

Then the character puts on his Mardi Gras Indian costume.

And I'm thinking about the first time I saw a real-live Mardi Gras Indian.  And how hot it was.  And the smell of those feathers.  And the sounds that came from his mouth.  Raw, guttural noises that were something in between song and prayer.  And how it almost scared me.

Then he is playing his tambourine.

And my brain is thinking about three years ago in Winneba, Ghana when I stumbled across something that looked vaguely familiar: a parade in the middle of a village with a line of people marching down the middle of the street with horns and drums and dancing and singing and bright colors.  Handkerchiefs were twirled in my face.  I was so hot but so enthralled in the procession that I didn't care about the sweat dripping from my face.

And then I’m back in New Orleans, thinking about the taste of that po’boy and wondering if the shop we used to go to survived the storm and if it didn’t if they’ve reopened somewhere else.  And thinking about how delicious those crawfish Zapp’s potato chips are and the time I saved all my money to buy myself a kitten watch (with a ball of yarn as the seconds hand) from a flimsy booth in the French Market.  And how good those beignets tasted.

And what it felt like to see a real, live voodoo ceremony in Benin.  

And to hear a goat be sacrificed.  

And to run into Quint Davis, the freakin’ godfather of the Jazz Fest, in a random village in Benin because he was trying to find artists to bring from West Africa to New Orleans for the Jazz Fest.  To bring the music full circle.

And I’m thinking about Katrina and how angry it made me.  And how obvious it is to me that no matter what you try and tell me, if you're poor in this country, you've probably been fucked over by somebody.  And I'm gonna go out on a limb here and blame a system (although I won't narrow it down to just one).

And then I'm thinking about how much I wouldn’t get this shit if I’d never moved to Baltimore.  And never taken that first job in the Baltimore City Schools.  And never felt all the things I’ve felt.  And been in the places I've been.  And felt, first-hand, what my skin color affords me. 

And here is how I know David Simon is brilliant.  Because all of this happened to me on a Saturday night on my couch.  In yoga pants.  And I only watched like three episodes.

This is also how I know I’m Presbyterian.  I’ve found myself in this life of mine, where all these things make sense to me.  And I find it strangely normal.  Like it's the path I was always intended to be on.  With all these experiences connecting and merging and overlapping.

And I do believe in magic.  And I think sometimes we're given special knowledge from our ancestors that lets us in on some pretty big secrets about the universe.  When I was a kid, my dad would tell me I was part gypsy.  He told me all kinds of wacky things, but this was my favorite.  Well, no, the Easter Monkey was (is) my favorite.  But I've always liked to think about my totally-made-up fantasy gene pool (as if you couldn't tell from my sunburn that I'm totally Scotch-Irish-German-English and like 1/32 Cherokee).

Once upon a time, there was some rumor that up that magical family tree of ours was a Spanish bear trainer in the circus.  Naturally, I've embellished and blown up this story in my extra-fancy tree and Great-Great-Great Granddaddy who tamed the bears and wooed the ladies is this central figure in my family's history.  I'm assuming this is probably the way people feel when they are related to someone famous like a Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln.  In this fantasy family tree I can't help but feel like I've got connections to these places that I love so much.  And this gypsy grandfather of mine probably traveled around a lot.  And maybe procreated in New Orleans.  And I probably have cousins there. 

And maybe in West Africa, too.  Because it only makes sense.

And of course, I like to think I make him proud.