Since I was a little girl I’ve had this bubbling desire to do something—to help people and to make things right. I remember the first time I recognized class: I was a little girl and went home with one of my classmates after school. Being a kid, I didn’t really know the difference yet between new furniture and old; I didn’t know what to look for in a kitchen or a bathroom for signs of new-improvements. I didn’t even know the difference between a house and an apartment. I was focused on the Barbie dolls and the glue sticks and the make believe. I guess I didn’t really comprehend it, but it was something I felt—this place was different than my house. When I got home and started asking questions about the difference I quickly was told to be thankful and polite—furthering my suspicions that something other existed. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with this new knowledge and uncomfortable about how to deal with it.
Throughout my childhood, my father was the director of Social Services in my small, southern, mountain town. I would go to his office and see people I knew in the lobby. Years later I would understand what this meant—friends of mine that were in the lobby because their parents were applying for food stamps or welfare. I didn’t understand how lucky I was. As I become more conscious of this lucky place I had landed in life, I also learned how to feel guilty about it.
When I got to college, this only exacerbated itself. I discovered not only my guilt about class—but my guilt about race, as well. I suddenly become aware of what it meant to be white and privileged. I read book after book about how evil I was—an honorary white, female member of this budding bourgeoisie class coming from the small, private, liberal arts colleges of the world.
And in my sophomore year, I decided to go on a three-week study abroad program to Ghana. That first trip rocked my world. I experienced these things every day, all day for a month. I felt my white skin, for the first time, as a minority. I was questioned, out right, about my class and my guilt—didn’t I feel horrible for what had happened to the African man?
On this first trip, walking through the slave castles, a young Ghanaian stops me and asks: Don’t you feel terrible for what your people did to us? His question is so blunt and so forthright that I stumble on my words and can’t answer him. Here I am, walking around feeling heavy about this whole experience, and this total stranger pins the whole thing on me. I'd never thought to ask myself if I felt responsible for slavery. He walks away with a smirk on his face. He had won.
I searched my soul for a response to the young man's question. I sought some kind of a reaction that would illicit some large scale change in myself. I arrived home with a false sense of simplicity. I threw away clothing, I scaled down my possessions—seeking solace in a temporary reduction of the stuff I felt cluttered my life and my vision. I felt almost pious about these acts. As if these reductions had somehow made me a better person. In truth, the possessions crept back in to my life, over time. After all, it was never really the possessions that bothered me in the first place. It just seemed like the simplest place to start. The least messy place to begin. If I didn’t start with my stuff first, I’d have to actually look into myself for answers.
But the question, and the thousands of new questions that stem from that first one, have sat on me for eight years. Don’t I feel like I need to do something? Is there something I can do to help? To make amends? To change things?
On each of my trips, I watch children with distended bellies reaching out for my hand. Grown men and women beg for money. Young men run scams for the tourists, desperate for American dollars or something from our luggage. Women in markets offer you their children (mostly as a joke, but some not so much), begging you to take them to America. Posters in shack-like store fronts proudly display images of America—red sports cars in front of McMansions—referencing the American Dream.
And each time I struggle with myself. How can I have so much and be here with people who have so little? And most of all, how do I even begin to understand—to empathize—what this space is about? How do I cope with who I am? How could I sit comfortably with myself, knowing what I now know about how wrong the white man did Africa? And even worse, I'm always met with questions when I come home that I don't know how to answer. Why do you like it there so much? Why doesn't it scare you? Questions that make me angry and I don't always know why.
My work with urban youth in Baltimore has helped; these kids have taught me an awful lot about the realities of race and class in America. And I’ve learned a lot about my own skin. I’ve become sensitive to the way people talk about others, as if somehow ethnicity, class, and race affect a person’s humanity. I haven’t just read about poverty in textbooks—I’ve seen these things. I’ve felt it. It’s a different beast all together to feel these things.
So today while I'm packing a bag with my designer white jeans and my malaria pills and my expensive arch-supportive sandals, I’m struck by how far I’ve come since that first trip. How much more comfortable I’ve become with my status. I guess I’ve become more comfortable with myself, in general, and most importantly I think I’ve gotten over the self-righteousness that comes with being a “do-gooder”. I spent too many years of my early twenties feeling really, really proud. It wasn't doing me any good.
I feel a distinct difference in my heart from the first empty hand I turned away. I feel that my guilt has shifted to a new space. I still feel like shit, at times, but I have a different understanding of things like community and wealth and race. I’ve come to love these communities—these places I travel. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons about history and a human’s capacity for forgiveness.
I also have a new understanding, and perhaps appreciation, for what my role is while I’m traveling through these communities. I’ve become more okay with who I am. I am a white woman of privilege. I am American. I remember on my first trip wanting so desperately to be somewhere where I didn’t stick out. Where I wasn’t the subject of everyone’s conversation. Where I wasn’t the white girl. It was another first encounter with other. I didn’t know what to do with the feelings I was having. I couldn’t find words to explain myself. I didn’t know how to get over myself.
When I was working in the Baltimore City Schools, I had hundreds of moments where I felt like this. Where I wanted to be liked. Where I wanted to blend in. To not be the white lady. To not carry the baggage of all the horrible things the “white people” seem to do around here. And I learned, as most of my friends who teach in schools where they are the minority, that this was, fundamentally, my issue. The kids didn’t really understand what it really meant—they barely recognized me as a white woman. It was me who recognized myself as a white woman. As a contrast. And I had to sit on it. I had to feel uncomfortable for a few months. And it eventually changed--but I think it was me who changed. Not the situation.
And the kids helped me cope with myself. One afternoon, a small child, we’ll call her Jada, was sitting next to me in the cafeteria. For some reason she’d been calling me “Godmama” all week.
She asks, “Godmama, can I have another cookie?
“No, Jada,” I reply, “only one for every one.
Another child walks by, sucking his teeth, “Man, she can’t be your godmama! SHE WHITE!"
Jada, without skipping a beat, replies to him without the slightest bit of hesitation, “SHE NOT WHITE! SHE LIGHT-SKINNED!"
She then quickly and innocently turns to me, places her hands on my face and says, “When people call you white, it hurts your feelings.”
Breakthrough. Not white, light-skinned. All about perspective.
And I’ve had to dig deep on what these things mean. And I’ve learned that I’m not afraid to feel hurt or scared or to get my hands dirty. I crave to understand. Yeah, those things suck when they’re happening but what comes out on the other end is something that I often can’t name (although I’ll probably try).
And yes, I still have moments when I feel terrible, but I am who I am. I must start from this point. I can’t be anyone but who I am and I cannot continue to make excuses for where I come from. We all have a role to play in this world—the question becomes: what do we do with the power we have?
I know now that I'll never really save the world, despite all the liberal idealism I once had for myself. I've learned too much. I've had to get over myself. These last few years of traveling back and forth, I know I’ve been taught a lot more than what I’ve brought with me. I’ve seen more in these small self-sufficient villages that will educate me about community, about living, about humanity, than I would ever get from a lesson in a classroom. But it doesn’t make turning away those hands any easier.
I recently flipped through a travel book preparing for my site visit. Stuck between a paragraph on volunteering in Africa and safety tips was a sub-chapter entitled “Africa is Hell”. At first I read the short paragraphs waiting for the punch line—for the intended joke. There wasn’t one. The author was being genuine. He wanted to remind his readers not to get caught up in the fantasy of Africa. He wanted to include a reality check—a remember the-AIDS-rate-and-the-fact-that-civil-wars-erupt-overnight message. As if anyone whose ever really gone and known what it feels like could forget that. I'm not sure the editor really read this book before it went to print. Or maybe he did because he fundamentally believes this.
I've spent weeks laughing about this "Africa is Hell" chapter. And just today, as I'm packing and thinking and anxiously blogging, have I really processed what it means. I guess I can't blame the guy for including the chapter. I've seen the hellish parts. I've walked past people in such unfortunate situations that will permanently sit on my heart; I've seen images that I'll never shake. The place has changed me. The Africa is Hell message ringing true. And there are so many Americans who buy into the fantasy. Who go to "Africa" (a place to many think is a country) to find their roots and to go on Safari and to dance with other just long enough to feel excited but not really digging deep or asking questions. Africa is Hell, he wants to tell these people. Don't go. Don't ruin it. Don't exploit it.
I can't ignore the facts. No amount of sugar coating can take away the simple truths of what poverty really looks like. Hunger does horrible things to someone’s eyes. But I can’t shake this feeling that there is something more important happening under the surface of this pain and devastation. If Africa is Hell, why do I feel changed? Different?
And I struggle with myself. Am I one of those Americans? I don't feel like I am, but can I possibly be anything but that American? I feel like I've got an exemption pass. That I've earned my place here. I've asked all the questions and I've cried and I've kept myself awake at night riddled with guilt. I feel like I've had breakthrough. Perhaps in this space, I'm light-skinned. Because I've also seen the opposite.
Crashing parties is West Africa has become one of my favorite activities. Between shots of local gin, and the hundreds of libations made to the gods (and to the elders), my liquor-soaked eyes observe smiling faces and joyful dances. Women proudly prepare mounds and mounds of food, asking you to help and teaching you generations-old lessons on pounding yams, and everyone happily shares. Small children hold onto your thumb and giggle when you repeat words in your terrible Twi and Yoruba. This couldn't possibly be Hell.
And of course all of this rationalization serves one purpose: to make me feel better about what I’m doing. To make me feel more comfortable in my expensive jeans and pearl earrings.
As I'm packing, I'm remaining positive. I'm looking forward to another few weeks in this place I've come to consider a second home. I'm packing the gifts I'll bring to the people I've come to consider family. The children I've watched grow-up. The women I've become sisters with. But the guilt never subsides for long. It creeps back in with a mighty fist, demanding answers. Questions that I’m not sure I know just yet how to answer.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Crazy
Sometimes I think that I’ve gone crazy.
There was a time in college when a dear friend of mine did just that. She was having some kind of mental break and living in a land that made no sense to the rest of us. Among her delusions was the idea that she had indeed discovered the center of the universe. On our college campus. In the woods. She would spend hours talking to us about the things she’d discovered, almost yelling at us that it was right in front of our eyes and we didn’t see it; we didn’t understand it. I remember feeling lots of feelings about the whole situation, but mostly having this frightening idea that we might all be wrong. That perhaps she had discovered something out there in those woods and we’re the crazy ones for not listening to her more thoughtfully. I mean, aren’t some of the greatest thinkers of our time totally ape-shit nuts? Maybe all the people out there having psychotic breaks were onto something—perhaps they’re the ones that are right and we’re the ones that are wrong.
When they get back to a “normal” place (where is that place, anyway?), I always wonder do they feel different? Is it like meeting your spirit animal while you’re high on hallucinogenics? Or like traveling to the after-life during a surgery and coming back to life? Are you changed? Do you have some deeper insight into the world? Or are you so stoned on anti-psychotics that you can’t be allowed to feel changed?
Sometimes when I meet someone really crazy, I realize that experience in college never left me; I never shook that feeling and I try (if possible) to listen with a slightly more careful ear. Who knows, they might be saying something very truthful in their babble. Although here in Baltimore, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between real crazy and crack crazy.
And on those days (like today) where I, too, feel crazy, I wonder how close I am to being really crazy. Sometimes I wonder if I teeter a little too close to the edge. I know sometimes when words fly out of my mouth uncontrollably and I think to myself, “WHO SAID THAT? ME? NO!” Or when a string of irrational thoughts enter my head (usually involving men) and I think, “I don’t have thoughts like this! Out, out damned spot!” But they happen, regardless. Without warning or warrant.
I wish someone would have told me how schizophrenic my twenties would be. Each year I wind down closer to the end of this disastrous decade, wiser, stronger, and with better stories to tell, but feeling undoubtedly more crazy. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if someone had told me—and they probably did and I just blew them off like everyone else—because that is part of the beauty of your twenties. YOU DON’T GIVE A FLYING FART. When someone tells you something at age 19, you think, “Yeah right, man! You don’t know anything! I’M SPECIAL! I’M DIFFERENT!” The truth, at age 27, and despite being quite “special” and “different”, I’m not that special at all. And I’m not that different. Sadly, I’m a bit like everyone else.
But the real crazy thing is this wacky numbers game that people like to play in their twenties. By age 25, I’d like to have…x, y, and z. And if z never comes around, I’ll go with a or b. And if a & b end in a bloody disaster, we’ll switch over to j, k, & l. By 23, I should accomplish: insert accomplishments here. And of course it seems natural that most of these “things” have to do with getting married and buying houses and graduating from college. Or if you’re from a small southern town like I am, having babies, too. Or if you started that in high school, having your third baby. Or maybe your fourth.
And the thing that leaves me curious (crazy) about it is that in 2010, women now have healthy babies in their 40s. More people are getting married in their mid-thirties than ever (and those marriages aren’t ending in divorce…). The average homeowner is 37.8 (I’m going to start measuring my age in decimals, too). Hell, most people are still financially supported by their parents until 26 these days. So why, pray tell, do I still feel this enormous pressure to accomplish such acts in the next three years? Why do I still feel like there is a looming psychotic break in my future as I get closer and closer to thirty, despite the fact that I can’t wait to turn 30 and be done with this miserable decade?
Perhaps it’s the woo of the wedding porn and the mommy blogs. Sometimes I get so involved in other people’s children and pregnancies that I dream of finding myself totally knocked up. Like straight-up single white female pregnant from a bad after-school special. Only to realize what an insane (crazy) idea that is and that really while my roommate is very supportive of my dog, I’m not sure she’d be thrilled with a screaming infant. Or, better yet, me as an emotional, psychotic wench for 9 months without a husband or boyfriend to berate with my endless request for pickles and krispy kreme donuts. Plus I can barely pay my bills as it is—a baby? Really? INTRAWEBS! You’ve betrayed me!
And the weddings are also great fun. I love weddings. I mean the industry makes me kind of nauseated but the good porn—the Etsy and all the great hipster wedding blogs and the DIY weddings. It’s enough to make a girl want to post an ad on Craigslist for a husband. And I’ve been to so many weddings at this point (and been in them, too), that I feel I’ve become a bit of an expert. I think, when I get married, I’ll have x, y, and z. Which is really like going to the mall when you’re on your last $45 the week before pay day and trying on Christian Louboutins. You can’t exactly buy the shoes without the money (hell, without the trust fund). Nor can you plan the wedding when you haven’t had a successful relationship in years. So maybe I’ll just go into the wedding planning business. Or maybe I will post that ad on craigslist.
And the race for careers and degrees is also b-a-n-a-n-a-s. I’ve been working on a master’s degree for years now, chipping away slowly, three credits at a time, so that I can what? Advance my career? I even switched programs because I was in a program where people read the book Who Moved My Cheese? and found it inspirational. I had to withdraw. Now I'm in a program that I like, sometimes, but I question pretty much every week how these people graduated from college. Sometimes high school.
But I get degree envy. I turn mad green and begin a self-depricating parade of all the things I could have done different. I look at the uber-focused friends of mine with law degrees and PhDs and think, if I hadn’t spent age 22-27 goofing off and “following my heart”, I, too, could have one of those shiny degrees to hang on a wall. And big fancy letters behind my name. Although the goofing off from 22-27 has been pretty rad, and I’m not sure my heart would have allowed anything but what happened to have happened. Even within my profession, I’ve got an awesome resume and great references and incredible experience—but sometimes it feels like I’ve accomplished nothing at all because I haven’t gotten that degree. I don’t have that shiny thing on the wall and the only thing that comes after my name is usually: Lindsay Johnson, Asshole.
These “things”, these numbers, these expectations are enough to make you crazy in your twenties. And even with great role models who consistently tell you, "Don't follow a path! Or check off boxes on a list! Live your life!", you still feel crazy. Like the center of the universe is in the woods kind of crazy.
Not to mention the fact that you’re a raving lunatic as you try to figure out who you really are in the world—without the crutch of high school, college, and family. You’re usually so broke you can barely afford to do anything but sit at home and think about how broke you are. But this time at home, eating ramen & saltines, gives you plenty of time to discover the real you. And to start thinking about all the things you want to accomplish before you’re 30. And to discover the show "wife swap" (which can really make you crazy).
And when you get past 27, unmarried, without kids and without letters behind your name, the list of things you thought you'd have accomplished by 30 can start to make you crazy. And despite your best logic, and the fact that most days you truly are content with your life and lack of "accomplishments", it can start to make you feel really crazy. Like cat-lady crazy. And even though you went to a liberated former-women's college and feel that it was pounded into your head that you, as a woman, would never be judged on your merit in society by your ability to cook a roast, iron a shirt, and birth a baby, there's this nagging hormonal thing that seems to happen regardless of all that bookishness and nerdery. Sometimes you just wanna make a roast and birth a baby, damnit. And maybe read a book while you wait?
So, tick-tock, goes the clock. But I refuse to let it make me crazy. Or maybe it's already made me crazy. And despite how badly I'd love for my womb to be filled with the spawn of someone wildly inappropriate (and probably twice my age), I'll continue to mother the one beast I'm proud to put in my list of "twenty-something accomplishments". And I'll try to keep my wedding plans at bay (because nothing's crazier than a single girl with a binder full of wedding ideas). And I'll keep going to class, taking another 3-6 credits every semester until the letters are at the end of my name. And I'll try to talk myself out of being crazy about getting older. But that does involve talking to myself...
And hell, maybe I am actually crazy, and you guys have just been sparing me from the truth all these years. But HEY! At least I'm self-aware, right? And I have this blog. And a dog that smiles when she sleeps (which is crazy).
And those are accomplishments, right? X, Y, and Z, I'd say.
There was a time in college when a dear friend of mine did just that. She was having some kind of mental break and living in a land that made no sense to the rest of us. Among her delusions was the idea that she had indeed discovered the center of the universe. On our college campus. In the woods. She would spend hours talking to us about the things she’d discovered, almost yelling at us that it was right in front of our eyes and we didn’t see it; we didn’t understand it. I remember feeling lots of feelings about the whole situation, but mostly having this frightening idea that we might all be wrong. That perhaps she had discovered something out there in those woods and we’re the crazy ones for not listening to her more thoughtfully. I mean, aren’t some of the greatest thinkers of our time totally ape-shit nuts? Maybe all the people out there having psychotic breaks were onto something—perhaps they’re the ones that are right and we’re the ones that are wrong.
When they get back to a “normal” place (where is that place, anyway?), I always wonder do they feel different? Is it like meeting your spirit animal while you’re high on hallucinogenics? Or like traveling to the after-life during a surgery and coming back to life? Are you changed? Do you have some deeper insight into the world? Or are you so stoned on anti-psychotics that you can’t be allowed to feel changed?
Sometimes when I meet someone really crazy, I realize that experience in college never left me; I never shook that feeling and I try (if possible) to listen with a slightly more careful ear. Who knows, they might be saying something very truthful in their babble. Although here in Baltimore, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between real crazy and crack crazy.
And on those days (like today) where I, too, feel crazy, I wonder how close I am to being really crazy. Sometimes I wonder if I teeter a little too close to the edge. I know sometimes when words fly out of my mouth uncontrollably and I think to myself, “WHO SAID THAT? ME? NO!” Or when a string of irrational thoughts enter my head (usually involving men) and I think, “I don’t have thoughts like this! Out, out damned spot!” But they happen, regardless. Without warning or warrant.
I wish someone would have told me how schizophrenic my twenties would be. Each year I wind down closer to the end of this disastrous decade, wiser, stronger, and with better stories to tell, but feeling undoubtedly more crazy. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if someone had told me—and they probably did and I just blew them off like everyone else—because that is part of the beauty of your twenties. YOU DON’T GIVE A FLYING FART. When someone tells you something at age 19, you think, “Yeah right, man! You don’t know anything! I’M SPECIAL! I’M DIFFERENT!” The truth, at age 27, and despite being quite “special” and “different”, I’m not that special at all. And I’m not that different. Sadly, I’m a bit like everyone else.
But the real crazy thing is this wacky numbers game that people like to play in their twenties. By age 25, I’d like to have…x, y, and z. And if z never comes around, I’ll go with a or b. And if a & b end in a bloody disaster, we’ll switch over to j, k, & l. By 23, I should accomplish: insert accomplishments here. And of course it seems natural that most of these “things” have to do with getting married and buying houses and graduating from college. Or if you’re from a small southern town like I am, having babies, too. Or if you started that in high school, having your third baby. Or maybe your fourth.
And the thing that leaves me curious (crazy) about it is that in 2010, women now have healthy babies in their 40s. More people are getting married in their mid-thirties than ever (and those marriages aren’t ending in divorce…). The average homeowner is 37.8 (I’m going to start measuring my age in decimals, too). Hell, most people are still financially supported by their parents until 26 these days. So why, pray tell, do I still feel this enormous pressure to accomplish such acts in the next three years? Why do I still feel like there is a looming psychotic break in my future as I get closer and closer to thirty, despite the fact that I can’t wait to turn 30 and be done with this miserable decade?
Perhaps it’s the woo of the wedding porn and the mommy blogs. Sometimes I get so involved in other people’s children and pregnancies that I dream of finding myself totally knocked up. Like straight-up single white female pregnant from a bad after-school special. Only to realize what an insane (crazy) idea that is and that really while my roommate is very supportive of my dog, I’m not sure she’d be thrilled with a screaming infant. Or, better yet, me as an emotional, psychotic wench for 9 months without a husband or boyfriend to berate with my endless request for pickles and krispy kreme donuts. Plus I can barely pay my bills as it is—a baby? Really? INTRAWEBS! You’ve betrayed me!
And the weddings are also great fun. I love weddings. I mean the industry makes me kind of nauseated but the good porn—the Etsy and all the great hipster wedding blogs and the DIY weddings. It’s enough to make a girl want to post an ad on Craigslist for a husband. And I’ve been to so many weddings at this point (and been in them, too), that I feel I’ve become a bit of an expert. I think, when I get married, I’ll have x, y, and z. Which is really like going to the mall when you’re on your last $45 the week before pay day and trying on Christian Louboutins. You can’t exactly buy the shoes without the money (hell, without the trust fund). Nor can you plan the wedding when you haven’t had a successful relationship in years. So maybe I’ll just go into the wedding planning business. Or maybe I will post that ad on craigslist.
And the race for careers and degrees is also b-a-n-a-n-a-s. I’ve been working on a master’s degree for years now, chipping away slowly, three credits at a time, so that I can what? Advance my career? I even switched programs because I was in a program where people read the book Who Moved My Cheese? and found it inspirational. I had to withdraw. Now I'm in a program that I like, sometimes, but I question pretty much every week how these people graduated from college. Sometimes high school.
But I get degree envy. I turn mad green and begin a self-depricating parade of all the things I could have done different. I look at the uber-focused friends of mine with law degrees and PhDs and think, if I hadn’t spent age 22-27 goofing off and “following my heart”, I, too, could have one of those shiny degrees to hang on a wall. And big fancy letters behind my name. Although the goofing off from 22-27 has been pretty rad, and I’m not sure my heart would have allowed anything but what happened to have happened. Even within my profession, I’ve got an awesome resume and great references and incredible experience—but sometimes it feels like I’ve accomplished nothing at all because I haven’t gotten that degree. I don’t have that shiny thing on the wall and the only thing that comes after my name is usually: Lindsay Johnson, Asshole.
These “things”, these numbers, these expectations are enough to make you crazy in your twenties. And even with great role models who consistently tell you, "Don't follow a path! Or check off boxes on a list! Live your life!", you still feel crazy. Like the center of the universe is in the woods kind of crazy.
Not to mention the fact that you’re a raving lunatic as you try to figure out who you really are in the world—without the crutch of high school, college, and family. You’re usually so broke you can barely afford to do anything but sit at home and think about how broke you are. But this time at home, eating ramen & saltines, gives you plenty of time to discover the real you. And to start thinking about all the things you want to accomplish before you’re 30. And to discover the show "wife swap" (which can really make you crazy).
And when you get past 27, unmarried, without kids and without letters behind your name, the list of things you thought you'd have accomplished by 30 can start to make you crazy. And despite your best logic, and the fact that most days you truly are content with your life and lack of "accomplishments", it can start to make you feel really crazy. Like cat-lady crazy. And even though you went to a liberated former-women's college and feel that it was pounded into your head that you, as a woman, would never be judged on your merit in society by your ability to cook a roast, iron a shirt, and birth a baby, there's this nagging hormonal thing that seems to happen regardless of all that bookishness and nerdery. Sometimes you just wanna make a roast and birth a baby, damnit. And maybe read a book while you wait?
So, tick-tock, goes the clock. But I refuse to let it make me crazy. Or maybe it's already made me crazy. And despite how badly I'd love for my womb to be filled with the spawn of someone wildly inappropriate (and probably twice my age), I'll continue to mother the one beast I'm proud to put in my list of "twenty-something accomplishments". And I'll try to keep my wedding plans at bay (because nothing's crazier than a single girl with a binder full of wedding ideas). And I'll keep going to class, taking another 3-6 credits every semester until the letters are at the end of my name. And I'll try to talk myself out of being crazy about getting older. But that does involve talking to myself...
And hell, maybe I am actually crazy, and you guys have just been sparing me from the truth all these years. But HEY! At least I'm self-aware, right? And I have this blog. And a dog that smiles when she sleeps (which is crazy).
And those are accomplishments, right? X, Y, and Z, I'd say.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, June 11, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
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 outour 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.
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.
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
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 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.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
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 onjust 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.
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
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.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
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.
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.
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