Reflections over 10:30 p.m. Dinner

It’s 10:36 p.m., and I’m standing in my kitchen at college, holding a lukewarm mug of tea in one hand and stirring pasta with the other. College dinner at a college time. My mother’s old sweater is thrown over running shorts and leggings and my hair is still too short to braid, but long enough that I’ve started bundling it up in ponytails out of annoyance.

I’m taking a break from writing a reader’s report for an internship application to actually eat dinner, while my housemate hollows out a dozen limes in our living room for a fancy drink she’s making. I won’t be in bed until at least 1 am. So much for early bedtimes. Like usual, I’m splitting my time: running back and forth from kitchen to bedroom to stir pasta and type a few more sentences of this post. I notice a bottle of cheap vodka on our kitchen counter, next to our hot pot.

“Is someone doing shots?” I ask my housemate, running fingers through my hair and pulling more hair from the loose braid. Dammit, I need a haircut. I glance at the clock. “I mean, it’s 10—it’s Thursday—” It wouldn’t entirely surprise me.

“No,” she says, laughing. “I’m making jello shots for my date party tomorrow.”

I woke up from an 8:30 p.m. nap groggy and already overwhelmed by the stack of short stories on my floor, my half-read reader’s report book, emails that needed to be answered, the three text messages beeping insistently next to my head. I considered turning my phone off for the night. It’s a week where I don’t want much to talk to anyone—a week full of ups and downs, all blurring together like a merry-go-round that’s gone too fast.

We’re all in deep mourning, I guess, for a wonderful, life-changing professor who is leaving us at the end of the semester. It’s a lengthy and complicated story and not precisely mine to tell. But I’ve remembered waking up every morning this week, often from stress dreams about her, our department, the entire shebang. Winter is clinging insistently, stubbornly, to the landscape of this tiny Upstate New York town, and I want spring so badly that I went running today. 28 degrees felt warm and the sky was October blue. Good enough. I ache already, but I have a sneaking suspicion I also run for punishment, to feel some kind of physical response, some kind of burn after I finish.

My phone bleeps again. I mute it without looking. I can’t take care of one more person today. I can’t think of anyone but myself this week. Selfish, selfish, selfish, the conscience that lives under my breastbone sings. Selfish girl, bad girl, be kind to other people.

My mentor looked at me across her desk on Monday, with concern etched into her face, as I sat sniveling into a wadded ball of tissues.

“Be kind to yourself,” she said, in a way that only made me cry harder. “Don’t forget to be kind to yourself, Amy.”

Inside, I whispered Thank you, thank you, but out loud I said, “I know—I’m trying. I’m trying.”

I’m not sure if she believed me. I’m not sure if I believe me.

As is their right, my internship team wants things written up, layouts done, I work thirteen and a half hours a week, I have assignments due for classes, I’ve assigned myself internship applications, organizing various projects, submitting my work to journals, the list goes on.

“Amy,” one of my bosses said to me today, looking up from her desk as I dropped off mail, “I just wanted to tell you—if I ever have a daughter, I hope she’s exactly like you.”

I blushed and stammered, flattered and lost for words. I don’t know her quite as well as I know some of my other bosses, but we always smile and say hello in the hallway and ask how each other’s days are going. I’ve done a few small projects for her, but nothing huge.

“Thank you,” I say finally. “That’s so nice, thank you.”

“I told my husband that last night,” she said, “and I thought I should tell you. You’re always so put together and professional.”

I try to remember compliments like that when I’m making spaghetti at 10:30 p.m., getting anxious about how messy my room and all the things I haven’t done yet.

Breathe. Relax. It’s going to be okay.

My mom called this morning, at 7:30 a.m., which made me panic when I got it at 8:10, tucking the phone under my chin so I can hop on one leg to put my boots on. I’m going to be late for class, I’m going to be late for class. Shit. Shit.  My parents never call—not because they don’t worry an unreasonable amount, but because they have a very hands-off policy now that I’m out of the house. A year abroad in a foreign country between high school and college worked wonders in terms of expanding the parent-child relationship. But because they never call, I worry when they do. My mind skyrockets to a death in the family, another announcement of cancer, Sweet Jesus, what’s happened now, please don’t let it be anything too bad.

“Hi honey! Did you get my message?”

There was a message?

 “Uh, no, I saw you called—” I’m about to tell her I’m dashing out the door, as I wriggle, one-armed, into my coat. “Why, what’s up?”

“Uncle Dick’s going into the hospital today, I just wanted to call and let you know.”

I forget that I’m going to be late for class. “Wait, what, why?”

“Oh, heart surgery. I called him last night—you know Sue, she’s frantic, but Uncle Dick just laughed and said ‘Well, I’m on my fourth beer and we had steak for dinner tonight.’” Typical Great-Uncle Dick. Typical Great-Aunt Sue. I can just imagine my birdlike great-aunt fluttering nervously around her well built husband, who just turned 80, talking a mile a minute in her thick Boston accent. We share a birthday, Uncle Dick and I, and he called me on our birthday to pass me off to 17 members of our extended family, most of whom I’d only met this past summer. Second cousins, once removed, the McSorley family, on my grandmother’s side.

“Okay, but it’s a routine surgery, right? Like—nothing can really go wrong?” My voice rises at the end, as I stuff my keys, cell phone, and lipstick into my pocket.

A painful memory stabs hard in the chest: My grandfather was in the hospital for a broken hip and the day after we saw him, he was gone. Anything can happen.

It’s too early to be grieving. Jesus fucking Christ, I have been grieving all week, for someone who isn’t even dead. Enough. Enough.

“I mean, there’s always some risk.” My mother sounds cautious. “Uncle Dick’s 80, you know. But it’s pretty routine, yes.”

“Okay, will you let me know what happens?” I collect my water bottle and jar of Earl Grey tea, glancing at the clock again. 8:21 a.m.

“Yeah, I’m going to call him tonight.”

“Okay, well I don’t get out of class, meetings, or work until 5 pm. But I’ll leave my phone on for you.”

“Sounds good. Love you. Have a good day.”

I don’t turn my phone off after my nap, just in case. She hasn’t called yet. I’m operating on the assumption that no news is good news.

It’s 11:02 p.m., and I’m doing this instead of writing that goddamn reader’s report. I’m half tempted to scrap it and just not apply, but I know I’ll hate myself on Saturday if I don’t. The chances of me getting anything from them aren’t good—I mean, I’m submitting my application on the date it closes. How does that look? Pretty shitty. But why not try?

Tomorrow is Friday. There’s always the promise of a new week dawning. The promise of a Monday to make myself into a better, more tolerant, kindhearted person, who isn’t itching with stress, feelings of inadequacy, impatience, with a healthy dose of hormones whomped in there. When I say TGIF to my co-workers tomorrow, we’ll all sigh with relief and think what the weekend means to us. Maybe I’ll sleep. Maybe I’ll spend all of Saturday in bed finishing up business with tea. Maybe I’ll write some poetry and clear some of that raging in my head, or go for a run, because it’s supposed to be warm.

I’m reminded of a particular few lines from one of Anna Journey’s poems (“Letter to the City Bayou by Its Sign: Beware Alligators”):

“I’m made//of so many girls I can’t get them all/drunk at once or they’d mutiny.”

I half suspect they’ve been sneaking bourbon behind my back.

Some New Poetic Speakers

Lately, the speakers in my writing (in my poetry, especially) have been feisty. Feisty and pissed off and not afraid to let everyone know it. In a recent poem, I have the speaker mailing back a blanket to an ex-lover, after a cat has given birth to six kittens on it. In another, Enya goes out the window to be replaced by Green Day shaking the neighbors’ walls. (For the record, I actually like Enya. Part of my childhood and new age-y aunt influences.) I don’t know where they’re coming from, these angsty, taking-no-shit, (and I think) very frustrated females. Because they’re distinctively female in my mind. (I’m still waiting for a good male speaker to show up, he’s there, just very deep and very quiet for now.)

Maybe one cause can be attributed to a quote I saw on Tumblr recently, taken from Scott Lynch’s Republic of Thieves that went thusly:

A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.

I dabble in feminist readings/articles–I’d like to get more into it, the way some of my friends are. They know stuff. I know a little bit. I’m taking a Women’s Literature course this semester which has been phenomenal. Our white Western male perspective frustrates me, as much as I  know there are so many people working to bring new perspectives, new voices into the mainstream. It feels like swimming upstream–changing centuries of history. Sometimes it’s  hard to identify it in yourself–I caught myself wondering if I should post one of the more vengeful poems on Tumblr. Well hey, I said. The speakers in your poems aren’t you. If people read them as you, well, tough. And why be apologetic for having an angry female speaker? Buck up, buttercup. I posted them.

Another cause might be one of my female professors talking about how some of her male colleagues don’t understand why walking alone to the parking lot after her late class makes her nervous.

“Women really worry about that kind of stuff?” one asked.

Deep, deep sigh.

Here’s a third for possible female speaker frustration: in the last two months, various family/family friends (including my mother) have asked if I’m in a relationship, if I’ve “found” anyone yet, and expressed anywhere from mild surprise to profound shock at hearing that I am not, nor am I looking that hard. (My mom hastily countered her response with, “Well good. Don’t settle,” but there’s still a little bit of asdjf;kajs;sjdsa panic there too behind her eyes.)

And lastly, In the latest InStyle magazine, Jennifer Lawrence was interviewed and the journalist made the mistake of asking if “Have you given any thought to having kids?” The following scene ensues:

Her eyes go dull. “I love kids and I hope I have kids someday, but not now,” she recites.
“So you’d like to fall in love and have some babies? Any immediate plans?”

She glares at me. I’m reminded of her character in Winter’s Bone the scene where she’s showing her two younger siblings how to skin a squirrel and pull out the guts. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says. (InStyle, December 2013)

I gave a giant eyeroll at the interviewer’s question. Like, really? REALLY? Lawrence’s response cheered me up though–I think I’m going to start using that tactic. I don’t want to talk about it. I have other, more important things to do than answer nosy questions about my relationship status, thank you. I also dislike that this question had to come up. It was unfortunately inevitable and I was waiting for it, and sure enough. Ta-da.

So yeah, I guess it makes sense that the female speakers in my poems are a little on edge. Kind of fed-up with the gooey romance stuff and the six rows in Walmart dedicated to make-up and other beauty products, and that so much of society is oblivious to the pressures put on women, 21st century notwithstanding. I’m lucky–I have some incredible male friends, my father identifies as a feminist, and I go to a pretty liberal school. But I repeat: I’m lucky.

At any rate: be on the look-out for some feisty speakers in the next few weeks. They’re here and they are loud.

Grad School? MFA? Year Abroad? Work? Question Mark, Question Mark, Question Mark.

I think almost everyone I know right now is either in a state of panic, elation, or both. As a junior in college, so many wonderful things are happening–and so many downright terrifying things are happening.

My housemate burst into our house today from her late class, shouting, “I’M GOING TO ENGLAND!!!!’, having just been accepted for study abroad in the spring semester. Everyone in my living room shrieked and covered her in a mess of flailing limbs and congratulations.

People’s lives are starting to take shape and form–some of us (the lucky bastards) are realizing what they want to do for the rest of their lives. (Or what they think they want to do for the rest of their lives.) We’re applying for internships and submitting work, and feeling generally optimistic about out future.

On the other hand, I spent a full ten minutes during break in poetry class having a mental blackout of sheer panic, because I realized that Holy shit I need to start working on a portfolio for MFA graduate programs and oh my God, I didn’t factor that in at all and wait, I DO have to take the GRE’s, WEAJFJSD;FJDAF;DAF;, WHATTTTTTTTTT, when am I going to do that, !@#$^&*, which led to What do I even want to do for my MFA? Non-fiction? Poetry? Am I even talented enough for an MFA program? How do I know if I am? Wait, fuck, I haven’t published anything yet, I have like, no publishing credentials. Well fuck me. What if everything I write just sucks and I don’t get accepted anywhere. (The stereotypical writer’s pit of self-doubt and loathing happened.) How do I choose? I’m only a junior in college, cry cry cry, which turned into, Didn’t I want to apply for that government funded year abroad in Germany and write and work, and it all went right back to HOLY CRAPPOLA, LIFE CHOICES, NOTHING IN MY LIFE MAKES SENSE, AND I HAVE NOTHING UNDER CONTROL, and this led to me just putting my head down on my desk and regretting very much that I hadn’t had this panic attack before seeing one of my professors, who always makes me slow down and pretty much reassures me that no, I’m not going to graduate college and become a miserable failure.

This syncs pretty well with my other friends’ sentiments. My best friend ranted about student teaching last week, one friend is awaiting her LSAT scores, another friend is anxious about applying to law school, other friends are turning around the idea of going for an MFA in their heads. And there’s the panic, panic, panic part of it.

My friend, C., and I agreed today that we vacillate between two frames of mind:

1) Everything is out of our control, so we’ll just do the best we can, organize what we can of our lives, assert that little bit of “my work can make it” arrogance you need to get anywhere in writing, and otherwise sit and eat cake as consolation. knowing that we’ll make it with some hard work and time.

2) EVERYTHING IS OUT OF OUR CONTROL, WE’RE NEVER GOING ANYWHERE, WHY DOESN’T ANYTHING MAKE SENSE MY LIFE IS A ROLLERCOASTER OF ABSOLUTE NONSENSE AND CHAOS AND WHY DON’T I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING YET. *cue the stomping around angstily*

I came home at 10:30 pm tonight, did my dinner dishes, crawled onto my bed, and tried not to dip back into poetry-break-panic. Revising my fiction piece that’s due for upper level workshop applications seemed pretty reasonable. Something manageable. I revised mine, a friend’s, and constructively chopped another friend’s poem to pieces. Writing I can do. Revising I can do. These are small, manageable chunks of my life that keep me sane, keep me calm. I tweaked other poems in progress, tried to focus singularly on what was in front of me. It worked. The panic abated.

I’m going out for sushi tomorrow night with a friend after another hellish day, and we’re going to decompress and whine and angst a little, and be gigantic English major nerds in public, and it’s gonna be GREAT. And in the meantime, I’m going to have to keep reminding myself to breathe. And take walks. And be good to myself. And that each day comes as it comes, no faster, no slower. I still have the safety net of three semesters of college ahead of me. As my dad is fond of saying: “it is way too early to panic.”

Here’s a fun snippet of a piece I’m currently working on that sums up how I feel:

               I’m a Pollock
painting, you tell me,
with hair like brushstrokes & undercurrents
in my eyes.

Time to let that one stew a little. Off to bed, off to Thursday. Strugglebus Wednesday, signing off.

Clotheslining Love Across My Room

So I’m thinking about revamping some poems into a collection, like a comprehensive thing, something whose pages you could flip. Part of it can probably be attributed to being in poetry workshop and having my pieces literally ground into nice little image fragments and thrown back at me. The other part can be attributed to this increasing feeling that I need to stop playing around at writing and actually write. One of my professors works a full time day job and is also teaching three classes on the side–Creative Writing and INTD-105 (freshman writing seminar), both of which require an immense amount of reading/editing/critical thinking. Being a TA for one of the INTD-105 sections has shown me how much effort goes into the process–and I’m not teaching the class, by any means, nor am I grading. But holy shit. This professor is also currently working on her novel–she says she gets about 4 hours a weekend to write, which translates into about 2 pages of actual writing–plus you know, singlehandedly caring for her horses and other animals, upkeep of her 3-acre property. If she can write, dammit, so can I. If I want to be doing this for the rest of my life, I’ve got to start now, and I’ve got to have some kind of focus. Perhaps another part of it is that I feel this tremendous pressure to graduate having accomplished something concrete with my undergrad degree. Which is unreasonable, of course, but I’m unreasonable about expectations in the first place.

At any rate, being in poetry workshop has made me see verse in a different way. Things like “love” and “happy” and “sadness” and “anger” get pitched out the window.

“Get rid of the abstractions.”

“Cut wordiness.”

“Get rid of your gerunds.”

One friend calls it “slashing-and-burning”–to get to healthy stuff, you’ve got to cut away all the dead parts. I went back to some poems I’d written last semester, this summer, this fall. To be honest, I was rather horrified. I spent a good half hour last night slashing and burning; perhaps saving a line, an image, but tossing a lot of the poem overboard. I had stanzas filled with vague images.

It’s also interesting now, to look at these poems critically. Poems I wrote in the middle of some desperate, soul-searching, obsessive frame of mind. Poems that felt like a surgical procedure gone wrong, like I’d gotten a defect heart to transplant my own, poems that bled everywhere. They were a lot of raw emotion, a lot of words just thrown around in stanza form, and it’s time to clean it up. To start making the poems less about me and more about an experience. To distance myself from the speaker and let the speaker take on his/her own persona. I can write from a calmer place now, mold the ideas into images that speak without telling. I think a lot of poetry is about the way images make you feel–and I know there’s so much more than that. But for me, when I read a poem, if an image makes me stop and I can’t quite put my finger on why I think it’s so beautiful, or stirring, or sad, or whatever else, I like that poem. For example, I bought Laurie Saurborn Young’s new collection, Carnivoria, off these first three lines:

                                   “When I say roses, I mean how
to change a light bulb with my teeth. How to peer

through a million wires until I see your fading skin.”

The freshness and striking imagery made me want to read more. I bought the book. And that is what I mean, I guess, when I say that a lot of times we feel things we can’t quite express. I wanted to write about how selling the house I spent my teenage years in felt sad but not sad–like I should have cried, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything, just a calm acceptance that this was happening. Or how I sometimes think that our stories with another person aren’t always over, even when we think they are, and how love takes so many different kinds of shapes. And how when I say “I love you”, it doesn’t always mean “forever”, but it never means that I don’t believe in what I’m saying.

So I’m going through the twenty or so poems that I wrote–one of my friends jokingly referred to an acquaintance as “my muse”, and she may have been right. But I think in the end, these poems are more of a journey–an arc, if you will, about trying to keep someone close, even if you’re strangling each other in the end.

**

Also, happy October, dear readers. I’m sorry I haven’t been posting as much. Excuses, excuses, but here they are.

Echolocation

I talk like echolocation,
but your echoes are empty. Your shape
one I could trace blind, but when I call
only the night sky answers back.
You are nowhere to be found among the constellations.
I’m your Stellaluna, but let me live right side
up.

I trust you–or try
–like knowing you’d catch me at the bottom
of the big slide at the playground.
But your faith in me scatters
like oil in a hot pan, scalding
us both. Tempers like cayenne
sizzle.

Send me echoes back,
love waves across the air, mother
steady. Ears listening
for my voice and what I have to say.
Too many words fill up our space, raining
down with acid intent. Look,
we’re corroding, one sharp blow
to level our foundation.

Fireworks

Strings of lights arched over the picnic tables, thirteen rental tables, two hundred chairs, and the three hundred members of the Country Club and their guests, who had all gathered to celebrate Independence Day. The tiki bar was wreathed in lights, illuminating the laughing faces, the bartenders’ hands moving in an intricate dance of alcohol and surety, and the various colorful bottles scattering the bar. Behind the white-linened tables stood two or three of the wait staff, pristine in white polo shirts, khakis, and black aprons. The general manager moved around the crowd in a button-down and dress pants, picking up garbage, chatting with members, and keeping an eye on things. The lake gave the beach love taps every few seconds, the dock stretching long and snake-like into the water. One could see the boats beginning to gather on the darkening lake for the fireworks, as their lights began to flicker on, one by one.  It made a nice celebratory picture.

I was celebrating Independence Day in a much different way. I was in the middle of my second double shift, hauling garbage bags across the beach area, bitterly resentful of every girl my age who could wear a fancy dress and drink and lounge about for the evening. I was planning on going home and scrubbing every inch of my skin off, having subjected it to various kinds of barbecued food, garbage stains, and plenty of sweat. Even worse, I’d just found out I couldn’t go home once we’d packed all the food away. No, the wait staff was staying until the bitter end, so we could pack up 200 chairs and the thirteen tables. I wanted to scream.

“Can you get a trashbag for us?” asked one of the bartenders, casting a quick glance at the debris behind her.

I eyed the hill and two sets of steep stairs with a feeling of resignation. “Of course.”

The dishwasher looked at me with some sympathy as I dragged myself in the kitchen doors. “How ya doing?”

“Hrmphfmfh.” I stomped off towards the back room to find can liners.

Coming out of the kitchen, my boss caught my arm. “The fireworks are starting!”

I stared at him for a moment, without much enthusiasm. I’m carrying a trash bag, I’ve been throwing out plates of garbage all night, fetching people drinks, taking out the trash, explaining that stupid vegetarian dish to eighty people, and you want me to stay here until at least midnight. Fireworks. Whoopie. 

“Okay,” I said, sighing. “I’ll be right down.”

The fireworks were indeed starting and I sat on the darkened steps for a moment, watching the first explosions of white and blue and red. The scene beneath me was beautiful, the strings of lights softening everything into their mellow gold.

“Come on, come on, fireworks!” A gaggle of kids streamed down the stairs, eager to find their parents or friends or a good spot to watch from.

I wandered down to the beach, finding all the waitstaff and bartenders gathered around the bar. Right in front of most of the members. I didn’t care. We all stopped for a few minutes then, bartenders, wait staff, country club members alike, to turn our faces towards the lake, as the fireworks exploded over the lake. I wedged in between two of the wait staff, to lean against a table and tilt my face up towards the sky, illuminated in flashes of red and white and green and yellow. A boy who had been trying to buy me a drink for the last two months, but was foiled by my not-of-age-to-go-to-bars status finally succeeded, handing me a gin and tonic, and trying to pay for it without me noticing. I pretended I hadn’t. The employees toasted each other with our free drinks and sipped them, eyes fixed on the sky, but minds maybe elsewhere. I watched the fireworks try and reach for the stars, and wondered what the stars thought of our brightly colored sparks, if they sat up in their celestial perches and laughed at what they must surely consider human folly. Or if they maybe liked the company. It must get lonely up there. The light of the fireworks was reflected in the still waters of the lake. I imagined my friends on their boat, watching the same fireworks. Looking behind me, everyone looked quiet and entranced. Peaceful, bathed in the contented glow of being surrounded by family, friends, good food, plenty of drinks, and the holiday-feeling. I put my trash bag down on the table behind me, and watched my boss put his arm around his wife. I wondered if he was thinking about his son, gone these six months.

“The fireworks in Oneonta can’t even compare with these,” said one of my co-workers.

“You can’t beat fireworks over a lake,” I said, feeling a little smug to be from Cooperstown, where we had fireworks over our lake.

“It’s beautiful,” he agreed, and we lapsed into silence again.

The finale fired off in a five-minute explosion, one right after the other, and everyone whooped and clapped and cheered.

“Happy fourth of July,” someone said, patting me on the shoulder.

“Happy fourth,” I said, smiling for the first time all night. It was the small moments that mattered, those fifteen minutes of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with my co-workers, drinks in hand, enjoying a moment together. Where everyone was equal: members and workers alike, enjoying the spectacular show.

Love Is…

Love is your father bringing you coffee in bed, because he knows you had one hell of a night at work and all you want to do is lie in bed and feel every cell in your body start to ache a little less. Love is your mother painting your toenails the night before you leave for college, while you lean your head on your hand, and she tells you comforting stories about when she was your age. Love is waiting for your best friend with movies and gin & tonics when she gets back from saying goodbye to her long distance boyfriend, heart-tired and with eyes that have wept oceans on the way home. Love is waking up early to make pancakes, coffee, and eggs for tired parents who spent their night making the yard look beautiful after serving others all day. Love is kissing your mother on the forehead as she sits on the couch, pretending to read, but thinking about the patient she lost today, because you can see that sadness in the crease between her eyes. Love is a drive in the dark around the lake, with a too tired girl who has become grown-up too fast, because she needed to talk and it’s safer in the dark. Love is homemade chocolate chip cookies just out of the oven. Love is in letters you send to people you  miss, to remind them that yes, there is someone thinking of you always, and here’s a reminder that even though we don’t always talk, or even if we do, I need you in my life. Love is cooking for others, because food is the great bond, an expression of joy and personality and the essence of hospitality. Love is 2 am hospital visits with a housemate, even though you don’t have to, even though you have an 8:30 am class, but because you know you’ll never fall back asleep again anyway, and people have always come before class. Love is a midnight walk during finals week, in the freezing cold, because you can’t take it anymore, you have to cry on someone’s shoulder and let someone else carry your weight for an hour. Love is biting your tongue sometimes, because even if we know–or think we know–what’s best for someone else, sometimes they have to discover it for themselves. Love is the dog who struggles to his feet every morning to be close to his humans, even though his back legs are weak and he can’t move very fast. Love is the cat who curls up next to your face in the middle of a wracking coughing fit, purring your fever away, one protective paw on your chest. Love is trying to believe that things will be alright, that some things are meant to be, and also that others are not, and accepting that too. Love is waking up in the morning next to someone and feeling like the luckiest person alive. Love is a kind word, a held door, a friendly smile, an outstretched hand.

Love is what makes our faces glow, our hearts melt, and our hands shake. It makes our hearts skip, our eyes light up, our mouths stretch. It is unassuming, all-encompassing, and it is what makes our world alive.

**
Just feeling rather thankful for the people in my life today. I love you all. 

Summer Nights 2013

We had the first honest-to-God week of summer last week. Maybe other people have been having weeks of summer earlier, but I go to school in Upstate New York, and winter loosens its grip reluctantly. Last week, my campus suddenly burst into gorgeous blooms, fuschia and lilac and creamy white, blushy pinks and brilliant yellow, and everywhere, green, green, green. It’s like the world just turned itself inside out, in this wash of color. I love when Nature puts on a show, and it’s never more magnificent than in the spring and fall.

The nights warmed, with a breeze full of growing things. I thought I could smell all the lively young things growing. There’s something particular about late spring early summer air–it smells green.

I was in the car with three other girls from my creative non-fiction class, leaning against the passenger door, hair streaming out of the open window like a lot of dark tentacles. We were coming home from a marvelous reading by Cheryl Strayed in Rochester and we’d just had dinner as a class with our wonderful professor. I was full and content. It was a warm night, the kind that begged to be celebrated by dancing in the street or having a bonfire or getting drunk with friends. It was a good night to just celebrate being alive and young.

I nudged my friend with my elbow. “Do you want to drink tonight?”

I’d been working on her since we’d left the restaurant–it was a Wednesday, sure, but we’re also in college, and days of the week tend to not matter as much. I didn’t want to get drunk, but I wanted to to be spontaneous and it was just a good drinking night. I could tell. Her roommate drove us to the gas station after we got back and we blasted “Sail” out the windows and screeched the words out the window, changing into “Cosmic Love” on our way home. We sat in their room and got loose and silly and talked about a multitude of things. K. and I ran outside, onto the big field next to her dorm, to stargaze. It was getting chillier and neither one of us had a coat, but we plopped down on the grass, stretched out and stared for awhile. That field is one of the best places on campus to stargaze–everywhere else is too light. Too protected. You have to be vulnerable to really appreciate stars. Because to look up at something so vast and so infinite, you can’t really feel secure. That’s the beauty of them. We got cold after awhile, and I rolled down the hill, shrieking and laughing. I was wearing a skirt, but I didn’t care. I lay at the bottom, gasping and wheezing as K. rolled down beside me, in a muddle of grass clippings and hair. She walked me partway home later, through the still campus, streetlamps softly glowing and I wandered the rest of the way, incredibly pleased with everything.

Thursday night, another friend in my creative non-fiction class texted me: “Want to drink tonight?” I calculated. The week before finals. Classes were winding down. It was another beautiful summer night. Oh why the hell not. We sat in her room and I got to meet one of her best friends from home and his boyfriend. We had a very English major-y conversation about writing and words and somewhere along the line, two more girls from our class showed up, breathless and exuberant. We walked the hill to another party, where people were sitting on the roof, silhouetted against the stars. Light and music pumped from the open windows, small little yellow squares of life. More people were milling around the driveway, the smell of cigarette smoke thick in the air. I wanted one, but I turned inside instead. The kitchen was small and dirty and somehow perfect, with vintage yellow wallpaper peeling around the light switch and onion peels and a singular sweet potato abandoned on the cutting board. Spices tilted at odd angles from the rusty spice rack and numerous beer bottles and empty boxes scattered the counter and floors. Two boys lifted one of our friends up to peer at the crawlspace above her head; they lifted the ceiling tile off and she peered up, barefoot and glowing.

“It’s like a whole ‘nother world!” she exclaimed, laughing.

I settled on the couch in the living room, not really knowing anyone, but perfectly content to just sit and observe. A boy bowed himself out–it was getting late, 1 am, 2 am?–and blew us a kiss.

“Goodnight. Goodnight world. I’m smitten with the universe.” He bowed with a flourish and took himself out the door. I was enchanted. How lovely that is. What a lovely exit to an evening. Pleasant feelings and a smug sense of contentment permeated the air the way the dogwood trees filled the college Green with their perfume. I decided to leave soon thereafter, popping my head into various doors to say goodbye to the friends that I’d walked with. I wasn’t terribly afraid about walking home by myself. It was a good night. I’d stopped being afraid.

Someone called after me, “Goodbye darlin'”, as I left the house, hands tucked into my pockets, and I beamed. It wasn’t in a creepy, menacing way, but in a way that sincerely wished me a beautiful night, with a degree of tenderness and contentment with the world that made me smile to myself all the way down the tiny street. Whoever had wished me a goodnight was evidently smitten with the universe himself. So was I.

Friday and Saturday followed in more or less the same way. Maybe a little hazy around the edges, a few empty wine bottles, but full of gorgeous people who love the world as much as I do. People who make me smile and inspire me. It was a feel-good week. So I went out four nights in a week. It was worth it. It was all worth it. I didn’t stop smiling all four nights. In four more nights, I’ll be back in my bed at home, and summer will have officially begun.

But I couldn’t have asked for a better start to this summer than last week. Universe, I’m smitten with you too.

Grandfather

I had an odd night of it, tossing and turning, waking up to the orange glare of the unreliable streetlamps oozing out over wet black pavement. I’d gone to bed feeling rather disgruntled and resentful, shut drawers with an emphatic bang and brushed my hair with short, irritated strokes,and then jumped into bed, thinking sleep would come easy.

I’d gone to bed reading The Rule of St. Benedict for my Humanities class and the line

If you have a dispute with someone, make peace with him before the sun goes down,

echoed in my head. I thought I could also easily slip “yourself” in there too, but I turned over to avoid the orangey accusation of civilization and must have fallen back asleep.

This particular section of my Humanities course is difficult for me. My grandfather was a monk at the Abbey of the Genesee, about five minutes down the road by car from my university. I spent one week of my childhood summers in one of the beautiful retreat houses: Cana, Bethany, Nazareth. Most often Bethany, a sprawling nine bedroom house with an open front porch and expansive backyard, where my extended family gathered to play guitar on the porch, barbecue, and regather. In my mind, I wander through each room of that house; my fingers dance through the pages of the guestbook, where I can trace my childish handwriting from 1998, logging us in.

Geneseo isn’t a foreign place for me–it’s tied to a man with eyes as blue as an autumn day, lively and snapping. I walked into class today to a Gregorian chant and stopped dead in the doorway, a painful deep cut welling up somewhere in the place that still cries for my grandfather. And at the same time, a beautiful rush of relief and peace. It cries home to me.

The slow, steady chant stirs memories of attending Vespers in the cool, circular chapel, with colored light slivering in from stained glass chunks set in the wall and the hard, straight-backed wooden pews that I would wriggle impatiently in as a child.

I sat down in my chair, suddenly remembering the dream I’d had, the one that had woken me up to the streetlamps. The one that had given me funny prickles all morning, a memory that demanded to be remembered.

I had dreamed of my grandfather last night. He was visiting me at college and I as so excited to show him everything. I don’t particularly recall much about the dream, other than the way his face lit up when he saw me. I never got the chance to tell him I was coming to Geneseo, even though he’d gently suggested it in the numerous emails he sent me, as I applied to college. I was often “too busy” to respond. I was to attend Hamilton College and go abroad to Germany–things he would also never find out.

I remember sitting in the car, driving up the long path to the Abbey for his funeral, keeping it together, my stomach as clenched as the fists I bunched in my black dress. At his funeral, one of the monks greeted us at the door. He clasped my hand warmly.

“Welcome Amy,” he said gently. “He was so proud of you, you know.”

I have never felt so unworthy. I remember “Thank you” somehow spilling out along with all the tears I’d been holding back the three and a half hours up to the Abbey. I never knew what it was to cry for so long that you ran out of tears, and could only shake dryly, your body emptied of everything. Even almost four years later, he still brings tears to my eyes, a violent physical emotion that I’m unaccustomed and uncomfortable with. He is buried in the back of the Abbey, one of many simple wooden crosses, and I want to visit his grave, sink to my knees, and ask for the answers I don’t have.

There is a photo of me meeting my grandfather for the first time, as soon as I was adopted from Korea. There is a love and a light between us that I feel even now. I walked the grounds of Bethany when I moved into the dorms freshman year.

“I’m here,” I said simply, sitting on the front porch, where I’d sung songs with my uncle and watched my cousins. “I’m back.” This is why I’m at college here. It felt right. There was something pulling me back to where I needed to be, and I try to remember it on nights like this. The ghosts of my childhood whisper all around this place, and next year, when I have a car, I think I will walk those grounds much more.

The Cana house is where I met my grandfather for the first time. The Bethlehem house is where my father stayed when he asked my grandfather for my mother’s hand in marriage. The Nazareth house we stayed at one summer when Bethany was booked. And Bethany. Bethany is the towering house of my dreams, full of antique furniture and memories.

I want to go to Vespers soon. Visit his grave in the dying sunlight. Try and remember what he taught me about peace and love by his example. Help me quiet the noise in my head. I’m here. It’s for a reason.

Moving Day

When you’re in your twenties, transitions are to be expected. Addresses change like fashions, friends come and go, we move from one phase of life into the next. One thing that is always a constant is your parents’ house. The safe harbor.

I came home last night to my safe harbor. My father’s face lit up with this slow, incandescent smile, and he didn’t have to say anything to let me know he was happy I was home. I hung onto him for a long time and he let me. My mom made up our dining room with a tablecloth and candles, and made lasagna, salad, and bread to celebrate my homecoming. I chased my cats around the house until they would let me pick them up and cuddle them.

And then, last night, my parents announced that they intend to move. Our mortgage is too high. I was sitting by our fireplace and got a chill nonetheless. I have moved six times in twenty years of life. I thought we’d stay in this house forever. They intend to stay in the area, but we’ll be living in a smaller house, not the house of my high school years. We’ve been here for seven years and after seven years, it’s hard to not be more than a little attached. They went to look at houses today. I went out to breakfast with a friend instead.

I’m twenty. In two years, I won’t even be living at home anymore. In fact, I very much hope to be living back in Germany in two years. I’m the adult child now. I’m grown up and going to be fully out of the nest soon. I have no real say in this decision–it impacts me on a much lower level, and I know it’s for the best. I don’t want to see my older parents struggling to finance our house, when they could easily downsize.

But the sentimentalist in me went through our house last night, touching walls, counting steps, trying to put away snapshots into my memory file. The  birthday parties with twenty girls crowding into our tiny living room, the arguments over the dining room table, the countless family, Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthday dinners cooked in the kitchen. My room, where I struggled through adolescence, where I sink gratefully into my own bed after months at college, whose every nook and cranny I know.

I still dream of my childhood home in Maryland, with honeysuckle bushes lining the driveway and big front porch with the swing. The two big pine trees in our front yard where I first learned how to climb a tree and picked off cicada skins with a mixture of revulsion and fascination. The arching magnolia tree under which I made stone soup for my dad, the hammock between the apple trees, the large field out back, where I pretended I was a horse and galloped up and down the length of it for hours on end. The collection of stones by the old shed where I cuddled six baby kittens once. Our sunroom, with red floors and deck chairs, and the ledge above the door, where our silly cat would always get stuck. The lilac bushes crowding in our kitchen windows in early spring, bursting with light and dark blooms and fragrance. The cool green kitchen, the expansive upstairs that was mine, all mine, and the attic that I was scared of. I still know every part of my family house intimately. I don’t dream about this house: it’s always the Maryland house. Maybe when we move this time, I’ll dream of this house.

Today, my parents came back from visiting houses. I walked into see two appraisals sitting on our kitchen table. I went straight upstairs. My mom just knocked, poked her head in.

“You need to start de-cluttering. We definitely want to–”

“Move?” I asked, cutting her off, putting my words in before she could.

“Move,” she said. “So we need to start downsizing now. A little bit every day, okay?”

A little bit of my angsty teenage self is surfacing. I don’t want to move. I love every part of this house, with the creek in the backyard that I swam up and down in eighth grade with friends. With the funny outdoor steps going from the second floor down to the deck and the roof I used to illegally climb onto and sun myself on during the summer. I mowed every damn inch of our 3/4 acre property this summer. I know where the roots in the trees are, how to steer around our trees and forscythia bush. My parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary tree is in this yard. Our vegetable garden. Our compost pile. My mom’s art studio. My dad’s shop. The tree I brought home from 11th grade AP Bio has gotten so tall. We just redid the barn, with lovely winding gravel pathways, and it hurts to leave all this love and care to someone else. It’s not just money we’ve invested in this property: there’s been so much love of home put up into this house, these grounds. My mother’s paintings scatter the walls of our house, our shelves and shelves of books heaped everywhere, our split rail fence brave against strange dogs and snowbanks.

I hated this house when we first saw it. I sulked the entire car ride up from Maryland when we first came up to see it. I was twelve. Now I can’t imagine leaving it. Readjusting to another house, that will never really be home. I’ll be a visitor in this new home. I won’t live there, not like I’ve lived in the Maryland house or this house. I will stay there four or five months out of the year. That’s not home. I see my parents packing up and moving on, moving onto the next phase in their life, without a child at home. And in a way, I sense a final farewell to childhood. Things are different now. I suppose this is the last tie to be broken. Someone will someday perhaps sit where I am sitting now, writing this. There will be more hopes and dreams and fears in my room, another life lived out in this house I call home. I only hope they will love it as much as we have.