Let's get this show on the road

As I write this post, I am surrounded by wedding paraphernalia. Place cards piled on my desk. Road signs that shout “Wedding this way!” propped against the wall. A conspicuous ivory dress calling to me from the back of my closet. And then there are the peripheral objects, filling up our routine spaces with signs of impending festivities. The cards (incoming and outgoing) perched on the shelf, supplies to feed more than just the two of us piling up on the counter. Even our little dog, Maisie, has resigned herself to a pre-wedding snooze, belly-up in the corner, exhausted from all the preparations.

For the past seven months, we’ve mostly kept the wedding debris at bay. Even if it was increasingly on our minds, we generally kept the wedding off of the kitchen table, returned relevant reading materials to their places on the shelves, and tried to make lists, not piles.

With two days left to go, however, all bets are off. I suddenly feel as if my space reflects my internal state—messy, chaotic, ridiculous, and wonderful. Our little apartment is starting to feel something like backstage at a theater. Everything points to something important that’s about to happen, something much bigger than this little space or even the two of us, scrambling to get this show on the road.

If there ever were a time to call liminal, it’s this. I can only think to compare it to finals period, when time seems to come unhinged. You fall asleep late and wake up early in an attempt to add more hours to the day, to slow down time. Your stomach feels weird, and you’ve been eating a very balanced diet of cupcakes and Doritos. You will accomplish a seemingly impossible number of tasks. Something will certainly be left undone. You are so very close to an end and a new beginning.

Over the next few days, I'm sure I will wish I could fast forward through stressful moments and slow down beautiful ones. I am looking forward to many hugs and smiles. I am so, so thankful to be marrying my sweetheart. As the whirlwind weekend begins, I am grateful that we're taking the time to acknowledge our commitment among a handful of family and friends, and I am especially excited to return to our regularly scheduled programming, to our life together.

Celebrating the Everyday

A co-worker once told me about a trip she took with a girlfriend. I don’t remember where they went or when or even if there was a specific reason for the journey. What I remember about the story is that they didn’t have a camera (this was before the age of iphones).  As they stopped at noteworthy places or scenic views, they’d take a moment, pose, and say ‘Click! Took a Mental Picture!’ This story has stuck with me for several years, maybe because when I travel, I make it a point to put down the camera and soak in the place and moment as much as I can.  Of course then I pick up the camera again and take 150 pictures of really-cool-old-stuff (not even a slight exaggeration), but I make sure I see things outside of a viewfinder and imprint the memory to my brain and not just my SD card, I take a mental picture.

Surprisingly, as much as I strive to put down my beloved lenses while traveling, I’m becoming a total shutterbug at home.  The ease of having a camera on my cell phone means I can snap a shot at the grocery store or in my backyard. I can document a particularly awesome hair day or my current shade of nail polish.  My shoes are regularly photographed as one of my favorite subjects.  All show up on my instagram account. At first I thought it might be silly, I’m not a photo-journalist or an artist. I’m not taking pictures of Big-Important-Things; just snaps of my everyday life. But now I realize that’s the great thing.  These quick snaps are a celebration of the everyday.

Every day is fantastic.  Every day there is something beautiful or interesting to see.  Every day is a new journey and a new discovery. And that should be celebrated.  The collection of ice cream scoops that caught my eye thanks to the bright colors----the sunset over the cornfield---my current favorite pair of shoes---These things make up who I am. Like little happy puzzle pieces, these square snapshots build a bigger picture.

The great thing about instagram is my everyday isn’t the only one I get to experience.  I follow friends and relatives, and even a couple of folks I’ve never met in real life (like some of the wonderful contributors to Equals Record!).  I get to catch glimpses of other everydays without stepping outside of my own.  Roxanne’s views of Boston remind me that fall is on the way, I can’t wait to see the leaves change and snap some of my own autumnal photos. My cousin Andy’s photos almost always come with a thought provoking caption or interesting story and encourage me to think about the world outside of myself.

Equal parts inspiring and instigating, that’s what I love about the every day.[gallery link="file"]

For I have sinned

I am about the furthest thing from a Catholic imaginable, it's true.  But last night I was lying awake feeling guilty for a litany of failings and vices from the past weeks.  'How Catholic of me,' I mused.  And this is not to say that my own Jewish culture doesn't have a lot to offer in the guilt department.  As I flopped back and forth under the covers, I told myself to stop spinning about my various shortcomings and try to focus on all the ways I might have been effective or kind recently.  As so many of us writing here have acknowledged, it is not easy to take those night-time demons to the mat, especially when the hours are small.  Part of the struggle is feeling alone, trapped in your mind with what you imagine to be shameful thoughts and deeds. When I was finally awoken by the chattering of the baby in the early morning, it was something of a relief.  As I extracted her from the crib and set about to start the day, I decided I would engage in something of a "confessional" exercise.  Perhaps if I purged my consciousness of some of the low moments, I could make room for fresh experiences.  Forthwith, a detailing of seven mortal sins of late.  Here is hoping that cracking open my humanity can start to heal what ails me.  At least it might make you feel superior and then you can write about all the ways in which you experienced Pride :)

Wrath - I am typically fairly internal when it comes to anger, which, if you read any study on health is not ideal.  Apparently, people who externalize anger (at least express it, if not outright explode all over the place) tend to have lower levels of depression and can experience improved communication.  This article from the American Psychological Association (and there are a host just like it in the literature) describes some adaptive qualities of anger and how to use it to your benefit.  At my worst, I employ the tactic of stuffing down things that irritate me and then completely coming unglued over something relatively innocuous much later on down the road.  This is totally unproductive and moderately to profoundly confusing for loved ones.  I am working on addressing problems in the moment and being honest about my needs.  This is tricky and can feel risky to someone like myself who likes to avoid confrontation.  But ultimately, the confrontation always happens, just maybe displaced, which is no good for anyone.  Onward.  Upward.

Greed - I want more time, mostly.  Of course, I always desire too many cookies, clothes and earthly possessions, but hours in the day . . . what I wouldn't give.  The truth is that I could manage my time better.  There is certainly some whiling away the hours on Facebook/Instagram, spending late evenings watching Boardwalk Empire instead of answering emails, iChatting with a friend rather than ordering groceries.  The balance of stealing some time to which I feel entitled ("me" time) and organizing the day around prioritizing important tasks is the struggle of all good people, right?  And listen to my language: "stealing" some time . . . from what or whom?  Still and all, I want more time for work, more time with my family, more time to noodle on the internet.  There, I said it.

Sloth - Um, please see Greed.  And then sprinkle in all the moments where I sit in the chair at the studio or on the couch at the apartment thinking 'Sarah, stop flipping through the magazine and move on to the next thing.'  How about the time last week when I recalled I had read a study somewhere (I'm big on studies) indicating that dogs have fewer allergies when you bathe them less often, so . . . On the whole, I tend to push myself to make it all happen and there are times when I actually take great pleasure in physical labor and menial tasks.  There can be a wonderful meditative quality to folding, organizing, washing, etc.  But I realize I tell myself that things are just super busy now and fitting it all in will get easier over time.  This is, of course, an exercise in self-delusion.  Everything will just continue to get busier and the tasks and demands on time will simply compound.  Operation Pull it Together in full effect, then.

Pride - I post about 74,000 pictures of my daughter on Facebook every day with captions extolling her adorableness.  I talk about her accomplishments (at 9 months, these include things like almost, maybe, no definitely, actually probably not - but it really sounds like it! - uttering, "mmmmm…" when I feed her bites of something) ad nauseum.  When people ask me about her I always start with, "She is totally @#!&-ing awesome."  Sue me.  I am a new mother.  I got nothing for you here :)

Lust - There are days when I want power and I want it badly.  This is typically applicable in my business.  I want to be huge enough and famous enough that clients line up at my door, the phone rings off the hook and my inbox is brimming with messages where the inquiry goes something like this, "We really want to work with you, exclusively and specifically, and as such, we are writing you this check with a large sum.  Please deposit this check immediately and then show up on the day of our event with whatever florals and decor you feel are appropriate.  Thanks so much."  Until then, I suppose I will continue to work really hard to prove myself in the industry, hone my brand, secure the trust of clients and exceed expectations in the execution of events like my business depends on it.  Because it does.  The mogul situation is still out of reach, as it turns out.

Envy -I always think everyone else has it easier, is doing it better, knows something I don't and so on.  I believe this to be a fairly universal issue but it doesn't make it any less potent. I am particularly uncomfortable with this aspect of my personality, as my life is so relatively rosy.  As previously discussed, I have greater flexibility and more human and capital resources than most working people.  There is real suffering all around me in this big city and my concerns about finding the time to update my website or whether my daughter has enough of whatever thing-of-the-day should consume scant mental energy.  No excuses here.

Gluttony - The unending battle with cooking at home and eating "like a real family," wages on.  We over-indulge in take-out and restaurant meals where we are inevitably served too much of less healthful food.  This is a symptom of multiple larger issues in our house (see above struggles with time management, for example) and the remedies aren't coming easily.  I picture us coming together for dinner each night, discussing important matters of the day, laughing, sharing locally sourced food we have lovingly prepared, nourishing our bodies . . . then I scrape the sauce from the (recyclable?) plastic container from Dao Palate onto day-old rice, popping it into the microwave and feel awful.  Fill the refrigerator weekly, take a cooking class (or seven), continue to try and carve out the time.  How hard could it BE?!  HONESTLY.

Well, now I see why people are into this process of recounting wrongs and requesting absolution. It does feel somewhat cleansing.  The accountability piece is where things get dicier.  Maybe writing it down will catalyze forward motion.  And reading it over will help me be a little more gentle with myself as I strive to be a better . . . well . . . everything.  Wait, is that Greed or Pride or maybe Lust?  Sigh.

 (image via)

Lessons from a weekend at home...

Dear Clara,

Aren’t weekends the very best part of the week? If you think that now, just wait until you start working!  Half of our weekends are usually on the go, discovering something new, but I always savor a weekend at home too.  Here’s what help make ours special:

• Start the weekend with something active: A quick run, a brisk walk . . . on one of the days, usually Saturday, I have been trying to get some physical activity out of the way right from the start in the morning.  It usually gives me a bit of time to myself to think and relax from the week, and I feel like it gives me a pass to enjoy the rest of the weekend without guilt.
• Try something new . . . : Sometimes when you live in a place, you take all of its gifts and treasures for granted.  When I find myself at home for the weekend, I try to always make a point of seeing or doing or trying something new, almost as if I would be visiting for the first time.  It might be a museum or a park or a restaurant or a farmer’s market.  Everyone always has a list of things they’ve been meaning to do or see in their own town, so pull from that list and rediscover where you live all over again.
• . . . but balance with something old: At the same time, try to have little weekend routines that you can attach to.  There’s something comfortable and familiar about coming back to a place or schedule that makes home feel more like home, especially for us since our home changes so often.  We have a “Sunday Routine” that involves going to our favorite neighborhood, going to church, taking a walk and then having brunch in one of a few restaurants in that neighborhood.  Having that comfort of Sunday morning helps us to feel grounded and rooted---with so much else that’s changing, the familiar routine is like a big hug that at once is the end of a week and the start of a new one.
• Enjoy a lazy morning: People say that when you have children you no longer have lazy mornings.  I disagree---for sure, mornings are different.  But we still pick one to lounge around a little longer to savor the sunshine through the window, to read a book, watch a cartoon, have a good laugh over tickles.  We have breakfast at the table, and linger over coffee . . . just little things that make mornings mornings, and that we don’t have the time to all do together during the business of the work week.
• Make time to reflect and be grateful: I use our time at church for this, and while I hope you find that same space and comfort there, I realize that one day you might choose to do things differently.  Whatever that space might be for you, set aside some quiet space for yourself to truly appreciate the gifts of the prior week, even on the hard ones.  Think about what you have done for others and what you could have done for others, so that you reset for the new week with that mindfulness.  Make some room in your heart for gratitude---we are blessed with so much, even when we think we are lacking. Remember, no matter how much more we might think we need, there are always people who have much less, and I mean more than just material things---it might be love, it might be forgiveness, it might be family. See if there is anywhere where you can share a little more, and expect a little less.
• Go to bed early on Sunday:  Pick a cut-off time for yourself and just make that last part of the weekend a little bit about relaxing.  Watch a show or read a favorite book but then lights off . . . the week ahead is so much better if you’re actually well rested.  Get at least 8 hours of sleep, and then call me to thank me on Monday morning.

All my love,

Mom

The F Words: Ally Kirkpatrick

We have an exciting treat today in F Words land, folks. One of The Equals Project's newest contributors, the ridiculously overtalented and supercool Ally Kirkpatrick, is here to talk about being a lady and an eater (and an emerging cook). Her blog, The Green Cabin Year, is a chronicle of her life in a teeny little house in rural Virginia. She didn't always live the bucolic life, though---she just recently moved from Brooklyn, where she worked as a barista while writing the nights away. I have to say that I am seriously psyched about her joining our family here at Equals, and I think you will be, too. Tell us a bit about your day job. For the last ten years I’ve pretty much been a professional dishwasher. You could also say I was a barista, too, since I made cappuccinos and espressos part of the time. Dishwashing was half the work, so I got pretty good at that, too. It’s a useful skill, I think, to be able to bang out a huge bus tub of dirty dishes really quickly and effectively. Every coffee shop or cafe I ever worked at (eight different places between Boston, DC and New York), washing dishes was an important part of the job. City cafes get really slammed. Coworkers will like you if you can wash the hell out of some pint glasses, and the customers like seeing you hustle because you get them their iced latte faster.

Sometimes it was good. Sometimes I really hated it. Like when I worked at this one place in the East Village that had terribly steep stairs that would get wet and slippery with each load brought up and down to the sanitizer. I totally busted my ass one time, falling down the steps one at a time like “duh dunk, duh dunk, duh dunk.” I just sat at the bottom for a minute absorbing the reality of what had just happened, thinking “So, this is my life, I guess. This was the most exciting part of me week . . .” then I got up and washed a bunch of lipstick-stained demitasses.

But I’m making it sound worse than it was . . . It was mostly, like 98% of the time, an absolutely wonderful job. Every cafe I worked at had fantastic staff members and regular customers. People I’ve met through washing dishes and pulling shots have become my closest friends. Some of my regulars from the coffee shop came to my wedding a few years ago. Some of my best friends I met over sudsy dishwater.

That said, I’m glad I don’t work full time in a coffee shop anymore. I’m still washing dishes, but now it’s as a kitchen assistant for food writer Cathy Barrow. It’s the best job ever. During the cooking classes Cathy teaches I wash dishes and listen in as she gives instruction. It’s a much more interesting situation than when I was working in coffee shops. Now as I’m washing dishes I get to learn all about cooking, canning, pasta making, etc. I’m learning a lot. Before I would just binge on muffins in the mop closet waiting for the dishes to come out of the sanitizer. I kinda used food to cope with not loving my job. Or maybe it’s that I loved my job, but just wanted more out of life. I wanted to be a writer, and no shameful mop closet muffing inhaling can address that void. I’m still cleaning the hell out some dishes. But I get to learn new things and I have much more time to write. I also get to take home lots of delicious food.

How did you learn to cook? I really don’t know how to cook. I know how to follow a recipe. I know some basic techniques. But as far as actual cooking, as far as being a real home cook, I’m not there yet. I’m trying to learn how to make one big meal instead of all these disconnected spazzy little meals. Does that make sense? “One big meal?" For example, I made scones yesterday. It took me two hours. Then all I ate all day was scones. I felt like crap, obviously, and I never want to make scones again. Maybe what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to learn how to eat. Cooking is the easy part. I know how to season and taste and adjust. What I’m figuring out now is how to do that in my mind, working towards following my wants and hungers and then interpreting those feelings, translating them into plans for a meal.

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends or family? I love cooking with my husband Jake. He cooks like he’s dancing, except he doesn’t dance. If he were a dancer his cooking would be like ballet. He’s very graceful in the kitchen, but has a lot of energy and expression. I like working with him because of this. I stay out of the way a bit and just watch, follow his lead, help with one specific thing (chop this, stir that.) It’s always best when one person is in directing the meal, I think, that way you know who’s calling the shots, who’s choreography you’re minding.

With my mom, I love being in the kitchen with her, too. My husband makes things up as he goes, depending on what he has in the fridge that day. My mom, on the other hand, is a big fan of cookbooks and follows recipes more closely. This means that it’s better for us to work on separate tasks if we’re in the kitchen together. She’s knows where she is in her process, I know where I am... with her it’s more like a line dance. We’re in step with each other but on different planes.

Then there’s Cathy. Working in Cathy’s kitchen is just amazing. It’s different than cooking with anyone else I’ve ever cooked with because there’s this childlike wonder that washes over me every time she brings up a favorite dish she makes, or every time she sends me to the pantry for some special jar of something.

I should also really enjoy cooking by myself. I put on Beyoncé or Robin and gyrate around the kitchen like a moron and my dog just looks at me like he’s concerned for my life.

What's your favorite thing to make? Coffee. My favorite thing to make is, and will forever be, coffee. Espressos, cappuccinos, macchiatos, cortados, pour-overs. All of it. I love coffee the way people love wine. I love the story of each coffee: where it came from, how it was processed and roasted, how it tastes in different preparations. Maybe I’ll grow to love making food one day, but for now I suck at it too badly to find peace and enjoyment out of the process. I think because I’ve been making coffee for so long and competing in barista competitions and such that I get a lot of pleasure out of the ritual and the process of brewing coffee.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? What cuisine would you say belongs to Deborah Madison? I want to eat Deborah Madison Cuisine.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? Anything involving shellfish, because I’m very allergic. Also, recipes that call for hot peppers. Not because I don’t like eating them, but because I always worry I’m going to rub my eyes by accident while prepping them and end up with stinging, watery eyes for the rest of the afternoon.

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? Most recently my relationship with my family has made me more interested in foraging. Pawpaws, morel mushrooms, black walnuts, fiddle heads. These are all things my husband and I have been finding on my parents property in Virginia. We just moved here in this past spring and I found myself obsessed with foraged foods. It’s trendy right now, I guess, but I got into it because of my dad, who is possibly the least trendy person in the universe (don’t worry, he won’t read this.) He spends a lot of time in the woods as a hunter and told me about all these hot spots for morel mushrooms up in the hills. I also learned to butcher my first deer this year because of him. That was a relationship to my food I hadn’t experienced before. My husband and I were in the driveway of my parent’s suburban home with this deer my dad had shot that morning laid out on a card table. We had this beautiful deer before us, and we didn’t know what to do with it. So we used my dad’s ipad and learned how to process it step by step from YouTube. It was an exhausting experience, both physically and emotionally, but it was an interesting connection to food – seeing the whole deer-to-venison process – and it made me more mindful about my meat consumption. I still eat meat, but I’m edging further and further away from animal products. You can’t butcher a deer and not feel awe and respect for the animal. I felt a lot of sadness, too, so I think I need to figure out how that needs to impact my eating and cooking habits.

Even today, home cooking is strongly associated with women's traditional place in the family and society. How do you reconcile your own love of the kitchen with your outlook on gender roles? There was an article on Propeller that I read recently by Mary Rechner that addressed this issue in a way that was really meaningful to me. I want to write fiction. If I worry about food all the time then there may not be space for writing fiction in my life. On a personal level I reconcile my love of the kitchen by having a fiercer love for private writing time in my studio. Let me mention that I don’t actually have a writing studio… but you get the idea. My kitchen and my (imaginary) studio are two places I make sure I spend a certain amount of time each day. I want to think about writing and ideas two thirds of the time. One third of the time I want to be canning some jam or stuffing my face with scones.

But on a larger level I’m completely perplexed and can’t reconcile it at all and I feel very worried about it. I’m totally confused on this issue and don’t know what to think. In the meantime I’m reading Propeller polemics and Emily Matchar’s blog New Domesticity [Meg: Me, too!] and thinking “Right on! Fuck canning and baking pretty tarts! It’s pointless domestic posturing!” but then at the same time as I say that I’m canning and baking pretty tarts and not working at all on a short story.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you're sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? The recipe I’m sharing is for fresh Sriracha from Food52. I made it for the first time this summer and I love it because it tastes good on everything. Wear gloves and don’t rub your eyes!

Fresh Sriracha By edamame2003, republished with permission from Food52 1/2 pound red Fresno chiles, coarsely chopped 4 garlic cloves 1 tsp. kosher salt 1 cup distilled white vinegar 2 tbs. palm sugar

Visit Food52 for the full (delicious and surprisingly simple) recipe.

Looking Forward: Hello, Neighbor.

It was a Friday night. My friend Ben was visiting from out of town, and we’d made plans to go out to eat in my neighborhood. As we walked, I listed dinner options---Thai, Korean, Italian, Japanese---but it wasn’t long before I realized I’d lost my audience. Half a block behind me, a wide-eyed Ben stood transfixed in front of the window of a neighborhood barbershop, one I’d passed many times before but to which I’d never paid much attention. “Let’s go here,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, incredulous.

“Here,” he said. “Let’s go here. They’re watching the Pacquiao fight. Let’s join them.” Then, in response to my blank stare: “Pacquiao’s a boxer.”

Still several yards down the street, I proceeded to list the thousand-and-one reasons I thought this was a crazy idea. It would be rude, I insisted, to assume that this group wanted guests---judging from the music and the laughter that was coming from the shop, they seemed to be having a wonderful time as it was, without us. We weren’t invited, we’d never met---therefore we’d be intruding. And, I huffed, it was getting late. I was starving.

“We can do whatever you want after the fight, I promise,” Ben said. “Please can we do this? It’ll be fun. These people are your neighbors.” He paused. “Afterward, it’s your call, I swear. Anything you want. We can eat ice cream and watch ‘Father of the Bride’ if that’s what sounds good to you.”

Ten minutes later, I found myself seated on a bench in the front of the barbershop, in the center of a flurry of activity. Men placed bets in Spanish, swiveling in leather barber chairs. Couples salsa-danced to music on an old boombox in the back corner. Beer bottles were opened with cans of hairspray. Ben had joined some sort of raucous conversation with a cluster of Pacquiao fans; meanwhile, an old man pacing the front of the shop graciously attempted to explain to me the complexities of boxing. A girl in the corner about my age offered me a shy smile, a gesture of camaraderie.

“I told you this would be fun,” said Ben.

He was right. It was.

That was almost a year ago. I’ve passed the shop many times since then and have peeked in on occasion, but the barbers’ backs are often turned, or they’re too focused on their work to notice passersby in the street. Last week, however, I ran into the owner on the sidewalk outside a local bodega two blocks from my apartment.

I gave a cautious wave, thinking he might not recognize me; instead, I was met with a giant hug and an ear-to-ear smile. Despite our language barrier, we exchanged pleasantries: we were doing well, enjoying life, working hard as usual. Before saying goodbye, I told him I’d stop by again soon to watch another fight, punching the air awkwardly in a poor attempt to mime boxing. “Yes, yes,” he replied, holding me at arm’s length. Then he did something I’ll never forget.

“Look at you,” he said, beaming, “You’re wonderful.”

All my life, the cities I’ve lived in have felt like temporary homes. Growing up, my family moved back and forth between Los Angeles and Honolulu, and I knew that Santa Cruz, where I lived for four years in college, wasn’t a city I’d remain in after graduation. Now, though, for the first time, I’m beginning to get a sense of what it might feel like to be a part of a community. To settle in. To make a place my own.

And I’m realizing I don’t just want to exist as part of my neighborhood---I want to know it. More importantly, I want to know the people I share it with---and not just the ones whose lives look like mine. It makes me so happy to be able to say hello every day to the man across the street who feeds the pigeons every morning, to the bearded bartender next door, to the crew of barbers down the street, and the dreadlocked tattoo artist around the corner.

Two years ago, when I lived deep in a hipster-dominated pocket of Bushwick, someone plastered a sign over a chainlink fence that read, you are not your neighborhood.

Perhaps not. But aren’t neighborhoods largely a reflection of the men and women and children---the barbers, bartenders, artists, hippies, hipsters, and everything in between---who populate them?

We may only know each other well enough to smile and wave and say hello, but this makes us more than strangers.

This makes us neighbors. And together, we are our neighborhood.

Make Down

I'm far from knowledgeable when it comes to other parts of the country, but here in the south makeup seems to be a necessity. Little girls grow up dreaming about the day when they are allowed to imitate their mothers' daily ritual of applying lipstick, blush, and eye shadow. The youngsters turn into teens and start experimenting with heavy eyeliner, brightly colored lips, and many other trendy facial fashions. Beauty pageants, high school proms, and date nights all call for an hour or so nose dive into the make up bag. Before long, the adult version doesn't feel like herself in public without at least a puff of powder. Neither right nor wrong, somehow I skipped right over this entire phase of girlie-hood. Being almost thirty years old means that my skin is far from perfected porcelain. Like most, my face is dotted with freckles, sun spots, the occasional blemish, a couple of scars, and a fair amount of wrinkles that, at times, I wish I could erase. But when I really think about it, those unique characteristics decorating my skin are  just minor details. Details that tell my own personal story: freckles because I have fair skin, sun spots because my family enjoys vacationing at the beach and we forget to reapply sunscreen, blemishes because I get stressed out or eat too much chocolate, scars because I was an active kid, forehead creases caused by being confused or angry at times, and those deep parenthesis wrinkles between my cheeks and mouth because I've laughed a lot during my lifetime.

At this point, I wouldn't exactly know where to start the process of buying cosmetics. Besides modifying my features with a light brushing of mascara and lip gloss, I even bared it all in front of my husband and guests at our wedding. Don't get me wrong, there are many times when I look around at all the flawless faces strolling the streets, and my mind starts to wonder: "That shadow really makes her eyes pop, would it do the same for mine?" or "Her skin looks impeccable with that powder, should I invest?" or "I wonder if I would look younger and fresher with a bit of concealer?"

But in my world, being able to roll out of bed and shamelessly face the world (with under-eye bags and all) within five minutes of placing my feet on the ground trumps everything else.  I could probably just chalk this all up to the fact that, in general, I'm lazy when it comes to presenting myself.  However, I prefer to think I'm sharing and celebrating my life experiences one sun spot and blemish at a time.

Why Do We Live Where We Live?

Growing up, I always felt trapped by my surroundings.  Why had my parents chosen to raise me in the dry, geriatric filled desert of Tucson, Arizona instead of Paris, where I would’ve learned charmingly French traits like bike riding with a baguette or tying a scarf in several hundred different ways?  Why had my dad moved us to the agricultural hub of California, rather than Manhattan, where I would’ve become street-wise and savvy, ready to take on the world with my fast-talking charm and quick wit? As I’ve come to a point in my life where I get to personally choose where I live, I place a high premium on the cities that drew me as a child.  I’ve now lived in Berlin, San Francisco, and New York, with my recent move to London adding to my tour of world cultural hubs.  I spend four times as much on rent than my father does.  I’ve become used to taking over an hour to get from one place to another, walking a block, hopping on two buses and subwaying to meet a friend out.  I have not, since I left my parent’s house, had a backyard to call my own.  I compete constantly:  for jobs, amongst the best and brightest from across the country and world; for seats on public transportation and in restaurants; for space on the sidewalk; for tickets, for roommates, for a drink at a bar.

After we’d been in London for two weeks, my boyfriend Zack seemed agitated.  We were grabbing dinner after spending the day working from home.  “What’s wrong?”  I asked.

“Nothing,” he said.  “It’s just---this is the exact same day we would’ve had in New York.  We woke up, ate the same thing as there, worked in the same way for the same amount of time, are eating dinner at a different version of the same restaurant.”

As he spoke, I realized how much I’d expected my life to feel somehow different in London, as I had when I moved to New York from San Francisco years before.  I tried to put my finger on what, exactly, I expected the change to be:  my lifestyle would be the same (same job, same boyfriend).  The streets I walked would be different but they would lead to the same types of places---the grungy bar I like to spend my Friday nights, the cheery, rickety-tabled brunch spots of my Sunday mornings.  Yet, I needed the change of place to have a palpable, tangible effect on my life.  Otherwise, what was all of the effort and time spent living in the cities of my choosing for?

I asked Zack why he thought New York was, well, New York.  If it simply was the same bars, the same restaurants, the same jobs and (much crappier) apartments, why did people from everywhere want to be there?

“I think,” he said, “it’s because everyone wants to be there. No one accidentally just ends up living in New York. Everyone is there by choice.  Everyone in New York, then, is there for a reason.  There aren’t many other places in the world you can say that about.”

“So the people create the place that creates the people,” I said.

He smiled and took a sip of his beer.  “Something like that.”

Taken that way, I think the childhood me wanted to be the kind of person she saw living in the big cities of the world.  She wanted me to be somewhere by choice, somewhere for a reason.  If I can’t supply any other reason as to why I’m here, the simple fact that I want to be is, for her, enough.

How much do you think place affects your daily lifestyle?  Do you think the New York, big city idea of everyone being there for a reason is true for more rural or suburban areas as well?  Are you choosing to be where you live, or are you there for other reasons?

VII. Provence

My host mother in Aix is a frustratingly loquacious woman named Agnès. She has never left the country and spends most of her time pattering around the apartment in her slippers, fussing over pillows and arranging stacks of magazines. Her social interactions outside of her son seem limited to a few men she used to be in relationships with and now come over every once in a while and sit in the kitchen while she prepares meals for them. She has a heavy torso and thin, spindly legs. At the beginning of my stay, I feel sorry for her.

Though the French dinner is typically a more family-oriented affair, ours consist of Agnès and I sitting at her small dinner table watching the news. She provides a running commentary while I nod and say mm-hmm at intervals. Sometimes I wonder if this is why she offered to host students---so someone is obliged to listen to her.

But one warm evening the television is off, and Agnès tells me a French joke over red, ripe tomatoes and mozzarella.

God, she says, is looking at the earth after its creation. He notices that France is the most beautiful of all the nations---mountains, lakes, beaches, oceans, plains, forests. Every part of the landscape is diverse and breathtaking. And so, to make it a bit more even for the rest of the world, he creates the French people.

I laugh a little too hard.

On learning life from life

He aprendido la vida de la vida, “I have learned life from life.” These are the words of Pablo Neruda from the poem, “Ode to the Book,” in which he casts aside words on the page for the immediacy of experience. I’ve loved this poem for the longest time, and these words have never been truer for me than now. From the time I could read, I consumed book after book, in search of compelling stories, complex characters, and literary worlds that helped me reflect on my own. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I often arrive at the first page of a book in search of answers.

I am a lover of questions, and of questions that lead to more questions, but there’s a persistent corner of my consciousness that wishes books were Magic 8-balls. I haven’t shaken up one of those round, little toys in many years, but I sometimes open a book with a similar approach.

Whether it’s fiction, memoir, or poetry, I’ve been drawn to the title by a half-formed question in the back of my mind, and by the last page, a part of me hopes I’ll have uncovered a roadmap, a step-by-step guide to the challenges and questions swirling beneath the surface of daily life. Other times, I secretly hope that by reading about an experience, I’ll be prepared for it in my own life and never be taken by surprise.

But in this time of transition—of graduating and building a career, of moving to a new city, of preparing for a wedding—the voice of Neruda nudges me again and again to simply learn life from life. To learn by doing and making mistakes. To let go and allow myself to be taken by surprise.

This is, of course, easier said than done, but I suppose it is only with such openness that we invite in the possibility for our fears of the unknown to be unexpectedly swept aside by joy.

A Traditional Marriage

This weekend I will be traveling to New England to attend the wedding of two dear friends.  Naturally, I love weddings---the pageantry, the ritual, the attention to detail---and I know this one will be memorable.  Part of the fun with weddings is evaluating each of the selections the couple has made.  One of my favorite activities is getting into bed after an event such as this and breaking it all down piece-by-piece with my husband.  We like to do the full debrief, including, but not limited to: fashion, ceremony elements, weird family dynamics, food and decor.  Clearly, I will be inspecting the floral design with a critical eye---it is a brave soul that invites a wedding professional to the Big Day. This wedding will be much the same in that I know how deliberate and painstaking this whole process has been and I can't wait to see how the couple will be reflected in their choices.  Additionally, I have been made aware that the guest list is rich with characters and we are to be seated at a table with some of the more dynamic friends of the couple.  As usual, my husband and I will immerse ourselves in all the action and take mental notes along the way for fruitful discussion later.  Although we are always delighted to participate in bearing witness to a public commitment to love, something that distinguishes this wedding from the many others we have attended is that the people getting married are two men.

The grooms-to-be in question, are, in actual fact, already married.  They ran right out and got married here in New York on the very first day it was legal.  It was that significant a step in their relationship---they didn't want to wait a single day more than they had to before making it "official."  Anyone who has ever doubted how critically important, how equalizing and normalizing a right it is to be able to get married, should really watch any footage or read any story from the day it became legal for gay people to wed in the few states where that dream has been realized.  New York was no exception when this happened in July 2011.  Appropriately, there was a collective sigh of relief in our community followed by raucous festivities---much like a wedding.

Certainly there is so much to celebrate here.  The idea that we have progressed to the place where there is majority (sometimes overwhelming) support for gay marriage in various corners of the nation is, in itself, staggering.  Although it is easy to wring hands over many social policy and civil rights issues these days, states legalizing gay marriage and our nation's president endorsing gay marriage are heartening signs.

When I think about the relationship that I am traveling to exult and sanction, I am struck by the fact that theirs is a marriage quite similar to and also much more “traditional” than my own.  Both men are working professionals with advanced degrees.  One of them is self-employed and owns a business.  They are both public servants in some capacity.  They value social justice and give to charity.  They share the aspiration of having children and are expecting a baby in the coming months.  They sit down to dinner together each night to a meal they have often actually cooked (!!), candles lit, and discuss the long day behind them.  Their home is warm, comfortable and impeccably decorated.  Most important, they are demonstrably in love and I have only ever seen them speak to one another with kindness.  I already look up to them as parents and their baby has yet to come.

When I consider the controversy around gay marriage, I absolutely cannot understand it from an entirely practical standpoint.  No question, I recoil at the notion that two men or two women couldn’t or shouldn’t love each other as much as a heterosexual couple or that they wouldn’t have the same legal rights and social empowerment.  But this couple bears out my experience that gay people who want to marry thrive in such a way as often puts most straight couples to shame.  They are doing “us” better.  Perhaps it is all the years of being “other” and observing relationships from the outside that has honed their skills within the partnership?  Maybe it is that being with somebody of the same sex has distinct advantages and allows for smoother communication?    The bottom line is that who is anybody to say that they shouldn’t have the right to kick our ass at marriage and/or bomb miserably at it?  I say, WELCOME.  Come on in, the water is fine.

So the next few days will be a whirlwind tour and I am so honored that we made the short list for this one.  These are selective people and not just any person scored an invite.  We are gearing up for a life event that will look a lot like so many that have come before it in terms of the customs.  But, the magnitude of the occasion might just mean slightly more.  I say this both because of what these two men marrying represents and who they inarguably are as individuals and as a couple.

Cookbook Confessions

It was a weeknight at Barnes and Noble. The lights were harsh as usual, the whole place too well lit.  Or maybe it just felt that way---I wanted privacy for the deed I was there to do. I needed an off-the-beaten-carpet spot. Perhaps a corner near an under-trafficked genre . . . what about by that sale table of puppy calendars from 2011? Finding every discreet inch occupied, I gave up prowling and slumped back into the curve of a heavy wooden chair.  It was the worst possible place. In the middle of the store. At the end of an aisle. I carried on my despite the indiscreet location, desperate for my ends. On my lap was a stack of newly released cookbooks. I felt like I was about to do something bad.

And I was.

But let me explain.

I am learning to cook. No one I know is going to teach me how to cook. This isn’t because I know no one who is capable in the kitchen. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I have several friends who are culinary professionals and I have worked beside some very talented chefs. My husband, too, is a natural around food, both in terms of consumption and production. He can improvise a meal in minutes. Yet here I am, still needing inspiration and some serious planning before even boiling a some water. I try to remind myself that becoming a good cook is a process. A journey.

This journey into cooking, as with learning all new things, takes one step at a time. My kitchen’s true north, thus far, is my discovery that there exists no better culinary cartographer than a slick new cookbook. They are my collective compass with their vivid photography, exciting personal narrative, delicious recipes; my ladders for scaling walls of recipe boredom, my ships for crossing the choppy sea of a weekday dinner.  Food is an adventure when presented in a beautiful book, and I hunger to be whisked away to France, Morocco, New York, the Deep South . . . They say you eat a meal first with your eyes.  I would add to that the grumbling imagination we feed far before the food is on the plate. At times my mind is sated in simply reading the lyrical titles printed on a pretty cloth bound spine.

Yet here is where I hit another wall: money. That cookbook compass can be quite expensive. I try to be patient and wait for these books to come at at my local public library, seeing as my tasting menu aspirations are really on a lunch special budget. But that never works. They're always snatched up in a flash. There are, for example, twenty-six holds on Tamar Adler's "An Everlasting Meal." More like an everlasting wait . . .

Which brings me back to the bookstore.

The man sitting behind me is breathing loudly and snarfing a candy bar. (Turns out the word “snarf” is in the dictionary, by the way.) Nearby, children are arguing over a wooden train set. Then I look around, eyes darting, and . . . and . . . I do it.

I take a photo of the cookbook on my iPhone. And then another. And then another.

It’s just like sexting, except that the rump pictures happen to be of roast beef in Around my French Table. 

Here’s my MO: I take a shot of the front cover so I remember the author’s name and the title. I take a shot of the index, then a shot of one recipe for a trial run.  I only allow myself to poach that one recipe, as if that makes my illicit photography any less rude. This photo test shoot is my trial run. I tell myself I'll buy the book if it delivers the goods.

Later that night, when I get home, I sit on the couch with my glowing phone an inch from my nose. I peer into the images, sliding back and froth between the choice shots, zooming in on certain spots.

It feels a little dirty at first, but I’m consoled by the fact that though I won’t be taking any of these cookbooks out to dinner, at least I’ll be making it for myself.

Train Travel

I took the commuter train out of the city this weekend for a jaunt with old friends. I was looking forward to taking a familiar route  to meet up with familiar faces, but mostly I was excited about the few quiet hours I’d spend alone on the train. I have a deep and long-standing affection for the Metro North’s New Haven line which barrels along the Connecticut shoreline, into the belly of the beast at Grand Central, and out again. When I was a little girl, my dad worked in publishing on New York’s 5th Avenue. His building at number 666 looked to me like a giant cheese grater and on special occasions I would get to go with him there.  We rode the train together, I wore lace-up sneakers and carried my fancy shoes--mary janes--like the other commuting women. In college, the train was my salvation. I would pack a duffle and squeeze my way onto a crowded rush hour train, thoughts of my mom’s chili and the crackle of the fireplace luring me homeward. When I was lucky, the conductor would never even get to me and I’d have fare for the trip back into the city. For the two hours it took me to get home, I would lean my head against the greasy train window and watch the gray world pass by. I used to prop my weekend reading on my lap. Learning by osmosis.

For people who don’t live there, the route along the Connecticut shore can feel like an interminable middle road between New York and Boston. On summer weekends, traffic on I-95 through Connecticut is so sluggish that even the state’s most stalwart defenders will curse its name. But the train? It just rides along. If you’re lucky enough to live east of New Haven, like my parents do, a connecting train snakes you through marshes and homeward. Depending on the time of day, the light is either all pinks and blues and silvers or golds and greens and blues. Train travel is pure romance.

After college I flung myself across an ocean to live in France. My return stateside found me first in North Carolina and then in Rhode Island and all this life in other places meant years away from this particular train. I didn't have to be on the train to imagine it: the smell of the vinyl seats, the smudgy spots on the windows where other passengers have leaned their weary foreheads, the click, click of the conductor as she'd make her way toward me to punch my ticket, the crumpled brown paper bags with empty cans of cheap beer, the dog-eared copies of the New York Post left on seats, the conductors calling out the town names, their Connecticut accents causing them to eat their t’s.

The catch, of course, is that nothing stays the same for very long. The trains that I took for much of my childhood and young adulthood have recently been replaced. The new trains are glitzy by comparison---all lights and beeps and clean white and red seats. Lucky for me, on Saturday morning the new automated announcements weren’t working. I got to hear the the conductor’s voice just the way I remember it, “New Haven will be the last stop. Please remember your belongings as you exit the train.”

On Deserving

My sleep patterns change according to the season. At this time of year, as summer fades into fall and the days grow shorter and darker, I sleep deeply and long—but once the year has rolled around again, and light peeps into my bedroom late into the night and again early in the morning, I develop seasonal insomnia. Sleep doesn’t come easily to me in the springtime; even when exhausted, I feel the pull of so many things I’d rather be doing than closing my eyes. This year, as sunny days peaked around Midsummer, I found myself once again in the throes of my circadian sleeplessness. My mind seemed to whirl and spin, filled up with the promise of all that sunshine, leaving me spent and ironically too tired to do any of the things on the to-do list that called me out of bed again and again.

As the sun-filled days passed, I tried to unravel the layers of physical, emotional, and spiritual components to my lifetime of insomnia. I came up with many ideas: I didn’t feel safe; I had too much to do; I had a hard time convincing my irrational mind that I’d get more done if I also got more sleep.

And then, one afternoon as I lay on my couch trying and failing to take a much-needed nap, I thought: I don’t deserve to sleep. I don’t deserve to rest.

And that was an attitude I recognized. “Deserving” has played a large role in my life; I fight a constant battle with the insidious little voice inside me that is always fixated on what is fair and what is deserved. Because my energy is limited and must be parceled out in careful allotments, I find myself locked into a continual war with this voice of guilt over how I spend my time.

I don't deserve to rest, because I haven't done anything worthwhile today. I don't deserve to take it easy, because I have been lazy all morning. I don't deserve to have my husband make me dinner, because I ought to get up and do it, whether I feel well enough or not. Sometimes consciously, always unconsciously, I have a running tally always going in my mind. X amount of rest requires X amount of doing. If I have taken it easy today, I need to work extra hard tomorrow. If I have missed this many hours of church this week, I must make sure to go to all of them next week, even if I feel the same or worse. I must not do anything "fun" if I don't have all the "not fun" stuff finished, even if that means I will never have the time or energy for the "fun" stuff.

Since the winter of my junior year of high school, when I began this new life where my energy is so limited and I must live so carefully, I have been afraid. I've been so afraid of becoming that useless person, the one who just never musters up the willpower to get anything done, who always falls back on their physical failings as an excuse for checking out of life. This fear has clawed at me, ruled me, always dictated with precise care the doings of my day-to-day. It has made me feel enormous guilt when I fail to follow through on something I have assigned myself to do. It has made me hard on myself.

It has made me feel undeserving.

That summer afternoon as I lay sleeplessly on my couch, new thoughts came crowding in my mind.

What if it is okay to rest?

What if it is okay to take it easy when I need to?

What if it is okay to care for myself, regardless of what I have or haven’t done today?

What if it’s okay to cherish my body, even if it means letting go of some of the expectations I have for myself?

What if I deserve these things, not because of something I have accomplished or as a result of how clean my house is, but simply because I am a precious soul? What if we are all precious, not because of what we have done, but simply because of who we are?

What if we are all deserving of love? Of rest? Of joy?

.   .   .   .   .

In the months that have passed since that summer afternoon, I have felt my thinking gently shift. That voice—the one that harps so much on deserving, and tries to tell me that I do not deserve to rest—is still there; I suspect it always will be, somewhere deep inside my heart. And, all too often, I find myself listening to that voice, giving it leave to shape my thoughts and feelings about myself.

But I like to think that I’m making progress. I like to think that, in the last three months, there have been a few more times where I gave myself a little grace, a few more times where I reached out for peace and happiness in my life regardless of what I had or had not accomplished. I like to think that I’m a little closer to being able to claim these things for my own, to let go of what I can’t do and live abundantly with what I can.

Because you know what?

I deserve it.

VI. Savoie

In Chambéry, I have rented a room on the upper floor of a house owned by an old couple who sometimes invites me down for crepes and tea. Another girl lives with me, a French student at the local university named Marie. She is a bit younger than me, but, in a stereotypical French way, turns out to be super kinky and progressive when it comes to sexual relationships. She is involved in a love triangle with an older married man and his wife. The situation is never fully explained to me, but becomes painfully obvious when they come over and have weird, loud group sex in Marie’s room. Nowhere to escape to from my room on the other side of the small apartment, I turn up my miniature TV as loud as it goes and scribble away furiously on my vocabulary lists, copying down word after word that I don’t know.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Carrie Allen Tipton writes and lectures about classical music, American popular music, religion, and Southern culture. Her work has appeared in many publications and is upcoming in Texas Heritage Magazine, Black Grooves, and the Oxford American. Tipton has presented extensively at conferences and has lectured for the Eroica Trio and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; in 2013 she will speak at the Houston Bach Society. Her research has been featured on KUHF radio (NPR in Houston, Texas), in the Houston Chronicle, and in The One: The Life and Music of James Brown (R.J. Smith, Gotham: 2012). Following a Ph.D. in Musicology and a stint as a professor, she flew the coop of academia to write and edit more extensively. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband where they wait impatiently for the arrival of their first baby in December. She hopes their child will one day heed the profound wisdom of the television show Reading Rainbow and “take a look—it’s in a book!” More about Tipton can be found at www.carrieallentipton.com. When I was three, my mother enrolled me in group piano lessons. For the first month, I sat next to her on my tiny bench, hands covering my eyes. When she cautiously attempted to remove my little paws, I dug in, explaining that I “was not ready yet.” The thought of new paths may conjure thrilling visions of adventure to some, but to me they signify the peculiar torture of leaving the known and familiar, now just as they did then. But the month of piano lessons did pass. Eventually I took my hands off my eyes and put them on the keys. I kept them there long enough to complete a masters degree in piano performance. Turns out that change can be scary and good all at the same time.

Three decades later, I once again face bends in my own path. Where to turn for nourishment, for the reassurance that others too have set out on unknown roads and have found them to be good? To books, of course. Much of my reading this summer has explored themes of personal and communal exploration of unmapped territories. Here are a few that, in capturing the ambiguity of the gains and losses that come with change, may help you in your own journeys to new places.

Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald At the micro level, Wald writes of the personal exodus from the Mississippi Delta of bluesman Robert Johnson in the 1930s and his efforts to forge a career in the tough early years of the commercial recording industry. Wald simultaneously charts a broader unmapped path as he smashes his way through standard historical narratives. He takes issue with common notions in written blues history: that the genre represented a primal cry welling up from neo-African roots in the Mississippi Delta, isolated from contemporary pop music; that its early practitioners were unsophisticated musicians; that 1930s Black audiences heard the blues as a pure folk art rather than as commercialized pop music. Wald reminds readers that it is blues historians, not Johnson’s contemporaries, who elevated him to demigod status after his death. Using archival evidence for his assertions, Wald manages to scold blues revisionists and celebrate Johnson’s admirable output all at the same time. A new path indeed.

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann I learned of this book through an NPR interview with the author, immediately intrigued by his improbable ability to make agricultural history sound fascinating. The book does not disappoint in this regard, arguing that Columbus inaugurated the collision of previously-separate ecosystems and unwittingly launched globalization. Mann demonstrates this through quirky tales of staples such as the lowly potato, vastly entertaining as they meander clumsily through complex geopolitical contexts. Despite Mann’s fairly snappy and occasionally humorous prose, however, I often glazed over at the wealth of detail, guiltily skimming for the next cool anecdote. Additionally, Mann’s neutral stance on the ethics of globalization formed an interesting and uncomfortable undercurrent. I am more accustomed to hearing globalization roundly denounced, but appreciated the author’s encouragement to think about its positive aspects. If you’ve ever wondered how shiploads of bird guano helped reconfigure human civilization, this is the book for you.

The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country by Jefferson Morgenthaler My point in mentioning this admittedly obscure book isn’t to imply that you should rush out and order it, but to make you wonder how your town or city or region Came To Be. My husband’s mother was born into one of the German communities that began forming in central Texas in the 1840s, and after a trip there we became curious about how and why these folks wound up on the other side of the world. Morgenthaler answered our questions many times over, relating how fallout from the French Revolution drove German nobles to finance the migration of underclass persons to, of all places, the republic of Texas. The book details the often-woeful and sometimes-humorous journeys of the Germans as they pushed forward in the Texas wilderness, surviving on bear meat and negotiating treaties with Comanches. Morgenthaler’s meticulously-researched book reminded me that the tale of new beginnings in unfamiliar places is the story of how all of us came to occupy our present plot of earth.

Mama Ph.D.: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life by Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant, editors Particularly germane to my own life circumstances recently was this collection of essays. By turns frustrating, funny, and affirming, it features the voices of female academics across a spectrum of disciplines, degree programs, and academic ranks. Some discuss remaining in the academy while raising children; others explore leaving to start a family. The book was sobering in its repeated structural critiques of academia’s inadequate maternity provisions. The writing of women who chose to leave university life upon having children deals honestly with the grief and deep embarrassment that often accompanied their decisions, but also points the way towards alternative career paths and new modes of satisfaction outside the academy for those with Ph.D.s. The book assured me I was not alone in my questions, struggles, and frustrations.

Among the Mad (A Maisie Dobbs Novel) by Jacqueline Winspear I hope you have already met Maisie Dobbs, a relatively new yet already much-beloved female sleuth. In my mind her only peer among fictional detectives is Harriet Vane, created by the great writer Dorothy Sayers, for complexity of character and full-bodied realness. Like Sayers’ Vane, Dobbs works in the interwar period in England. The books, and Dobbs herself, are shot through with shadows and scars of the first World War, and a major thread in the series is how Dobbs’ own wartime pain slowly and haltingly gives way to new beginnings in her personal and professional life, though never in a pat or easy way. In this book, as with all books in the series, Dobbs works her way through a new mystery related to the war that gripped Europe fifteen years earlier (the book is set in 1931). She also forges new inroads into her personal relationships, an ongoing theme for Dobbs’ character after the life-altering tragedies she experienced as a nurse during the war.

Time is on my side

While my daughter is still an infant, I am trying to adhere to a schedule of spending at least two solid weekdays alone with her, despite the fact that I own and run a business.  “Alone,” in our household, means that my husband (who also works for himself) might tag along and spend some portion of the day with us, as well.  This is quite obviously living the dream and I mean that in all sincerity.  Like so many people, all I ever wanted in life was to create a family and to have one in which the adults prefer palling around together to any other activity.  The addition of the portly, charming baby (who, I might add, has been impressing even total strangers of late with her glittering, two tooth-bud smile, full-body laugh and enthusiastic hand-clapping) is just the definitive bonus.  We have these epic moments, often only the two of us, where we find ourselves sitting on a blanket in the park in the middle of the day, staring up at the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.  We are saturated in, practically oozing happiness.  But lest you think we are busy having it all (wait for it, Schadenfreudes) you should know that organizationally, domestically, we exist in a state of utter chaos---a ceaseless game of whack-a-mole. There are, as they say, absolutely not enough hours in the day and it is my perpetual struggle to prioritize appropriately.  On the days when I am solely focused on the baby, I make an effort to really and truly be present during her waking hours.  I have the great privilege of a somewhat flexible schedule and the even greater privilege of being her mother.  It is in this spirit that I strive to keep work emails and tasks tucked away in my pocket or purse.  I look at the mounting pile of laundry or the creeping clutter in the apartment and decide that it can wait.  I shrug off the light sense of despair over the two primed walls that we were supposed to paint last winter.  I tell myself that she will never be exactly this age again and that I will look back on this first year and know I didn’t miss a thing.

I am acutely aware that most women (or men, for that matter) do not even have the option to do this and I feel almost a sense of responsibility to parents everywhere to take full advantage.  Of course, this means I have to work harder and smarter when I am on the clock.  It also means that I am on the clock longer and at odd hours.  Ultimately, it means that we sort of live in a college dorm and have to run to the bodega at 7:30 PM to buy an $8 roll of toilet paper because we ran out and nobody had the chance to get more.

Meanwhile, as is my wont, I am plagued by the notion that everyone else must be doing it better---they have to be, right?  During a recent trip to the playground this was confirmed, as I zeroed in on a few other mothers and observed their whole set-up.  Each one seemed to have the diaper bag completely dialed in, down to the perfectly portioned organic snack foods in an eco-friendly/non-petroleum/possibly Swedish baggie.  Their strollers were tidy and their children even had on accessories.  They had brought galvanized tins of French sidewalk chalk and appeared to have organized play-dates.  When I arrived on the scene, my daughter was assiduously chewing on the rubber case from my iPhone (almost certainly made in China).  My stroller was pandemonium---it included incongruous items like dog poop bags, my diluted vitamin water bottle and a calcified, half-gummed whole wheat dinner roll from a restaurant adventure the day before.  I plunked my daughter on the padded playground surface and watched as she crunched fall leaves between her fingers and attempted to stuff them in her mouth.  She was not wearing shoes or a bow in her hair but she seemed pretty thrilled.  We did not have an adorable German tube of bubbles (why is everything good European?) and I hadn’t even remembered my nursing cover.  We embarrassed the family with an awkward lean-to situation using a cotton drape, which she repeatedly tore away with a whipping motion, exposing my breasts to the most populous borough in the city.

So, I am coming around to the idea that I actually only have so much bandwidth.  The letting go of certain practical elements of daily life in favor of more time for human relating seems a fairly obvious choice to me.  While I aspire to be a person who deftly balances her infant on one hip while folding fitted sheets or doing the taxes, it turns out that I only can/am willing to (?) do one thing at a time.  Most tasks, therefore, are sort of shined on or phoned in until they have the good fortune to be in the pole position.  I keep the goals small, so then when we have a fully stocked fridge or I send out a birthday gift, I feel like I have summitted Everest or passed the California bar.

Although I mostly feel good about the way I am partitioning my time for now, like every working mother I grapple with needing and/or wanting to be in two places at once.  Who knows how this will all change as she gets older and as my business evolves?  It is a little disheartening to realize that I did seem to need the “excuse” of a baby to finally feel justified in prioritizing enjoyment.  Why didn’t I do this before?  And why do I still feel like I’m “admitting to something” when I tell you I spend entire days, in the middle of the week, not just being with my baby, but actively trying to do little else?

Needless to say, I want my daughter to be proud of her mother as a role model and an entrepreneur.  But I am hoping she doesn’t have to feel this from a remote place.  I want her to experience that I am as available to her as I am to my work.  She will doubtless have a wide array of things to discuss with her therapist about her home and family.  I figure I won’t just hand her the line that her mother always had too many things on her plate.  I want her to work a little harder for her gripes.

Grunge and the Goddess Girl

By Rhea St. JulienImage from the cover of In Utero

At the tender age of 12, I got my period, fell headlong into rock and roll, and unwittingly had my heart broken by the girl of my dreams. Let's start with the body. In a few short months, my skinny frame had grown a layer of downy brown hair over it, my thighs had thickened so fast I had stretch marks, and menarche arrived with such a torrent of muddy red blood that I was sure I had shit my pants. It was just my luck that I was wearing white jean shorts, at the mall, on the way to 5.9.7 from Claire’s. I tripped over my own feet rushing to the bathroom, and got the nib of the pencil I was carrying stuck in the side of my leg, which I can still see in there, 19 years later. It’s a permanent memento of that day, as if I don't already have a reminder every single month.

When I showed my mom my shitty underwear in horror, she threw a pad at me and said, "That's blood. Use this. Shower every day." That was about it. No big "Welcome to Womanhood" speech, no talk of the dreaded word "menses". My mother's unsentimental approach belied how she felt about all things woman-related (including me): they were a hassle. So, I figured it out like I did everything else, with my girlfriends. We tried to fit tampons up there, not knowing to take out the applicator, and having it all kill so bad we gave up and stuck to pads, even though they bulked out our cut-offs.

The one friend that seemed to do just fine with all things lady-bits was Lauren D'Agostino. Her long blonde hair shone as she ran full tilt down the soccer field, leaving all the boys and a few of us girls feverishly fawning in her wake. No matter how close I came, I could never catch her.

We spent hours, the two of us, in her huge attic bedroom, dancing to The Doors and Ugly Kid Joe, trying on outfits for the school dance and talking deeply about our families. The other girls in our clique could not for the life of them understand what Lauren saw in me. I was a perennial misfit, a “freak”, who got straight A’s but also had a permanent seat in the vice principal’s office. I was too everything: too smart, too wild, too loud, too poor, too fast. When Lauren dipped her Venus hand in my direction, inviting me into her inner circle, the collective population of my small town middle school took an inward breath, “HER?!” The girls we shared our lunch table with, who I can just call “The Melissas”, were positive I had stolen my place in Lauren’s BFF photo album from their shinier, worthier visages.

But there I was, despite all odds, feeding horses on her father’s farm and sipping hot chocolate he brought us in steaming paper cups. What no one understood was that since I wasn’t a friend that Lauren needed to keep up appearances with, she could really be herself with me. She was so buttoned-up in the lunchroom, attempting to keep her Queen Bee status, but with me she let herself go, trying out head banging and dressing up with me and another friend like Huey Duey and Louie for Halloween instead of a “sexy witch” like the Melissas.

I knew that I adored her, but I had no idea that I was actually in love with her, until, without a word of explanation, she dropped me. The Melissas were triumphant, noisily whispering throughout the halls about how Lauren and I were no longer, how one of the Melissas (whose name was actually Mary) had dethroned me, and how pathetic I was after all.

Absolutely certain this was all a misunderstanding, I ignored them and called Lauren’s personal telephone line, repeatedly. I imagined it ringing, pink and perfect on her trundle bed, and willed her to answer. But she never did. I wrote long missives about our friendship and how much I missed her, reminding her of all the fun times we’d had together, but there were no return notes from Lauren in my locker. She never spoke to me again. The following year, she headed off to a private Catholic school, so I blissfully did not have to see her beautiful face any longer, and be reminded of my unrequited love.

The truth is that while Lauren may have been more of herself with me, I was less and less of myself with her. I was so desperate to hold on to her that I contorted myself into her mold, pretending I liked 50’s-style boy-girl sock hop parties and banal trips to the mall, like the fated one where I bloodied my underwear for the first time. So, once Lauren broke my little 12 year old heart like a slinky stretched too far, I was free to explore my darker tendencies.

I found myself in Mystery Train Records, eyeing cassettes and CDs through my growing-out bangs, which I had to keep tossing back with a flip of my head in order to see the cover art. Music, particularly the “alternative rock” that was pouring out of Seattle at that time, fed the painful part of me that was sore over losing Lauren, and humiliated over proving the Melissas right. If had to be a loser like they thought I was, I was going to fucking rock out.

That Fall, Nirvana released In Utero, and I got on the Kurt Cobain train right before it was blown to pieces by his shotgun. With Heart Shaped Box on repeat, I yelped along, “Broken hymen of 'Your Highness', I'm left black/Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back”. I couldn’t consciously conceive of the fact that I was wishing I had broken my dear highness’s hymen myself---I sub-knew it. The fact that I didn’t just miss Lauren or want to be her like the Melissas did, but actually wanted to be in her, and rub my hands up her blondy legs was never stated, not even in my reams of diaries. Instead, I howled along to Hole, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots in my room 3 streets away from Lauren, hoping she would hear me, pick up the phone, and ask me to crawl back into the folds of velvet-girl goodness that I was nearly received into.

On place and pawpaws.

We slide the boat down the muddy bank and into the creek. The water is high and brown with silt from a heavy rain the night before. Scout, our black and white spotted pit bull mix, chases bobbing sticks and floating yellow leaves, his toenails clinking and hissing against the metal belly of the boat.  Jake paddles us along with an old kayak oar as I sit at the bow and scan the shore. We’re out looking for pawpaws this morning, a tropical tree fruit that looks like a mango and tastes like banana custard. I’d never heard of a pawpaw until moving back to Virginia. My curiosity was piqued, of course, by this curious sounding wild edible. We spot a thicket of pawpaw trees along the bank. They are thin-trunked and have big green leaves that look like floppy rabbit ears. Jake maneuvers the boat up to the shore and I grasp a branch in my hand then bend the whole tree gently over the boat. We pluck bunches of fruit from the limbs and I think of the word “bower.” I think of this word later when writing this column, too, when trying to describe the feeling of being closed in by the arch of a bent tree. I look up “bower” in the dictionary and I learn that it is also a word for an “anchor carried at a ship’s bow.” I like this very much, to have been within a bower made of pawpaw trees, and for the pawpaw tree to have also been a sort of bower in the other sense, anchoring us to the shore.

This experience made me recall a piece of writing I once read in Ecotone, a literary magazine about place, that’s published by the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. In the essay that came to mind---“Naming our Place”---David Gessner thinks on the relationship between words and things in nature. The part I thought of while picking pawpaws was this, which Gessner writes about Barry Lopez’s book Home Ground:

“Skim through this encyclopedia of terms for particular places, and if you’re  like me, your synapses will snap like popcorn. Just take the B’s, for instance: berm and biscuit and board and borderland and boreal forest and borrow pit and bosque and box canyon and braided stream.”

Add to that list bower, and my synapses do go pop!pop!pop! At the sound or sight of certain words I think of that morning on the creek. I think of the soft light filtered through the big rabbit ear leaves. I feel the silky pawpaw in my hand and taste its crème brulee-like pulp. I experience that sense of place for a second time, almost more clearly now as filtered through my imagination. It's thinking about the particular words for that place ---the bank of the creek, the bend of the tree, the shape of a bower---and  linking my experience and memories to those words, that focuses and clarifies my memories.

And that’s Gessner’s point, I guess, because he continues: “These are physical words describing physical places, and they have heft to them, and distinctness, and we can say of them what Emerson said of Montaigne’s sentences: ‘Cut them, and they will bleed.’”

I wonder if we could say of words about food:  “Eat them, and they will be tasty,” too?  While hearing or reading the word "pawpaw" may not literally fill me up, I'll still feel sated in a way.  Bower. Bank. Pawpaw. The words elicit a sense of a very particular place and time. Of balancing on my tip-toes in the bobbing boat and anchoring myself to shore, of the a cool round pawpaw smooth in my palm. I can't eat these words, but I can use them to tether me to that beautiful morning on the creek. And that, I think, is quite appetizing.

Secrets to the South

I'm not exactly your average bear, and by bear I mean southern belle. I prefer getting dressed up like a comfy pillow in lazy boy jeans paired with an over-sized tee to a sundress and heels.  On a Saturday night, you're more likely to spot me sitting with friends in our regular corner booth tapping along to live music than out wine tasting.  In my world, vacationing in the fall means trips to our alma mater to pile our plates high with tailgating treats and cheer on the nineteen-year-old football players who can't exactly hear us.  That dreamy bed and breakfast getaway with the husband will just have to be scheduled for the dead of winter.  I shy away from wearing make-up and my sister conducts a seasonal intervention in order to get me into the local boutique to buy the latest trendy must-haves.  The all too familiar word "ain't" has been eliminated from my vocabulary.  I fancy vegetables and will never take recipe advice from Paula Dean.

Even though the southern shoe doesn't fit like a glass slipper, I adore breathing in the charm every single day.  It fills my lungs with a burst of energy but relaxation all at the same time.  There is rarely a sense of urgency around these parts.  We drag out our words which results in not repeating a sentence twice.  Or perhaps we are just all on the verge of becoming the next great country music singing sensation to hit the air waves.  We stroll at a snail's pace in order to take mental photos of the mystical landscape surrounding us and the faces we pass along our way. The autumn leaves change color a bit more slowly, but only to stay bold and vibrant for longer. Taking the time to strike up small talk with a stranger is our forte.

Over my thirty years of living here, I've discovered many hidden secrets to the south. Our buildings are lacking in height which comes in handy when viewing a fierce sunset.  Driving up on a fruit and vegetable plus boiled peanut stand makes the heart flutter with excitement.  The pure, crisp air should be bottled up and sold in all major retail stores.  The surge of humidity following a southern shower gives us a respectable excuse to let our hair go up in frizz.  Sweet tea and freshly snipped flowers are like honey for our souls.  From spiffy business suits to overalls, tube tops to cardigans, skinny jeans to the occasional jogging suit, fashion is clearly what the individual makes of it and will rarely turn a head.

Southern living may seem a bit odd to some, but we have our reasons.  Different strokes, right?