Future Shock

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend-of-a-friend, in which he essentially said this to me (and I am paraphrasing here): “You know the main reason my wife and I decided not to have children is because I think the world is falling apart at the seams and we, as a species, are doomed.  I didn’t want to saddle another generation with this mess.”   My jaw fell slack and my response was an awkwardly managed and strangely delayed “Oh, MmHmm . . .” Having rather recently procreated, myself, I am, perhaps more sensitive to the insinuation that having children might be a selfish act and one that a reasonable and humane person would sacrifice, based on the state of the planet.  And yet, I was also surprised by my initial instinct which was to reply with, “I totally hear you and I mostly agree!”  Part of the reason for the bungled response was pondering whether the mother of an infant should be concurring that having children is crazy, all things considered.  It should be established that this person works in an industry that bears intimate witness to both the real impact of climate change and the barriers to spurring governments, individuals, and cultures to reverse course.  He also described a feeling more generally that he enjoyed a measure of freedom, loved to travel, etc., but his main thesis really stuck with me.  It got me ruminating about the rationale for having children and where we are as a society—you know, nothing heavy. In some ways, despite clawing my way to motherhood against tough odds and having a singular focus about it for years on end, I can utterly relate to the idea of not wanting children.  Like any haughty adult enjoying the relative ease of life and limitless possibilities that come with a child-free future, I have fantasies of coming home at the end of the day and flitting off to a movie or hopping a plane to Bermuda.  The beginning of the end of my first marriage started with a conversation in which my ex-husband declared he had decided he didn’t want children because, “What if I want to just, like, go to Costa Rica?”  At the time, he had never traveled outside the United States, save a solitary surf trip to Mexico, and he didn’t even have a driver’s license.  But this straw man danced around in my head and the phrase “Costa Rica,” eventually became code to me for “noncommittal.”

The other problem with this, obviously, being: When was I ever a person who was able to come home at the end of the day and flit off anywhere or hop a plane to anywhere?  Let’s face facts: I plan things.  Basic work-life functions and my own overdeveloped sense of responsibility slash free-floating anxiety have basically ruled this kind of behavior out for me a long time ago.  This truly has very little to do with newly caring for a living being.  I have always been more attracted to a cozy evening curled up with magazine, husband, and domestic beast than to painting the town.  I have a knitting phase in my history, I have hosted more than one “game night” at my place . . . you don’t need further elaboration, of this I am sure.

Traveling with children is a bit more intimidating, although I do have the goal of providing as many diverse experiences as possible for my kids.  While I realize that taking a child to a place that is inhospitable, inaccessible, dangerous, etc. is no longer in the cards, (which it never was for me, either, frankly) I don’t think my only option remains a Disney Cruise.  I have lots of examples in my life of people picking up and exploring exotic places with one, two, three (!) kids, even living abroad in somewhat “colorful” circumstances.   And the people I know who have gone down this road range from families with endless resources and major job security to those working with a shoestring and cobbling together freelance gigs to make it work.  So, let’s strike that from the list.

Now on to the issue of the world and how it appears to be unraveling.  There is no denying that we are in crisis with the environment.  But, how do I know that my kid won’t be the person who develops some sensational new technology that quite literally saves the world?  I worry much more about the way our politics, culture, and social norms have degraded.  Here again, I like the idea raising a person who might contribute positively in these areas, even better than we have.  And to experience the children of our friends and family and see what lovely, tiny human beings are all around us, I am increasingly confident that we can tip the scales in the direction of progress.

There is no doubt that some element of child rearing is profoundly narcissistic.  By definition, you are creating and shaping a person and then offering that person to the world in your likeness.  This is true whether or not you have biological children.  Then again, I still submit that if all of us out here---imperfect, but kind and loving (sometimes snarky)---raise children with good hearts and strong minds, there are larger benefits than just how it makes us feel to be loved and see ourselves reflected.

From Berchtesgaden, Germany...

Dearest Clara, When we lived in Vienna, one of our favorite getaways was in the mountains, just across the border in Germany.  We spent so many weekends there---we took you for the first time when you were barely two months old, and we absolutely had to go back during our return trip this summer.  There is something about these mountains that keeps drawing us in, and I suspect we’ll be going back for years to come, even though this wouldn’t be the type of place to top most people’s “places to go list.”  All the better I say, it just leaves more of this gorgeous landscape undisturbed for those of us in the know to enjoy!

Berchtesgaden can be a tricky place.  It’s so beautiful that you want to think it was laying here so peacefully forever, but the truth is that it had its role in a darker side of history.  And visiting there presents somewhat of a quandary about how to reconcile those two things.  For me, what I’ve learned over the years is that will always be your responsibility to know the history of the places you visit.  But be sure to separate the past from the future that any place is trying to build---by being aware of both, you’ll be able to feel out what your assessment is of the present.

In addition, I’ve learned the following from this charming mountain town:

• The view from the top is always worth it: There are no shortage of hills and mountains in this area, some that you have to walk, some you can cheat a little and ride a gondola  to the top.  I think so often we breeze through places like these and just take the time to see the town and move on, but the real treat is what you see from the top of the mountain, not the bottom, so make sure you always plan for a few of these jaunts when you come across elevation.
• Tradition should always have a home: When places are small and not on the beaten path, we are quick to write them off as closed and narrow. But some people work very hard to preserve their traditions.  This time around we stumbled onto a parade of local villages, all with families in their local variations of national costumes . . . all handmade. there are very few places where such craft by hand can survive.  Know when to let people keep their traditions.
• Beef should be expensive: This sounds funny right? But in the hotel that we always stay at, they often have “filet of local heifer” on the menu and the translation has always made us giggle a bit.  And it happens to be the most expensive item on the menu by far.  This is common in many alpine areas, even though the meat is local to the region.  But it takes a lot of time and resource to raise animals that are out on fresh pasture, with space and cleanliness and natural foods.  Of course there are faster and cheaper ways of raising animals, but ultimately, animals are living things and should be respected as such.  I guarantee you it doesn’t taste the same when you take a shortcut.  You won't be able to take the long way as often though.
• Change can come quickly: Much like near the sea, the weather in the mountains can change in what seems like an instant.  Many times we’ve started out in sunshine and watched black clouds roll in, erupting the mountains into flashes of lightning.  A little extra preparation and know-how will protect you in places where change is the constant.
• Protect what’s still clean: Near where we stay there is a beautiful lake which is one of the largest and deepest in the country, but is also the cleanest.  In fact, you can drink water right out of this huge body of water in any place on the lake.  That is a rare gift that this water has been taken care of so well over so many years.  When you find these pockets of clean air . . . water . . . land . . . it is your responsibility to help keep them that way---when you find pockets that have strayed, you still have to do your part.

All my love,

Mom

The privilege of a return ticket

For reasons I do not quite understand, Barbarossa keeps recurring symbolically in my life in Greece.

I first became familiar with this historical figure when I was about ten years old and a new convert to the Age of Empires strategy game. That Barbarossa was a 12th century Holy Roman Emperor and the particular objective of that game scenario was to claim dominance over other European Duchies. It was apparently still the age not only of empires, but also of prizing dominance over compassion. At 10, I was fascinated by the concept that you could make digital people forage, build homes and fight just by clicking something in a computer.

The break-down of the dominance paradigm began during my encounter with another Barbarossa: operation Barbarossa during World War II, the name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union. Every time my favorite history teacher recounted the horrors of that war, I couldn't ignore the memories of the glorification of combat in the first Barbarossa I had known through Age of Empires.

Nearly a decade later, and after I have born witness to the kind of violence you cannot unsee and the kind of compassion you revere over dominance, I was standing in the cave of another Barbarossa. This one was a notorious pirate in the Mediterranean in the late 1400s. The bay in which he used to hide exists to this day and is aptly named Κλέφτικο in Greek: bay of thieves.

Κλέφτικο is a series of cliff formations on the island of Milos, Greece. Behind them, pirates used to hide to observe the shipping route to Crete. Today it is the site of sailboats and snorkels, sea urchins and sunscreen. I have always been intrigued by how history and the passage of time transform places from battlefields into tourist attractions. Two years ago, my love and I had camped in a field overlooking the Horns of Hattin in Israel. Those towering rocks had provided the backdrop for one of the fiercest battles during the Crusades. Now they are the stuff of wheat fields and hiking boots. As we pitched our tent, Elijah noted: "A crusader probably died here."

I am currently in Mexico City and for the first time in a while, there is a TV in my room. At night, I watch images of brutality in Aleppo, Syria parade through my screen. I remember my Aleppo of the car breaking down on the Syrian highway, of the kind man in the tow truck stopping to give us a three-hour ride to safety, of him refusing our money because "you have to help a traveler." I remember leaving at dawn alone for the bus station and being shielded from street harassment by the rest of the women there who glared at any men who dared to make eyes at the foreigner traveling solo.

The tragedy is not that I have lost the ability to return there for now; it is that I am able to leave in the first place. Being a foreigner, even if you are a "conflict specialist", especially if you are a "conflict specialist", gives you a parachute. You arrive at your liberty with a return ticket that you will use when you wish or when the situation necessitates. The Aleppo I saw then came with hotel floors that were less dusty than my own body. The Aleppo I witnessed was a direct reflection of my own privilege. My ability to parachute in and out is an outcome of that same privilege. I am ensconced in another hotel room with clean floors, watching the violence from afar, thinking of those without plane tickets out of it.

YWRB: It Takes Nerve

By Amanda Page It took nerve to go to the microphone and ask a feminist legend for some advice.

It takes real nerve to be a rebel.

It took a year of writing about rebellion for me to build up the nerve to finally claim my life as my own. I was 22 and ready to travel and it seemed like the whole world was telling me, “No.” I simply wanted to get on a plane.

“You can’t go,” I was told. “You can’t leave.”

My biggest rebellions have always been about going after what I want for myself instead of living in service of what others want for me. It’s hard to hold our own desires and protect and honor them. The wants and expectations of others can so easily become the “shit” that we’re not supposed to take. If we don’t respect our own wishes, then we’re taking shit from ourselves.

It takes nerve to take no shit . . . from others or from yourself.

Nerve is like a muscle. Rebellion is the exercise that builds the nerve muscle.

And you can do rebellion by writing it.

It took nerve to whip out our pens and legal pads in bars at midnight. It took nerve to declare that we were writing a book. It took nerve to share the idea with the wild woman from my poetry class.

Each action was a tiny act of rebellion, working my nerve muscle, making me more capable, more daring, more able to surprise myself.

I was told, “No,” but I said, “Yes.” Yes, I will.

I can now say, “Yes, I did.”

The stories we hold dearest are the ones that come from the times that we dare ourselves to do something.

Do something that scares you. Today. Anything. Ten years from now, it might be the moment that changed everything. It might be your best story.

Your best story takes nerve.

Things

Whenever I tell someone that my husband and I went to high school together, I’m quick to point out that we weren’t high school sweethearts. Pat, always ready with a joke, will tell you that he didn’t even like me that much during those days. An impossibility, of course, but the truth is we’ve built our relationship on compromise, laughs, and most importantly to me after 8 years in New York, a common understanding of where we come from. We know that fish frys are eaten on Fridays, that the Penfield Patriots will always be the Chiefs, that the Park Ave Fest --- in Rochester, that is --- is the first weekend in August. There are inside jokes and stories that date back to middle school, way before “Pat and Ali” meant anything. We know these things inside out, these truths about our past and present, but there has always been a piece of my husband that I couldn’t grasp. When Pat was 19, just shy of his junior year in college, his father died. Suddenly, tragically. And in the blink of an eye, his whole world changed. His dad was his rock, his role model, his mentor in sports and school --- in life, really --- and one day he just wasn’t there. For 10 years, I’ve tried to understand, but the truth is, I didn’t. I couldn’t. And suddenly I do.

There’s a desk in our apartment that Pat has had for all the years I’ve known him. For most of those years, it was nothing to look at – scuffed, with old hardware and a shape too antique for my taste. What it lacks in looks, however, it makes up for in sentimental value. It belonged to Pat’s dad, and so it has moved with him from college, to several apartments in Rochester, and then to Brooklyn in the back of a U-Haul van. Two years ago, when we moved into our new condo --- our first “real” home together --- I was determined to get rid of that desk. We don’t have the room! I want a NEW desk, one with drawers that close properly! Let’s store it at one of our parents’ houses! I tried every argument in the book, but in the end it was my mom who saved the day. She first told me to shut my mouth --- and then volunteered to refinish it for us, to transform that desk into something new. It was a compromise, and I begrudgingly agreed. For weeks, my mom labored over the desk, meticulously following each step in the refinishing process and updating me nightly on her progress. Anyone who knew my mom knows about her penchant for "winging it," and so her commitment to following the directions here was both shocking and touching.  In the end, the desk was reborn into a better version of itself. Now shiny and smooth, it has since provided a place for Pat to spend endless hours studying for the CFA exam, and is my home base several days each week. I like to think that my mom and Pat’s dad are laughing together somewhere at the humor and irony in that.

As it turns out, I now find myself surrounded by my mom’s things. On my right ring finger sits her amethyst ring. Strangers stop me to take a closer look at the ring,  guessing that it must have belonged to someone special to me, while family and friends recognize it right away. I take my mom's pearl earrings out at night and put them back in first thing in the morning. My history of losing jewelry --- earrings especially --- haunts me, but somehow I don’t let these out of my sight. My mom’s purses line my shelves, and with each trip back to Rochester, I know I’ll return with more tangible reminders of her.

In the end, they are just things, like I told Pat for so many years. They don’t replace the memories or the laughs, and they certainly don’t soothe the tears. But then, they are more than that, too. They are a constant reminder that our parents are never far; perhaps out of sight, but never --- ever --- out of mind.

On (Un)following on Twitter

I've been wondering what Twitter is to me. While my favorited tweets reflect of my headspace, and encapsulate my strengths and flaws, my entire Twitter stream is the pool from which these highs and lows materialize—an idea-filled microcosm of my world, where my current interests lie. I've been thinking about the process of unfollowing, especially after reading Mat Honan's piece on Wired about unfollowing everyone. For me, the unfollowing process is active and ongoing, and while I've unfollowed people for various reasons, it's less about the account being unfollowed and more about me. My interests change from week to week, so I follow and unfollow to keep up with my mind, to keep the flow rushing and constant and healthy, to prevent debris buildups and mental cobwebs.

* * * * *

Earlier this summer, I noticed a a smattering of #TBEX in my stream, the hashtag for a travel blogging conference. I'm not a travel blogger, but in 2008, I'd created my Twitter account and my blog as platforms to complement my job at a travel website. In the beginning, I followed and networked with travel writers and travelers by default, but over the past four years, I've diverged from this path and discovered other interests and topics I enjoy writing about. It has made sense to unfollow publications and bloggers that no longer offer ideas and information that are relevant to me.

I still have friends and contacts from the online travel sphere and today find myself on the periphery of this world, yet wade in other currents that interest me, like technology and nonfiction, within my Twitter stream. I see how my Twitter feed is constantly evolving, not stagnant. It feels natural to follow and unfollow; to cull and prune; to find a balance, on any given day, between information and entertainment, hope and despair, and significance and irrelevance.

And I notice occasionally that when I unfollow someone, they immediately and automatically unfollow me in return (and sometimes on other networks, too). I find this kind of reciprocal following and unfollowing meaningless, but I understand people use Twitter, and other social media, in different ways.

* * * * *

I have my reasons for following each account on my list. I follow a handful of bloggers because I regularly read them; a group of people for interesting ideas on all things digital; a bunch of folks for general news, art and design, and pop culture; book handles of bigger publications like the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books; and then a sprinkling of accounts who add the necessary color, humor, and "padding" to my feed.

I've thought about what kind of irrelevance to keep in my stream. I don't enjoy reading complaints and the daily minutiae of a person's day, yet I don't mind the wickedly inappropriate trolling tweets of assholes. I hate when "LOL" or "LMAO" appear in my stream, but am completely fine with other abbreviations.

A systematic randomness, I suppose.

And I don't follow my closest friends. Not because I don't like them, but because I don't use Twitter to communicate with them. I also may love someone's photography so will follow them on Instagram, but that doesn't mean I will follow them on Twitter. (Can't I be drawn to just one facet of a person?)

* * * * *

But ultimately, do I have to explain this process?

So, I'm curious: do you actively follow and unfollow people on Twitter, too?

Defining Simplicity: An Introduction

I fell in love with women’s magazines by about age twelve. My mom had a friend who was a librarian, and she would bring us back issues that would then pile up around the house, their glossy covers beckoning. Each issue offered its own promises of quick weight loss, clutter-free closets, and five-minute meals. I guess you could say I grew up in a sort of magazine heaven. Our house was a place where serials came to live on, far past their prime, dog-eared and well-loved. They made the journey from couch to recycle bin only on rare occasions and more often remained nestled under beds, in over-full baskets, or between cushions. Ironically, these volumes of promise eventually became a part of the clutter and weight of our material lives.

Of all the magazines I lived among, one title stood out above all others: Real Simple. I devoured the how-tos on packing healthy lunches for your kids, simplifying your beauty routine, and entertaining effortlessly. I remember a summer weather tip that suggested cooling off by running cold water over your wrists. How simple. I couldn’t get enough of it.

If I visualized my grown-up life, it was a collage of images and checklists swiped from between the covers of countless issues of Real Simple. From an adolescent perspective, age 35 looked something like a hazy mishmash of perfect white button-downs, a couple of charming children, a golden retriever, and something called a “work/life balance.” Above all, I was filling notebooks and mental file cabinets with instructions for keeping it all “simple.”

These days, my dreams have evolved (although, the ever-elusive perfect white button-down is still on my radar), but “simple” has stuck. It’s become a recurring question and a promise I encounter on a daily basis. Simple time management strategies. Simple DIY. Simple meals. Simple cell phone plans. Simple apps. Simple weddings. Simple investing. Simple skincare. Simple living.

I can’t help but wonder, what does “simple” really mean? And what is “simplicity”? A state of mind? A practice? A place? An illusion? Even a dictionary defines “simple” mostly by what it is not. It is not complicated, ornate, artificial, elaborate, or affected. More subtly, I would argue that “simplicity” is not necessarily cheap or convenient or easy, though the terms are often used interchangeably.

What is “simple,” then? And why does “simplicity” continually elude us and tempt us as consumers and as human beings? These are just a few of the questions I hope to explore in this column, through stories and memories and wonderings.

For now, though, I’d love to know what simplicity means to you. Where and when and how have you encountered it or achieved it in your own life? Or, alternately, how has simplicity eluded you?

From the Italian Lakes....

Dearest Clara,

I think one of the nicest surprises you can have is when you unexpectedly find yourself back somewhere that holds a special place in your heart.  Sometimes, places you loved just have a way of working themselves back into your life.  Six years ago, I met your father---long before he was your father, and before he was a husband even---in the Italian Lakes region.  Como . . . Lago di Garda . . . Lugano . . . we did them all.  But the one that's just a little more special is Lago Maggiore.  That's where he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife, and it has been one adventure after another for us ever since.

We have always wanted to go back, but we never pulled the trigger on the trip.  We said we would go for an anniversary . . . for a birthday . . . for a long weekend . . . but somehow something always got in the way.  Yet on this trip, which was not at all about Italy, the little town of Stresa, where we stayed after our engagement, just so happened  to be on our way as we were driving from Austria to France.  We couldn't help but stop to spend the night---in the same hotel no less. And it turns out it was worth the wait, since we were able to come with you.

In thinking about our very first trip there, here is what stands out in my mind:

• Always have some cash in your pocket: Believe it or not, while we were out on the lake, taking the ferries from island to island, we ran out of money.  We didn't think much of it, but it quickly became clear that credit cards were not going to get us on the last boat. We weighed our options between panhandling and swimming to shore; the latter lost out.  We will forever be grateful to that total stranger, and your father always makes sure he has some cash in his pocket when we leave home.
• Eat a big breakfast: No one does a breakfast like an Italian hotel---chances are you already paid for it with your room so take advantage.  Pick good proteins and fresh fruits, and a little roll in your bag for later comes in handy.  If you enjoy a nice leisurely and full breakfast, you can often skip lunch and make the most of your day out and about.  And don't forget a good cappuccino. Or two.
• A passegiata every night: The lakes aren't exactly bustling with nightlife, in the traditional sense.  No clubs here, but you'll find nearly the entire town taking a walk along the lake every evening before dinner.  That's a party to be part of.
• Admire pretty things . . . just because they are pretty: In this region, there are so many beautiful hotels, some would even call them over-the-top.  And you'll find some of the decorations to be excessive, maybe even unnecessary.  Just admire them for what they are: adornment.  The region is so beautiful, you can't blame people for trying to translate the visual feast of the view into their everyday surroundings.
• Take time to do nothing: The pace of life is entirely different around the lakes.  Days are calm, and there is nothing to hurry for.  Take in the view of the lake, enjoy a long walk, read a good book, have another coffee.  Or just sit and be.  You'll have time for it all here.  There will be hardly any obligations here---enjoy that rare freedom.

All my love,

Mom

My Story: Poetry and Prose

My parents are my heroes. I was their first child, born when they were 21 and 23, respectively. They were young, hopeful, and excited to become parents.

For the first four months, everything was normal. After that, things went downhill quickly. A bad reaction to an antibiotic sent my infant self into a quick spiral of electrolyte loss and malabsorption, until my tiny body was so taxed by constant vomiting and dangerously low potassium levels that my parents were told I was near death.

When I turned twenty-one—the age my mother was as she experienced all of this—I marveled. I could not imagine the pain that the two of them went through, welcoming their beloved first child into the world only to be told months later that the end was likely.

Finally, at six months, the doctor thought to test me for cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease that causes a buildup of sticky mucus throughout the body—and also, incidentally, leads to very quick electrolyte loss. The diagnostic test came back positive.

My early memories of cystic fibrosis are a jumble of doctor’s appointments, strange machines, and leaning upside-down on a pile of pillows as one of my parents percussed my chest to help keep my lungs clear. There are other things that swim through my remembering as well, like the time my babysitter told me that if a necklace clasp worked its way around to the charm in front, it meant you could make a wish.

Crystal-clear in my memory is one sunny Sunday afternoon as I left church with my favorite necklace around my neck. The clasp nestled against the heart-shaped pendant. With childish fingers, I reached to pull it back, remembering as I did so the babysitter’s words.

That’s easy, I thought. I wish my CF would go away.

Still, my childhood was by and large a happy and very normal one, defined far more by the monsters that lived in my basement and my favorite park two blocks away than by my disease. I breathed easily, and could not remember those early days of endless hospitalizations. It wasn’t until high school hit—and with it, sleep loss—that the hospital became a part of my life again. Each winter, I would be admitted for a few days to begin a course of intravenous antibiotics. I would finish out the weeks-long course at home, needing a month or more after I’d finished the round to recuperate from the harsh effects of the strong medications.

And then, early in my junior year, everything changed.

High school had been a hit to my immune system, and I’d grown used to spending the winters fighting off one cold after another. At first, the virus I picked up around Thanksgiving of my junior year seemed like all the others: I was tired, my throat was sore, I had a cough, I was spending most of my time in bed.

But unlike all the other things that had come my way, this didn’t go away. Months stretched on. I was exhausted all the time, living in a half-awake world where even reading a novel was sometimes too much for my brain to process. Weeks would pass in which I never really left the house. I rotated from bed to couch to my parents’ back porch, where I would stretch out across two chairs and watch the squirrels jump from tree to tree in the backyard. I canceled plans with friends again and again. Even a twenty-minute phone call was enough exertion to leave me so drained that all I could do was crawl into bed, desperate for sleep.

Every few weeks, my mom drove me to the pediatrician for more tests. Nothing came back positive, and still my symptoms did not change. I began to have pain in my legs and feet; over time, the pain got so bad that I could hardly walk. I spent my days confined to places where I could have my feet propped up, my legs stretched out, to give my aching muscles a little relief. I left church early each week, roaming the building to find an unused room where I could lay down on the floor. The simple effort of sitting up had become exhausting.

Eventually, a diagnosis came. Ten months after that first sore throat, my doctor tested me for Epstein-Barr, the virus that causes mono. It came back positive. Another doctor explained that because of my weakened immune system, I hadn’t been able to shake off mono like most teenagers do; not only would it take longer for my body to fight off the virus, but I would be susceptible to relapses in times of stress for the rest of my life. He also said that I had developed Fibromyalgia, a muslce pain syndrome, as a complication of the mono.

I hardly recognized my own life anymore. Gone was the vibrant, energetic teenager; in her place was a girl I didn’t know, a quiet girl who found long conversations tiring and needed as much sleep as a newborn. I raged against this change, raged against the loss of the life that I had loved.

But slowly, so slowly, I learned to find the beauty.

Nearly a year after my diagnosis, I sat at my desk with my computer slung across my lap and felt bathed in light and loveliness in a way I had never quite experienced before. That afternoon, filled with a peace I had not felt in so long, I wrote these words:

There is a state, somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, prose and poetry, that is entirely unique.

Colors seem brighter; sounds are sharper and clearer but, at the same time, gentler on the ears. Every movement you make—lifting a hand to brush at loose hair, blinking, turning to look beside you—feels lyrical, like ballet. You don't speak: there is no need for words. You simply are.

This, then, is one of the gifts that sickness has given me. This, the talent that some people are intrinsically born with, but I never was: the ability to slow down, to take things as they are, without preconceptions or misperceptions to cloud my vision. The ability to stop for a moment, and see loveliness in ordinary things: a mess on a table, a bag comfortably stuffed with contents, a plastic craft bead. The ability to recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary, and understand the beauty of peace.

I have always been a writer. I would venture to guess that I probably spun stories and wove words in the womb; I certainly have for all the years afterwards. But, I think, as I silently uncurl my legs and shift my position on the chair, that it is sickness that has made me a poet.

YWRB: Rebel for Want

By Amy Turn Sharp I love that Amanda remembers the Brando quote.

Who the hell knows what we were rebelling against, except my soft soul back then, the girl who still had invincible skin left.

I was rebelling for the future. I was leaving the past in the dirt.

It was also that year that I met Gloria Steinem and in a large crowded lecture hall I was able to stand at the microphone and ask her a question after the event. My lips bumped the mic, there was quiet noise.

I just need some advice, I asked. My name is Amy Turn and I need some advice for my life.

And so Gloria shook her head and said {and let me tell you it was certainly like a movie}

Amy Turn, BE A WOMAN WHO TAKES NO SHIT.

The crowd roared and we all looked at each other and it was like church up in there. It was gospel. Always has been.

What are we rebelling against and what is happening at a young age as women?

Well, I hope we are all practicing what to want. How to to need and want to be treated, how to love, how to push away. All the parts to be a woman that are not taught in classrooms, but in friendships, love affairs, seedy bars, libraries, and offices.

Lessons from coming home...

Dearest Clara, Coming home from a trip is always a bittersweet moment, a mixture of relief that you made it safely with a touch of sadness for an adventure completed.  I’ve never been good at all of the activities that are supposed to take place after a trip: the laundry, the photos, the getting back into the swing of things at work.  I alternate instead between reliving the memories of where we’ve just come from, and dreaming away into planning the next adventure, the next trip.

Nonetheless, I still love the familiarity of home, wherever it is for us at the moment---here is what I always do when I arrive at ours:

• Tell people you are coming home a day later . . . or even two: The minute people know you’ve walked in the door, the world will start turning just as fast as it was before you left.  Tell others you’ll be home just a little later, and enjoy the quiet time that comes with no one knowing you are there.  Use the time for whatever you need for yourself.
• Don’t go back to work on a Monday: A boss of mine told me this years ago and I’ve stuck to it ever since.  There is something overwhelming about coming in first thing Monday morning with a list of things to do and a line of people to see you a mile long.  Come in on a Tuesday;  the week can start without you just fine.
• Drink lots of water: Whether you came home by plane, train, or automobile, I guarantee you didn’t drink enough water on the trip.  Drink lots, more than you think you need.  It will make you feel better and help ward off any unwanted souvenirs.
• Unpack on the first day you are back: Unpack at least a little . . . if only to throw your dirty laundry in the hamper (that alone should be the bulk of your suitcase anyway).  If you don’t start unpacking the first day, you can bet that your suitcase will stand there for at least a month before you touch it.
• Write it down: You think you’ll remember everything from your travels, and you think your photographs will be enough, but it is amazing how quickly the details start evaporating the minute you walk in your front door.  If it was important to you and you want to remember it, write it down, even if it is just a quick list in a notebook.
• Have a “coming-home” routine: Order dinner from the same place, take a taxi from the same stand, spend the first evening taking a bath or reading a magazine . . . whatever makes you feel relaxed and comfortable.  Since our home changes so often, we can’t always rely on the structure itself to make us feel like we are “back”.  Rather, the routines that we have developed over time have become our sense of home, our sense of arriving back where we belong.

I know you will travel far and wide over the coming years, and on your own---probably much further than I will ever go.  Enjoy every adventure that comes your way---but don’t forget that being at home sometimes can be just as beautiful.

All my love,

Mom

Unexpected

This was not the column I expected to write this week. But when I read Elisabeth and Miya’s recent posts about change and moving, I knew the column I had planned would hold for another Thursday. This week, I’ll tell a different story, one that I wasn’t expecting to tell.

On January 4th I got on a plane to head back to Bangladesh. I had moved across the world the previous February and come home for the first time 10 months later to celebrate Christmas with my family. Without question, moving to Bangladesh was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Certainly I was sad to be moving so far away from friends and family, but I felt, in my bones, that it was the right decision. My husband moved in November while I stayed in the states an extra three months to pack up our apartment, sell the car, and generally wrap up all the little things that go along with moving. And then I got on a plane and started a wonderful adventure.

It wasn’t easy leaving home, it never is. I almost cried as I waved to my mom from the security line and certainly would have shed tears when the first flight took off had it not been for the wondrous distraction of SkyMall. But I was headed towards my husband who I hadn’t seen in three months, so there was joy and excitement mixed with the sorrow.

Eleven months later, the situation was not that changed. My mom took me to the airport so I could catch the first in a series of flights that would take me back to my husband and Bangladesh.

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Except I never got there.

Three flights and 20+ hours after my departure I was turned back in India. There was a problem with my visa. Changing from one flight to another would, in essence, require that I change airports, which meant entering the country. A technicality to be sure, but it didn’t matter. Immigration officials insisted and I felt I had no choice but to do as I was told. Two flights away from my final destination and I wasn’t going to make it. I was guided back to the same plane I had just disembarked to repeat my journey, only in reverse. Over 50 hours after I left, I was back at my parent’s doorstep.

That was more than six months ago and this is the first I’ve written of what I have dubbed The Journey to Nowhere. With the exception of explaining what happened to my parents, sister, husband, two best friends, and an aunt, I haven’t even spoken of the experience except in platitudes. It was such a shocking event that until very recently (I’m talking two weeks ago) thinking back to that day was more than likely to lead to my heart pounding against my ribcage and my eyes watering. It was shocking and emotional and scary and just hard.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. Not today at least.

When I called my husband from an airport payphone in Amsterdam, I knew we had some decisions to make. We had a plan; I would go home for three weeks and then head back to Bangladesh where we would go about our routine for an indeterminate amount of time, probably somewhere in the vicinity of six months. Someone or something had thrown a wrench in our plan, now new plans had to be made.

Ultimately, we decided that I would remain in the states and my husband would leave Bangladesh after tying up any loose ends. It was undoubtedly the most logical and practical decision. But it was a decision that I felt forced into. I had a plan and it crashed around me leaving us to pick up the pieces and attempt to fit them, like mismatched jigsaw pieces, into a new picture, a new future.

I don’t handle unexpected change well at the best of times. Some people can just roll with things like that, but I am not one of them. I think it’s a trait of being an introvert. I like to plan and adjust, to dwell and ponder. To all-of-a sudden be living on a different continent than I expected was, for me, a curve ball of monumental proportions.

So, with the loss of a well-thought-out plan, an emotional upheaval, and an attempt to adjust to a new plan, I did all I could: I put one foot in front of the other. Early on, before my husband got back to the states, I was so thrown, so uncomfortable, that it is not an exaggeration to say I was taking things day by day. Twelve to twenty-four hours was as far as my vision could stretch. I learned several things from the experience, but one of them was that when you’re so lost you don’t know which way is up, its ok to only worry about the current day, not tomorrow, not a week or a month, just today. Do the best you can on this particular day, don’t worry about the rest.

I’m still not 100% back to my old self. I’m not sure if it’s noticeable to anyone besides me, but I know I’m less confident, less secure than I once was. I have twinges of separation anxiety when I’m away from my husband overnight. And I’ve lost the trust in travel I used to have, that if I set out for a destination, I would ultimately arrive. But the fact that I was able to write these words, that I’m planning for more than tomorrow, well to me that’s proof that if you hang on long enough, the world will right itself.

Sometimes you don’t know the answers; sometimes you don’t even know the questions. Sometimes it is pointless to ask. If I had spent my time wondering ‘why me’ I would have felt even more lost and out of control. Because there is no answer, only more questions. Things happen, things we don’t understand, things we don’t like, things that throw us for a loop and leave us reeling with vertigo. And then, all you can do is look forward and trust that something great is hiding around the corner.

You can go home again.

At least twice a year, I come back to my hometown in California for a visit.  The goal is to get back here every quarter, which, in the math of our crowded lives typically translates into every six months.  These trips take on significance beyond a vacation.  They are a form of meditation for me, a head-clearing journey back in time. While many people avoid visceral reminders of the person they have been, I seek them out whenever possible.  In the movies, characters often return home to revisit glories from their youth or to avenge some wrong that they carry into adulthood.  This is not my story---it is nothing so black and white.  I do, however, perform some touchstone rituals that allow me to take stock.

Along with every German backpacker and family from Minnetonka, I pay a visit to the seals at the Cove.  I stand on the wall above the beach where, as a child, I spent hours diving to examine sea creatures and baking on the course sand.  I watch the slippery, spotted beasts cuddling close in the sun and am reminded of piling onto the roof of the car with my brother to watch a drive-in movie on a summer evening.  I walk up the hill along the water to a patch of grass that saw a friend’s mother’s psychotic break, a cottage that was the site of a first date turned into a marriage turned into an excruciating divorce and a cliff where I learned to bring my battered heart to the ocean.

As with so many aspects of my life, all this revisiting is at once healthy and productive and also like repeatedly running my tongue over a sore tooth.  I am afforded multiple opportunities to process the wounds and confusion of childhood and make some adult sense of things.  I am flooded with the sugar rush of memories from a mostly charmed young existence.  I call up primal fear and devastation and then forgive myself and everyone else.  I hit up every frozen yogurt joint in America’s Finest City because it just tastes better here.

Back home in New York, I have rituals, but they are rooted in keeping my present life manageable.  I fold the towels in the kitchen just so.  I put pacifiers in every room, ensuring I always have one at-the-ready.  I put ice cubes in Ruby’s dog bowl in the morning hoping her water will stay chilled for a few hours.  I approach the apartment through Fort Greene on my way home so I feel like I live in a nicer neighborhood.  The million and one things like this that comprise and organize my days feel like some version of a lifeline and I suppose have some relationship to my identity.  I don’t cook, but I like a clean kitchen.  I am a mother to child and bulldog, alike.  I worry about the shady dudes on my street corner.  But without a periodic anchoring to the chapters that have come before, I start to feel adrift.

I wonder whether moments in time will come to have the same power in my new(er) city.  In that place, I am collecting formative experiences all the time.  And I know that someday I will trot my daughter around and show her the block where her father first made me swoon on the walk back to the apartment that would become my home.  I will take her to the stoplight where we sat idling with her three-day-old, tiny, chicken of a self stuffed into a carseat on the way home from the hospital while they played that one song on the radio that it seemed like we must have willed them to play.  I will sit her on the Great Lawn and describe a hazy afternoon when we talked about books and politics for hours and I realized I could see myself moving back here so that this conversation would continue on forever.

The snapshots of life are more convoluted now.  They are messier portraits, built on layers of knowledge that temper the way they imprint on the psyche.  Perhaps coming back here and slogging through ancient history is a therapist’s version of escapism?  It is infinitely easier to solve the puzzles of the past than it is to do the complicated work of the present.  Still, I like the idea of looping back around again and again to find new twists on the narrative.  Each round brings me closer to this moment, where I have the chance to re-engage my story with a few extra insights.

Prologue

I have always loved butterflies. Something about the way they seem to hang on drafts of air, featherlight, the iridescent greens and yellows and blues of their wings catching the rays of the sun, catches at my heart. A butterfly flitting across my path or alighting on something nearby is a reminder to me to stop, to breathe deep, to live. To embrace joy, and be the deepest version of myself. One summer when I was straddling the line between childhood and adulthood, my Carolina hometown was overrun with tiny green and white butterflies. They fluttered everywhere, gems against the rich blue of the August sky. They were so abundant that it was hard, driving down the freeway, to avoid catching one on your windshield now and then.

“I hate to see them dashed against the glass,” I told my mother one afternoon as I swerved to miss a small white shape. “It makes me feel sick.”

“Don’t feel too bad,” she answered. “They only live for two weeks, anyway.”

That conversation has stayed with me. I think about it, sometimes, as I watch a butterfly pass me, or delicately fan its wings as it sips from a flower. In a human lifespan, two weeks is infinitesimal, hardly a blink on the landscape of a decades-long existence. It is so short as to almost be meaningless, lost in the longer lives of larger creatures.

And yet in its small life, the butterfly brings such beauty.

This is a principle I try to remember.

At six months old, I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a life-shortening genetic illness that affects many organs in the body, causing frequent and serious lung infections, sinus infections, malabsorption, and a host of other issues. Halfway through high school, I battled a year-long case of mono that left me with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. My life is one that is lived in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals; I have both my nurse and my pharmacist on speed dial. I spend hours each day doing treatments and therapies to help keep my lungs clear of infection. Each morning, I swallow more pills than my 82-year-old grandmother with Leukemia. Each day is a delicate balancing act, a struggle to accomplish what I need to without overusing the limited reserves of energy that I possess.

I am breathless on a daily basis. But, as a friend once reminded me, “breathless” is also the word that we so often use to describe moments where we are awed by beauty, or bathed in heart-stopping joy.

And this life of mine is both of these things. The days of frustration, of feeling overwhelmed and betrayed by my own body, are balanced with moments of deep, pure delight. I have learned to find the beauty in a small life, as well as a grand one. I have learned to break new ground, to blaze new trails when the old ones become impassable. I have learned to savor the moments that come my way.

I have learned that sometimes, the only requirement for happiness is a single choice.

This is my story. In this space, I hope to share my own evolution, the ways I have come to accept the circumstances of my life and find great contentment within them.

Because what I continually come back to is this: In my reckoning, two weeks is nowhere near enough time for anything to be accomplished or gain meaning.

And yet, each time I see a butterfly, I am reminded of just how precious each life—no matter how small—can be.

The trips that weren't

What they do not tell you about the Pyramids is that, grand as the monuments may be, the surrounding area smells profoundly of camel piss. I arrived in Cairo ungrounded: no apartment, no friends, no Arabic, not even my own luggage. I was anchorless to the point of adrift---weightless to the point of exhilarated. Over time, Cairo became filled with the buoyancy of firsts and the gravity of love. It was the first place where I worked with the United Nations and, in many ways, where my passion for gender advocacy and conflict management came alive. Cairo marked my first attempt to live mindfully in the present, an endeavor that ran counter to my inclination to wander in the memory of the past or anticipation of the future. And on the first day of Ramadan that year, I met someone on a boat on the Nile in the kind of way that will make it impossible for me not to consider the river blessed, the city magical, and my time there transformative.

We drank strawberry juice in a street alley across from his apartment building. Pronouncing "Mumkin asir faroula?" became a small victory. The strawberry juice gave way to tea and to coffee and to domino and when we ran out of non-alcoholic drinks and board games, he would deposit me into a taxi and I would employ the only other Arabic I spoke at the time: "Five pounds. The fare is supposed to be five pounds." The driver would argue, I would say no emphatically, habiiiiibiiii would bellow from the radio, we'd run a red light or five, and my head would hit the pillow just as the first call to prayer of the day echoed from the nearby mosques. The realm for a public romance was limited and filled with mines, so our budding love was rife with the kind of companionship that prepares you well for retirement: conversation, domino and tea.

And I had yet to see the Pyramids.

This was a point of contention among my friends. It did not matter that I was filling their inboxes with the cautious enthusiasm of a young love. Everyone would write back asking how Cairo is and "have you seen the Pyramids yet?" "No, but there's this little alley that I love . . ." stopped cutting it as an answer.

Four months of alleys and domino later, I had eight hours before I had to be on a plane to Uganda. I asked the cab driver to take me to Giza for the trip that almost wasn't: the pilgrimage to the Pyramids. The postcards create an impression that the Pyramids exist in a vacuum. They do not tell you that there are apartment buildings poking the air around the area of the Pyramids. The guidebooks do not mention the all-piercing smell of camel piss.

They also do not mention that great memories are not always made in the shadow of historical grandeur. Future travelers should take note of the unmarked alley off the map (which, to be fair, also occasionally reeks of urine). After standing in awe in front of the Pyramids for a few minutes, and waving off the salesmen asking me to buy papyrus, I went back to my alley, for one last whiff of nargileh smoke, sip of strawberry juice, and exhale of gratitude for the memories that were.

In Guatemala, I failed to make it to Lake Atitlan. In Colombia, I never saw Villa de Leyva. In Uganda, I missed Murchison Falls. This was neither my criminal inability to traipse to remarkable places nor a snobbish rejection of the kinds of experiences that inspire universal awe. Rather, I learned in Cairo to allow myself to be attached to the alley---and, like Hansel and Gretel in the fairy tale, to leave a trail of crumbs to come back to. "The trips that weren't" give me an anchor in a home that once was. They supply a reason to retrace the steps to a self I left behind. Seventeen conflict and post-conflict zones after Egypt, I favored the sites of memories over those in the Lonely Planet, saving the latter as collateral to the promise that I would return.

Jerusalem was meant to be the last stop for a while. After my work there, I would fly across the ocean to the United States to return to an academic study of gender and conflict. I would unpack the bags and own what is gratuitous simply for the sake of not worrying about how to pack it for the next trip. I would own wine glasses and more than one pair of sheets and I would get excited about things like latte art and permanence. This time, I was not interested in leaving any item unchecked. A month before our departure, I made The List: walks, food, experiences to have before we leave. We ate nostalgia for four weeks, stuffing our stomachs with all the food we thought we would miss and our days with itineraries. I thought we did a good job this time, that we did so much and saw so much and felt so much that we would leave Jerusalem with a sense of satiation---as though that could vaccinate us against future nostalgia.

Two hours before we had to hail a cab to the airport, we lit a coal for our nargileh and breathed apple-flavored smoke into the street. We had recreated the alley. Everything else may have shifted, but it was still him and I and the apple-flavored smoke. We looked over The List and realized that "the trips that weren't" had become the trips that were. I was afraid that we had done it all, that there would be no more Jerusalem to discover in the future. We had crossed off the items.

All except one: The YMCA was his favorite building in town. It became mine as well. We never made it to the top.

Outdoor Movies

I’ve never been to a drive-in movie. This is surprising, mostly, because given the chance to partake in anything that smacks even remotely of another era, I’ll be the first to sign up. I know I can’t be the only one daydreaming of necking while the latest sci-fi thriller goes unwatched in the background. I keep telling myself, one day.

In my own defense, active drive-ins are increasingly difficult to find. While I won’t claim to be an expert on the subject, I think we can probably blame increased land values and the incredible ease with which we can all watch movies from the comfort of our homes. Surely, there’s something wise to be said about an increased cultural tendency to turn inward and something else about folks’ unwillingness to pass a cozy evening surrounded by their favorite and least favorite neighbors.

While the drive-in movie might be largely a relic from another time, there’s an alternative to be found in movies playing in outdoors in city parks. Judging from the crowds at these cinematic evenings, I’d hazard the guess that more people than we realize relish the opportunity for some quality time surrounded by other humans under an open sky.

Last week, my fiance James and I joined throngs of our fellow New Yorkers to watch To Kill A Mockingbird in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The scene was impressive. The lawn was full to overflowing with families and friends and, in the case of the duo in front of us, very amorous young couples. Many of them packed dinner picnics and set up a hodge-podge of sleek picnic blankets and dirty beach towels to take in the film and the sunset over the East River. I imagine half the crew was seeking refuge from their overly air-conditioned offices and the other half sought the cool breeze coming off the river after a day of sweating it out without any.

Whatever the reason for being there, it was utterly delightful to be surrounded by so many happy movie-goers. The sun setting behind lower Manhattan alone would have been worth the walk down to the park, but seeing so many people enjoying it together, well, that just about got me choked up. If you’ve got a hankering for a little summertime movie adventure, or are feeling bummed out about a summer in the city, I heartily recommend trying to catch an outdoor movie or two. If you’re not in New York, never you fear. There are outdoor movies screening in cities all across the globe. Check out your local listings and make a pact to go. It'll be worth it.

YWRB: What We Rebel For

By Amanda Page Essays were written. We collected them and took them to the head of the English department. We handed him our short stack and waited. We waited for his reaction, for his feedback. We stood in his office, terrified, exhilarated, proud of ourselves for taking this on, scared of ourselves for the same reason.

Maybe we wanted his approval. Instead, we received, with apprehension, a question: what does rebellion mean to you? He didn’t want to disappoint us, that much was clear. But he wanted us to understand that something was missing.

“Right now,” he said, “all I’m reading is several stories about drinking in bars and meeting boys.”

It was early in the project and we were in our early twenties. Drinking in bars and meeting boys was a significant slice of our collective experience.  He went on to say that we needed to have a point, a reason to rebel. We knew he was right, but we challenged him anyway. My memory wants to share a moment where one of us (Amy) dared him to see past the surface to what we were really saying. I don’t remember exactly, and it both kills me and relieves me. I want to say that he responded by daring us to do the same.

We were orbiting the point, just discovering the lesson.

I don’t remember where we found it or who gave it to us, but we happened upon the Marlon Brando quote from The Wild Ones. A girl asks him, “What are you rebelling against?”

He answers, “What have you got?”

Well, we had plenty.

It’s too easy to look back and assign ourselves things to rebel against. I also think that we weren’t rebelling against things. Our rebellion didn’t look like rebellion, which could be seen as a type of rebellion. But we weren’t protesting, we weren’t overtly political, we didn’t have one particular issue that pushed us or for us to push back.

I like to think that we were rebelling in the service of something. We were rebelling for something, not so much against. The idea was to share some instruction on how to rebel, how to live, how to be a young woman writer. We were writing it in real time.

It’s clear to me now, that our rebellion was an attempt to figure out how to live our lives authentically---how to live an authentic life. Every act of authenticity is an act of rebellion. If we rebelled against anything, it was the script. When you’re about to graduate from college, your options can feel limited. You can be overwhelmed with choices, and paralyzed by the pressure to choose. We fought against that pressure, those expectations, often from well-meaning family and friends and professors and advisors.

The most we could hope for was to make interesting lives for ourselves. And at that point, the interesting stuff was boys and bars.

Of course, there was more. By claiming any kind of power over our own lives, we were rebelling against many things: parental expectations, societal expectations, what we’d been taught and what we’d been told to expect for ourselves.

That’s where essays served us most. We claimed our power by claiming our stories. By owning our experiences, through how we wrote them, we created respect for them. I learned to respect my own stories. I learned the power in having a story, and in telling it. The YWRB project made my stories matter at a time when no one wants you to trust yourself. But I trusted my stories. I trusted Amy’s stories. I believed our stories mattered. Our stories mattered. That’s all anyone can ever hope for. That’s what we were trying to say to other young women: Your story matters.

That’s what I rebelled for.

Geraniums and Green Feet

My parents built my childhood home, the house my father still lives in today, in the early 1970's, for just over $30,000. My grandfather convinced my parents that a fourth bedroom wasn't worth the extra money, a decision that turned out to be ill-informed when I made my surprise appearance a few years after my two sisters. He redeemed himself when I was a toddler, by paying for the addition of an in-ground pool in the backyard. That pool came to define our summers. Days, weeks, and months were spent playing sharks and minnows and agonizing over the 15 minute wait to get back in the pool after each meal, swim lessons were held there for all the neighborhood kids, and countless bbqs were thrown together on a whim, with my mom firmly at the helm. For a city girl, she thrived in her yard and by the pool---both of which required a staggering amount of work, as my sisters and I are finding out years later. She weeded and edged, power-washed, and for her pièce de résistance, she mowed the lawn in her bathing suit and bare feet, as evidenced by the color of her feet all season long. She never had a good explanation for her mowing uniform, beyond It's hot out! What do you want from me?, but  told us years later that it was the only time she had to herself when we were little. It wasn't all work and no play, though. As we swam away our days, my mom entertained neighbors and friends with gin wedges and an endless supply of potato salad, melon, and veggie platters, making it seem as though they just appeared out of the ether.  Her open door policy was known throughout the neighborhood and beyond---what would start as a small gathering inevitably became, in her words, a cast of thousands.

My mom was famous for her bright red geraniums, transplanted from large hanging plants and placed  in pots around the pool. The years she tried something different---begonias, dahlias, petunias even --- were busts, and she always went back to her beloved geraniums. She surveyed those flowers daily, methodically---and, if you knew my mom, without remorse---getting rid of dead blooms with a flick of her wrist. There is an area of the yard, behind one corner of the fence surrounding the pool, that courtesy of my cousin became known as the "Geranium Graveyard," where the dead blooms went to spend their final days. It is only fitting that we plan to place some of my mom's ashes there, forever memorializing the spot. In the first few days following my mom's death, those geraniums came up in conversation several times. Family and friends wanted to make sure that my sisters and I would still plant them; no one could imagine the backyard without those pops of red.

We all chipped in to open the pool this year---my sisters and I, along with our significant others and my dad, with the help of neighbors who have themselves swam in the pool since childhood. My sisters took charge of the geraniums, and the good news is that all but two of the plants are surviving their first summer without my mom's care. The unfortunate ones are victims of my dad's valiant effort to water them using chlorinated pool water.

There have been barbeques and gatherings already this summer, and the youngest generation now whiles away their endless summer days in the pool, just as we did a lifetime ago. To celebrate the 4th, we invited friends and family over for what felt like just another Brady barbeque, but with me in charge instead of my mom. I grocery shopped, I straightened the house, and I made burgers, salads and snacks, all the while cursing my father and husband, who were relaxing and playing golf, respectively. How did my mom do it all those years?---this was the question I asked repeatedly throughout the day. But deep down, I already knew the answer. She did it because it was more important to bring family and friends together than to lounge by the pool;  she did it because it was always a few good laughs; she did it because she didn't know how not to do it. It's a burden and a blessing, this legacy of ours, but I don't have time to worry about that. I'm busy planning our next party.

On (New) Marriage and the Ever-Elusive "Home"

Here on the Equals Project, and elsewhere—on my own blog, and in the musings of my favorite writers like Miranda Ward of A Literal Girl and Roxanne Krystalli of Stories of Conflict and Love—we talk of an elusive home. We explore what this thing, this state, this feeling means to us, is to us. If we have found it.

If it is not located on a map.

If, as Judy writes in Home Sweet Home, it is not a literal space to fix and construct.

If it shapeshifts as we change.

Or if it is the loved one that holds us, that anchor that keeps us afloat, wherever we may be in the world.

* * * * *

In Homelands, Miranda asks: What if home is just a memory that we carry with us?

In Home, Karey does not have a clear picture of home: "It still looks like my mom and smells like Oscar de la Renta and vanilla ice cream and chlorine and lilacs and cow manure. . . . It’s in the eyes of someone who has lost her world, someone who’s found it, and someone who’s trying her damnedest to get it all back."

In Wherever You Go, There You Are, Sarah describes her bicoastal identity—the pull of New York, but also her roots in California: "I live in New York, but I am not entirely at home here. When the question of where I am from comes up, my answer tends toward the knee-jerk and almost always mildly defensive: "CALIFORNIA, I am from California." This is said as if to distinguish myself somehow, as if to say 'I really belong somewhere else.'"

In No Place Like Home (Wherever That Is), Shoko places home in quotation marks, which reminds me of Roxanne's piece, Home, in quotation marks, which led me earlier this spring to explore my own definitions of home and love, and how they intertwine—or if they are one and the same.

What if home is not the birthplace, the stacked bricks laden with memories, but the new place, filled with learning, with promise, and with love?

 * * * * *

In Roxanne's recent post on her blog, she refers to her explorations of home and away as a "serial infidelity to place," which also reminds me of Miranda's musings from last fall on a visit to London, and whether or not she could live there, and how it's interesting that even though she has a home in Oxford, she's still window-shopping for places to live.

So it appears that while we are all different, born and raised in different countries, living now in different places, or between places, or constantly on the go, we share a special something, a quality I sense in each of us and hear in our voices. We redefine ourselves with each stop, each state of stagnancy, but also with our movements and lapses of change. We ask these same questions over and over again, which both comfort and confuse. We are driven by such elusiveness—driven to inspiration but also to uncertainty, and maybe to loneliness, but certainly driven, period.

* * * * *

I do love the haze produced by these questions of home; it's the best kind of fog—a cloudiness I don't mind.

Indeed, lately my head has floated about in this fog. So, so many things: engaged at the end of June, and then married to my beloved the day before the Fourth of July. Perhaps my mind hasn't been clouded, but is rather in the clouds. And I've been thinking a lot about my evolving definition of home, and how it continues to change now that my long-distance relationship has morphed into a marriage, here in San Francisco.

Can I finally remove the quotation marks, or place it in regular font and not in italics, because the person who has encapsulated this word is now physically next to me, each day?

Has my exploration of home come to an end?

As I read the words of the other women on the Equals Project and elsewhere, and their very different but very similar worlds, I know this is not possible; if anything, I continue on a trajectory in which the target continues to move, a bullseye that shifts as I, and my husband, grow together.

At the moment, that's all I know: that home continues to surprise and elude, that it can be many things and something unreachable at once, and that the one thing that matters right now is realizing this journey is no longer just mine, but ours.

Alone

“Run the marathon with me,” says my best friend (who also happens to be my business partner), “I don’t want to train for it alone.” At the time, her husband is contemplating taking a job 3,000 miles away, in our hometown. We are both hoping to move back in a few years—this city is the bullseye of our 30’s. Our lives are so intertwined that when she mentions him interviewing for it, the job isn’t even contained within the realm of possible. I take it as seriously as if she had told me he was buying a unicorn. I sign up for the marathon on a whim; running a marathon is on my bucket list, and who wants to do anything alone? We are going to train together, to run together. This marathon is to be another check on our list of things that we’ve done, together. We’ve built our business on the principles of wellness and prioritize making time for our friendship amongst our busy days. Our love of running (and ability to run together--no small feat for two lone-wolf runners) binds us; of course this would be something we would tackle together.

I get the message while I am finishing up some work for the evening: “He got the job.” And then within a matter of days, it’s final: my best friend is moving away. Far, far away. I feel happiness for her (she’ll be so close to her family) and deep, deep grief for the moments that I realize may not come the way we had expected them to (We always bring our girls to see Santa together, I worry about her kids not remembering me). At the core, below it all, I am desperately afraid of being left alone.

We were fast friends, bonded by our California roots and our preppy east coast husbands. Running together early on was a test of the potential in our friendship. Our first run together took us over a sun-dappled gravel path that smelled of decaying wood and fresh undergrowth in New Hampshire. It was the summer I got married, before spending our time together in the summer was happily consumed by organizing activities for our sunscreen-slathered children with impossible blonde highlights. She was training for a marathon. Before we started running, I had visions of being left far behind, huffing and puffing in an embarrassing attempt to catch up. That melted away once we started out. Our steps fell into synch, our paces compatible. This, I thought, could be a great friend. Towards the end, as our conversation waned and our breathing and footsteps were all that broke the silence, we realized that we had both stopped sweating, not for lack of exertion. This found us begging for water at a local bar. It was cool and perfect, and we clinked the plastic cups they had given us in a toast to our inevitable closeness.

She has been my steadfast company in a tumultuous time. Through my husband’s surgical training, where he works countless hours, through the birth of my daughter and the growth of our business, she has been my constant. I am as entwined into her family as I am into my own. I love her kids with the unrelenting ferocity of a blood relative; her little sister makes me feel like less of an only child. In fact, her family is the primary reason that though my husband spends far more hours at work than he does at home, I (and my daughter) have felt neither lonely nor alone. Now, during my runs, I have a desperate and sinking feeling. My brain repeats over and over, “I don’t want to do this alone.” What, exactly, I am afraid of doing alone eludes me. Perhaps this is an indication of the hole that she will leave when she moves.

For the first time, I am running and crying at the same time. With our training for the marathon, I am spending more time on the road. Mostly alone, since our routine has been so upended by this move. Running for me has always been a release, and the metaphor until this point has been of the yogic variety: finding comfort in discomfort, pushing through, knowing when to yield. I ran through teaching special education in the Bronx, through the abject terror of my father’s cancer, through the life-swallowing grief following my grandfather’s death. In these times of hardship, I turned to running to be my constant companion, found solace in its repetitive simplicity. Left, right, repeat. All without tears. To stop the tears, even. With this move comes a new metaphor in my running: I don’t want to do this alone. I’ve always run alone, save for runs with very close friends (I have exactly two people with whom I like to run, not including my dad's running club, many of whom I have known and run with since I started coming home from college). What is it about this time in my life that brings the tears every time I lace up? Running had, for so many years, been my companion; now its companionship reminds me of the one I am losing. This marathon, this move, solidifies for me the simple fact that good company is at the heart of what we all want in life. Yes, misery loves it, but so does joy.

It’s all anyone really wants, isn’t it? A friend to synch steps with; company for life’s path. We look for, and find, companionship in the oddest places. Online, in bars, in friends’ social networks. We find drinking buddies, lovers, friends, husbands, confidants. We curate relationships that we hope will prevent us from being alone---truly alone---on our journey. But, I’m learning (as an unwilling student), interludes of aloneness are inevitable, even with the most loving cultivation of relationships. More than not wanting to face her leaving me, I don’t want to face it alone. A cruel irony. The fact is that it’s only her and me inhabiting our friendship; when she shifts a bit, there is nothing to fill that space, except dull sadness and the fear that she has something to fill the space that I will leave.

A few weeks ago, my left quadriceps started to ache. It was unstretchable, unrestable, unmassageable. Gnawing. I chalked it up to getting older. Then, last week, my right leg began to ache behind my knee, a twinge with each step. As if one leg was incapable of working without the other. Left, right, repeat.