Starting Over

By Rebecca D. Martin When we moved into our last house, the first piece of furniture we bought was a sofa, big, comfy, and at the top of our price range. We promised each other that, if we let ourselves buy it, we’d commit to filling it with friends. We would open our home. We would give the sofa back, in a way. Share it with others. My husband and I are introverts with big ideas and true intentions.

A year and a half later, we bought a used dining table, full of chipped-up charm. By then, our illusions had shrunk to a manageable reality, and we made no promises about numbers or chairs or dinner guests. The reality was that I had moved four times in five years. I was worn down by building new relationships in each new city. So for long, long stretches, both sofa and table held only the two---and then the three---of us, resting weary together after long weeks of working, mothering, and missing friends in other towns.

Did we fail? Did we fall clean over our good intentions of being hospitable? It probably depends on who you ask, but if you ask me, the question itself is the wrong one. Hospitality is, after all, about people. It isn’t about meeting a year-end friend quota. It isn’t about succeeding or failing. It’s about sharing life. And life can be downright messy, complex at the best of times, convoluted or worse at the most difficult. In this life, we put down roots where we can, but who knows which way they’ll grow? We intend to stretch out arms of wide welcome, but we end up reaching for help and support or comfort and calm, instead.

And now here we are again: another move, another home. The sofa settles comfortably into the new living room, and I pop out the dining table leaves to give them a good wipe-down. We think with hope about the people we will meet in this new city and what friends might fill these seats. Our intentions are true. But our expectations are open. We’ve learned that relationships will grow in their own way. Community will develop where it’s able, when it’s needed.

In the meantime, our job as a family is to put down roots and grow strong together. We sit down around the weathered dining table, join our tired grownup hands with soft, sweet, chubby ones, and offer thanks for what we have right at this moment. Just the three of us: it is a good place to start.

Looking Forward: Growth.

A couple of months after my niece, Calla, was born, my brother and sister-in-law sent a photo of her on a sheepskin rug, staring straight into the lens with wild, wide green eyes. I was still in New Zealand, living in my front-yard trailer, when the photograph arrived in my email inbox. “She’s switched on,” said my WWOOF host, admiring the shot on my computer screen.

As Calla grew, more photos came. There she was, bundled in sky-blue snow gear. Strapped in a swing at the playground. Setting foot in the ocean for the first time, wobbling on tiny, tubby legs. One video showed her demonstrating a newfound ability to operate the bedroom humidifier with just a touch of her fuzz-covered head.

When I moved to New York in 2009, Calla turned one. As her aunt, babysitter, and---as my sister-in-law once kindly referred to me---her real-life fairy godmother, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of witnessing the numberless spectacular and bewildering transformations that occur in the first few years of life.

“Can you imagine one day we’ll have a real conversation with her?” I remember asking my brother.

Today, three years later, we not only have conversations, but discussions. The baby who once did little more than babble can now ride a scooter, sit through chapter books, make correct use of the word confidant, and identify several obscure varieties of pasta. (Anyone familiar with strozzapreti? She is.)

Calla's a new person every day.

A few weeks ago, she took my hand and pulled me onto her bed, yanking a blanket over our heads. She held a glowing egg-shaped nightlight in her hand. “The grown-ups will never find us here,” she said.

“Am I a grown-up?” I asked her. “How old do you think I am?”

She squinted, lost in thought, and guessed. “Eight?”

---

I ran a Google search recently using the question, “can a person remember being born?”

Apparently, and not surprisingly, the answer in most cases is no. In fact, what I gathered from my search was that for the majority of us, first memories extend no earlier than the age of three---and can occur as late as the age of seven.

It’s unlikely, then, that Calla will remember her first time in the ocean, her penchant for the Milly Molly Mandy book series, our egg-lit conversation in her bed.

She’ll have no recollection of the many drastic metamorphoses that have occurred in the past four years.

I will, though, and I look forward to telling her about them.

I’ll also remember this as a time of significant change for me, as well. The difference is, I can recognize it. And feel it. And think about it. It’s mind-blowing, for lack of a better term, to be conscious of major changes as they’re happening, to feel yourself growing---having new experiences, learning, experimenting, being uncomfortable. I---like my much-younger niece---feel like a new person every day.

It’s kind of like being a child again. I imagine, in wild, stunning ways, it’s a little like being born.

More or Less Like Family, Part II

By Molly Bradley Read Part I of this series here

For whatever reason, my sister Khady took a strong liking to me. She was thirteen, small and skinny, and startlingly sassy---around me, anyway, and with the little ones who paid no attention either way. Around her older siblings she barely opened her mouth. That was the far more startling shift.

In the family room after breakfast the first morning, she took a handful of my hair and lifted it from my face.

“Je vais te tresser,” she said. She wanted to braid my hair.

“Non. . .non, ça va,” I said, dismissive, smiling. Thanks, but no thanks. Already I’d seen a few other girls from my program pass by my house, flanked and flaunted by their sisters, newly tressées. Their hair was tight against their scalps in what can only be called cornrows. The skin underneath strained with white and red.

“Mais si,” she insisted. “Il faut augmenter ta beauté!” We had to “augment” my beauty.

I was fairly certain that method of augmentation didn’t really do the trick for white girls.

But I was plopped down on a low, unsteady stool that sunk into the sand beneath the shade of a tree. The sun was just past its peak, and it was still hot as ever.

The little girls gathered around my ankles and stared. Khady set herself up behind me on her own stool. She pulled out a comb and began to move my hair this way and that, parting pieces, pinching them together.

Binta came out to watch with another girl. I thought at first she was another sister of mine, but I realized later that this girl just hung out in their compound all day long. At one point while we were watching TV, the ever-hanging girl---Hangout Girl, I called her in my head, because I never quite caught her name---made a snide comment in response to something that happened onscreen. Without missing a beat, without even turning her head, Binta said in French, “Don’t you have a home or family?”

Hangout Girl was still smirking, but no one laughed and no one apologized. No one kicked her out, either. Either Binta and Hangout Girl were friends, or they’d just given up on getting rid of her.

Binta and Hangout Girl ambled over and away continually throughout my braiding. Khady pulled my hair in a confident way that bordered on callous---every now and then I made a soft sound to remind her that there was a person under all that hair---and talked to me, hummed to me, berated my hair for being so uncooperative. It felt peculiarly motherly. Odd, for this thirteen-year-old girl to seem so in control. Around me, anyway. Despite my age, I was the baby of the family now.

An hour and a half into the process, a new shadow fell over me. When Khady allowed me to lift my head and my eyes I saw it was Mamadou.

“Very nice,” he said.

I smirked. “Thanks. You’re next.”

“No, not me,” he said. He raised a hand and patted his too-short hair that was already winding into stubby dreads. “Beauty is for the women. They are making you like them.” He walked away, slowly. Everything was a just a little slower in the sand.

I felt content, accepted. This wasn’t so bad. My homestay family seemed to like me---and even if they didn’t, they were working on making me something they’d like. Khady was on it.

She pulled abruptly on my hair, forcing my head up a little. “What did he say?” she asked.

For a second I was puzzled before I remembered no one else spoke English.

“He said he liked it,” I told her. I lifted a hand to my head to feel the progress. The right side was almost done, and almost numb. Khady was pulling the braids tight. It occurred to me, with a tinge of dread, that she was probably modeling my braids after her own, which were microscopically thin and innumerable.

“Could you make them a little thicker?” I asked, but she’d already yanked my head back down by means of my hair.

“Quoi?”

“Plus épais?” I pleaded.

She let out a little hmph and said no more. From somewhere outside the curtain of my remaining loose hair I heard Binta snicker.

 ***

The English was jarring the first night. It was still jarring the second. Khady would turn and ask me something in Wolof; I’d reply in broken Wolof and amend my meaning in French; the TV blared a mix of both; then suddenly in my right ear I’d hear a question in a language only my brain used now. It felt forward. Too familiar. Oddly intimate.

Still, with Wolof flung at me like a test of character from everyone else I encountered, the English was wholly welcome.

The regular soap was on. I was still a little fuzzy on specifics, but there was one duncelike man who kept procuring the anger of two other men. They argued in an endless stream of Wolof until finally they all broke grins and sat down for ataaya together. This was how the women would then find them and berate them for doing nothing but drinking ataaya all day. They had no idea.

As for the very well-dressed women, they sat in their living room and extensive conversations would take place at too fast a pace for me to understand. I stuck to paying attention to the clothes: the elaborate boubous, outfits, in bright colors and patterns; the jewelry---heavy gold, or intricate silver filigree---that made me feel shameful and shabby. I pulled at the thin grey yoga pants enveloping my thighs. When I’d come out in them this morning Khady had told me they were si si beau---so so beautiful---so many times I really couldn’t tell whether or not she was being sarcastic. But she herself wore more Westernized clothes, spaghetti-straps and jeans and rhinestone-studded sweaters.

Mamadou murmured something about the scene onscreen.

“What?”

“They’re cruel,” Mamadou said. “You see? Africans, we Africans, we are always cruel to each other.”

I looked to the screen. The two men in the show had hidden something from the other man, sending him into an overblown frenzy. To his face they were cold and unyielding; when the fool went off in search of his possession, the men laughed and held each other’s shoulders and slapped their knees.

“We do that in America, too,” I said. “TV is crazy in America.” I thought of action movies, crime shows, movies about high school---hell, I thought of the Marx brothers. “We’re always tripping people, or lying to them, or stealing from them, or shooting them . . .”

“Alright, but we are like this really. Not just on television,” Mamadou said.

“What do you mean?”

“We are cruel,” he said again. “Africans are bad, bad men.”

He said it simply, like it didn’t need explanation. I’d never heard anyone talk about where they came from that way. Talk about themselves that way.

“I don’t think that’s true,” I said. Immediately I wished I had phrased it differently---wished there were a better way to phrase it. I didn’t mean to challenge him, since he was African and I was not; I meant to emphasize the I: that in my experience, I hadn’t found that to be the case at all.

“Alright, alright, it is true,” he said. For a second I wondered who was arguing what, but then I realized he used his “alright”s as acknowledgment as well as dissent.

“Alright---you see,” he said, “an African man who is in the street---who is injured, maybe, or who does not have a home to be inside---no one will help that man. That is the best.”

I didn’t follow.

“Alright,” he says, “you see---in the best, at his best, another African man will leave him be. But usually another man will kick him, hurt him, or steal from him.”

“You really think everyone---every African---would do that?” I asked.

“I know this,” he said.

“But it’s the same in America,” I tried again. “No one looks at homeless people in the street. Everyone just walks by. And there are even some people who take advantage of them. Who hurt them.”

“Yes, alright, but American man, he will feel sorry,” Mamadou said. “He will say to himself, Oh, I wish I could help that man. Even if he cannot help that man he will feel sad. He will want to help. The African man, no. The African man only helps himself.”

This was bizarre. Not only had I never heard as much from anyone else---African or otherwise---I hadn’t seen evidence of it at all. Almost all I’d encountered was warmth, generosity, willingness to teach, et cetera, ad nauseum: all the stereotypes of West African hospitality that are stereotypical for a good reason. The worst anyone had done to me was laugh at my feeble attempts at communication in a language that was clumsy on my tongue.

Then again, I wasn’t African.

“How do you know,” I asked, again, “that any African would behave that way?”

“I know this,” he said.

We fell silent.

The men laughed. The dunce searched.

 ***

Before I went to bed that night, Mamadou asked how much longer I was staying in the village. I told him I had one more night before our group of students left for Saint Louis.

“That’s good,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. He nodded a little. I’d learned his nods meant he was making the sentence he’d say next.

People are unpredictable. It’s always gnawed at me, the way there is no way to ever get inside someone’s head. Mamadou wasn’t much more predictable than anyone else, but his nodding was one thing I could identify. It was a reassuring habit to be able to look for and interpret. It was small, but it was something. That, and there was the comfort of English. At the time, in that place, those seemed like two very concrete things to know about someone.

So after his nodding he said, “If you want I can take you to the fields tomorrow, before you go.”

I was eager to see the fields, to talk with him some more, and to participate in a helpful activity---but mostly I was eager to get out of the village. Aside from sawing fish into brow-raisingly sloppy pieces for meals, and failing to persuade any dirt out of the laundry I scrubbed with my sisters, I’d done very little but sit and watch soaps. (The one soap, really.) And I still didn’t understand the conversations in the living room. I felt like a child listening to adults talk about Things They’ll Understand When They’re Older.

He said he’d ask my host father to walk me there the following morning, when I was awake and ready. We said goodnight and I stepped out of the room.

“Mama!”

The older girls had followed me out: Khady, Binta, and the Hangout Girl. I turned and waited. Binta stood squarely before me. I thought maybe I was in trouble for something. Not that I had done much of anything to get in trouble for.

“Don’t talk to the Gambian,” Binta said.

There was no curve in her lips this time.

“Why not?” I asked.

“You’re not supposed to.”

I opened my mouth, paused. Asked again: “Why?”

Hangout Girl shifted her weight. Khady looked nervous. She was stiff except for her eyes moving between Binta and me.

“It’s not good,” Binta said. “It’s not good for you to talk to him.”

I had so many questions. Was it not good for me to talk to him as a tubaab? Was it just because I was new to the family? Was it because I was a woman? Was it because I was American---or, worse, considered somewhat French?

But I didn’t ask. I didn’t think she’d tell me. I didn’t think she knew. What I did think was that she’d been told to tell me not to talk to him. I thought this because, I saw suddenly, my host mother was standing just outside the family room, watching us. To my surprise, the look on her face resembled worry.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But he’s nice.”

Khady and Hangout Girl shuffled their feet.

Finally Binta shrugged and broke eye contact. She murmured a goodnight, and the three shuffled off to their bedroom.

I looked to the family room. My host mother was already gone.

Grief: Mapping Your Online Community

I learned the phrase “Community mapping” at age sixteen while volunteering in a small community in rural Paraguay. At the time, the notion of mapping the resources in a community seemed clear. Quickly drawn on a piece of paper---the community school, church, homes, the dirt roads connecting the dots, and the fields that spread in the spaces between houses. The stick-figure buildings my host family drew to mark the previously listed sites represented the physical locations of where community manifests. They leapt off the page as a visible sign of the strength and resources held within this community.  At sixteen, I transferred this model to my life in Colorado---my school, my home, my family’s cabin, and the places where I spent time with my friends.  My map made sense, I didn’t question my places of support and where my community came together. The intervening twelve years of moving and creating new communities---including online---threw a wrench in my map. It no longer fits on one page or within a single community. I access much of the pieces of different communities in online spaces, including gchats from friends who still inhabit past homes on other continents, Facebook messages from childhood friends, and following twitter feeds of friends-I-haven’t-actually-met, who share a common journey.

Grief and loss often throw the individual into an unknown emotional space, where the “community map” becomes increasingly important. It creates a sense of one’s resources and places of support; showing the individual the strength of their community(ies). For many, the communities of support blend between in-person, phone, and online communication.

Admittedly, the online space trends towards the more positive aspects of life, as Jenna Wortham notes in her article, Talking about Death Online, “This is more than trying to decide how carefully polished you want your online image to be. . . . It’s about the way social software is slyly engineered to get us to participate---we are encouraged to brag about our lives, and present ourselves as living our best lives each day and year.” Between updates about babies, engagements, jobs, and school---loss becomes just another post that slides by not really resonating.

Engaging with more difficult, heart-wrenching topics, such as grief and loss via social media opens the individual up to vulnerability. For many, loss creates moments of intense need to reach out to one’s community. The online platform is not necessarily designed for in depth sharing or support, as posts and tweets have character limits. The feeds stream by, not allowing the adequate time or ability to respond to a friend’s post. As Jena Wortham writes, “However, when it comes to talking about death and grief in a non-abstract way---that is, when dealing with the loss of a family member, a partner or close friend---it gets much, much trickier. It doesn’t have an appropriate reaction face, a photo that you can reblog, a hashtag.” I often wonder as I see friends hesitantly posting memories of their lost parent how our ability to comfort each other spills into this medium?  How much of our ability to empathize in person actively translates with each “like” we give to their posts?

As a firm believer in allowing each individual to chart their own path for grieving and healing, online spaces may become mechanisms for both. In my own process, I try to push the boundaries of what feels comfortable to share on Facebook, twitter, etc. I don’t shy away from posting pictures of my father, marking what would-have-been his sixtieth birthday, the sixth year since his death, or my travels to places he would have loved. However, the accompanying text is often positive, such as “missing your adventures” rather than engaging with the harder, empty feelings of loss. While I can’t express my “full self” in this online space, I trend towards sharing what I can with this online world. As my community is spread throughout many places, online becomes the place that I receive (and provide) support from so many communities at once. Online, I am reminded of the people beyond the Facebook photos who love and care about me---through likes, comments, and quick emails after they see the post.

Beyond our individual experiences with grief and healing---Facebook has become a community in itself, creating a way to memorialize those who have died. Two of my “current” Facebook friends are people who have passed away. Their profiles remain places where friends and family leave notes---sharing life updates, memories, or simply typing “I miss you.” In a world where visiting gravesites may not be practical, the online memorial space may bring us closer together.  In her blog post, Online Mourning and The Unexpected Refuge of Facebook, Cheri Lucas (another Equals Record writer) discusses her experience with a friend’s death;

“A few hours after receiving the news, I wrote something and shared it as a Facebook note. I posted scanned photos from college—precious moments of youth, debauchery, and experiences I had never shared publicly—from nearly 15 years ago: onto his profile, our friends’ profiles, and my timeline. I sat in front of my computer, clicking on photos people tagged of him: images that conjured memories, that stunned and confused me, that made me feel grateful for knowing him, that devastated me because I realized I didn’t know the man he had become.

Alone, I sobbed. Yet I sobbed with Facebook open—his life revealed and exposed in bits on my screen, his friends spilling tears on his profile. I sobbed at home, by myself, but also with everyone else. I had never given in to the community of Facebook until that moment. For the first time, its communal space had comforted me.”

The possibilities of online spaces to bring us together are endless, we can share memories of those who have died, sharing our own healing processes, and of course, share our joys. Yet, as Wortham also notes, we don’t yet know the outcomes of creating online communities that don’t support the whole breadth of human emotions. However, we should trend towards sharing our authentic selves, our whole journeys---and in return, we should support others who do just that---comment on posts people share about those they have lost, about their difficult moments---engaging with the full spectrum of emotions, will only make the blissful moments stronger.

Much of my community is online, thus my grieving and healing cannot be completely separate. However, as with all pieces of grieving, this is personal---and we will each have to carve out how we interact with our online spaces. Yet, striving to make these spaces open to deeper human interaction, will only bring us closer to each other, and as a community---closer to healing.

Just Somebody That I Used To Know

Dear Sibyl, One of my best friends who I have known since kindergarten is slipping away from me.  I'm in my mid-30s and we've have a pretty distant relationship for at least the past 10 years.  I see her several times a year and love her very much.  We have so much past behind us and obviously care about each other but it seems that she puts no effort to be my friend.  When I reach out to her by phone or email, she does not respond.  And when we see each other in person I feel like she doesn't seem that pumped to be with me.  

We both have kids now and I thought that this would bring us closer.  Both of our dads died in the same month and still we can't seem to find a way to communicate like best friends.  It's strange and sad for me.  I don't feel that there is a way of talking about this with her.  It just doesn't really work to ask someone if they don't like you anymore.  

I want her to be a close friend but I don't know how to do it, our friendship seems so empty and what feels like one-sided.  I am certain that we will always know each other since we are basically family.  I think we have a lot less in common now than we did when we were kids but I still love her very much.  What can I do to make it less awkward and more friendly?

Sincerely,

Long Lost Best Friend

Dear LLBF,

When my teenage best friend slept with my first love boyfriend, I not only forgave her, I put her in my wedding as a bridesmaid seven years later.  At the time, I thought I was being so very magnanimous, but now, seeing how that friendship fizzled out over the years as I struggled to keep the connection with letters, emails, and phone calls that went basically unanswered, I think I had a lot to learn about boundaries and letting go.

For so long, I considered myself a pitbull in relationships---intimidating at first, but once you got in, I'd hang on by my eye teeth forever.  I believed that that was what it meant to love someone---to hold on no matter what happened, but over time I found that what I had sunk my teeth into was simply a hungry ghost.  She floated away from me, and in her wake I found that she was actually a pretty terrible friend.  I had been afraid of letting go of our intimacy because I feared I'd lose a part of myself in the process.  What I realized is that I'd always be the young girl who loved her, trusted her, forgave her, and kept reaching for her, but she had moved on, and I needed to as well.

Luckily, as an adult I have worked hard to create a few incredibly honest friendships, the kind where if we have a phone conversation and the other person seems distant one of us calls back pretty soon after to say "That was so weird.  What is really going on?  I think it's me, I'm in a strange place today.  Sorry I made fun of your boyfriend's hair.  He's Sassoon fabulous."

The juxtaposition of these two friendships, one in which I was striving to make something work even though all I was getting was indifference at best and poor treatment at worst, and the others, in which we are so concerned with keeping short accounts with each other that we go the extra mile to check in about the smallest bit of disengagement growing between us, is what I keep thinking about with your question, Long Lost Best Friend.  What you have found yourself in, all these years later, is a non-reciprocal relationship, in which you are doing all the pursuing, and she is distancing as fast as her legs will take her.

The simple fact that you don’t feel like you can share that you feel disconnected from her is a huge red flag to me.  In order to find the friendliness you seek, you actually have to dive further into the awkwardness.  What have you got to lose?  At this point, you don’t have a real friendship, and it’s leaving you with grief and, I imagine, a growing resentment of some kind.  So, my suggestion is that you plan a date with her, sans kids, to sit down and say, “I’ve noticed we’re growing apart, and it’s sad to me.  Do you think it is just an inevitable part of growing up, or has something gone wrong?  I’d really like to work on this with you.  Either way, you are always in my heart and will be in my life.  But I’d like us to be close like we used to be, when we’d be so excited to talk to one another that we could barely wait for the next chance.  Have you felt this too?”

Hopefully, she’ll say, “Yes!  I’m so glad you brought this up.  It pains me too.  How can we make it better?”  And you’ll have a chance to ask her to respond to your emails and phone calls more frequently.  Or, she’ll tell you what she’s been holding on to, some place that the relationship broke down, and the two of you can work it out.

However, she may claim that she doesn’t know what you’re talking about.  This is the time that you stand firm in your reality, and say, “Well, I miss you.  I’d love it if you called more often.  If you can’t do that, I understand, but we’ll lose a connection that we’ve forged over many years, and I’ll be grieving that loss.”  She’ll think you’re brave for stating your truth, and will be flattered that you hold her so highly.  Then you can relegate her to someone who walked alongside you for awhile, hand in hand, but is now on an adjoining path, still moving in the same direction, but with distance between you.  It could free you up to form a closeness with a new best friend, who has the capacity to give you the intimate friendship you crave.

With Love,

Sibyl

Let go of time.

It’s official---we have a legitimate walker in our house.  Our 1-year-old is suddenly, out-of-thin-air toddling around like the tiniest Charlie Chaplin.  She has that hilarious stance: butt jutted out, feet duck-splayed and little arms curled up by her sides.  Sometimes she flaps them just for good measure, as if flying might be next on her list.  Her forward motion is augmented with a side-to-side wobble that threatens to send her scooting to the floor in either direction. I so desperately want to fashion a miniature bowler, cane and moustache and perpetrate it on her.  Occasionally, she revs up the engines a little too high, which can result in face-planting that ranges from controlled to . . . less so. Watching this process, I can feel the anxiety welling to the surface.  I have visions of gluing packing peanuts all over her entire person.  After all, I didn’t spend ten months eating algae-based DHA and another twelve torturing my breasts (THEY USED TO BE AMAZING.  AMAZING.) so that she could crack open her fragile melon with one ambitious step over the dog.  Incidentally, she has negotiated some kind of détente with the Ruby thus far, which seems to involve using her for a taxi, a way station, a pillow, a jungle gym---you name it---in exchange for the dog gaining unfettered access to her head, hands and feet for incessant licking.  It is, all at once, achingly adorable and also disgusting.  But here we are one year into her life and she has six teeth, can eat an entire avocado in one sitting, has finely honed comedic timing and ambulates.

I have spent a good portion of the past three years worrying.  I worried I wouldn’t get pregnant.  I worried she wouldn’t be healthy.  I worried she wouldn’t develop appropriately.  I worried she wasn’t getting enough milk.  I worried I was working too much or too little or some combination of both.  These days I worry she is growing at lightning speed and I am not appropriately savoring every moment.  Having said all that, I would like to take this opportunity, at the start of a new year, this second year of my daughter’s life to stop worrying so much.

Today I was driving through Brooklyn, rushing from working in one location to another.  As is typical, I was contemplating about 1400 tasks and projects while simultaneously replaying Isadora, elated, walking across our living room in my mind.  In this particular scene, she scurried toward the front door, plopped down on her tush and hastily gave herself an enthusiastic round of applause.  This memory prompted an audible laugh.  But my next thought carried the sheen of sadness, “It’s all going by so quickly.”  At that moment, the light turned green, and I noticed the side of the building next to me as I passed.  In large, block letters, someone had stenciled onto the brick, “LET GO OF TIME.”

In 2013, I intend to release my tight clutch on each moment with my daughter while not wasting any more of them at sea with concerns.  This is what parents do.  I am not terribly unique in this.  We claw after the days that slip away and busy ourselves with anxiety over things we can’t control.  But perhaps if I keep reminding myself to loosen the grip now, at the beginning of all her beginnings, I can open up space for even more delighting.

Lessons from a North Dakota Winter...

Dear Clara,

Remember your trip to North Dakota this summer? With long summer days, green grass and your discovery of dandelions? The wintertime paints a different picture---in the place of the green and gold fields is a blanket of thick, quiet white.  There is something about the air when you step outside---when the temperature is so low, I like to think that the air can’t be anything but completely pure and clean.  I love that kind of winter in its own right, but like everything else, it is only when you spend some time away that you really appreciate the peculiarities of a place like this.  Over many winters growing up in North Dakota, this is what I've learned:

• Don’t leave the house without a hat, scarf and gloves: You might think you are just heading out to the car but you never know.  The car will break down, there might be a storm, you might get locked out . . . Always, always, always have winter layers with you.  Remember, it is always much more important to be warm in conditions of that kind, than fashionable.
• Brake slowly, allow time and give yourself space: Nothing good ever comes of being in a rush in the winter time.  Things will always somehow not go the way that you planned.  Don’t rush when you’re driving so that you don’t put yourself or others in dangerous situations.  If you start slipping, brake slowly---no knee jerk reactions.
• Don’t spin your wheels, you’ll only end up deeper:  If you get stuck in the snow while driving, don’t keep trying to accelerate your way out of the problem.  Stop, figure things out, move wheels around, take a deep breath, get traction from other materials . . . Catch yourself while you can still do something about it.
• Take care of your hands: Your hands are one of the first things to betray your age.  You won’t appreciate this when you’re younger, when you think that young skin will last forever.  But a harsh, dry winter won’t be kind to that skin.  Use lotion regularly, wear gloves, keep your nails short so that they do not break.  You hands will always make an impression on others.
• Never take the last flight out:  The chances are high that you won’t be going anywhere.
• Accept that sometimes the weather will be stronger than you: When the snowstorm comes, or the wind chill sets in, or the gusts of wind blow snow up your door, realize that there are some elements of nature you just won’t beat.  And that’s okay.  Know your own limitations.  Be prepared to change plans, to enjoy the quiet, and admire the elements from the inside looking out.  Sometimes those changes that we can’t control end up being their own gift.

All my love,

Mom

On Flying

Over the holidays we took a short trip up to Pennsylvania to visit my husband’s family. We decided against moving after all and it would be our last trip for awhile with the baby coming in just 7 (!) short weeks. It was a quick weekend trip, but the timing was perfect to see some snow, only Charley’s second time seeing it. He was thrilled; watching it float down through the air was just as magical as I remember. I was glad that at the last minute Charley and I decided to accompany Matt on the trip. Originally I was going to stay home, I’m just getting too big and am exhausted all the time. But seeing his face in the snow made it all worth it. He and Matt spent all day Saturday before New Year’s sledding and building a snow fort as close to six inches blanketed central P.A. I sat by the big picture window in my sister-in-law’s house and watched them from afar, it was almost as much fun. Charley is getting so big, and everyday I have to let him go a little bit more. I read Catherine Newman’s “Bringing up Birdy” on the flight and it was the perfect companion to the trip. In the memoir she is expecting her second just as her son is about to turn three, almost my exact situation. She writes first about the pregnancy and then towards the end about juggling two kids. I was taking notes for that part! After February feels like this scary unknown, but one that I’ve maybe navigated before. Much like driving a well-traveled road through the snowfall. You know the road is there and you know where you are going, but the journey is still frightening.

We had a layover with our flight both ways, and since we booked so last minute (the morning of) our seats were all over the place. The first leg of the trip I managed to sit across the aisle from Matt and Charley. I could kind of lean over and see Charley, but mostly Matt entertained him. The second leg the plane was very small and we switched so that I could sit with Charley on one side and Matt was across the aisle squished next to a larger gentleman. It felt comforting to be near my baby again. I’ve noticed I’m a more nervous flier now as a mom. I grip the seat tightly and for the first time in my life, I watch my son instead of the runway during takeoff and landing. I want to make sure he’s okay, and he always is.

On the way home I ended up several rows behind Matt and Charley and it was nerve-wracking. I wanted to see my little guy and know what he was doing. I had to trust that he was ok with daddy. The very last leg of the trip Matt gave me his first class ticket (he had been bumped before we booked our tickets) and they sat some twenty rows back in coach. At first I was a wreck! It was fun to be in first class, but I kept thinking how much Charley would like the mini water bottle they gave me and the cookies and blanket. I worried about him and it struck me, this is what being a mom of two will be. I have to let go of my firstborn just a little bit and focus on the baby. I have to trust that I’ve taught him well in three years and let dad take over a bit. It was hard, and as soon as the plane landed and people were departing, my eyes scanned the crowd for them. And there was Matt with a sound asleep Charley in his little yellow striped leggings thrown over his shoulder. He told me that he had slept the whole flight.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Samantha Shorey is an essay writer and film photo taker from Portland, Oregon. She recently moved to a small New England town to get her masters studying communication and culture at The University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her current research focuses on the way people create authentic identities online.  Samantha's blog Ashore looks at everyday life through metaphors and a camera lens, mostly in close-up. She believes photos should look more like memories and in Motown records on Sunday mornings. Even though I love (I mean, really love) browsing bookstores, back-cover paragraphs just don’t work for me. They’re all plot synopsis, and no “this book made me realize that love is the bravest choice!” or “this book made me ugly cry on public transportation.”

So, I asked my friends Laura and Meg for a recommendation over coffee at Stumptown in New York. Both of them are heart-stirring writers, and they’re my go-to girls for books that make me feel.

After our chat and a little iPhone voice-memo magic, here are five books to make you feel hopeful, encouraged, understood, inspired, and interested---respectively.

Recommended by Laura Marie Meyers | Little Things and Curiosities

Love Walked In by Marisa De Los Santos When people ask me for book recommendations (which happens a lot because I’m a full time writer!) my number one choice is Love Walked In. I’m a sucker for characters that stay with you long after you’ve finished the book---as if you might actually run into them somewhere. With names like Cornelia and Teo, they were so unlike anyone I’ve ever known that I wanted to find pieces of them in people around me. This book follows so many different types of love that you’re not really sure which is the most important---whether it’s the love of a child, or the love of a family member, or the love of a lover. It’s about every type of love.

And really, I’m a sucker for the title. I love the ide of love walking in---as if it was somewhere else and then stepped through the door. Like Love was out doing it’s own thing and it wanted to drop in on you one day. Love walked in? “Oh! Hey, Love! It’s been a while, fancy seeing you here!”

Recommended by Meg Fee | The Wild and Wily Ways of a Brunette Bombshell

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed Dear Sugar is a collection of advice columns written by Cheryl Strayed, previously written under the pseudonym “Sugar”. Advice columns are usually all about the person asking for advice and not the person giving it. But, she totally turned the thing on its head and decided to talk from her own personal experience.

I think this book is so great because every time you think you know the advice she is going to give---it isn’t. Her advice just calls attention to what the person is actually telling her. They already know the answer. She tells people that they have to be guided by their truest truth, and that is an immovable thing.

Two of my favorite pieces of advice from her are: “every last one of us can do better than give up” and “we have to reach in the direction of the life we want.” I think about that last one a lot. Real change is happening on the level of the gesture. It’s one person creating a tiny revolution in their own life.

Recommended by Samantha Shorey | Ashore

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby “Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at twenty-six.” If you’re that type of person---and I definitely am---then High Fidelity is a book for you. Rob, an English record storeowner, narrates the story in the days after his live-in girlfriend moves out of their apartment. Hornby’s writing is funny, full of emotion, and punctuated by music references and “top 5” lists.  I’d like almost any book about heartbreak, but this one especially captures the messiness and uncertainty of this in-between age---the unquietable desire to love and be loved, but the fear of being tied down. In times of happiness and in times of sadness the question is the same: is this all there is? or will something better come along?

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck Walkable City is the perfect book for cocktail party conversations with the hip and urban. After reading it, I’ve started quite a few sentences with “did you know _____?”. (Did you know that additional highway lanes often make congestion worse because of “induced demand”?). Being from Portland, Oregon, I have first-hand experience with a lot of the things that Speck says make a city walkable---and ultimately, wonderful. His argument is so compelling because it has less to do with buying into “being green” and more to do with the tangible things that make life better. Cities have corner coffee shops, chance encounters on the sidewalks, easy errands, and less time spent in traffic. All of these are the reasons why cities like mine and San Francisco, Chicago, New York and even Charleston are attracting disproportionate numbers of the bright and creative.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion I’m pretty sure Joan Didion is my spirit animal! Slouching Toward Bethlehem is a collection of her essays about California and the counter-culture movement, written in the style of “New Journalism”. It isn’t removed third-person newspaper writing---her sentences have such extraordinary presence and clarity. She’s inspiring to me as a researcher too, because she’s acutely interested in the way people live their every day lives.

One of the personal essays in this book, On Self Respect, is the most important piece of non-fiction I’ve ever read. In it she writes “People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things.” Without it “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out . . . their false notion of us.” As a people-pleaser, it’s a bit of tough love that I’ve always needed.

How to See in the Dark

Sibyl, In the past few months, my family has suffered two major tragedies, and a few minor ones.  Now every time my husband leaves the house and doesn't answer his cell phone I think he's dead.  Most of me knows this is irrational, but until he gets home or contacts me, I'm a bit of a mess.  I can't afford the $170/hr to see a shrink, but sometimes I don't know how I'll move through the world without feeling at any moment someone I love could die or be hurt.  How can I move past this?

Sincerely,

Irrational

Dearest Irrational,

I have good news and bad news.  Since I know it would calm your anxiety to get it out of the way, let's start with the bad news.

You are not going to get past this.  It is going to become part of who you are.  These traumas, whatever they are, are changing and shaping you.  Who you become in the face of them is up to you.

We'll get to that.  Before you can worry about who you're going to be, you have to survive these first traumatized months.  First of all, explain to your husband that for right now, you need him to answer the phone every time you call.  He doesn't have to talk, he can answer with a text that just says "I'm here".  But for right now, that is what you need -- to know that he is alive.

It is perfectly okay to be Irrational right now, when life makes so little sense.  It’s okay to be a mess.  It’s okay to put your hands on his face every time he returns to you, and say, “I thought I lost you.  You’re back.  We’re home.”

If he really objects to this imposition, put a time limit on it, "I just need this for the next 2-4 weeks.  Then we can reassess."  Trauma is a huge relationship litmus test, so if he can be there for you in this, you will only get closer.

Now for some good news: you don’t have to go it alone.   Of course you can't afford $170/hour for a therapist.  Who can?  That fee is absurd.  I don't know where you live, but I bet there's a clinic or a graduate school nearby that has therapy interns that could see you for as little as $25/session.  If you live in California, and any of your recent tragedies are from violent crimes, you can get therapy through a program called Victims of Crime.

So, with a little bit of research about clinics, schools, and resources in your area, you can see a therapist that you can afford to help you through this time.  You'll have to go through this dark period of your life no matter what, but you shouldn't have to go through it without a guide.  Therapists are trained to walk alongside folks who have experienced tragedies while holding the lantern to help them see the way.

So, with your supports in place, you'll be able to dive in to the crux of the matter.  These recent tragedies have pulled the veil off of your life and you are seeing humans for what we really are: ephemeral.  Our lives, no matter how bright and beautiful, will one day pass away.  It is a horrible panic attack-inducing truth.  But it is also what makes our lives have a sense of urgency, what propels us to ever do anything of consequence, what gives us something worth fighting for.

When my beloved father died, I spent a grief-stricken winter laying face up on my bed, immobile, staring at the one lonely snowflake I had hung from my ceiling, reciting my favorite poems and feeling the chill of a world in which my anchor had been pulled up.  I was adrift.  And terrified.

So, when it came time to register for classes at my university, I signed up for an intense course in Death and Dying, in which we read 12 books about death; theological, philosophical, and personal texts.  The professor's father was dying as he taught the class.  He and I spent several afternoons in his office, laughing at the absurdity of death and sitting in silence at the horror of it.  It was insane to immerse myself so fully in my grief, but I had a therapist I trusted and my fiancee by my side, so I dove in.  I needed to make sense of the world before I could commit myself fully to living in it.

Perhaps you are not about to take such an undeniably intellectual pursuit.  However, do something to make sense of your world, or you will find yourself trying to control it in odd ways.  Pulling out bits of your hair and lining them up in straight rows, restricting certain foods to cheat death's knocking, calling your loved ones obsessively -- I've been there, I know this behavior.  But how you face these tragedies will direct a good portion of your life.  Don't judge yourself for however you experience grief, but strive to get the better of it.  Just the fact that you wrote in to this column shows you are ready to face these fears.

Finally, do something that makes you feel really alive.  Take up boxing, write a poem every day, hike the hills behind your house, sing at a monthly open mic night.  Whatever it is, choose something that brings you close to the core of life, but does not throw you over.  Grind your feet into the earth, finding your shoring beneath you.

Remind yourself why you want to remain a citizen of this world.  Give yourself visceral experiences of the beauty of this life, despite the pain we inevitably incur.  Love so fiercely that death has no lasting sting, just a dull ache that reminds you that what you’ve lost lives on in you, propelling you to further bravery in loving.

Love,

Sibyl

Lessons from a Birthday...

Dear Clara, Birthday season has come upon us! In our little family of three, there is yours, then mine, then the holidays, then your father’s, and then the new year, all in a row.  And our extended family is pretty close to our timeframe too–I guess we were all fated to be together.  But the rapid succession of all our celebrations made me think of what I’d always like you to keep in mind on your own birthdays in years to come:

• Wear something new: Even if it’s a little thing . . . there’s something about bringing something new out of the package, cutting the tags and having that new, shiny, or crisp feeling.  It just adds the right start to the day, and going forward you’ll always associate that item with the day you celebrated another year.
• Call you parents: I never really thought of this growing up, but your birthday is actually more emotional for a parent than for the person celebrating.  It is the day, after all, that their life changed forever when you came into their world.  Don’t forget the fact that they are celebrating in their own way too.
• Don’t forget to celebrate in your own way: When you’re younger, celebrations come easily.  There are parties, there are friends, and there are always much-ado’s about birthdays.  But as you get older, and work schedules set in, and bills need to get paid, and hundreds of other things crowd our mind, not the least of which is our uncertainty about being yet another year older, it’s easy to say that we don’t want to celebrate.  That’s bogus.  You don’t always need a big party, but do something to mark the occasion---you will be more likely to embrace the year ahead and the gifts it brings.
• Don’t be upset if people forget your birthday: It happens.  Some people are excellent about remembering birthdays, but some people slip, despite all of their best intentions.  If someone calls late, don’t hold it against them.  Accept their good wishes for you, that’s what counts.  Someday it might be you that forgets . . . despite all of your best intentions.
• But remember how nice it feels when people do remember: Try to be the person that remembers.  Take notes of important days, keep a calendar, set up reminders.  You might not always get it right but if you try, it’s much easier.  Think of how special it makes you feel when someone goes out of their way to call or write a card or do a surprise for your birthday, and try to be the person that does that for other people.  They will remember you for it, even if they don’t always thank you.

I wish you only the happiest of birthdays over many long years, and remember that I will be with you, in some way, for all of them.

All my love,

Mom

Needing the New

Growing up, whenever there was a school vacation (regardless of length), I felt compelled to be different upon my return.  A three-day weekend prompted me to scavenge the mall, seeking out a perfect GAP t-shirt that would make all of the other seventh graders drool with corporate envy.  A week over Easter meant a new haircut or an unhealthy amount of time spent laying in my pool, trying to cultivate the perfect golden brown skin-tone (I am half Irish; this is not easy).  Summer break?  I needed to travel to far-flung places to build my sophistication arsenal.  I needed an accent, or at least a fake one.  I needed to lose weight or gain muscle, to learn gymnastics or grow three inches.  I needed, on that first day of school, the look in my friends’ eyes that said, “you’re a better you.” The world we live in, of course, both helps in creating this need for change and makes achieving it all too easy.  A quick perusal of the magazines on newsstands right now showcases too many “new you!” headlines to count, whether it be how to lose 10 pounds fast or reverse aging or try a new hairstyle that will change your life; flipping open the same magazines reveals advertisements and articles geared towards becoming your best self, over and over and over again.

And now, the pinnacle of the makeover madness, the holiday designed to remind us, yet again, that we’re still striving; that we will, in fact, always be striving: New Year’s.  Stressed and strung out from too much family time and too delicious gingerbread men, bloated from the eleventh eggnog cocktail and bleary eyed from waking up to play Santa, we look at New Year’s and think, “yeah, that sounds good. I’ll resolve to be better.”  Because who couldn’t stand to be a little better?  And because, of course, the resolution is the easiest part.

My need for drastic change has subsided over the years.  I remember distinctly returning to the hometown I’d moved away from when I was thirteen.  I was now sixteen.  Since leaving, I’d spent a summer abroad in Germany.  I’d stopped wearing bell bottoms (so unfashionable!) and moved on to bootcut jeans.  My hair was longer and less frizzy, my skin was beginning to emerge from under its sea of zits.  I rang the doorbell of an old friend’s house and stood on her porch, trying to cock my hip out just so.  She opened the door.

“Liz!” she said, flinging her arms around me.

“Hey,” I said, my irrational teenage heart sinking.  “I thought you’d hardly recognize me.”

She pulled back and looked me up and down.  “Nope, I recognize you perfectly.” She caught the look in my eye and frowned.  “Why?” she said.  “Did you not want me to?”

“I just wanted to be, you know . . . different,” I mumbled.

She swooped me into her arms again.  “But I,” she said, “wanted to see Liz.”  While I was disappointed, she got exactly what she wanted.

The ten pounds, the red hair, the black, brown or green hair, the tan, the pale skin, the contacts, the new dress: all of it is to get you that much closer to a person you like, not change you in the eyes of anyone else.  My friend would’ve recognized me no matter what.  The question was if I had become the person I wanted to recognize.  If I had become a person I could like.

This New Year’s, I’m resolving to stay the course.  Like many people my age, I’m learning to love myself a little bit more every year, and any drastic left or right turns might impede that journey.  I resolve to enjoy exactly who I am right now, and exactly who I may be in a week, or a month, or a year.

Happy New Year’s to everyone.  May your night and all the subsequent ones be bright.

A Christmas Present

A lovely video by Molly McIntyre

When We Are Older This Will All Make Sense and It Will Be Too Late

Sibyl, I have spent a significant amount of time pursuing one career direction, and now I am unsure if that is the right way for me. This is not unusual, but I am unsure how to decide on a new direction. Early 30's still feels too old to just try out some other career paths. I have worked in religious institutions or social services or both or 5 years. Now I would like to try something more creative . . . yet I am unsure where to go or what to do. How do I explore options while still affording to live? What can I do to both explore and survive?

Sincerely, Ummm

Dear Ummm,

I am so glad you brought this up.  True confession time: Sibyl has no idea what the heck she is doing with her life.  Like you, I have invested a considerable amount of time, energy, and debt in following a life in the "helping professions", only to find that it is an unsustainable way for me to live.  So, I am striking out into the world with writing and other creative pursuits, terrified at the outcome but totally sure that it is what I need to do, anyway.

I have learned some things along the way, which I will now share with you, dearest Um.

1. A life of service will suck you dry and spit you out when you have nothing left.  

My father was social worker, and when he would get home every day, I would ask, "How was your day?"  His one word response was invariably, "Crazy."  Whenever I pressed him for more answers, he just said, "It's a thankless job."  And that, my friend, was that.

Despite this harrowing harbinger of the life to come, I idolized my father and followed his footsteps, pursuing a life of helping others.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  In college and graduate school, I heard a lot about the way the work feeds you from within, and how your thanks is in the process of helping others.  This was enough for me, in my twenties.  I worked my ass off at low-paying jobs, and did indeed find the work rewarding.

However, I realized that although I enjoyed this kind of work, I had some life goals I wanted to complete, namely, having a family.  So, I set out to get knocked up and have a child.  This is when I found that having a job that pays you very little to take care of other people's emotional needs does not work well with being a parent, which consists of being paid absolutely nothing to take care of another person’s EVERYTHING.  Like you, I realized I needed to create or I would be left with nothing.  Art poured out of me like my desire to "save the world" once did.  But for whatever money work in social services provided, art provides even less.  What to do?

2. Make a list of all your creative interests, no matter how foolish.

Let yourself really dream here.  Do you want write, paint, be a film critic, cook, front a band, report the weather?  Be ridiculous.  Write, "I just want to be Vincent Gallo."  Okay!  Now we're talking.  Look over your list.  Where do you find the MOST energy?  It is important to tell your inner critic to go take a nap when you do this.  Instead of listening to that nagging voice that says "You'll never make a living that way!", listen to the one that tells you that what the world needs is more people doing what they love, what makes them truly come alive.

There are tons of practical exercises like this in the book The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron.  I suggest you pick up a copy and start the twelve week program she outlines, as soon as possible.  It's a great way to start your explorations while still living your day-to-day life.

3. Get water from a stone.

Have you decided on what creative path you're most interested in exploring?  If you chose filmmaking, you don't need to know what you want to make films about, you just need to start researching film schools, and go from there.  Look up unpaid internships (I know, I know) at your favorite magazine and write for them in the time you used to spend watching sitcoms.  Volunteer at your local artist collective and talk to people who actually do make a living as art-makers.  The way they’ve pieced together their lives could surprise you.  For instance, it may make a lot of sense to combine your helping profession efforts with art-making -- they could inform each other in beautiful ways.

Again, tell your inner critic to take a vacation while you're researching artist residencies in Maine.  Or, better yet, sit that critic down, and say, "You're RIGHT.  I'm never going to save for retirement and buy a house if I follow my creative goals now.  But giving everything I have to others has not made me millionaire either.  So guess what?  I'm going to do what makes me happy.  And when I'm drowning in debt, you can say, 'I told you so', and I can go make a masterpiece on my canvas.  You're right, but I win."

Here's what you need to do, Ummm.  Figure out the very least that you can live on.  One fancy coffee per week instead of five?  Awesome.  Brown bagging it every day instead of eating from food carts with your friends?  Excellent.  Turning on the heat in only the direst of snow storms?  Pull up that blanket!  I know that you've probably been living a life of almost-poverty taking care of others for so long.  But believe me, this is different.

Investing your time and efforts in art-making actually is enriching, in the way that all our professors told us that lives of service would be.  Okay, so you don't have a living room that could be featured in Ladies' Home Journal, and you can't go on vacation and post a picture of your feet with a fancy drink by the ocean on Facebook, but guess what?  You get to be you, and you get to be awesome.

You will always be that interesting person at a party who is not just talking about what milestone your baby has reached, but has a new project or idea you're working on that you want feedback from your friends about.  You'll always have something to do on a Friday night, because you'll be in your studio.  So, you don't have all the material bullshit and security our culture seems to uphold so much, but look how that's working out for those folks?  Rich, secure, and absolutely terrified of losing that wealth and perceived security.  Be bold, risk big, and yes, get mad about the fact that art-making doesn't pay actual dollars.  Do it anyway.

3. Don't go it alone.

So, you've spent all this time taking care of other people, and you're ready to follow your own dreams for once.  Guess what?  All of that time you spent caring for others spiritually and physically was not wasted.  It was all a part of your creation as a soon-to-be artist.  You not only became a person of substance, who actually has something to create art about, but you stored up a ridiculous amount of good karma.

Being there for others means that they are now going to be there for you.  They'll say, "That Ummm, what a good guy, he came to the hospital when my dad was sick, and now he's striking out as an artist and needs a leg up, why don't I buy one of his pieces, or, at the very least, invite him over for Sunday dinner."  You've got to find your people, and chance are, you already have, since you've devoted your life to loving humans.  Lean on them now.  Let them take care of you in the ways you've been taking care of them.  Help comes from the most unexpected places.  Reach out, and see the lovely (and materialistically helpful) ways your community responds.

It will not be magical, it will happen because of all the work you have already put in.  Everything is not going to mysteriously go your way once you set your mind to what you want to do, don’t buy that bull.  However, it will flow back to you proportionally to what effort you put forth.  You want to explore?  Really excavate!  Don’t hold back.  You get out of the creative life what you put into it.  Stop ummming and start risking, give up the fallacy of security, and be who you are, big time.

When we are older, all of this will make sense to us, and we will say, “Oh!  I should have started this or that sooner.”  But it will be too late.  Right now, contrary to what you are being told, is not too late, because it is all we have.  Dive in right this second.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

In solidarity,

Sibyl

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Lauren Kodiak is a Connecticut native living in Portland, Oregon with her boyfriend and her slightly overweight cat. She has a master’s in Educational Policy, Foundations and Administration, but still doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. She loves to spend hours in the kitchen, practice yoga and eat ice cream for dinner. My boyfriend, Drew, is an MFA in creative writing candidate, so every inch of our tiny studio apartment is occupied with books of all kinds. I rarely have to make a trip to the bookstore or library when I’m looking for a new read, as I have a seemingly endless supply at my fingertips. Since reading is such an integral part of our relationship and life together, I thought I’d extend the invitation to him to share a favorite book with you all. Perhaps in light of the tragedies our nation currently grieves, our picks lean toward the darker side, full of raw emotion. But in these stories, as in life, there is always humor and light to be found if you choose to look for it.

Lauren: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live by Joan Didion Comprised of seven books of nonfiction, dating back to 1968, this is certainly a hefty undertaking. But what I love most about it is that I’ve been slipping back and forth between books here and there, in no particular order. My first foray into Didion was just this past year, when I read The Year of Magical Thinking. I found myself captivated by her precise observations and minimalistic prose. I kept rereading sentences, trying to decipher what it was exactly about each one that elicited so much emotion. After reading from We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live—specifically The White Album—I see now that it’s not the how, but the what. Sure, her sentences are sparse, but what they contain are stories of a nervous breakdown, of her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and of the paranoia and anxiety she experienced while living in California during the unsettling time period of the 1960s-70s. She shares everything, spares us none of the unsavory truths. As I read more of Didion, I’m beginning to understand that writing about deeply personal issues is not synonymous with depressing others. Actually, these dark anecdotes inspire and reassure, universalizing anxieties and fears we all have felt at some point in our lives.

Drew: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt As a graduate student of creative writing, I’ve read some great literature. And while I enjoy much of what I read, I sometimes agree with the opinion that criticizes contemporary literature as plot-less and humorless. Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers reminded me why I fell in love with literature in the first place. A hilarious adventure set in the old West of Oregon and California, the novel drives forward in short, sometimes mere page-long chapters, which force things to happen—force horses to fail, whisky to be drunk, and gold-seekers to be murdered. The voice, younger brother Eli’s first person account of a manhunt undertaken with his brother, is pared-down, even keeled, sharply chiseled and oftentimes downright hysterical. Yet at its core, The Sisters Brothers meditates family and the moral compass of a mercenary. These topics, of course, are potent and worthy of examination in imaginative literature. Lucky for us, deWitt doesn’t crutch on his sentiments to carry the book; instead he juxtaposes them against a hilarious cast of characters, situations and killings gone wrong, all of which make this the best novel I read this year.

Both: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout We have a soft spot for coastal Maine, the setting of Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of thirteen linked stories, Olive Kitteridge, and the title character—a crotchety, opinionated retired teacher—serves as the collection’s nucleus. Regardless of whether we are inside Olive’s head or see her through the lens of others, her big, boisterous character is ever-present. Despite Olive’s abrasive and callous demeanor, we can’t help but find her loveable as she lumbers through life. With such emphasis on Olive, it would be easy for the rest of the book to fall to the wayside, but the scenery of Crosby, Maine and the lives of those that inhabit it are richly illustrated. As you become privy to the gossip and secrets of the townspeople—an elderly couple is held at gunpoint, the mother of a killer becomes a hermit, a widowed old woman finds love in the least expected man—it’s difficult not to feel intertwined and invested in this little community. The range of emotions and experiences expressed throughout Olive Kitteridge are representative of those of the human condition. We both got lost in the day-to-day trials and misgivings of these characters, and cheered for them when they found glimmers of hope and happiness. A must-read for all!

Home

Faded ticket stubs, dried rose petals folded inside notes of high school love, gleeful photos of attempting to blow out candles on childhood birthday cakes, and journals describing firsts---the first time away from home, the first crush, the first heartbreak, and the first encounter with grief. A whole life, a full life, is contained in the dusty leather photo albums and journals, remnants of a world before Facebook and iPhones. This past life, which I visit upon coming “home,” feels distant. I associate with the girl in the photos, whose memories I find in my childhood bedroom---the one smiling in the photos, wistfully blowing dandelion seeds off a dark green stem; the one who scribbled “BFFs” on the back of pictures and saved notes secretly passed in class, attempting to immortalize friendship; and the one with the mischievous grin of adventure-scheming, creating imaginary worlds in the backyard. Yet, she feels distant.

Home is now packaged with the holidays and my trips are fewer and shorter. At times it astounds me that over ten years ago, I packed my bags, ready for a new world in Boston. Without fail, upon returning to this bedroom, my attention is drawn to the old photo albums (which I aptly called “memory books”), scribbled notes, and journals---each full of its own memories. Perhaps by searching through the past I can find answers to the persistent questions of the present. Perhaps simply reigniting the memories, the feelings, of a life contained within a single community and countable friendships, will bring resolutions to questions in a life not contained by space and experiences.

What pulls me to these photos and scribbles is the inability to return to these cherished moments---childhood, a past sense of friendship and family, or, in many ways, the version of myself that existed here. As the brilliant article in the Harvard Business Review, How to Move Around without Losing your Roots notes, “. . . home is where we are from---the place we begin to be.” Home is where the “self” I began with is.

As a wise friend told me recently that we carry the “versions” of ourselves from the past with us.

The self in the photos is confident in belonging; joyful, yet naive to realities beyond her world; and, yet this self longed for understanding beyond her immediate experience. While the current version feels distant from the photos and scribbles, so much of the searching, creating, and defining in my life was born in this mischievous grin and the very first iteration of home and self. The notion of home, even if it is past, challenges me to assess changes and growth, while tying my current life back to the Colorado landscapes, the house my father built, and friendships helped me define who I was in the beginning. As distant as I may ever feel, my current self is rooted in this past narrative of home and place. If home is an experience of “belonging, a feeling of being whole and known,” as the HBR article describes, it is not my current self in the place that “I began” that feels at home. Yet, the self I remember when I visit may hold joyful child-like insights and mischievous adventure schemes to inform my continued search for this notion of “home.”

Lessons from a New Year...

Dear Clara, One year rolls out, and a new one rolls in . . . I love the fresh feeling of possibility that the New Year brings, the crispness of winter, and the sense that there is a blank canvas of achievements just waiting for us.  Here is always what I think about for the year ahead:

• Reflect on the year past: I think it’s only fair that before you leave the old year with abandon, that you reflect on everything you accomplished.  And be generous.  We so often focus on what we didn’t get to on our lists that we forget what we were able to do.  Sit down with your calendar and think about all the good things that came your way, and you’ll have a new appreciation of what you’ve been given and what you were able to do with it, even in the tough years.
• Buy a new calendar: Nothing says possibility to me like the crisp, white, blank pages of a new calendar (except for maybe the crisp, white, blank pages of a new notebook!) This is where your plans will take place.  And this will be your record for looking back on everything that you will still accomplish in your new year.  Find a calendar that organizes you, but also inspires you.  They’re out there.
• List out your resolutions: I see more and more that people make fun of New Year’s resolutions, they say we should be doing these things all the time.  That’s probably true, but in all reality, this is a time of year where we have a bit of time to slowdown to think about the direction that we’d like to go in, whether it be personally or professionally.  Writing things down makes them more real.  Keep the list short, but mix a few tangible things with a few dreams, and I guarantee you’ll get to both faster.
• Do something for your wealth: Think about where you are financially and where you want to be eventually.  Are you moving in the right direction? Do you need to save a little more? Do you need to invest in your education a little more? Think about what makes you feel more secure and plan a few steps on that path.
• Do something for your health:  Remember that your health is a gift, but it can easily go away when we don’t take care of it.  Maybe it’s eating a bit smarter, maybe it’s moving a bit more, but think about one think that you can focus on to take care of your body in the way that it deserves.
• And do something for your happiness:  Try to think of what you don’t make time for but that you know would make you truly happy.  For me, these tend to be creative things.  I don’t have what most people would consider a creative job during the day, although for me it’s still rewarding.  But I look for other opportunities to get the creativity that I crave, and because it doesn’t become part of my work, I do it just for me and it makes me happy.  Look for just those one or two things that you know you should make time for, because it would help you find happiness in the other things that you do all day.
• Think hard about the changes that others would like to see in you: For the most part, our resolutions are about ourselves, for ourselves.  But I also try to think of a quality that I know others would like to see more of in me.  Patience comes to mind often . . . so does mindfulness regarding things like phone calls and correspondence.  These simply aren't always my strong suit.  Your job isn’t to turn yourself into the perfect picture of what everyone else would like to see in you.  But chances are, we all have a few things that could use a bit of improvement on, and that little bit of improvement could translate into a whole lot of happiness to those that matter most to us.  This isn’t a time to be defensive, it’s a time to be reflective.

In this new year, and in all of your new and many years ahead, may I be the first to wish you all the health, happiness, success, mindfulness and joy in the world.

All my love,

Mom

The F Words: Miriam Blocker

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Miriam. You might have noticed that Miriam and I share a last name; she's married, you see, to my little brother, and is a seriously amazing lady. She studied at the University of Edinburgh, where she managed a theater over the summers (where, it happens, she met said little brother), then moved here to the States to join my wacky family. Her parents, both Anglican priests, still live in Manchester, but are Dutch (mom) and American (dad) by birth. That said, Miriam still managed to develop a very English taste for Christmas pudding, something she got me to try exactly once. The apple cake she shares below is a bit more my speed---though I it's likely I just didn't pour enough brandy sauce on that pudding . . . Tell us a bit about your day job. I develop and manage marketing campaigns for new luxury residential developments in New York.

How did you learn to cook? I learned a lot from my mum---she cooked almost every day when we were growing up, and she’s good at it, too.  My dad has a few things he likes to cook---including his 1-bottle-of-wine-for-the-pot-2-for-the-table fondue---that I’ve picked up along the way.  I learned to bake with family friends, making particularly English recipes like Christmas pudding and Victoria sponges.  When I got to university, I started to cook with my friends and I learned a lot from them, particularly as many of them were much more confident and would throw elaborate (Ten course! Themed! Costumed!) dinner parties or combine ingredients I’d never have thought of (sometimes heard of).  And I am definitely still learning---since I moved to the US I’ve been working on perfecting cornbread, chili, apple pies, picking up tips from family and friends and Ina Garten (among others).

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends and family? I really like the idea of cooking with friends and family, and with a few select people it can work out, but I think I am best suited to cooking alone.  I often like things done a particular way, and our tiny Manhattan kitchen can make it all a little too cozy unless you are really comfortable with your cooking partner.  But when it does work it’s wonderful.  And I always like someone to check the seasoning.

What's your favorite thing to make? I love making pizza.  And ice cream.  They are easy once you’ve got down a good basic recipe (dough, custard) and then you can tinker around endlessly with the toppings and flavours.  And some delicious combinations have happened by chance because of ingredients I happened to have in the house, like whiskey and stem ginger ice cream.

I also love making curry.  It’s such a different set of ingredients than I usually use, and it is incredibly comforting to have a pot stewing on the stove.  It reminds me of home---my mum cooks great lentil curries, and Manchester’s famous Curry Mile is down the road from where I grew up---and of traveling in India with my best friend. We spent a day in Udaipur learning to cook, making real chai tea with whole cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods, vegetable curry with the Chunky Chat masala the local's swore by, and chapatis.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? Probably Italian---you just can’t beat a big bowl of pasta and cheese.  And pizza, of course.  And gelato.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? I was vegetarian from the age of 10 until just after I left university, so my formative years as a cook were meatless ones and I never really learned how to cook meat or fish.  I am still intimidated by recipes that require elaborate (frankly, often even embarrassingly basic) techniques.  And I am not really much help when it comes to preparing my husband’s annual clambake birthday dinner (another quintessentially American meal)---sure, I can peel potatoes and shuck corn, but I am helpless in the face of 10 live lobsters that need a sharp knife to the head.  I just tend to shout words of encouragement from the other side of the room (specifically, "Go, Meg, you can do it!").

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? My immediate family ate together nearly every day growing up, so food was an integral part of those family relationships.  It just seems such a normal, and important, part of family life, and so natural to want to cook for and share food with people you care about.

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? For me at least, cooking is a choice and not something that is expected (or required) of me by others because I’m a woman.  And being a proficient cook is no longer tied in the same way to a woman’s identity as a woman, to whether you are an ‘ideal’ woman or ‘good’ wife, so I can enjoy cooking without that pressure.  Which doesn’t mean that burden to cook now falls equally between men and women, but there are a lot of couples I know where the man does more the cooking than the woman.  Also, the kitchen at home when I was growing up was well-stocked with tea towels proclaiming "A Woman's Place is in the House. Of Bishops" as my mum was campaigning for the ordination of women in the Church of England, which was a good reminder not to get too caught up in traditional gender roles.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you’re sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? This is my mum’s Dutch Apple Cake recipe.  This is the one exception she acknowledges to her assertion that she can’t bake (which I don’t think is true anyway).  I’ve been helping her make this for as long as I can remember, and I requested it for dessert on my birthday almost every year.  Though my mum is Dutch, this isn’t a longstanding family recipe (I think it comes from the Katie Stewart cookbook) but it is now committed to memory, and hopefully will be a family recipe going forward.  It’s light, not too sweet, and it goes really well with ice cream, homemade or otherwise.

Miriam's Mum's Dutch Apple Cake This is a European recipe, so measurements are by weight, not volume. (You need a kitchen scale if you don't have one, anyway!)

For the cake 6 oz. self rising flour 1 level tsp. baking powder Pinch of salt 3 oz. caster (superfine) sugar 1 egg 6 tbs. milk 2 tbs. neutral oil (sunflower if possible)

For the topping 1 lb. cooking apples (Braeburns or Granny Smiths work well) 1 oz. melted unsalted butter 2 oz. caster (superfine) sugar 1/2 level tsp. ground cinnamon

Heat the oven to 400F. Grease a 9” inch tin (or 12” and reduce the cooking time slightly).

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl and stir in the sugar.  Blend the egg with the milk and oil in a separate bowl then pour into the flour mixture. Mix together with a wooden spoon, then beat well for one minute until batter is smooth. Spoon mixture into the prepared tin and spread level.

Peel, core, quarter and thinly slice the apples. Spread the melted butter over the cake batter using a pastry brush.  Arrange the apple slices over the surface of the cake, inserting them on their side (curved side up) into the batter in a circle, pointing out from the centre to the edge (like spokes on a bike, only packed tightly).

Mix the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle this over the apples.  Place in the center of the pre-heated oven and bake for 35 minutes.  Allow to cool in the tin for two minutes.

Serve hot or cold, as-is or with cream or ice cream.

Naughty or Nice?

Dear Sibyl, My older brother has a girlfriend for the first time in years. I'm super psyched that she's going to be around for the holidays. I've already got her gift lined up. I'm looking forward to being able to hang out with her and get to know her. I've only met her once so far.

Earlier this week she texted me about a Christmas present for my bro. Super sweet. But here's my worry: I pretty much know he won't get her anything. He is always broke by choice and quite cheap. Love him anyways, of course. I'm aware that I might be projecting my own fears onto her (no gift = no love), and I know in my heart things just don't work that way. But I'm still freaked. Part of me wants to just buy a gift for her from him without her being the wiser. I know my bro would approve (unfortunately). But something tells me I shouldn't do that.

Should I say anything to her? Should I do anything? If this is all my own problem, what can I do to get over it?

Thank you! Santa's Elf

Dear Santa’s Elf,

First of all, congrats to your brother on his new relationship, and to you on your connection to her.  I can understand your excitement, relief, and hopes that big bro will be loved in the way that he deserves.  However, I have to advise you to pull that elf hat off right this instant, and burn it on sight.  It’s not a good look.

Here’s the thing: YOU love your brother despite his Scroogey ways.  What makes you think she won’t do the same?  Is it because it really, really sucks not to receive in the manner in which you give?  Yes, Sibyl knows this feeling well.

Love is fucking disappointing.  At times it can be wonderful, but at others, it makes your heart so sick that you’re sure it’s detaching from your chest.  I remember that I was several years into my marriage when I realized that marriage is even more heartbreaking than the cycle of getting together and breaking up that makes up the dating scene.  I spent a sleepless night with a pile of old love letters, crying over what was lost and what might still be.

Your brother is going to disappoint his girlfriend.  She is going to let him down, as well.  What will be most important for them to work out as a couple will be: is the way in which they disappoint each other inherently traumatic to them, because of things that have happened in their early, shaping years, or can they survive the disappointments and grow stronger because of them?

It is good that she is learning now that your brother does not really value gift-giving.  If it is something that is very important to her, hopefully she will tell him that, and he will either be able to change and grow, or he will say, “Well, I’m never going to get you anything, that’s just who I am.”, which could be the end of the relationship.

Listen, I know you would do almost anything to make this relationship stick.  You love your brother and it sounds like you desperately want him to be happy.  But if you interfere here and give his girlfriend what you think she needs and wants here, you're writing an emotional check for your brother that he may not be able to cash.  It's love forgery.

So, if you can't get his girlfriend a soy candle and tie it up with a raffia bow and do your best impression of his handwriting on the to-from tag, what CAN you do?  Well, you can tell him that she contacted you, and is planning to get him something nice.  You can lay your cards on the table with him, and say, "I really like this girl, and you seem happy for the first time in a long while.  I think you should consider getting something for her for Christmas.  Perhaps you don't have any money, but you can do this.  You can make her something, you can give her a coupon for a great date, or you can be really frugal for the next few weeks so that you can afford to buy something.  I think it's worth it, and I hope you do, too."  Then, you can buy the girlfriend that soy candle, and put your own damn name on it.  It won't erase the awkwardness and frustration of not getting anything from her boyfriend, but it will express to her that you are excited about her presence.

After all, if you swoop in and compensate for the ways his expression of love falls short, not only will you be making promises that you can’t really keep, but you are taking something else away from them—an opportunity to grow as a couple.  It is through feeling lack that we change.  Without the chance to feel loss, we’d have no impetus to look within ourselves and see what needs work.  Will your brother step up to the plate and find a way to show his girl he wishes her all the best this year?  I hope so.  But if he doesn’t, I hope even more that they find a way to talk about expectations and disappointment, an important conversation for any couple to have.

Wishing you and your family Happy Holidays,

Sibyl

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Gossip Girl is Dead. Long Live Gossip Girl.

Dear Sibyl, I'm trying to figure out how to be a supportive friend to one person (friend A), while not feeling like I'm talking trash behind another friend's back (friend B).  Sometimes A will get frustrated about a conversation or something else that B said/did.  She has a point, and I've often supported that, but then it felt like I was entering mean girl territory.  Is there a good way to be supportive, but not nasty?  I'm also trying to figure out how to not be the go-to person for these comments, since I feel like I'm betraying B.  Sounds like I'm back in middle school, uugghh!

Thanks, Gossip Girl

Dear GG,

Friend A is involving you in a fun little game of Triangulation.  That’s when you have something you need to say to one person, but instead of making a straight line between you and them, you add a whole new angle by saying it instead to a third person.

Relationships are confusing.  Everyone needs to express how they are feeling about their friends from time to time to someone else, for some reality testing and to work out how to address it with that person.  A simple conversation of, “Uh, that was whack when she made that joke about my kid, right?  Okay?!  How do I tell her to step off without just saying ‘86 your shit’ and dropping a sippy cup on the ground?” is sometimes necessary.

But here’s how you can tell if it’s triangulation, and not normal relationship processing:

1. Does Friend A plan to do anything about Friend B’s behavior?  If she is preparing to confront Friend B, or, at the very least, put some boundaries between her and Friend B so she stops getting hurt, then you can totally walk her through that.  But if she is just using you as a validating force to make her feel better about secretly hating on Friend B while she still hangs out with her, then we need to rename her Frenemy A, because what they have is less a friendship, more a bad romance.

2. Is Friend A saying things to you that she would never, ever, say to Friend B’s face?  If asked, “Hey, you’ve seemed sorta weird to me lately.  Is everything okay?”, would Friend A fess up?  If not, then this is at best a bitch session, and at worst, a weird power play to get you “on her side” against Friend B.  You’ve got to take yourself out of the equation.

So, if you’ve realized you are indeed in a triangulating situation, then here’s what you do.  You tell Friend A that you are no longer willing, under any circumstances, to discuss Friend B.  You can do it in such a way that is not judgmental of what Friend A is doing, by saying, “I’m working on my personal relationships, and realizing that if I say things directly, it really helps my peace of mind.  So, let’s talk about us and how we’re doing, and leave Friend B out of it.”

Will it be awkward to say this?  HELL YES.  But if there’s one thing I can encourage you, Gossip Girl, or ANY of my dear readers out there, it’s this: BE AWKWARD.  We must, as a community and as a culture, increase our capacity for awkwardness in human relationships.  When things are uncomfortable, perhaps it is because we are getting very close to them being real.

If you need a warm up, start small.  Bring up your dead dad at a cocktail party.  Go ahead.  Mention your impending divorce at the library, when someone sees the stack of self-help books you’re checking out.  With a couple of these chance encounters under your belt, having not been reduced to tears when the other person looked at you askance at first but then said, “Oh yeah, this book here at the top of your pile really helped me when I had to cut my mom out of my life because she was using crack”, you may have the courage to tell Friend A that you’re no longer interested in chats about Friend B.

You’ll have to reinforce it, probably a few times.  Friend A will fall back into the old patterns of discussion, will even say, “I know we said we wouldn’t talk about Friend B, but you can NOT believe what she did the other day when she got in my car, smelling like . . .” Cut her off right there!  Don’t take the bait!  Resist your olfactory curiosity and say, “Oh, let me stop you here.  I was dead serious about my request not to talk about Friend B.  I need to have my own experience of her right now.  Why don’t we discuss your job situation---did you say you were getting laid off, or getting a promotion?  I know it was something career-related, the few months ago that we actually got around to talking about you.  Let’s not let Friend B take over our catch-up time.  Fill me in!”

It will be surprising to find how this changes your friendship with Friend B.  You may find her delightful, without that worm in your ear of all the ways she pissed off Friend A recently.  Conversely, you may realize that you don’t even like Friend B, and you were just keeping the relationship with her because you were addicted to following the soap opera between she and Friend A, and it’s time to let that friendship go.

With all that time freed up from worrying about what Friend A and Friend B are going to do next, you may have chance to talk about . . . yourself.

xoxo,

Sibyl

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