Looking Forward: So Little Time

I can remember a time in my life when boredom was a bad thing. In fact, I can very clearly remember referring to my dog-eared copy of a book called "101 Things To Do When You're Bored," a pre-summer vacation gift from my third grade teacher. Draw a sidewalk town with chalk, it suggested. Build a go-cart. Host a pet party with your pals. (I actually went through with that last one, much to the dismay of my parents.) Boredom occurred fairly frequently in my life as an eight year old,  but like they say, it encouraged great outbursts of creativity. I spent my free time drawing, writing stories, playing "avocado tree tag," a game invented by the children who lived across the street. I climbed trees. Played in the dirt. Jumped rope. Did all the things you're supposed to do when you're a kid. It occurred to me recently that nowadays, it's a rarity and a luxury to be bored. My freelance schedule is such that I seldom have a moment when there's not something I could be doing. Last Friday night, when a group of my friends came over for dinner and a movie at my apartment, I typed away on my laptop through the entirety of "Saturday Night Fever." In the morning, I woke up early for a work call. After dinner in the city that night, I came home to write an article due the following day.

To be clear, I'm all too aware that I should not be complaining about having work to do. I am incredibly lucky to be busy. Two years ago, when I hadn't yet fully committed to pursuing a freelance career, I would have given anything to have work. But being in charge of my own schedule is a huge responsibility, and managing my time effectively is something I'm still getting the hang of. A night owl by nature, my ideal schedule would involve working between the hours of 8 PM and 3 AM; during the day, I'd run personal errands. However, if I'm ever going to see my friends---most of whom work in offices---writing at night won't make sense. Juggling work, play, and alone time, it turns out, is a quite a feat.

Sometimes I wonder whether things might be easier if I had a 9-5. I'm sure that in some ways, it would be. But that's just not the path I'm on at the moment. So while I often wish I had more free time---time to go out at night, watch a movie without having to work through it, go to dinner without having to rush home afterward (you know, things you're supposed to do when you're twenty-something)---I'm content to assume that one day in the not-too-distant future, I will. This period of my life---exhausting as it sometimes is---is just paying my dues. And that's something you're supposed to do when you're a twenty-something, too.

Subway Rider

When I moved back to New York last summer, I had just finished graduate school and had taken a job before I had even gotten my diploma. The job was on a farm. The farm was not in the city. And so. I had to figure out how to get there. Going by train was terribly beautiful. To get to where the farm is, the hulking MetroNorth hurtles along the Hudson River and on foggy days and blue-sky days alike, the ride is exquisite. Getting to soak in all of the early morning beauty came at a price, though. After spending an afternoon with a calculator, I realized it made better financial sense to drive. My fiance already owned a car that he’d allow me to usurp and since we’d just moved to Brooklyn wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, parking on the street and commuting fifty-minutes twice a day seemed totally doable. The ride was never that short. On one particularly unfortunate June night, it took me 3.5 hours to reach lower Manhattan.  By that point I was already late for dinner and so I parked my car on Varick Street and, still dressed in farm gear, ran the remaining four blocks to the restaurant where I was meeting friends. In this city, sometimes feet are faster than wheels. Eventually I started carpooling with friends and the drudgery of the commute became more tolerable. There was company and friends to share the burden---both psychic and financial---of the cost we'd all been paying separately at the gas pump. The honeymoon didn't last long. The novelty of the farm and the carpool soon wore off and although the reasons for deciding to go freelance were many, excising the drive from my daily schedule continues to be one of the most liberating things I've done in a long while.

Now that I’m mostly a city-girl, the subway is my typical mode of transport.  If the distance is short enough I still prefer a good walk to going underground, and when I’m feeling brave, I strap on my helmet and bicycle my way around,  but always, a trip on the subway gives me refreshing taste of freedom. I know that for some people, the opposite is true. For these folks, the subway and its close quarters and erratic schedule feels decidedly less free than simply hopping in a car and going where your heart desires. But the truth is, this isn’t the country. There aren't dusty roads with endless open miles. When I ride the subway I feel free because I don't need to fill a tank with gas and I can take comfort knowing that even though considerable amounts of fossil fuels are gulped to keep those trains running, they’re transporting more than five million other riders each day, too. When we talk about making an impact on the environment, most of us know it's our big-time habits that need to change. This doesn't mean I'm ready to start guzzling coffee from plastic cups just because it's not really the little things that matter, but it does mean that making a decision to limit my use of a car feels important. It’s a big thing.

YWRB: Genesis

We were young writer party girls in college.  At the time, creative nonfiction was the new, hot genre.  We were asked to write essays. We understood essays.  We learned that the word “essay” meant “attempt.”  We attempted constantly.  We attempted friendships and sophistication and reputations and all the things you can try on and discard while young and starting out.  Everything felt like rebellion: against parents, expectations, systems and growing up.  And it was.  We couldn’t articulate it at the time, but one thing I know now is this: the most rebellious thing you can do, at any age, is be yourself.

I remember the moment the title came to me.  I was sitting on a friend's black leather sofa, drinking vodka and fruit juice from an old flower vase.  I was wearing a ballgown.  We weren't going out that evening, but that's what we did when we stayed in.  Anyway, in the moment of garish getups and pride in our own ridiculous behavior, the quick thought came to me: The Young Women's Rebellion Bible.  I thought I knew something about rebellion.  Dressed up for a party, but lounging on a couch was a rebellious act in my twenty-one year old mind.

Later that week, I was in a bar with Amy before our creative nonfiction workshop.  I told Amy the title and before the words were completely out of my mouth, she screams, "Oh my God, we could totally do this!"  We immediately started brainstorming topics.  We took quick notes on napkins and then ran to class, high on possibility and buzzed on cheap beer.  Amy's enthusiasm made me believe we could do it.  We could write a book of instructions or stories or something that taught others about rebellion.

We liked pushing boundaries, walking edges.  Although the English building was designated non-smoking, on breaks we'd find an empty classroom and lean far out the window with our lit cigarettes.  We relished that rush.  A little rebellion made us bold.  Writing about rebellion made us rebel. Our process was born.

We enrolled others in our mission.  Our creative writing teachers, the head of the English department, the owner of the restaurant where Amy worked, the bartender at our favorite haunt.  Amy's enthusiasm made other people believe we could do it.  And before I knew it, we were.

For several months, we wrote essays about our behavior, our rebellion, our romances and our families.  We filled yellow legals pads full of ideas and ways to organize chapters.  We wrote in coffee shops, bars, the library when necessary.  We were relentless, but we weren't entirely clear about how it would look or what it should be.  In that way, the project mirrored our lives.

In June, we graduated, flew to Greece together, and split up to go our separate ways.  Amy stayed on the tiny Greek Island of Mykonos and I hopped a ferry to the mainland and spent a lot of time on trains.  When we returned, seperately, to the states, we lived in different cities.  We embarked on very different lives.  We drifted apart.  Fifteen years later, we reside in the same city, once again.  And the Young Women's Rebellion Bible was reborn.

We have very different notions of rebellion, as does every woman, I believe.  And our rebellion has looked very, very different from one another's over the years.  Amy is married, a mother, a writer and wood toy maker.  I am single, a dog owner and avid rescue supporter, a writer and part-time teacher.  Amy has put down roots and I've been a wanderer.  We've both embarked on creative endeavors, but nothing has had the same momentum, the same dizzy, blissful energy as the Young Women's Rebellion Bible.

A few years ago, I pulled the manuscript from the trunk where I keep sacred things and I photocopied it and sent it to Amy.  I've held on to it, maybe as a way to hold on to that time with Amy, to hold on to that enthusiasm and the belief that it is possible that we do this.  We're doing it now.  What we knew of rebellion at twenty-one is a very different knowledge than what we know of rebellion at thirty-six and thirty-eight.  With the fine partnership of The Equals Project, we'll explore that knowledge and examine its impact.  To do that, we need your help.

We want to explore rebellion with you.  Every week, we’ll prompt you to consider rebellion – and we challenge you to share it with us.  We’d love to feature your stories and experiences as part of our exploration.  Send responses and stories to Amanda at amanda@bold-types.com.

This week, we want to know:

If you had the chance today, what would you tell your teenage and/or college self about rebellion?

The Curves and Bits of Barcelona

I love Barcelona's curves and lines and organic forms. Flow and movement are ever-present, on every corner and up and down its avenues. And while Gaudi’s massive masterpieces are stunning to behold in their entirety, what moves me the most in this city are its details: the grooves between mosaic bits, the imperfect bumps in surfaces, the intricate wiring. I see and sense the world in fragments, beautiful or broken in their own ways, all contributing to create the setting and narrative of my life. The different steps, the various angles, the many possibilities. And so I appreciate Barcelona not just for its grandeur—for what we see when we stand back, for what we ultimately create—but for all the pieces I can touch up close, and all the tiny things that ostensibly don't matter, but really do.

Here, it’s about absorbing minutiae and magnificence at once, which is a wonderful way to experience a place.

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A Summer Indulgence

By Marni Zarr Beginning with summer trips to the library, books have always been a best friend and a place of discovery---stacks of them brought home, the heat simmering and enhancing their musty familiar smell. Since childhood I connected this as summer’s signature scent. Even now as an adult, entering a library triggers memories of my dad taking my sister and me downtown to check out as many books as our library tote could carry. Sometimes it was so overweight we ended up dragging it down the sun scorched sidewalk until dad would pick it up, on his face a knowing smile of “I told you so.”

Only 5 miles from our house, the city library seemed hours away. Childhood memories are like that, everything stretched out like silly putty: rooms enlarged as if viewing them through a magnifying glass, situations enhanced to the millionth. I still remember the day I turned six. The required afternoon nap seemed to stretch into my next year of life.  A special occasion, nap time was spent in a royal way on my parent’s king-sized bed, the clock on their dresser ticking sluggishly while my heart pounded in double time, the excitement almost unbearable.

I felt that same excitement when entrenched in a good story. Once I'd devoured all of the “Little House on the Prairie” books---the series unwrapped itself in annual birthday gifts from my grandparents---mystery became my favorite genre. I ate up Nancy Drew in a day like a delicious dessert that demands to be finished. I remember lying on my bed, ceiling fan spinning above me, the flouncy bo-peepish butter yellow bedspread below me, my shag haircut propped up on a stack of pillows, and a big flip of dark brown curl in the back, my mind eating up the words.

One blistery day when my sister and I were elementary age, one of our favorite babysitters gave us a box of hand me downs, including a long wig, thick with blonde hair, that became the prop du jour. She and I fought over who would wear and who would style. Earlobes still unpierced, paper clips became hippie hoops or gypsy rings. With celebrities like Cher to emulate, we rocked and flicked that thick bushy blonde like no one’s business. With scarves tied around our heads and waist and 45’s and 78’s on the blue and white cased record player in my sister’s room, we danced the day away using our imaginations, at times sneaking our mom’s high heeled shoes and flashy accessories to switch it up to strutting runway star on the 70’s avocado green carpeting. I remember wearing the wig in a ponytail and paper clip earrings to Thrifty for an ice cream cone. I didn’t notice one hand-forged circle had fallen off until I got back in my dad’s truck and saw it lying on the floor. Unbeknownst to me, that one missing detail had transformed me from strutting model to swaggering pirate. I’m glad my parents were okay with things like that.

But there were many things they were not okay with. Books were a way to escape the rigidness that I felt kept me isolated and separate from the rest of my peers. My first glimpse of sex was found on a tubular spinning wire book rack dressed in paperbacks in my junior high school library. The covers were faded and edges slightly tattered, worn by groping teen-age fingers trying to find the juicy tidbits before the bell rang. I remember one book titled “Sunshine” or maybe that was the name of the main character; either way it was a welcome discovery.  She was a teenager and so was he and they made a baby.  While reading the innocent outwardly descriptive words I could feel the warm rays reaching deep down to the base of my belly---the feeling like tiny stars dancing inside me. I instinctively knew my parents wouldn't approve, which made the words taste that much better.

Original photo of the Biblioteca Pública de Pelotas in Brasil by Eugenio Hansen

What Are You Reading (Offline, that is)?

We love to hear what our friends are reading when they step away from the computer. Drop us a line and let us know what’s blowing your mind. Amanda Page, Bold Types I’m moving, and just recently put all my books in boxes.  From my bedside table, I removed a short stack that I’d pulled to give me comfort through a fairly stressful time.

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli On a whim, I asked the Twitterverse to send me reading recommendations.  I think I asked for “fiction that would change my game” or something like that.  One person responded, and this is what they suggested. I couldn’t shake this one for days.  There’s a sequel that I can’t bring myself to read because this one made such an impression.  It changed my game.  It broke my heart.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote Holly Golightly is an old friend.  This is the book I wish I’d written.  I found it in a used bookstore just a month or two before I left for graduate school.  I’d seen the film and wasn’t crazy about it, but something about the small, pale turquoise paperback with the bright yellow stars spoke to me.  I read it in just a couple of hours.  And then I read it again.  I read it sometimes to remind myself of the type of book I aspire to write.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro I saw the movie first.  Then, when asked to teach a novel in a freshman course, this immediately came to mind.  There are just so many layers!  I find the narration so interesting.  Plus, I’m fascinated by the author’s choice to use that particular character as the one who tells the story.  It was on my table because I recently met a man on a plane, a professor, and we talked about this book.  He didn’t like it.  I didn’t understand how anyone couldn’t like it.  When I got home, I pulled it from my shelf and started sifting through it slowly.  It still grips me.  Haunts me.  Maybe some people don’t like to be haunted.

Marni Zarr, Dream Day Musings Daily . . . Journey to the Heart by Melody Beattie Daily mediations that keep me moving forward and provide encouragement when I'm feeling stuck. Reading this book has taught me that pauses are as necessary to the journey as movement. I jot dated notes in the margins when something really speaks to the way I'm feeling at that time. It's interesting to read what I penciled in two years ago and compare it to now. I can see how my thoughts about the events in my life are gradually changing. I'm on my third read through after receiving this book from a dear friend three years ago this past May for my birthday. I love that it's showing its well loved wear with tattered edges and turned down corners.

Midway through . . . The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay My mom loaned this to me after she finished reading it for her book club. It's a story about a boy's journey through some humorous---while at the same time harsh---moments, beginning in the late 1930's growing up in South Africa. I love that the book begins in a young child's voice that brings me to both laughter and tears in it's innocence. A robust tale of how he is influenced through the lessons and words from the adults he meets through his multifarious experiences growing up. He has a quiet, sweet maturity about him that attracts their wisdom and protection. Even if only together for a day, they leave him with potent advice that stays with him for a lifetime. I am enjoying the colorful characters in the story as well as the historical material about life in South Africa as the story unfolds.

Recommended . . . The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman Each of the characters separate lives is intertwined into a cleverly layered story of their overlapping experiences and relationships while working for an English language newspaper in Rome. I loved how the author weaves the emotions and actions of one into all. A great read for the beach. Each chapter is a short story in itself.

Savala Nolan, Detroit Shimmy Cleopatra  by Stacy Schiff A writer taking on Cleopatra is like an actor taking on Jack Kennedy: what can she do that feels real when her audience is drunk on mythology?  I went into this book with neutral expectations, thinking a gifted scholar and an impossible subject would yield a decent book.  But it blew me away.  Schiff’s writing is lean, elegant, and sumptuous, like a ballet.  It ferries you across a familiar story in fresh and vivid vignettes, loaded with juicy tidbits about life in that ancient era, from statecraft to bloodlines to royal feasts to poisons. She acknowledges how much we can’t know about Cleopatra, yet her speculations ring true (maybe because she herself is woman).  And, of course, there’s plenty of lust and love, with Caesar and Mark Antony keeping wind in the sails.

The Good Soldiers  by David Finkel I read a lot about war and military history, and this is one of my favorite books in that genre.  A journalist follows soldiers on a fifteen month tour of Iraq during “the surge.”  The story is bracing, and detailed: the soda soldiers drank, the music playing, the fruit trees in yards of houses they searched, the deaths, the stomach aches, the letters to and from home. Finkel tells it with heart and a mirror’s clarity.  He has a genius for creating intimacy.  In fact, he disappears; you don’t feel you’re reading a reporter’s chronicle.  You feel you’re in your living room with the soldiers, and they are telling you what happened, and you understand.

Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem This is a mystery, both futuristic and noir.  It’s years from now on the California coast, and though the cities and ocean are the same, life is not.  Questions are forbidden,  everyone’s hooked on mega-pharmaceuticals, and animals are “evolved,” living, working, and making very-new-school families with people.  There’s murder, sex, and drugs.  Lethem’s protagonist is an acerbic and sly detective.  He’s defunct in some ways, but he’s got a big aching heart and an appetite for life that the future doesn’t abide.  This book is brilliant because its beautifully written and feels unnervingly prescient:  Lethem’s bizarre world is so real, and our real world is so bizarre, that his future seems, at times, only a few status updates away.

Blonde  by Joyce Carol Oates Arthur Schlesinger, Special Assistant in the Kennedy White House, described meeting Marilyn Monroe:  When he said something that pleased her, it created “a warm and spontaneous burst of affection---but then she receded into her own glittering mist.”  Glittering mist!  I love that image; she does seem to’ve been profoundly inviting and yet totally obscured, as if the dress in which she sang the President “Happy Birthday” dissolved and lingered around her body.  Oates’s novel---a sort of imagined Monroe autobiography---captures the glittering mist perfectly.  The sparkle-covered-cotton-candy element of Monroe endures.  You can’t take your eye off the page, just like you can’t take your eyes off her.  But the mist is there, too.  Monroe remains, as she must, in your peripheral vision, even as you read her story in her own (imagined) voice.  It’s a magical read.

Love I Came Looking For

By H. Savala NolanPhotograph by Leigh Anna Thompson

I expected to come back to New York and look beautiful.  Show off tan legs late at night in a white dress and red heels.  I expected to cook dinner at his house, get tipsy with red wine, and make out on his couch.  I expected to feel like I felt at the beginning, when I got my first look at the city.  Riding a train from Rhode Island that August evening, I looked up from my book, and there was Manhattan, silver stilettos of skyline, regal in thick orange sunlight.  It was fascinating, an intricate Cubist brooch on the breast of the earth.  It sent out shock waves---this metropolis squeezed into place by the corseting rivers, and I felt as if my body had just been plugged into a sun.  That first weekend, I stayed with a friend on Park and 91st, and I'll never forget: tiny-aisled, overflowing grocery stores with moms and pops at the register, my first taste of the ubiquitous ginger-carrot salad dressing, Bow Bridge, Tasty Dlite frozen yogurt, the eerie insulation of Upper East Side apartments, the motionless heat of subway stations, doormen, Prince Street, the Astor Place cube and Around the Clock french toast, Midtown magazine workers with tap-tap heels, the clip and cadence of New Yorkers conversing, the swirling backseat universe of taxi cabs at drunken three AMs.  I knew I had to live in New York, and for seven years, I did.

At the end of those seven years, I graduated from college and flew home to California.  I thought it would be a six week visit, and I'd return for my new job as a public school teacher.  But I didn't want the job.  I wasn't ready.  So I stayed in California, and offered my coordinator in New York a cursory explanation about changed life circumstances.  That November, unable to stand being gone from my beloved city, I bought a last-minute ticket and flew east for a weekend.

I expected not to spend any money.  Fifteen dollars a day, I told myself.  Have will power!  Think what Soho is actually like before you decide to shop. Eat Zone bars for breakfast and pizza for lunch.  Don't buy foreign magazines and dream of a chic life just because, in this city, it seems plausible.  Don't get wine or bottled water.  Embrace  lowbrow: drink coffee from street kiosks with Parthenon cups. Take the subway.  Take the bus. Take the shuttle to the airport.  Don't buy cigarettes---they're cheaper in California and you barely smoke anyway.  Ignore your chipped nail polish.  Don't get your hair blown out.  Don't buy a week of Bikram classes because you're worried about getting fat.  Go hungry.  Let your feet ache. Remember your rent, gym membership, cell phone, health insurance, medications, credit cards, student loans, car insurance, the price of gasoline, groceries, and the fact that you took off work to pull off this trip.

Make the most of this weekend!  See everyone.  Everyone. This is a pleasure trip, but you are here on business---the business of finding a way back.  See the friend who you haven't seen since she returned from London, see the one you had the fight with, see the guy who owes you a favor, your roommates from Italy, your old boss, your old professor and get a signed copy of his new book.  Network.  Remind them that you exist even if you crossed the river.  Swing by the old office and chat up the editors, get to the Guggenheim, email that moron at MTV and invite her out for coffee.  Pay.  Insist.  Congratulate her on the engagement, the apartment. Tell her she looks wonderful.  How shiny her hair is.  Let her be the heyday Carrie Bradshaw we all wanted to be.

That weekend, I expected a definite answer from myself because I was confused: I gave up New York, a real job, and my friends to do what---drink overpriced Whole Foods vegetable juice and sunbathe to skin cancer?  Live with my mom? Surf Craigslist?

I have a new job now that I don't mind---a small creative business, decent pay.  But, as I told a friend that weekend over amber pints in the Village, I don't want to become a brick in the wall, and my boss can probably sense that I have one foot out the door.  My former New York Life is stuck in my mind like a song.  Even in the green, clean, serenity of my Bay Area enclave, I observe all things California with disdain and keep Manhattan in my mind's eye. Sometimes I intentionally say, "Are you waiting on line?" to remind myself that I haven't gotten used to being away.  When people wave clipboards at me and ask for my signature, I tell them, "I don't live here," and I mean it.  I haven't registered to vote, I haven't made any friends.  And when I'm on the freeway, I pretend I'm driving out of town for a beach house weekend, Atlantic ocean and hydrangea bushes, brown nannies and white babies, naked feet in loafers and fresh cinnamon donuts in East Hampton---only this time, I'm not sitting in the backseat of a Yukon, charged with three kids and counting the minutes until the paycheck.

But where am I actually going?  What city? What life?  I am clueless.  I see signs but can't read them.  I expected the long Manhattan weekend to make it clear—I belong here—to make me fall in love, like I did every night I rode home in a taxi, watching the city lights beyond the window glass, or looking at Chagall and chandeliers past the champagney Lincoln Center fountain.  Like I did those first, verdant, Central Park days of spring, or after exchanging some unexpected kindness with a stranger who was also a New Yorker.   After a New Yorker Smile, where one city dweller makes quick eye contact with another and they take turns exchanging eyes-looking-away smiles.  But I don't feel in love; I feel lost.  Starved, restless, unheard—and I don't know if place will fix that.  I'm an artist, I get to create something from nothing---but so what?

I do know that I'm waiting, actively waiting for an arrival, a renaissance---I'm not sure what to call it.  But I'm ready. Sometimes I could scream I'm so anxious for it to get here.  I'm underground in a tunnel, alone on a platform, and it will come to me, barreling forward, a train with no passengers, its headlights at first just a flicker through the dark, its weight a shudder on the tracks that sends the rats fleeing.  Then its sound will rush up and deafen me---all my blessed futures collide---and its wind will blow, tossing up the dormant riches that have been gathering dust on the floor of me.  I'll jump off the platform and grab hold of the metal snake as it bullets forward.  My old skin will open.  I'll have something to make, and I will make it.  That is the love I came looking for.

From the Blueberry Patch in Virginia...

  Dearest Clara, This past week, I just couldn't stop thinking about strawberries.  I guess I read too many articles on picking your own fruit because I packed us up in the car and insisted that we pick our own too.  As it turned out, we were too late for the strawberries, but it was the first day that the blueberry "patch" was open, so blueberries it was.  I thought that blueberries grew in bogs, like cranberries, but that just goes to show you how much your mother knows---it turns out they were potted in large planters in a field.  You turned out to be a much better at picking than I, although I was much better at putting them in the basket.  You (perhaps like your father) seemed to be concentrated on eating them.  But the whole day out at the berry farm got me thinking about a few different things I hope you'll remember:

• Take the time to learn where your food comes from: Our experience so far has been mostly living in cities, and it's so easy to think that your food just comes from aisle six of the supermarket.  But food is a little more complicated than that---someone had to grow it, to pick it, to take care of it, to package it. Don't take that for granted---knowing where your food comes from makes you appreciate what you put in your own body.
• Gathering your own food takes tremendous time and care: After about an hour in the blueberry patch, we had barely half a bucket to show for our work, yet when you go to the grocery store there are cartons upon cartons of berries.  If you're not in charge of providing your own food, make sure you appreciate those that do.  It's not something many people do.
• Make time for the countryside: When you live in the city, it's especially important to make time every once in a while to visit green space, farms, small towns . . . these are an important part of what makes living in the city possible.  Not only will you see where our food and animals are from and meet the people responsible for it, but you'll hopefully notice what fresh air should smell like, and what green grass should look like.  It's easy to get caught up in the pounding pavement and speed of the city, but that's not all there is out there in the world---plenty of people do just fine without it and bring something completely different to the table.
• The best part of gathering your own food is eating it . . . with friends: We may not have picked all that many blueberries, but we added to our stash at the farm's general store, and we added raspberries and blackberries too---enough for snacks on the way back, and pancakes for breakfast, and then some. Blueberries have never tasted better.  When you have the satisfaction of eating what you grew or collected, it's best shared with others, so always bring home extra, even if you buy it.  After all, it's still straight from the farm . . . and that tastes a little different than straight form aisle six.

So what's next for us? Peaches? All my love, Mom

Thank You, Kindly

“Beautiful . . . enthralled . . . raving . . . wonderful . . . stunning . . . brilliant . . . gorgeous.” Last week I opened my email early Monday morning and found not one, but TWO lovely notes from a satisfied bride.  Just that Saturday, we had done her wedding florals and she apparently wrote the first “thank you” the very next day.  Then, after becoming concerned that the initial note may have gone to my junk mail, she wrote yet another, similarly warm letter.  She wanted to make absolutely sure I had been properly thanked.  This happens much less frequently than you might think.  I proudly pictured her making certain to fire off these emails before jetting to her post-wedding brunch.  In my elaborate fantasy, her new husband was calling out, “Janie, let’s get going, we are going to be late!” and she replied with, “Just give me one more minute, I simply MUST let Sarah know how fabulous she is!”

I found myself turning this bride’s sweet words over and over in my mind and it energized my work for the remainder of the week.  ‘This is why I do this,’ I thought.  I tried to access that sense of fulfillment during several decidedly lower moments during the work-week and even in one instance of standing over the changing table, with a fresh bathrobe suddenly soaked in poop.  Ironically, her wedding was only a small, intimate affair, for which we did just a few precious arrangements and yet it was one of the more immediate and glowing responses we have received to date.  The power of her generosity and this kind of communiqué cannot be underestimated.

Growing up, my parents were not terribly formal about much of anything and bucked societal convention in ways that were often spectacular, at times mortifying.  But, when I received a gift from a friend or relative, my mother would place a note card, envelope, and ink pen (she abhors a ball point) in front of me on the dining room table with the expectation that I write a personal “thank you.”  Just before my Grandmother passed, we were organizing some of her papers and found a prime example from my “thank you” canon.  I must have been about six years old and I was demonstrating my gratitude for a Chanukah gift.  In quaky script, I had seemingly offered a stream of consciousness communication that included the sentence, “OK, I have to go now, my stomach hurts.”  So, clearly, I hadn’t yet understood the precise etiquette involved in such a letter but I promise there was a solid “thank you” earlier on the page.  I imagined my Grandmother having a chuckle at my wording but perhaps being filled with the same tender feelings I experienced upon receiving this bride’s emails.

Throughout my adult life, I have endeavored to acknowledge the people around me with verbal and/or written “thank yous” whenever possible.  I have done this for gifts and deeds, alike.  Even though we operate almost exclusively in an internet age, I have traditionally resisted writing electronic thank yous and have instead opted for a carefully chosen, hand-written card.  I labored over my wedding thank you notes to the extent that they were sent out in (somewhat belated) spotty waves.  It always feels important that I write something personal and capture my genuine response to each treasured item.  Although many people find writing thank yous daunting, I generally relish the meditative process.

I am ashamed to admit that for the first time in my life, I dropped the ball on thank yous when our baby was born.  The bounty bestowed on us from friends and family has been truly overwhelming and continuous.  For a while there, even massively pregnant, I managed to stay on track with diligently recording each gift and responding in kind.  I wrote notes and letters and made phone calls.  This went beyond my being compulsive (although there was certainly some of that), this was me authentically intending to return the kindness and make our appreciation evident.  Toward the end, things went a little haywire with finishing my wedding season, entering into the Holidays, and preparing for a new life and I failed to record some things that came in the mail.  The slippage escalated and compounded when I lost one of my master spreadsheets matching names and gifts.  Ultimately, I gave up altogether and became convinced that slighted friends and family all over the country were preparing to weed us out of their lives.  At one point, I recalled that a close friend who recently had TWINS had been prompt with her thank yous and I sank even lower.  No excuse, Sarah.  No excuse.  If anyone still waiting on a thank you is reading this piece . . . thank you?

Perhaps the most significant thank yous, in my view, are the daily acknowledgements in relationships.  I try assiduously to thank my husband for something, anything at least once a day.  If he says something kind, puts away the clean dishes, walks the dog, anticipates my food craving . . . I make an effort to tell him I feel lucky to be with him.  He invariably says something like “I live here, too,” or “You don’t have to thank me for that.”  Sometimes he uses it as an opportunity for bombast and mild teasing, “WHAT KIND OF HUSBAND WOULD I BE IF I DIDN’T . . .”  But, I know it gives him a boost and lends value to the small tasks that frankly make up the majority of a life together.

My sister once told me that the secret to a happy marriage is “choosing someone you can eat dinner with every single night for the rest of your life.”  At the time, I thought that was absurdly unromantic.  Now I understand that it speaks to not only compatibility, but a capacity to do the mundane together and be grateful to be slogging through with the person sitting across from you.  I want my husband to hear about that gratitude as much as I am able to proffer it.

My recent experience with this gracious bride reminds me to be voluminous with praise and recognition.  There are countless people who do not just do enormously nice things for me all the time, but provide a series of tiny kindnesses that get me through the week.  The ripple effect of a hand wave when someone lets you into her lane on the FDR to a beautifully crafted missive on letterpress for a huge favor from a friend is undeniable.  This is hokey, fine.  But, a well-timed and well-executed demonstration of gratitude is totally free and can shore up even the most jaded among us.  I don’t always recycle appropriately (I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW A MILK CARTON IS A PLASTIC) but I can take a brief moment to thank the guy for toasting my bagel to perfection.

198 Days Without You

Field trips, recess at the park sprinklers, warm weather and bag lunches are all signs that my son's first academic year is drawing to a close.  This morning the parent association held one last breakfast and a special conversation with parents and the directors of the upper and lower schools. I felt pretty nostalgic as I climbed up the windy staircase to the music room remembering all the special memories that make up my son's first year here: the first day of school jitters, his first tooth falling out at recess, the numerous play dates with new friends from school, a weekend caring for two ducklings, and the class home visit.  I engaged in every moment possible of his first year in the 4-5s class as if I was re-visiting my own first year in kindergarten.  Yet, there is something very momentous about this first year that goes beyond the milestones of the 4-5s curriculum.  In this same year, my son and I also just about complete one year as a family together.  So in reflection on the past year and the year's struggles, accomplishments, fears, joys and risk taking, I write this brief letter to my son, Diego. Dear Diego,

A year ago today, I sat in my office anxious, scared and missing you deeply.  You see, your papi and I had separated, and I moved back to New York City to take the big job that would provide for you.  Remember when you lived with him in the apartment so you could stay at the JCC preschool last year?  Well in that time, I rented a room to save enough to secure the apartment we call home today.  In those painful and lonely seven months, I missed you every day. At any moment whether I was at work, on the bus or in the grocery store, tears would stream down my face as I questioned whether I had made the right choice to leave you and miss out on the little four year old child you were growing into.  I missed your last tot Shabbat, I missed your end of the year preschool musical production and the parent committee meetings, and all the little moments in between -- but I did it anyway for us.

It is true I doubted myself every day for those 198 days without you.  But today I write this letter to tell you it was the right choice at the right time.  You know why I know this?  Because I see you and me today and we have grown tremendously with a sense of independence and interdependence in our new home, community and life.  The first few months in our home you were afraid to sleep alone in your new room and you missed your father.  I comforted you and slept next to you to assure you of my love, trust and security.  You cried daily at drop off at your new summer school program missing the rhythm and routine of the JCC; but each day I came to pick you up, I found you smiling.  We took adventures over the summer on the subway to parks with sprinklers and neighborhood stores.  By fall, you began a new school less fearful and more certain of yourself and your surroundings.  You no longer cried at drop off and came home tired from a hard day of play in the 4-5s class.  I marveled at your ease in adapting to our familial changes and your resiliency, but this is not to say we did not have our challenging moments.  You challenged me daily for months about wanting to live with your father and not with me.  Our biggest challenge was your hospitalization on your fifth birthday for a severe asthma attack postponing the birthday party you were counting down the days for. You rebounded quickly and we celebrated weeks later at Wiggles and Giggles with all your friends and loved ones.  Onto the holiday celebrations of November and December, you traveled back and forth from Virginia to New York splitting your time over the breaks to enjoy the customs and traditions from your multicultural parentage.  By the New Year, you became a pro at your school routine and would inform me daily of your after school activities and which buses and trains we should take in the morning to school.  I marveled at seeing you become so confident and alive in your environs.  Into spring, we began cooking together, painting together, and going to tee ball practice together which has resulted in some of the best memories this year.  I think your proudest moment was when you led three classmates to our home traveling on two trains and a bus for the annual class home visit. This very milestone in your 4-5s class allowed you to share with pride your culture, family and home life with your classmates. We enjoyed eating apples, grapes and crackers, touring your room, creating a collaborative art piece on the chalk board, break dancing to You Spin me Round by the Chipmunks, and your favorite part -- jumping on my bed.

I remind you of all of this mi niño lindo, so you never forget how much this year has meant to me after spending what seemed like eternity without you.  I most recently threw out the calendar I had meticulously crossed off each day that passed in your absence.  I held onto it like a medal of honor because I needed that visualization so I could see the progress I was making toward having you back in my life.  And now, I can say goodbye to that marked up and wrinkled calendar and those 198 days without you.  Today I proudly celebrate the many more days and years I have with you.

I hope when you read this letter one day, you will begin to understand and feel through my words the depth of love I have for you.

Te adoro y  te amo, mi hijo lindo y querido.

Tu mami para siempre,

Judy.

Rebellious Eating: Today’s food movements seen through childhood memory

By Shani Gilchrist I always smell a horse when I eat a peach. I close my eyes while chewing and am suddenly enveloped in warm, humid air, the musty mammalian fumes from the hot animal’s coat and the greenness that wafted up from the black dirt. My best summer days were spent on my family’s horse farm in the country.  I would sit atop my favorite horse and meander through the grounds, often reaching just above my head to snag a peach when we would pass beneath a tree.

When I was a teenager we had to sell the farm, as it was a large operation and too far from the hospital where my father took call on nights and weekends.  There were no major highways that led from the tiny stoplight-less town where we lived to the hospital in the tiny city where he worked. There were too many nights of pulling through the gates to find that he had to immediately wind the car 35 minutes back to admitting. Then, after finally getting back home at two or three in the morning he would have to get up, check in with the trainer and the grooms, then drive back to his office next to the hospital once again. Something had to give, and since no one of sane mind raises horses for profit, the farm had to be sacrificed.

At a certain time in South Carolina, where an average of 60,000 tons of peaches are grown every year, it is impossible to avoid the smells and lures of the juicy peach. During that time I am often transported back to the sloping grass that was home to most of our fruit trees. By the end of the summer I’ve been known to throw my children into the car and start heading out to the country, toward the direction of the old farm. The only cure for the melancholy that the flavors evoke is a trip to my old stomping grounds and a stop in front of the now dilapidated barn to dream of what the land could be if it were mine. I probably look ridiculous sitting in my big SUV in the driveway of a property whose current owners, I am told, are likely to come out with hunting rifles if they were to see me. Thankfully no one can see the silly look of nostalgia on my face, as if every time we sat around the kitchen table there was a full farm meal, complete with fruits from our orchards and milk that I had gotten from an imaginary goat that lived outside my bedroom window.  The truth is that our dinners often consisted of frozen lasagna, spaghetti with sauce that was doctored from a jar, or barbeque from up the road. There were many evenings when I scowled ungratefully at the food on my plate and wished for “real food.”

Right now there are tomatoes fattening on hairy green stems in terra cotta pots in my backyard. They are out there for two reasons. One is that I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t kill them before we embark on planting a larger vegetable garden. The other reason is that one day, as my 5-year-old son scrambled his unruly limbs into his booster seat at school pickup, he declared that he wanted to grow tomatoes. This was one of those moments where my child’s words almost caused my forehead to violently meet the top of my steering wheel. My oldest child—the skinny kid with the infectious smile and cherubic curls—does not eat anything. And by anything, I mean he does not eat any food that one would consider for true sustenance.  Somehow we have kept him alive on a diet of strawberries, pepperoni pizza, pancakes, and a variety of cheeses. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to hear his sudden declaration that he wanted to grow vegetables of any kind.

The other day we picked our first tomatoes of the season. They were beautiful. And they are still sitting on the kitchen windowsill. My son recoils in incredulous horror every time I suggest that he taste one of “his” tomatoes that he diligently waters each afternoon. I had harbored visions of him being enthralled by the plants that he had nurtured into food for the table. It would be another step toward achieving the sustainable household that I’ve been trying to build. We will grow our own food. We recycle. I make my own counter sprays. We use cloth napkins. Then, a thought occurred to me as his top lip curled as I waved the sweet cherry tomatoes at him this afternoon.

 What if he spends the next thirteen years pushing back?

A friend of mine recently told me about her own childhood growing up on a farm. She was surrounded by everything she needed to feed and clothe herself, but all she wanted to do was go to Pizza Hut. The food on her table actually did come from her cows, goats, chickens and orchards, but it was the last thing that she wanted to eat. I listened to her story and thought about how much the teenage version of myself despised my days of drinking Diet Pepsi and eating whatever artificially-sweetened version of spaghetti sauce my mother had thrown together for dinner at the last minute. Now here I am, wanting every bit of food that sits on my table to be local, organic and at least seventy-five percent homemade.

My food memories don’t usually include the way I longed for dishes that didn’t taste like a garlicky Christmas elf had made it. My mother gave us the gift of insisting that we all sit around the table together each night to talk over our day, but “master chef” was far from being on her resume. My food memories are instead made up of the days that I felt self-important because I was eating a peach right off of a tree, with no packets of SweetN’Low anywhere near me. It was real, but most importantly it was different from the way my parents presented food to their children.

Is our current and beloved farm-to-table movement a similar reaction? It certainly has its perks… no one can really fight the sustainability argument… but now that the movement is heading down the path towards mainstream I have to wonder if our generation, like so many before us, isn’t sticking it to our parents for the quick-and-easy food approach of the 1970s and 1980s that is now being blamed for everything from obesity to cancer. Are our teenagers going to look at us like we are the ultimate dorks for spending so much time on things that could have been thrown into the microwave in another version? Most likely, yes. And their children will be horrified by their parents’ food hastiness.

Our most distinct memories are tied to our senses no matter what the quality of the thing we are experiencing. What remains poignant is that which is outside the realm of the everyday, and as humans, we naturally seek out experiences--large or small--that take us outside of our comfort zones. Everyone wants what they can’t have, and we don’t even notice this when it comes to food anymore because it comes in the form of righteous “movements”.  The farm-to-table movement is out to save the American small-farming industry and reintroduce the population to foods that don’t have as much potential to cause harm to our bodies. These are causes that are important and need to be championed. But the viral spread of such a movement has more to do with acting on our childhood statements of “When I have my own family, I’m going to do things differently,” as we stomped out of our dining rooms in our untied shoes. Our childhood rebellions will always stay with us, which is why at some point every summer I end up standing in front of a fading barn, looking at it as if it is the Taj Mahal, thinking of horses and tasting peaches.

[Original peaches photo by CaptPiper on Flickr]

The Best Intentions

This is part two of Megan's travel diaries from Nicaragua, part one can be found here. We had been mildly planning for a few months. Mildly, meaning ordering Lonely Planet's guide to Nicaragua and Google imaging the places that sounded cool. My college girlfriend/favorite travel buddy/sister soulmate, Wanna and I are both business owners who had been working our asses off for the past couple of years and we needed a vacation---vacation, meaning an adventure. We weren't the types to plan out the entire trip's itinerary or relax on lounge chairs while a hot pool boy hands us piña coladas all day. We wanted to go with the flow and see, hear, touch, taste, and smell a new culture. We wanted an EXPERIENCE.

One place that stuck out in our limited research was a tiny island off the Caribbean coast called Little Corn Island. It was off the beaten path, a serious adventure-seeker's paradise. You had to take a plane, a taxi, and a scary little boat over huge ocean surges to get there. And once there, the only way to get around was by foot. There were no cars or roads on the entire island, just a poorly paved sidewalk through the village and dirt paths through the jungle that led to the pretty beaches. It was exactly what we wanted.

We made camp at the most magical little eco lodge called Ensueños on the Northside of the island. The modest accommodations were just what we needed: a palm frond-covered hut with two mosquito-netted beds, steps away from the ocean.

We slept like babies, ate like queens, swam like fish, and zenned out like Buddhas. There were plans for further Nicaraguan explorations but we were so enchanted by the island, we made it home for 2 weeks. Before long, we befriended some of the locals. There was the Spanish ex-pat lodge owner/painter/philosopher who expanded our minds over bonfires, the Italian chef who blared reggae from the kitchen while he prepared delicious meals, the bad-ass female British scuba diving instructor who had sailed the world, and the two groovy Nicaraguan sisters who could have been our alter egos.

After exploring North of our beach one day, we happened upon what we thought was the best beach on the island.

It was an empty expanse of smooth white sand, the warmest bit of perfectly clear turquoise water, and lovely gentle waves. There was a blue house set a few steps back with a hammock on the porch, some roosters, and a couple dogs wandering about. Nailed to the leaning palm tree that crossed the beach's path was a hand-drawn sign that simply read "Hay Cerveza."

After hours of walking, swimming, and sunning, a frosty beer sounded just right, but there was no one around for us to order one. Soon enough, two lovely island girls made their presence and in our broken Spanish we asked for beers. A little hungry at that point, we asked if they possibly had any snacks. They looked at each other, walked away, then came back holding up a huge, freshly-caught fish. We nodded and gave them the universal thumbs up.

Twenty minutes later, we were presented with the most beautiful plate of food. It was hands down one of the top 5 meals of my life. There was something about the freshness, the combination of tastes and textures, and the care put into the presentation. Wanna and I felt like the most fortunate girls in the world eating that small feast. We hugged and thanked the sisters, Darinia and Muriel, and gave them a giant tip.

From then on we were the ambassadors of "the blue house." The first thing we said to every new traveler we met was "Have you been to the blue house? They make AMAZING food! You must go." Soon enough, it was the talk amongst travelers on the island. We had figured this was common knowledge with the locals, but as it turned out, this was a new venture for the girls. One night in the village, we met up with the sisters and discovered that Wanna and I were the first ones to ask them for food. They had never considered cooking for people before, but since we had been sending people their way, a new business venture was budding. We figured this must be some sort of synchronicity.

There was talk of making it a business . . . the dream was to have a real restaurant for tourists and eventually build huts on the property. We loved the idea of these two women pursuing a dream---I think we saw a little of ourselves in them. Wanna and I decided long ago that we didn't want to rely on being taken care of. We wanted to support our own lives and provide for our own futures. And after getting to know these girls a bit, we were hopeful that they could do the same. It was going to take a little start-up cash to get a new kitchen going and we were totally willing to donate our hard-earned cash to the cause. We were elated to be involved in potentially changing the lives of virtual strangers a world away from us. We had big plans to support the sisters in making their dream a reality.

Once back on our home turf there was a lot of Facebook messaging and Google translating to work out the next steps. After a couple months, despite everyone's hard work and big dreams, the restaurant had to be put on hold due to family complications. Wanna and I felt we had seen a reflection of ourselves in these women (maybe more than was actually there) and we had good intentions. We were probably overly optimistic and a little naive in thinking that we could blindly send money and change these women's lives. Even though our hearts were in the right place, we realized that our goal of supporting women in their efforts to come into their own might be better realized through an established organization such as Kiva. It might sounds cliché, but we did come away with an important travel lesson from all of this: live and learn!

Looking Forward: The perks of being a grown-up

Looking back on my first few entries of this column, I realize we've covered a lot over the past several weeks: creative insecurities; setting goals; getting past the fear of making mistakes; wondering where home is. It made me think. There's no denying that growing up is tough business. I know quite a few people in their thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond, who claim that no amount of money would be worth living through their twenties again. And I believe them.

But. I think for as many challenges that we face as we become "grown-ups," there are just as many things to be thrilled about. It would be a shame not to acknowledge those aspects of the journey---the ones worth celebrating---as well.

For example:

I love that as I've gotten older, I've come to care less about appearance. No makeup? No problem!

I love that I've learned to embrace my quirks, and those of others, too. Sometimes I'm awkward. Sometimes I'm clumsy. Sometimes I'm shy. All of these things are okay. I wish I knew this in high school.

I love that I don't need to ask for permission or approval when making decisions.

I love that I can eat pie for breakfast if I want---and I often do.

I love that I've learned that standing out is a good thing. 

There. That's a lot of things to feel good about. Now it's your turn. What makes you happy about getting older?

Urban Foraging

I wish I could say that I forage with wild abandon all over Brooklyn. I wish I scouted mulberry trees and returned as they began to fruit, that I rooted around for burdock in city parks and dug up sidewalk purslane and dandelion greens. Truth is, I’m something of a serial rule-abider and foraging in the city makes me nervous. In the country, there’s more of a sense of communal ownership. At the very least, you can usually find a field and wooded path where nobody’s there to watch as you fill a basket or two. Growing up, my mom would pick my sisters and I up from soccer practice and pull our lumbering minivan off the side of road to pull down a bramble of bittersweet for the front door. She’d spot a cluster of black-eyed susans during a walk by the beach, and we’d have a vase full of them at home. Once, she enlisted me and all three of my sisters to dig up an entire forest floor of daffodils in order to save them from their impending death by backhoe. You’d think that all of this wanton disregard for personal property would have instilled in me a similar streak. In some measure at least, it seems to have done the opposite. I get nervous about breaking rules. In the city, the side of road usually means someone’s yard. Trees have fences around them, for goodness sake. Foraging in city parks is frowned upon by park officials and last week when the juneberries were at their peak in Brooklyn Bridge Park, all I could muster was to pop a few ripe ones into my mouth. When I saw a young couple filling containers to take home, I felt a pang of jealousy, but found no more courageous reserves to harvest a pie's worth myself.

Besides my mild case of  rule-abiding, there’s also the pollution factor. I worry thinking about the kinds of things city plants are supping on. If the filmy dust on my window sill is any indication, there’s a lot of stuff floating around in the air around here, and not all of it can be good. Brooklyn Bridge Park is managed organically, but the same can’t be said for the 1700 parks managed by the City Parks Department. [gallery link="file" exclude="2086"]

Sometimes though, even a scaredy cat needs to face her fears. This weekend, I enlisted the help of my fiancé James to do some old fashioned foraging. If you live in New York, you might know that it’s linden flower season. Take a stroll down many of the city’s sidewalks and you’ll stumble upon the intoxicatingly floral scent of just-blossomed linden. It’s heady stuff. Dried, linden leaves and flowers make one of my favorite tisanes. It reminds me of lazy evenings spent in the south of France. After dinner and cheese and a glass or three of wine, we’d sip linden flower tea and ease even more gracefully into the evening. James and I plucked a whole bagful of the new spring leaves---flowers still attached---and I strung them up to dry in our apartment. Another batch is steeping, destined for syrup.

There’s yet to be a Brooklyn-berry pie baked at our house, but I think I just got a step closer. What about you? Any courageous foragers out there?

Why I Didn't Breastfeed

When I found out I was pregnant, I had just turned twenty-two. I had moved down to Florida after graduating college in Chicago and started dating my now husband. We hit it off right away and went on this amazing two-week long vacation down the East Coast. We spent hours in the car talking, finding out every facet of the other’s life---all of our wants and dreams, hopes and fears. After the trip, we were pretty sure we would get married. After six weeks, SIX weeks. That was before I even knew I was pregnant. At our wedding, my husband’s friend James gave a toast. He talked about how just a year earlier, when five of the engineers, including he and my husband, were cramped in a too-small office under lots of stress, they played “Would you ever”? The question was: Would you ever marry someone after only six weeks? The oldest employee (who had been married already for over twenty years) said he would, and he did. He and his wife were married after only a few weeks. Every other person said, No way, that’s crazy! And then the question came around to my husband. “Yes, when you know, you know.”

And then, a few weeks later, amidst throwing up daily several times a day and watching bad television, unemployed lying on the couch, reality hit me: OH SHIT, I AM HAVING A BABY. I didn’t know how to escape, didn’t know if I wanted to escape. If there’s something my generation is defined by, it’s this attitude of feeling lost without a purpose. Before getting pregnant, I was just floating along. I’d quit my job and moved in with my parents. I was considering graduate schools, and thinking about moving to the west coast. I thought in some naïve way, that this baby would give me a purpose. I would wake up everyday thrilled to take care of this little human being, pack lunches, and dry tears. I would have a job, and it would be mother.

Except you are pregnant for nine (practically ten months) and during that time I didn’t have a job. I was depressed and spent most days in bed looking at blogs online and shopping. My body turned on me. After weeks of throwing up and being sicker than I had ever been, the weight just started to pile on. 5, 10, 15 pounds, all the way up to 50 plus pounds as the due date neared. The truth is I stopped looking at the scale towards the end. The first time the nurse weighed me above 150, clunk . . . clunk went that second weight, I started to cry. Never in my life had I had the two clunks. Boom, boom went my old life. By the time Charley came, I had gone from a size 4 to a size 14.

Even though I only threw up in the first trimester, the entire pregnancy I felt sick. I had heartburn, my body hurt all over, and I couldn’t sleep. The only things I wanted to eat were sugar and carbs (hence the weight gain). I couldn’t even look at a vegetable without feeling something rise in the back of my throat. I was miserable and I wanted my body back. I wanted to have sex with my husband, without this giant belly. I wanted the old me back. The labor took hours and hours; I had an epidural and then Pitocin, then the epidural wore off and the Pitocin increased. It was terrible. But even still, immediately after giving birth, shivering under warmed blankets and tea from the missing heat in my body, I felt better than I had the whole pregnancy. It was amazing how quickly it took for me to stop feeling sick. As soon as he came out, the apple juice tasted fantastic, the air felt cooler, I was comfortable; I could have run a marathon. Then they handed me this squirming tiny alien, his eyes closed, and I tried to breastfeed. And PAIN, PAIN, PAIN, he was tearing apart my nipples! Just as I had started to feel better and like myself, he’d attached to me like a clamp. The nurses didn’t know why he wouldn’t latch properly. They kept trying to reassure me it shouldn’t hurt and I’m telling them, through my tears, it does, it really does. And just like that I gave up.

Psychologically I couldn’t do it. Truthfully, I’m uncomfortable around breastfeeding. I admit it. I’m a woman, and a mother, and breastfeeding makes me embarrassed. Am I just a product of our society’s fascination with breasts as being purely sexual and disgusted with breasts for their biological purpose? I want to feel that it’s natural and amazing, I read blogs where women profess their love for breastfeeding---“I’ll be doing it till he’s five, or in college, it’s so easy!”---and I think, good for them, that sounds wonderful, and then they whip out that boob in front of me, in my living room, and I have to turn my eyes.

Maybe it’s my age. I talked to a breastfeeding friend recently who mentioned how her mother-in-law was a huge breastfeeding advocate, but didn’t breastfeed her first child. My ears perked up. I want to be a breastfeeding advocate, I’m intelligent and educated. I read the studies about how it’s better for everyone: better for the mother, healthier for the child. I hear stories of how women lost ALL of their weight within weeks; it just came right off! (Mine didn’t, still hasn’t, hello permanent size 10). And I wanted to do it, wanted to try it, I really did, but I just . . . couldn’t. My friend said her mother-in-law had her first baby at age twenty-two and didn’t want to breastfeed. She felt like it was her body and she didn’t want to share. She wanted her breasts to remain sexual, not utilitarian. A light bulb went off---that’s me! That’s exactly the psychology of it. After watching my body morph into something it never was, and being so sick and depressed for so long, I wanted my body back. I wanted to own it, be in charge of the weight and my breasts. I wanted to just be me, not just mom.

We are a naked family, and sometimes I’ll take a bath with my son, just for fun; it keeps him entertained. Lately when he sees me naked, he is fascinated with my breasts---wants to touch them, pour water on them---and I think dammit, he’s a male, how did it start so early? Because he wasn’t breastfeed, will he just be obsessed with them as he gets older? Or did it really not matter? And when he reached for my breast, just like he did when he was only a few hours old, a pain shot through me, and I thought, don’t touch me. 

The Ultimate Lesson

When people hear that I went to Bryn Mawr College, the first thing they ask (If they've heard of the school, that is, and, yes - I judge a little if they haven't.) is why on earth I chose to attend a school full of women and only women. (Well, actually, they usually call it a "girls' school," but that's a whole other post right there.) The truth is that when I decided on Bryn Mawr, I did it because it was the best fit out of all the schools that had accepted me. It was a gorgeous campus full of wonderful professors, it was academically competitive, it was close to a city, but wasn't right downtown, and I loved the size of the place - small. I don't know if I would have chosen Bryn Mawr if it had been isolated and not integrated with a whole bunch of co-ed institutions, but I was in no way deterred by the idea of a women's college - nor was it my motivating factor.

Looking back on it, though, I think that choosing a women's college was one of the best things I've ever done. And I think they're some of the most important institutions we have.

It really hit home for me last spring, when I went back to campus for my 10-year reunion. Reunion weekend is traditionally held a couple of weeks after graduation, so the alumnae have the place to themselves. We stay in the dorms, eat in the dining halls and generally take over like we never left. And - unlike the high school reunion I went to a couple of weeks ago - people mostly don't bring their spouses or kids, unless the spouse is there to handle a kid or two and/or the kids are still breastfeeding. (That, right there? That desire to connect with the women you spent four years with instead of show off who you've married since? Perfect example of why Bryn Mawr is awesome. Let's call it Exhibit A.)

The result is a sort of heady freedom, the likes of which I hadn't felt since graduation. Aside from a quick trip off-campus for a fan (it was ridiculously hot) and provisions (read: booze), I barely left all weekend - but I hardly felt trapped. Quite the opposite. After dinner the first night, my class headed back to our assigned dorm, where we congregated in the living room and on the front steps, drinking, talking and reminiscing. At some point, someone spilled some red wine on my white jeans. I went upstairs to throw on my pajamas instead, and when I came down, everyone had disappeared.

I was barefoot, wearing only a nightgown, and had only my dorm key (actually a fancy electronic fob) and phone with me, but I set off in search of my classmates anyway. I strolled across the green, savoring the feeling of the grass beneath my feet and the view of actual stars overhead. I had one ear tuned to the night's sounds, listening for the raucous laughter that would eventually lead me to my friends. But - for the first time in years - I felt completely safe. Yes, I was tipsy, and yes, it was dark out, and yes, I was alone - but, unlike every time I walk home late at night in New York, I didn't feel the need to be on guard at all. I felt completely and utterly protected.

Protected not just from physical harm, but also from the need to be dressed up, or to present myself with any kind of artifice, or to censor my thoughts or feelings. Because, you see, an institution devoted to women gives you a little taste of what it might be like to actually be on equal footing in the real world. Suddenly, you're the center of attention, and not for the usual, creepy, physical reasons. Yes, you have the freedom to not wear makeup and so on, but you have more than that: an entire institution devoted entirely to you. This, kids, is what it must feel like to be the privileged gender, to be the default. And, let me tell you: it doesn't suck. (Also, they give us lanterns. I know!)

It was a feeling I didn't notice until after I left. I know, I know: between this whole "you don't know how good you have it" thing and my wonder at the newfangled keys, you must be thinking, "Curmudgeon!" But I think that's actually part of what makes it so powerful: you can learn to take that feeling for granted. It can be had, and it can become your normal. That's...amazing.

Until I can have that feeling of safety - both physical and intellectual - in the real world, places like Bryn Mawr will not stop being incredibly important. Until I feel in every arena the way I felt at Bryn Mawr, women need the option of that experience. Because now that I've had it, I won't settle until it's universal.

Ode to House Hunters

I wouldn’t call myself particularly design-oriented. I appreciate good design and good aesthetics, but I’m not oft-inspired to do anything I would call “design” at my home beyond being sure that I can see my alarm clock from my side of the bed. That said, I love HGTV. That’s Home and Garden Television if you are not familiar. I came to HGTV slowly. As a teen, my mother occasionally watched their shows, but I was resistant to the appeal. I would never make my own headboard---why should I watch someone else do it? Never mind that I will never be a 1960s ad man nor a police detective and I happily watch shows about those enterprises.

At some point in the last decade, it all changed. Was it that I matured, became an adult, and suddenly had an interest in the aesthetics of my abode? Absolutely not. What changed was the introduction of House Hunters to the channel. House Hunters is addictive and infuriating. It has a simple rhythm, not unlike Law and Order, that is soothing and anesthetic.  House Hunters allows me, from the comfort of my couch, to judge the interiors of stranger’s homes.  I find this remarkably relaxing.

Each episode is structured in the exact same way. Viewers accompany potential house buyers on visits to three different potential homes. The prospective buyers walk around the homes, commenting on what they like and don’t like. Sometimes the prospective buyers affect the episode minimally. They want granite countertops and open concepts and are pretty bland. On other occasions the prospective buyers can be absurdly demanding, and it can be fun watching their dreams of finding a four-bedroom house for under two hundred thousand dollars dissolve. Schadenfreude is a key component of watching House Hunters. Aristotle said that good tragedy must have spectacle, and the best episodes include the spectacle of dreams dashed or the buyers being shown a short sale house that was clearly trashed by some combination of frat boys and rabid beavers.

On occasion, the prospective buyers are people I want to root for. They seem friendly and intelligent and just want a place where they can grow some plants or have a baby.  Or, they realize that they will have to pay more for the neighborhood they really want to live in and they accept it and take the plunge. This can be satisfying as well, but not necessarily cathartic for the viewer.

Often there’s a semi-manufactured conflict in the episode. It might be a conflict between spouses, an adult child house hunting with parents who aren’t ready for their child to grow up, or a newly-divorced middle aged woman looking to start over. I accompanied my wife to a professional conference once and we saw a gentleman there whom we recognized. We saw him from afar and couldn’t remember his name and then we realized, “Oh, right, it’s that guy from House Hunters who lived in Knoxville who mocked his wife’s interest in Feng Shui!”

Regardless of the manufactured conflict of the episode, the viewer is led through three homes. Sometimes there are murals. Sometimes there are dolls. Sometimes there are words on the wall (you know what I mean, things like “The food here is seasoned with love” in the kitchen. I loathe words on the wall).  On every third episode, there’s a man demanding space for a “man cave” where he can watch football and not have to interact with his family, and everyone around him treats him like this is appropriate, totally ignoring the fact that “man cave” is just “cave man” backwards. All of these are targets for disdain. I know that when I have stored up disdain from a rough week at work, I can simply spend twenty-two minutes with House Hunters to release it upon unwitting strangers.

There are HGTV purists who decry the fact that the network’s programming consists mainly of real estate-related shows, including many House Hunters copycats. They miss the emphasis on design and home improvement. I’ll admit, the joys of House Hunters are only tangentially related to the concepts of “home and garden.” Not unlike MTV forgoing music videos in favor of teen mothers, and the History Channel forgoing history in favor of pawn shop proprietors, HGTV knows where the ratings lie, and it’s with They Who Love to Judge (while often in pajama pants). I am not necessarily proud of being a part of that demographic, but at least I know I am not alone.

Little Corn Island, Nicaragua

Megan Hill recently traveled to Nicaragua; here is part one of her adventure.

What's Cooking?

Lovely illustrations by Akiko Kato

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Meg Blocker, Queenie Takes Manhattan, and the brainpower behind The F WordsThe Likeness by Tana French I love an un-put-down-able mystery, but I chafe at cliched genre writing. (Love the cliches of the genre; hate the repetitive phrasing and language.) Enter Tana French, author of the Dublin Murder Squad series. Each novel can be read independently - and they work in any order - and this one is my favorite yet. It's told from the perspective of Cassie Maddox, a former murder and Undercover detective who's been working Domestic Violence cases. Cassie goes back undercover to solve the murder of a woman who adopted her old undercover identity, and winds up living in a house full of eccentric, too-close-for-comfort PhD candidates. Classic Agatha Christie estate-focused crime novel, with a twist. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky I just started this last night, and am already hooked. I love Young Adult fiction with a passion, and seeing the trailer for the movie version of this novel reminded me that I'd never quite gotten around to reading it. So far, so awesome. It's a classic coming-of-age story set in the early 1990s (Hello, awesome music and flannel shirts!), and it's written in an epistolary style, which I just love.

I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith This is one of my all-time favorites. I read it (for the first time) in my mid-20s---and fell deeply in love. I re-read it every summer, and plan to bring it with me to Maine in July. It's about a family whose patriarch wrote one superlative novel, then stopped writing altogether after an altercation involving a cake knife, a hot temper, and a nosy neighbor. As a result, his family is living on next to nothing, but doing it in a drafty, rented castle in the middle of Sussex. Enter the Americans who've inherited the estate to which the castle belongs, and cue the adulthood-making culture clashes, romances and life lessons. The first line? "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." It. Is. So. Deliciously. Good.

Michelle Edgemont, Designer I always wished I was one of those people who loves to read and constantly has great book recommendations. Ever since I launched my company last year, the pile of business books next to my bed has been growing taller and taller. A few I'm done with, a few I'm half way through, and some I'm saving for the beach. Nothing better than a nice big blanket on the sand with a few books to page through.

FINISHED: Launch: How to Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition by Michael Stelzner This was a fast, great read that I actually took notes on. I loved the simple language and easy to understand concepts. It's ideas can be applied to any type of business, especially ones that are online based and have a blog. My to-do list after finishing this book was a little overwhelming, but it gave me a good kick in the butt to get things in gear.

HALF WAY THROUGH: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath Ok, honestly, this book is too thick to hold my patience level, hence why I'm only half way through, BUT, it's full of great information on why some stories are easy to remember and some are forgettable.

EXCITED TO START: Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance by Jonathan Fields I got to get myself to the beach to start this baby. Being a small business owner, fear and doubt are the #1 and #2 things in my brain at all times. To use those as fuel to be awesome, I would be unstoppable.

MAGAZINE: Runner's World After only being able to run one block (not kidding), I started training in January and ran/walked two half marathons in the past two months. I was way towards the back of the pack during both, but I finished, and that's a big accomplishment. I wouldn't necessarily call myself a runner today, but leafing through an issue of Runner's World makes me feel a little but more legit.

Miya Hirabayashi, You + ME* I do a lot of sitting on the subway. I admit that I often am that girl who is passed out and drooling during her commute (don't judge, I have to sleep sometime), but I love to read magazines because of the short nature of each of the pieces. The three that I read religiously every month are:

The Atlantic I love the shorter snippets in the front that explore a wide range of topics. This month, I loved the piece by James Harkin about gallows humor in Syria. It followed a piece about the reintroduction of beavers into American streams and rivers (by parachute in the 1940's, and probably not by parachute starting shortly thereafter) by ecologists as a conservation effort. I love that these stories present stuff that is really interesting, and that I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to.

Garden and Gun My sister-in-law, Robyn, turned me on to Garden and Gun. I have neither a garden nor a gun, nor am I a southerner, nor do I live anywhere remotely close to the south, but this is a beautiful magazine with a lot of stories that I would never otherwise come across (fly fishing in Guyana, or a father-son barbeque road trip in Tennessee). I really believe in seeking out and letting in influences that don't match perfectly with your exact aesthetic, and Garden and Gun is just that for me (also, see above, the story about beavers). It's enjoyable because it's foreign, and still really beautiful. Plus, I may have purchased a subscription on Fab after having one too many glasses of wine. But who remembers these things, really.

Fast Company Fast Company is great for short, well-written articles that appeal to entrepreneurs. It's business-y and design-y, so it appeals to my aesthetic sensibilities but also makes me feel like I am actively cultivating my business sense. Plus, when I hold it while I'm passed out on the train, I look like a smart, design-y entrepreneur. And isn't that what magazines are for?