Unexpected

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

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

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

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

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Except I never got there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can go home again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prologue

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

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

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

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

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

This is a principle I try to remember.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do I write "strong female characters"?

It only happened a few years ago, and it may be apocryphal, but the legend goes that when Buffy creator and The Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon was asked by a journalist why he wrote “strong female characters,” he replied, “Because you’re still asking me that question.” I love this quote. I love how it represents both a rejection of what’s a somewhat limiting term---what the heck is a “strong female character” anyway?---and an acknowledgement that despite its limitations we, as women and feminists and feminist-allies, still need to be aware of its existence. Because, it would seem, we don’t have enough in movies, television, advertising, and the media in general.

But what constitutes a “strong female character”? Does she have to be a black belt, have muscles, or carry a machine gun? Does she need magical superhero powers? Does she have to wear pantsuits? Does she have to be an emotional rock that never cries?

I don’t necessarily have an answer, which is part of why I wanted to write this column: to foster a discussion about how women are represented in our culture, and what implications those representations have for our everyday reality. But, if I had to define what a female character, ideally, should be, I would lean towards: real. Or at least as real as fiction ever gets. For me, any character who is not one-dimensional or a stereotype is a strong female character, if I can co-opt an already-overused term.

(Note: This 2011 piece by Carina Chocano sums up pretty well my approach to the “strong female character” phenomenon. Definitely worth a read.)

Case in point: Whedon’s own “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” (My first Equals Record piece and I’m already revealing my nerdiness: this was and is my favorite show of all time.) Buffy Summers, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar is the Slayer, a hero whose calling in life is to fight the forces of evil using her superhuman strength and agility. She does backflips, knows martial arts, and dusts vampires, demons, and apocalyptic monsters on a regular basis. She saves the world several times. She carries a successful seven-season self-titled TV series. If anyone should be the poster woman for the “strong female character,” it’s Buffy.

But upon closer examination, it isn’t just the fact that she kicks ass that makes her strong. Otherwise, Lara Croft would also be a poster woman SFC (which, to my mind, she most certainly isn’t). Throughout the series, Buffy faces tough situations of rather more earthly sorts: bad relationships, family dysfunction, problems with authority. Her choices are not always the right ones. She cries. She flips out. She does all these very human things, all the while continuing to fight for what she believes is right and remaining relatable to decidedly non-superhuman viewers, male and female. This—and not her ability to wield a wooden stake-- is what makes her strong.

Thus, a female character shouldn’t need to possess traits we consider “masculine” to be an SFC. She doesn’t need to be physically or supernaturally strong and kick male and monster ass, like Buffy or The Avengers' Black Widow. In my humble opinion, what we need more of in pop culture are not female superheroes, so much as female characters, period (FCs?): in a variety of roles, shown in a variety of lights, a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, orientations, and occupations, a variety of choices, a variety of voices.

As with minorities in general, a major reason this doesn’t happen as often as it should is because our centers of cultural production (e.g. Hollywood) remain dominated by white, normative males, who are both more inclined to represent their own kind and perhaps less suited to represent others with accuracy and nuance. So goes the country. But things are getting better. I think. I’m trying to be optimistic.

I embark on the adventure of this column with two goals in mind: first, to critically examine the way popular culture represents women, and other minorities, and address when it’s done right, and, especially, when it’s done wrong---because while complaining might not do much, it’s better than passive acceptance of tired old tropes.

And second, perhaps less nobly: to have fun gossiping about TV shows and movies! I've said it once and I'll say it again: I’m the type of girl who publicly hates on pop culture, particularly things like trashy reality television and entertainment magazines and celebrity fashion, while secretly enjoying them whenever I need a little escapism from, you know, life. What can I say? I’m a pop culture junkie. I am not going to lie, as I type this the Kardashians are on my TV set. I’m only a little ashamed to admit this.

So please join me as I dive into the good, the bad, the ugly and the pretty of pop culture, from positive role models to shameful stereotypes, from sexual empowerment to sexual objectification. Maybe I’m an idealist, but I believe that we give pop culture its power, and we can take it away---so if we stop accepting “the bad” and “the ugly” at face value and examine what’s underneath, maybe we can demand, and receive, more of “the good” and the “pretty”---whatever those may be.

The trips that weren't

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

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

And I had yet to see the Pyramids.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking Forward: Me, Myself, and I.

This sweet video, which I stumbled upon this weekend thanks to Kristina, made me think: how much time, on average, do I spend alone per day? Per week? Per month?

I’m single, twenty-six, and a freelancer who works from home. These three things add up to a lot—a lot—of alone time. And in general, I'm fine with this. Being alone means having the freedom to daydream, read magazines in bed on Sunday mornings, write by lamplight til three AM, sing along to embarrassing music that anyone in their right mind would turn off if they were there. But, they’re not.

I do, of course, have friends. But I’ve found I’ve reached an unsettling---and somewhat surreal---time in my life when everyone I know seems to have a partner. (I can count on one hand the number of close friends who are not involved in serious, long-term relationships.) Dwelling on this sometimes makes my alone-ness feel more significant than it is. But, like I said, I’m comfortable with it—most of the time.

I get the feeling that being on my own, much like many other aspects of getting older, is something I'll get better at with time. Right now, I’m perfectly happy to shop alone, cook alone, watch movies alone, jog alone (how anyone can run and hold a conversation at the same time is beyond me anyway). But there are certain activities I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to attempt solo just yet: going to dinner at a nice restaurant, for example. Or spending a weekend away. I love the idea of these things, but I know I’d feel self-conscious—and maybe a little lonely—if it actually came to doing them.

How do you feel about spending time alone? Do you love it? Hate it? Wish you could do it more often? Let's discuss!

Video by Andrea Dorfman and Tanya Davis.

Moving the Goalposts

By Michelle Bunt Rugby is New Zealand’s national sport: it consists of two teams of fifteen players, and a 100-metre playing field. Points are scored by kicking the ball through the goalposts, or dotting the ball down over the goal line. For most of my life, I have approached health and fitness as though as it were a rugby game. I tried to get the ball (myself) through these very narrow goalposts, and when I failed to do so, I assumed the blame. What I have come to realise though is kicking between the goal posts is great in sport, but not so good as a guiding principle for life. Rugby is concrete, and ordered by the rules of the game, whereas life and people operate by a far more nebulous playbook.

Several years ago, after being on different medications that had the unfortunate side effect of weight gain, I decided I needed to get into shape, and exercise. My motivation was simple: I wanted to lose weight. My goalposts were the people around me. I desired to look how they looked, in order to be more acceptable. Fortunately for me, fitness derailed that rather shallow path early on, and opened me up to a much broader, more expansive way of being. After exercising for several months, and finding it a chore---yet another task to be ticked off my to-do list---I suddenly woke up one day to the discovery that I actually liked it: the sweating, the puffing, the burning muscles, the challenge. It was no longer just a means to an end, but actually something life-giving and affirming in and of itself. This was when I started to realise that my goalposts needed shifting; that squeezing myself to fit between the expectations of others could only lead to despair.

So my focus changed.  I spent some time figuring out what was important to me, and there in my heart was the answer, in all of its beautiful simplicity. I wanted to be happy and healthy. Luckily for me, exercise is a significant part of the equation for both of these. I am still not a super-fit, super-slim athlete, and it is possible that I may never be, but no longer do I allow that to determine my view of myself.

Recently, I have just discovered a new exercise obsession. It’s called CrossFit, and is a military-inspired type of group fitness training. On Sunday mornings, I turn up to CrossFit, look at the board for the workout of the day, and try and contain my panic. The workouts are daunting, and they bring my every fear about not being good enough right back up to the surface.

The Dalai Lama gives a brilliant talk about how one finger is only longer than another if you look at two fingers together.  However, if you look at one finger by itself, it just is, and is perfect in its own uniqueness. This is what CrossFit is teaching me. Michelle, in relation to all to the other people in the CrossFit class may be slower and not as strong, but this doesn’t matter. In the moment all that matters is me: Michelle---perfect in her Michelle-ness. Now that I am able to grasp this knowledge, the goalposts no longer matter.

All I see is wide open space, and the freedom to play my own game.

Outdoor Movies

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

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

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

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

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

YWRB: What We Rebel For

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

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

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

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

We were orbiting the point, just discovering the lesson.

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

He answers, “What have you got?”

Well, we had plenty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s what I rebelled for.

Geraniums and Green Feet

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

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

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

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

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

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

If it is not located on a map.

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

If it shapeshifts as we change.

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

 * * * * *

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

Has my exploration of home come to an end?

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

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

Alone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Are You Reading (Offline, that is)?

This space is usually reserved for books, sometimes magazines, but always the printed word. At risk of romanticizing the tactile pleasure of physically marking where you’ve left off (are you a corner-folder or a book marker?), feeling the right side lighten with every page flip, or getting the perfect crease in the newspaper allowing you to hold it with one hand while balancing a coffee in the other, I will say that print will always be cozier—in my mind, friendlier—than digital words. But some print publications are fleeting and I feel incredibly lucky to live in a time when an article I’ve read, dog-eared, carried with me even, can be shared via the internet.

***

I love books. I’ve loved them unrelentingly since my first wobbly attempts at reading—maybe closer to memorization—when I was still small enough to be afraid of the dark and was, thus, the proud owner of a flashlight, perfect for illuminating pages under my covers. In elementary school, I once got into mild trouble for reading a too-good-to-put-down-for-an-entire-school-day novel on my lap during an unnecessarily long lesson on soil erosion. So you can imagine my surprise when during a particularly tumultuous time in my life, I’ve found myself unable to give a book my full attention or to still my thoughts long enough to form my own sentences.

It was only during this past year that I truly released the notion that we would move west. We renovated our apartment to include an office big enough for daily work sessions with my business partner/best friend and co-worker/sister, settled our daughter in an adorable preschool, found a nanny for our son who puts Mary Poppins to shame, and helped my sister move from an apartment upstairs to one literally right next door. Life being what it is, we had only just settled into this routine that felt worthy of forever when my husband got a job offer in San Francisco—at a company he’d admired for years, doing exactly what he wants to do, with people who could aptly be described as awesome.

In some ways this move is a no-brainer. Even putting aside my husband’s opportunity, there is a lifetime of reasons why our family should settle in San Francisco. One of the first things that people learn upon meeting me is that I’m a Northern Californian. My husband and I got married in Napa. Our dog is named Tahoe. I refer to the Bay Area as “home” (I also happen to refer to New York as home, but that’s fodder for another time). My huge extended family spans the west coast from San Jose to Seattle, with three quarters of them living in the Bay Area; our holiday gatherings have been described as epic. But it was sudden and I’m sad (which is a huge step up from the first few weeks after this news when I would have said heartbroken).

While books, even some of my forever-favorites, haven’t soothed my anxiety or even temporarily diverted my attention from this looming change, essays and articles that seem to have been written with me in mind have found their way into my purse. I pull them out—all crumpled and soft from the friction of my wallet, phone, and stray chapsticks—and read snippets when I’m feeling particularly heartsick. They’re worry stones for my mind.

***

I’ve always been a loyalist—none of that flitting around from thing to thing for me. I excel at commitment. My upcoming move wasn’t even a topic of conversation when I came upon this article, “The Joys of Staying Put,” over a year ago. Apparently, there are people who live in their New York apartments for a lifetime, generations even (see also “100 Years of Staying Put”). These are my people, my tribe. This article may have been the catalyst for my decision to live not just in the same city or same neighborhood, but the same apartment . . . forever.

The funny thing is, our apartment isn’t even that great. I mean it’s reasonably sized by Manhattan standards, it’s a duplex, and it has a backyard. Oh, and our rent is below market in a neighborhood we love. It’s also what a good realtor would call “charming” or “full of character,” meaning it’s old, creaky, and will always have a thin veil of dirt, no matter how hard you scrub. None of that really matters though because we hear the birds chirp every morning and one of the neighbors with an adjacent yard plays classical music on his outdoor speakers most afternoons (though everyone on the backside of our block, at one point or another, thought we lived in listening distance of a great pianist). Only one other person seems to understand: the late and great Nora Ephron. Her brilliant essay, “Moving On,” about falling in love and leaving an apartment, is everything I feel. Like one of her movies, I read this piece and find myself laughing through my tears.

Now I’m in what Thomas Beller calls the “In-Between Days.” We technically still live in New York, but we’ve been traveling to and from San Francisco. Our count of the New York days we have left is close to single digits. Every experience has the potential of being characterized as “the last”—last impromptu backyard grill party, last day of pounding lattes and never watching videos of animals doing funny things in the office, last run up the Great Hill. Then there are the saddest ones of all—last stroll through an empty wing of the Museum of Natural History while our daughter makes up elaborate stories about the exhibits and our son interjects with animal noises, last family walk during off-leash hours where our little ones scramble up the rock they’ve termed “the mountain,” and the kids’ last ride on the double-swing my husband hung in our backyard (the one baby Jack is only just big enough to hold on to himself). There’s a real danger of letting every moment become too precious to be real.

Despite my temptation to squeeze the life out of our last days in the only home I’ve known for my adult life and to document everything we do prior to our move for posterity, I’m trying to remember that I don’t have to. I should be marveling at my luck. Unlike Joyce Maynard, I’ve fallen in love with a place that in all likelihood will remain right where it is for the entirety of my life and my kids’ lives too. In Maynard’s essay, “Paradise Lost,” she describes her grief and finally acceptance when rising waters slowly submerged her home and haven on Lake Atitlán. Her surrender to the reality of life came when she realized "The idea that any of what we have will last forever is a dream." If we hadn't changed our life by deciding to move across the country some other circumstances would have. We'll cry, we'll move, and then we'll visit an ever-changing New York through our ever-changing eyes.

An Introduction

I've always considered myself to be a curious sort of person.  I’m not afraid to ask questions, to examine different options, and to experiment until I find the right answer.  Perhaps that’s to be expected when your parents are a Librarian and a Physicist.

When I was younger, I was fascinated with how things work.  I used to take apart old radios and telephones just to see what the inside looked like and how all the parts moved together.  I could almost never put anything back together, but that wasn’t the point. That mechanical curiosity faded by the time I was a teenager and was eventually replaced by a more personal curiosity.

I’ve never really been able to answer the question ‘What do you want to be’. Or at least not in a way that people expect.  While many of my peers would respond with details about their career aspirations, my answer is more abstract.  I want to be happy.  I want to be the best version of myself.  That’s all I’m looking for in the world.  I don’t aspire to a corner office or an expense account and I’m not looking to raise a family, at least not yet.

On the surface, to be myself and be happy seems trite and simplistic, but if you really think about it, it’s an involved, never-ending project.  People are not stagnate and happiness is a day by day process, not one final destination.  To be the best version of myself is an ever evolving undertaking involving issues of spirituality, self-confidence, learning and growth.

In this column I want to consider those topics and the questions they invoke.  I want to look to religions from all over the world and learn from them. I want to talk to women I admire about their own journeys. I want to reflect on what practices and actions work for me, which do not, and why. And I want to learn from you, what has made a difference in your own life and helped you become who you are today. What are our strengths and how can we strengthen our weaknesses.

We all have a journey and a destination, and everyone’s path is different.  This column is about how I’m making my way in the world. My interests, experiences, beliefs and thoughts are just that, my own.  Life is not one size fits all and there isn’t one right answer, but that’s what makes it interesting and exciting.  I’m not the expert on living your life, but I’m trying to become an expert in living mine!

I hope you’ll read along and comment, maybe even be a little bit inspired, I’m sure I will be.

This is Me, Making My Way.

Lessons from traveling...

Dearest Clara, We are still on the move---one week into a seventeen day trip.  This time around we have been taking you on a bit of a sentimental journey though you are much too young to remember these places or even understand their significance.  But don’t worry, one day we will certainly take you again.  In the meantime, we will take lots of pictures for you to remember this by.

We travel a lot, whether for fun or for work---it is a bit the nature of the job we signed up to do.  But even if we hadn’t, I have a feeling we would continue to move about anyway.  Traveling can open up the mind to so much, but it certainly can be draining as well.  Keep these things in mind when you find yourself on the go---my bet is that you’ll take after your parents.

• Don’t pack more than you can carry: I think this is rule number one.  If you yourself can’t carry it, you probably don’t need it.  My rule of thumb is one roller board and a folded duffle inside for the trip home (inevitably, you always come back with more).  But remember, you shouldn’t be dependent on anyone when it comes to just carrying stuff.
• Ask for help when you need it: That being said, ask for help when you need it.  Some days, your bag will be too heavy, or you’ll find yourself lost.  I always avoided services that booked taxis or brought bags or any countless number of other things, insisting that I do it myself.  That’s a good way to start and a good way to learn, but at some point, it’s okay to get some assistance.  It’s how others make a living, and sometimes, a few dollars more can save you lots of time and frustration and back ache.
• Move around with confidence: You won’t always know where you’re going, but you should always look like it.  You will build confidence in your own abilities to get to where you need to go, but you’ll also stave off any unwelcome attention that finds its way to the lost and unaccompanied.
• Be a gracious traveling companion:  No doubt you will come across myriad of personalities while traveling, and not all of them the nicest.  But traveling brings out funny things in people: some might be sad, upset, coming from or going to a place they would rather not.  Give people the benefit of the doubt and the space they need, and don’t take travel outbursts personally.  Be as gracious and patient as you can, the day will come when you need the same from others.
• Remember your documents and your wallet: I used to worry the entire way to the airport whether I had packed everything.  But my mother always used to ask if I had my passport and my wallet,  and then told me not to worry, anything else you can buy.  Always be able to identify yourself, and always have a couple of ways to get money where you’re going and you’ll always be set.
• Leave something to come back for: When you really love and enjoy a place you’ve visited, leave a little something to return for.  A museum unseen, a picture not taken, a personal item you forgot, a coin in the fountain . . . my mother always said that you should always “leave something to come back for”.

Over the years, you’ll find all of your own little bits of advice to make traveling easier.  You can always start out by laying out what you would like to take, and then taking half the clothes and twice the money.  Drink lots of water, travel with a shawl, and wash your hands a lot.  And of course, send your mother lots of postcards.

All my love,

Mom

He'd have me at Atwood.

Tell me, if you would, what each of these lists has in common.

1984, The Odyssey, Infinite Jest, Super Sad True Love Story. Lots of non-fiction, typically covering: history, science, or art/art theory. Neil deGrasse Tyson/Brian Greene/Richard Feynman. And biographies/autobiographies.

Just finished Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which is incredible. I am sappily fond of David Foster Wallace for many many reasons.

Confederacy of Dunces, Girl Curious Hair (surprised, wanted to really hate him), everything Salinger or Kundera.

Currently reading Life by Keith Richards and miscellaneous repair manuals. Some favorites: White Noise, Libra, Assassination Vacation, Shop Class as Soulcraft, Outliers.

All the Kings Men, The Man in the High Castle, 100 Years of Solitude, The Odyssey, Who Censored Roger Rabbit, The 1,001 Nights, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Catullus.

They are lists of books, it's true. And they're charmingly eclectic, up to a point. I mean, you have to admit that there's something adorable about a list that includes works by both Homer and Neil deGrasse Tyson. But look a little closer, and you might notice something missing: not one of these lists of favorite books includes a single novel written by a woman.

The common thread uniting these? They all herald from the OKCupid profiles of men who've either emailed me or caught my attention in the last few weeks. I haven't met any of these gentlemen in person yet, but they all seem perfectly nice, bright and open-minded. They are men who claim, either in their profiles or in the answers to their questions, a certain level of liberalism---even feminism. But nary a one lists a single book by a woman---not even a freaking short story---as among their favorites.

Whenever I get an email from a promising guy, I dread scrolling down to this part of his profile, knowing that pretty much every time I'm going to feel a twinge of disappointment in a man I otherwise find interesting. Why is it, I ask myself, that none of these men can be bothered to include a woman among their favorite authors? The likely answer, of course, is that they probably haven't read anything by a woman---with the possible exception of Doris Kearns Goodwin---since college. (Habits developed in childhood---which we've discussed before---follow people for life, kids.)

By contrast, here are the favorite books of some awesome, single, straight ladies in the same age range and geography:

A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan), Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), The Unnamed (Joshua Ferris).

I have favourites ranging from the Hitchhiker's Guide books to Jane Austen (cliche I know) to Stephen Fry's books.

Beckett, Plath, Hughes, Jack London, Brontës, Poe, Camus, Anthony Minghella's radio plays, Donne, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Strindberg, Thoreau, Marx, artists' journals (especially Munch), T.S. Eliot, Braudel, Benjamin.

Nabokov. Wells Tower. Lorrie Moore. Jennifer Egan. (Writing a list of books could take me forever and would only look boring on screen.)

The Handmaid's Tale, Middlesex, House of Mirth, I Capture The Castle, Persuasion, Grimm's Fairy Tales

This is hardly a scientific survey. But I can't help but think that when men---especially supposedly progressive, liberal, worth-dating men---can't be bothered to read women's writing (or, if nothing else, to cop to it online), we have yet another symptom of our still-yawning gender gap. (On the flip side of things, note the woman who feels the need to temper her love of Austen, one of the Western canon's greatest social satirists, with an aside noting how cliche her admiration is.)

I truly believe that "small" things like this are just the bubbles popping on the surface of a roiling body of sexist water, seemingly benign indicators of the ongoing wage gap (even more notable for women of color), the constant, unending street harassment women face on a daily basis, the one in four women who will be raped in their lifetimes---and on, and on, and on.

Plus, these dudes are missing out on some seriously awesome writing. Margaret Atwood is for real, bros. And would guarantee a reply email, to boot.

Inside the White Picket Fence

By Marni Zarr I met him in sophomore geometry. My head in the clouds over his best friend, the subject of which made easy fodder for conversation. Our instructor happened to be his basketball coach which miraculously made me privy to over the shoulder glances at his correct answers during tests thus saving me from failing. Happy that I had this advantage I was big on smiles and loved conversing with this insider who knew everything I wanted to know about my not so secret crush on his goofy yet charming friend.  In between the hand holding and break ups between his friend and I, the two of us grew into good pals. Hours spent with him on the phone, nothing said in coded whispers as was required with other friends.  I wasn’t afraid of my parent’s overhearing me as I spoke to him through the avocado kitchen rotary, only that our phone time would be cut off before I was ready to say good-bye. The curly cord a slinky in my hand, I’d wind it’s twisting loops through my toes while talking and daydream about compliments from the older girls in the P.E. locker room. One insisted I should be a foot model. The perfect shape and always polished, the only blemish a growing bunion on the right side, enough to squash that idea. My self doting thoughts were suddenly interrupted by his innocent question, “So what about going to the movies with me this weekend?”

My parents prejudices were a good cover-up for my own fear. I wasn’t totally comfortable with the thought of going on a date, although I considered him a friend, a black guy. Would people think he was my boyfriend? Would they stare and tag me with another accessory like my religion that I wasn’t comfortable carrying around? Did I want to say no but blame my parents prejudices as a shield for my own? How could I decline without hurting his feelings? All of these thoughts swirled in my head like an alphabet soup of questions whirring audibly in a blender, a jumble of words and feelings that in the end was so thick and unrecognizable my thoughts a messy mush. and then, the honest answer rose to the top, “ I can’t, I have to be sixteen to date.” Although valid, we both communicated the understood underlying truth with an awkward moment of silence.

Who knows what would have happened if I had been allowed to experience my first date with him. I could sense his feelings for me were different than mine for him, but his character spoke only of respect. I could have breached my parent’s rules and told them I was going to a movie with a girlfriend and met him there but didn’t. Instead I packed the incident neatly away, we stayed friends, I denied my feelings, and life went on with the blame pinned to my parents, folding my confusion neatly away to be dealt with later.

We remained friends while the dating excuse covered the dark truth until late winter. Still three months shy of my 16th birthday I successfully convinced my parents to lift the dating rule, “just this once.”  The most popular boy in high school, a year ahead of me had asked me out on a Valentine’s date.  Possessing perfect all American good boy looks with mischievous sparkly blue eyes and a California like carelessness to his confident athletic walk, he was the stud of the school. How I was chosen to be his valentine crush was never clear . . . to anyone. He was the boy on a pedestal. The one that everyone remembers.

All nerves electric at the sound of the doorbell, awkward introductions were made and off we went down the front walkway to his pristine truck where he opened the door politely and I raised myself up and sat on the soft burnished brown velour seat. First stop, a weathered liquor store in a strip mall just outside the cozy confines of his country club community. I waited while he confidently strutted in and came out minutes later with a six-pack, gum and a pink plastic comb which became my souvenir of the evening.  I loved how he played with my hair and teased me with it as we listened to “The Cars”  cassette on his fancy stereo and drank the lukewarm bottled beer in the theatre parking lot. Three for him, two for me, time for the movie. We each popped a fresh stick of doublemint gum in our mouths and before getting out to walk around and open my door, hand resting softly on my thigh, he asked me to reach into his glove compartment so he could reapply more of his “Polo” cologne. My senses heightened to the first hints of sexual tension the scent was forever branded on my memory so that years later I could smell our song whenever it played and feel his hand as it went up my shirt.

After the movie, fully clothed but rolling in the cool winter grass of the church on the corner, we kissed and I assumed it was true love forever, hearts floating in my head I went home to dream about our wedding and how envious everyone would be as I walked down the aisle with the dream god of the high school universe.  Two weeks later, as the deities of high school often do, he moved on to new and easier waters. My elevated ego smarted from the fall, but I had the song “Just What I Needed” by The Cars and my light pink comb for comfort. Even if never allowed to pray at the feet of his graven image again I knew I had earned his blessing and to me that was timeless.

A few years ago I ran into a former high school friend at a neighborhood restaurant as I walked out the door. Turning at my name there was instant recognition in the hint of a smile, the way you see through someone’s voice and facial expressions and it transports you back in time. We started talking about our current lives, family, kids, jobs etc., the creamy pre-prepared information filling the space between high school graduation and now. The conversation turned to people we occasionally ran into from school and we shared short clips of what we knew or had heard.  His son was on the high school football team at a small school in California and being coached by another former classmate’s younger brother, small world. The topic of football sparked my curiosity about my long ago crush and the question rolled off my tongue with a wistful lilt. His face fell as he told me what he had heard a while back. This boy who many of us had assumed would go on to have it all, just as he did in school, grew up and had taken his own life. I couldn’t help but wonder if every one of us who had assisted him in rising to that highest spot of teen-age stardom hadn’t somehow contributed to his fall.

When the bookmarks change

Kalomoira is pregnant with twins.

I imagine you want to know who Kalomoira is. She was the winner of Fame Story, a Greek talent show that came into being long after American Idol had solidified itself into the American pop culture conscience. In the ten years that have passed since then, I had thought about Kalomoira maybe twice.

And now I know she is pregnant with twins.

***

In making homes away from Greece, be it in Colombia or Egypt, I relied on a ritualistic consumption of the news. I was determined to assimilate and to do that, I had to know. So I read the local papers every morning until I had memorized the layout of the page and could rhythmically find my way to my favorite columnist or to the sports section. I had a favorite columnist. Everywhere, from Guatemala to Jerusalem.

There was no better home for my news-guzzling obsession than Jerusalem. My favorite radio station interrupted the music every hour for a brief news report. Without the kind of command over Hebrew that allows one to understand fast-paced news segments over the radio, the hourly report became a game. I hunted for words I recognized and matched them to the English news I had read about the region earlier that morning. "Hebrew Hebrew Syria Hebrew Kofi Annan Hebrew peace," the announcer said, and I knew she was talking about the diplomatic attempts to broker peace in Syria. Jerusalem radio may not have supplied me with news of which I was previously unaware, but it did teach me how to say peacekeeping and failure in Hebrew -- and it made me long for the kind of news and linguistic comprehension that would allow me to dream of peaceful co-existence and success.

***

I left Jerusalem for my homeland, Greece, 39 days ago and my news scouring habits have changed. Days can pass without my realizing there was a stabbing in my old neighborhood. 39 days ago, I knew about car accidents on highways I had yet to even drive through.  Even though the web broadcast of my favorite radio station is bookmarked in my browser, I cannot bring myself to click through, guided by the fear that "Hebrew Hebrew Jerusalem Hebrew Hebrew film festival" will propel me into an ocean of nostalgia.

Instead, I know that a local pop star I have not brought to the forefront of my mind in a decade is now pregnant with twins. Not only I have migrated, but also my bookmarks are shifting with me. I have the kind of wandering eardrums that long for Colombian salsa in Kosovo and Greek music in Guatemala. I have the kind of fickle tastebuds that long for arepas in Uganda and falafel in Mexico. All of me is punctuated by a serial infidelity to place; enamored as I may be with where my feet are currently meeting the ground, I will let the senses wander to the other places they once called home.

And yet, it is at bookmarks that I draw the line. The very newsy trivialities that help foster my sense of home when I am new to a place cause me painful wanderlust as soon as I have booked the departing flight. It is as though my brain can only handle one pregnant-with-twins pop star at the time: the local one. Any more than that, any more soccer team updates or festival schedules or a repaving of a street on which I once used to live, and my heartstrings are stretched till they tear.

There is indigestible irony to the realization that someone who has dedicated her professional life to international development and conflict management and aspires to understand notions that are far larger than herself needs to shrink her world to the news cycle of Here and Now, lest her feet want to carry her to all the Elsewheres she has loved.

Looking Forward: When I Grow Up.

I remember very distinctly, at five years old, deciding that I wanted more than anything to be a bus driver when I grew up. What could be cooler, I thought, than driving a bus? Buses meant field trips. Buses meant seat buddies. Buses meant songs, snacks, and hand-clapping games. To be able to ride the bus daily? To be in charge of the bus? I couldn’t think of anything better. A couple of years passed before I was quoted in my elementary school newspaper as wanting to be a professional violinist. “I just started learning,” I’d said, “ There are four strings on the violin, and when I play, I feel like they are speaking to me.” (Cut to the present: my violin – which I continued to play all the way through the twelfth grade – sits gathering dust in a corner of my closet in my parents’ home.)

Over time, my career daydreams changed, and they changed often. After watching the Robin Williams movie Awakenings, I decided I wanted to be a doctor. Later, at the height of Titanic-mania, I announced I wanted to be a filmmaker. In high school, when I fell in love with classic rock (leaving a long streak of boy-band fandom behind me for good), I was convinced it was my calling to be a rock journalist.

And that wasn’t the end of it. At various times, I considered being an actress, interior designer, photographer, stylist, screenwriter. For a brief period of time, I even dreamt of joining a circus. (Don’t laugh.)

Of course, it’s perfectly normal when you’re a kid to daydream about the future, to change your mind about these things on a daily - or hourly - basis. Is there a point, though, when it stops being okay? When is it no longer acceptable not to have a clue about what you’d like to be when you grow up?

I recently had a conversation with a friend who lamented the fact that she had no idea what her dream job was. Her sister, on the other hand, had known since childhood that she wanted to be a doctor; now she was enrolled in medical school, well on her way to realizing that vision. It would be so much easier, we agreed, if we could be more like her - if we knew exactly what we wanted to be, if we knew exactly where we were headed next.

(For the record, when it comes to my career, I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to say that I’m a writer. I love to write. I always have. But the truth is, there are so many things I love to do. In a perfect world, I’d be a writer-editor-chef-bookstore owner-painter-dancer-teacher-fashion designer. I’d also like to be the lead guitarist of a rock band, though I neither own nor play the guitar.)

Writing is the perfect career for me right now. But I still have other ideas about things I’d like to be when I grow up. I’ve already tried a few - my first year out of college, I interned in a fashion studio and apprenticed on a farm. But while I’m sorting through the rest, I figure the best thing to do is keep trying new things and remain open to adventure always.

After all, you never know – someday in the future, somewhere in the world, there just may be a circus trapeze with my name on it.

On Coming Back

There can be heartache in city living, especially in the summertime. For someone who grew up as a country mouse, summertime has always been the backdrop for my most sensory memories: the smell of freshly mown grass and charcoal barbecues, the sound of airplanes crossing a lazy summer sky, choruses of peepers and cicadas, the sharp crack of baseball bats, the feeling of bare toes in sand and the hot prickle of a sunburn. In the city, the smells and sounds are different, even when they’re the same. The smell of barbecue wafting from our neighbors’  balcony feels invasive when it’s not paired with sounds of cicadas and the soft hum of a garden sprinkler. Airplanes that cross the city sky compete with sirens and car alarms for aural dominance and all but disappear before I’ve even noticed them. Our neighbors' air conditioner now drowns out the sounds of the birds I spent the spring listening to. Last week, we spent two glorious days in Maine. We drove seven hours up and back for the priviledge of walking barefoot in tall grass and having mosquitos bite our legs into near oblivion.  The trip was worth every single itchy red bump. While we were there, mostly, we relished the space and the quiet and the company. Now we’re back and the city feels stifling and smelly by comparison. The places where I normally seek refuge aren’t working their usual magic. Our tiny apartment feels tinier. The smell of Sunday night’s garbage sitting out for Monday’s pickup is oppressive. I'm the first to admit, I'm the worst kind of grumpy. There is so much to love about summer in the city, and I know I’ll get back into the rhythm of things, but for now, it’s hard to be back.