Emotional Montage

I am working on an animated trailer for Jen Larsen’s memoir, Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head (being released in February by Seal Press). The script for the animation is the introduction to the book, which outlines a series of the author’s strange, hilarious, heartbreaking self-“improvement” fantasies. The first few are described so visually that the stage directions were basically written for me. But the penultimate fantasy is about an emotional transformation, in which the character becomes the kind of person she wants to be—warm, happy, wise, etc. To show her emotional transformation, I wanted to have the character enter a magical world. I decided on a woodland scene, starting out with the character standing next to some trees, looking glum. Then she stretches out her arms, the trees bear fruit, and she becomes friends with some deer. I thought this might be stupidly sweet in a way that would fit with the self-aware, funny, sad tone of the writing. But something bothered me.

I set the cut-outs aside for a day and thought about this scene—and realized that it wasn’t specific enough. In the rest of the animation, the imagery consists of everyday objects depicted in unusual scenarios. Almost every object is based on something I’ve seen in real life: my favorite coffee cup, my grandmother’s armchair, the funeral home near my house. The trees and deer in the woodland scene were not drawn from memories of real trees or deer, but from images in fairy tales.

That’s when I decided I wanted to make a montage of ordinary actions. Instead of changing the setting, I would change the perspective. I would show the character engaged in one domestic activity after another, using the trope of a montage to tenderly poke fun at the idea that it's possible to become perfect.

I love montages. I love how sentimental they are, and how they depict almost nothing of how time passes, but so much of how it feels to look back on things. I wonder how our ability to instantly “montage” our own lives through social media affects our way of thinking about things. I have a love-hate relationship with those perfectly Instagrammable moments—the well-plated, locally-sourced dinner; the perfect mid-day latte; the urban mason jar—you know what I mean.

I think that my issue has to do with making personal happiness a consumer item. This surely isn’t a new thing. Instagram didn’t invent bragging. When we don’t have something, we can become consumed with wanting it. When we get it, we know that our lives our still as complicated as before, and yet it is easy to fall prey to the allure of making ourselves appear simple now that we’ve gotten this (socially-acceptable) thing.

Stranger Here is about being unhappy and thinking it’s because of one thing, and then finding out that when that thing changes, the feelings don’t really change. There’s a quote I read (on Facebook, naturally) that goes something like, “Don’t judge yourself, because you’re always comparing your blooper reel to someone else’s highlight reel.” But much of the time, we put our highlight reel out into the world as the official storyline. And maybe that is inevitable when we are communicating in such short bursts. I'm not anti-Social-Media, but I am curious how, over time, the forms of communication we use might change the way we perceive the world, and ourselves. I think that’s why it is so important to also share longer, complicated narratives that aren’t all good or all bad, but are nuanced and ambivalent. They help us read between the lines of the 140 characters.

Two weeks from now, I will post the completed trailer. Hopefully, the guy doing the soundtrack will have come up with some sweet montage music.

Molly's previous pieces on process can be found here.

Whitney Cummings and the Maligned Female Showrunner

Lately I’ve been catching Whitney Cummings’ new late-night talk show “Love You, Mean It” because it airs on E! right after “The Soup” starring my alternate-universe husband Joel McHale. I’ve long been hesitant to embrace Whitney’s brand of comedy, which feels---particularly with the premise and set of her new talk show---derivative of Chelsea Handler’s blasé, sexually liberated cynicism, which, while fun, doesn’t need to be duplicated. Plus her NBC sitcom “Whitney”? Not great.

But the more I watch Whitney at her most comfortable, doing stand-up comedy and riffing on talk show round tables, the more I like her in spite of myself. She’s funny, self-deprecating, and even touches occasionally on social consciousness. In the first episode of “Love You, Mean It,” she hammered the trend amongst young females to ironically address each other as “hooker,” “whore,” or “slut.” And in last week’s episode, she called out Esquire magazine journalist Stephen Marche for his ridiculous assertion, in a cover story on Megan Fox, that women like Amy Adams and Lady Gaga and Adele are “perfectly plain.”

Of course, there are still moments---just like with Chelsea’s show---that are cringeworthy. Whitney herself doesn’t approach Chelsea’s flagrant disdain for PC-ism, but her round table guests certainly do. And both shows are on the E! network, so they’re not exactly “60 Minutes.” Or “The Daily Show.” They talk about celebrities and silly videos and Instagram.

It’s also worth noting that Whitney is, as guy friends of mine have phrased it, “really hot.” Every episode she comes out with a new blow-dry hairstyle and a cute outfit. Her promos feature her mugging in a bunch of self-conscious poses, poses that showcase her attractiveness, yet also wink at the camera---for instance when she leans all the way back in her chair with her legs apart like a dude and flashes a peace sign.

It’s that mix of self-awareness and self-deprecation on the one hand, insecurity and vapidity on the other, that seems to characterize not just Whitney but a whole neo movement of young modern feminists. Whitney’s simultaneous embrace of fluff, femininity, and super-competence calls to mind Zooey, Mindy, Chelsea, women showrunners who are out there, you know, running the show.

In spite or, more likely, because of this, there seems to be more than your average TV hate for Whitney, and to a lesser extent Mindy and Zooey. Why is this? What is it about Whitney, in particular, that makes her a lightning rod for criticism? It's true that "Whitney," "The Mindy Project" fall short of shows like "30 Rock" and "Parks & Recreation" and "Girls" (though these female showrunners, even universal favorite Tina Fey, can face their own gender-based criticisms---Lena Dunham was another target of that nonsensical Megan Fox article). But would there be such an onslaught if the shows were run by men? Why don't comedians like Jeff Ross and his schlubby, lowbrow, mean-spirited Comedy Central show "The Burn" get as torn apart? I say, more power to the women who take charge of TV. You can find fault with their comedy, but you might also recognize that, even in this day and age, being a female showrunner is still a pretty pioneering thing.

Looking Forward: Getting Lost.

When I first moved to New York City five years ago, I lived in a tiny apartment in Morningside Heights, in a bedroom with a single window that looked out onto a brick wall. Because I craved sunlight (a luxury I’d always taken for granted), and because my work-from-home schedule allowed me a certain degree of freedom, I spent most of my days and nights with my then-boyfriend, Ben, at his Columbia University apartment three blocks away. Ben was an exemplary tour guide. We went to jazz clubs in Harlem, used bookstores in the East Village, hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Queens. We spent long afternoons at MoMa, at ICP, in Central Park. A newcomer to the city, I was happy to let him lead the way.

Literally.

At six-foot-five, Ben was an imposing figure. More than that, he was excellent company. And he seemed to know the city inside and out. All I had to do was follow.

Months later, we went our separate ways. Ben moved to Austin. I moved to Brooklyn. My life changed in many ways, but there was one change in particular that stood out.

I got lost, constantly.

I took the wrong trains. The wrong turns. Ended up in strange neighborhoods, thankfully not at the wrong times. Alone, I felt like a tourist in my own city.

Slowly, though—very slowly—I learned. I learned my way around the subway; I learned the closest bus route to my house. I learned where to get the best doughnuts, the best coffee, the best sushi, the best milkshakes. I learned where to get my typewriter repaired; where to escape to find a quiet place to sit. I got to know my neighborhood bodega cats. I got to know my neighbors.

A guided tour, it turns out, is not the same thing as a true discovery.

“To really know a place, you have to get lost in it,” my dad told me. “You can’t be truly comfortable until you’ve been lost.

I can’t claim to know this city inside and out. But what I do know, I know deeply. Now that I’ve been lost in it—very lost, hopelessly so—I feel I’ve earned it as a home.

Five years later, I know where I am.

***

Snow arrived early in 2012. Just a week after Halloween and very shortly after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, an autumn storm blanketed the city in white.

Against my better judgment, I went out that evening anyway, celebrating the release of a local magazine’s newest issue in a cavernous, low-lit bar, feasting on Venezuelan sandwiches and guacamole into the early hours of the morning.

When it was all over, I walked home. More accurately, I stomped. (Stomping, I’ve found, is one way—however inelegant—to avoid slipping on winter-slick sidewalks.)

The night had taken me a half hour from where I’d started, but the snow had stopped, leaving in its wake an immaculate ivory carpet. Though I was alone and it was late, I was happy to stomp my way through it; to have a reason to move; to take in the streets, the buildings, the rooftops—familiar shapes, cloaked in frost.

As I walked, I remembered, suddenly, stepping off a bus on a high school trip to New York. The noise and the activity left me breathless, in a way that frightened me.

There was a time not so long ago, I thought, when all this would have been a mystery to me.

That night, though, on my snowy trek, I felt as comfortable in my surroundings as I’d ever felt anywhere. I felt confident. Even up to my ankles in snow, even in boots a size too large, even lost in a whiskey fog, I felt safe. Sturdy.

And I found my way home, a trail of footprints behind me.

The Birthday Tradition

A few years ago, I invented something called The Birthday Tradition.  Despite my opinions on my birthday (namely, that it is the best holiday of the year; that I am allowed to be giddy for a week or so before and depressed for a week or so after; that “It’s my birthday!” is a respectable response to any question and/or comment directed at me in the time period listed above), I did not actually institute the Tradition on my birthday, but on my boyfriend, Zack’s.  I’d already moved to New York by then, and he was still living in San Francisco, finishing up a building project at his job before joining me.  I came back to San Francisco for the holidays and for his birthday.  Feeling mushy (booze, old friends and too many gingerbread men, aka crack, will do that to me), I began espousing my love for Zack. “He’s one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever met,” I said, “but he also can talk about anything and everything, for hours, even if he’s just humoring me.  He looks super sexy when he’s rock climbing and has successfully taught me how to build IKEA furniture.  Kinda.”

“Well,” our friend Matt jumped in.  “If we’re doing that, I wanna say why I think Zack is awesome.”

“Me too,” said our friend Colette.  “You guys can’t get all the credit when he ends up crying.”

And the Birthday Tradition was born.

We do it every birthday, and every person is required to say their bit, even a friend’s new girlfriend or boyfriend who met the birthday person moments before.   There’s a lot to love about people, whether you’ve just met them or ate their crayons in kindergarten.  That’s the point of the Birthday Tradition:  we so often think the things we love about people, little or big, but rarely actually say them. Sometimes it’s nice, surrounded by loved ones, to be reminded of why the love is there.  It makes it that much more concrete, and that much harder to break.

We’ve done the Tradition for every birthday I’ve attended for the past three years.  I’ve said I loved a person’s brilliant sock collection, their offbeat sense of humor, their impeccable sense of self, their cooking and their party planning and their unfailing kindness and their loyalty and their karaoke skills.  Which is why I was so devastated when Zack told me, as his first birthday in London was rapidly approaching, that he thought we should skip the Tradition this year.

“But why?” I said, extending the final syllable, clutching my hands to my cheeks and sliding to the floor writhing as if a hot ball of fire were about to burst from my belly button.

“Most of the people coming out are friends from grad school,” he said.  “It’s kind of like asking your colleagues at work to say something.  I think it’ll be more awkward than fun.  Also, the British aren’t really mushy like that.”  (This is true: I’ve witnessed one marriage proposal in England.  It took place in a pub, and the matter of fact question was followed by fish and chips)

Begrudgingly, I accepted Zack’s wishes.  That night, though, as we readied ourselves to go out to the pub in which we would ring in his birthday, I was struck by regret.  Zack, of all people, needed the Birthday Tradition.  I brought in our roommate, and together the three of us, with our two cats as witnesses, did a mini Tradition.  It was the smallest the Tradition had ever been, but it was lovely.  Then we went to the pub and got drunk.

As the next day, Zack’s actual birthday, drew to a close, we ate cake at our flat, and watched as snowflakes the size of my nose slowly blanketed the world around our windows.

“It was a good birthday, right?” I said, snuggled up to Zack on the couch.

“It was,” he said.  We’d just talked to his parents in California, and his voice, like them, was far away.  A birthday is a time filled with love, but it’s often that kind of love that makes you miss the people you love the most.  I snuggled in closer, and squeezed him hard.

And then the email came.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ZACK, said the subject line, and in the email a single line of message, the word “Love” followed by the names of all of the New York friends we’d left behind.  He clicked open the attached Powerpoint and found, on the first page, the words, “Happy birthday, Zack!  We are so bummed that we can’t celebrate with you this year so the Birthday Tradition has gone digital.  We miss and love you, The Gang.”  Next to it was a not so flattering picture of Zack asleep with a pizza box on his belly.

Every page was made by one of our friends, and every page featured a heart felt message and several embarrassing photos, many taken years ago, reminders of how long the friendships had endured.  Our friend who is currently in Thailand even submitted his response, and a lump formed in my throat as Zack clicked through page after page of messages of love.  Zack, whom I’ve seen cry less times than I can count on one three fingered hand, blinked back shiny tears.

It is not the birthday of the Birthday Tradition, but nonetheless, I would like to say why I love it.  I love it because the more positives in the world, the better.  I love it because it makes me feel grateful for my friends, and reminds me that they are the buoys that so often keep me afloat.  I love it because it’s easy, and simple, and kind.  I love it because I love to see people blushing, and I love it because it’s fun to watch the newbies squirm.  Mostly, though, I love it because it could show, even from an ocean away, that the love was still there, steadfast and strong.

The Vanishing Man

Dear Sibyl, This summer, one of my best friends from childhood contacted me.  Actually, he was the first person I ever Loved.  As a teen, I hid my feelings from him for five years.  Finally, I told him how I felt in a letter, and said that if he didn't feel the same we shouldn’t continue to be friends.  I didn't hear from him again until this summer---fifteen years later.

When I heard from him, I was both excited and wary.  It was great to have him back!  At the same time, he was newly divorced after being separated for a year and clearly looking for something.  He said that he had a crush on me all those many years ago too, and that he had thought about me many times.  He started to talk about wanting to come visit.  I live over 600 miles away.  His tone became more and more romantic, and it was around this time I decided to do a reality check.

I didn't say I wasn't interested.  On the contrary, I was very interested, but I said that if he was going to keep talking romance, I needed to see him.  I told him that I really want children and a family, and that if he wanted to get together I would need him to be open to exploring that possibility with me if things went well.  

He responded that he cared about me, but that his relationships usually happen more 'organically'.  I said I understood and was sincerely grateful for his honesty.  We both said we were still very much interested in maintaining the friendship.

I didn't hear from him after our conversation for four months.

On Christmas, he reached out.  Although my feelings were mixed, I was mostly happy to finally be hearing from him again.

He dated someone briefly in the intervening time but is once again alone.  A few months ago, he was checked out by a doctor and learned he is sterile.  He bought a house in order to move toward a place where he can have a wife and children.  He knew he was sterile when he bought it, but he hopes to have a family through non-traditional means.  He was not in a good place on Christmas, because he had just spent the whole day around family with lots of little children.  He was feeling lonely and sad.  I doubted when I hung up the phone that I would ever hear from him again.

Since then, he has apologized several times for being a bad friend to me, and the two of us have been communicating almost every day, texting or emailing.  It has felt good to have him back in my life.

My love life has been complicated recently, and I let him know that the first time we talked.  For the first time ever, I’ve had a Friend with Benefits.  My FwB is great, but I always knew he was moving away. In fact, FwB just left this morning.  

The longer my old crush and I talk the more I realize I have major unresolved feelings for him.  In fact, I have been unable to climax since our initial Christmas conversation.  The one time I successfully came, it was because I was concentrating really hard on pretending I was with Old Flame instead of with my lovely FwB.  This has never been a problem for me in the past.  

Mostly, boundaries with Old Flame have stayed platonic this time around, but last night, on the eve of my FwB's departure, I texted that I was considering spending the next six months in celibacy.  Old Flame texted back ('jokingly") that I should visit him so he could “knock the bottom out for me instead”.  We flirted with each other and with the idea of me visiting.

I know this situation is emotionally precarious.  I really do want a family and a partnership, but after years of searching, I’m also feeling exhausted.  I want to have fun.  I want to have sex, hence the FwB.  I want romance to just happen for me the way it seems to be happening for ALL of my friends without having to work to meet that someone special.  

Even more powerful than these needs for sex and fun is the feeling that this man still has lessons to teach me.  Maybe he's just going to teach me more about heartbreak, but there's only one way to know for certain.  I want to find out.

I want to visit.  I want have sex with him, but I don't know if the flirting is genuine.  If it's not, I definitely need to ask him to stop.  At the same time, I'm tired of being the boundary police, the one who has to bring up all the serious stuff.  I’m also dreading bringing it up since the last two times I brought it up he completely disappeared.  If it happens again, do I keep letting him back into my life?  Our relationship has meant so much to me over the years, I don’t want to cut him out.  How do I even start this conversation?  Again?

Sincerely, Deja Vu

Dear Deja Vu,

Sweet baby jesus, you have a LOT going on here, girl.

The first thing I need to point out here is that you have not seen this person in fifteen years.  Fifteen years.  I know he seems quite attractive and interesting over text, email, and the phone, but things can be very different in person: is he comfortable in his own skin?  Does he tip waitstaff well?  Is he a road rage driver?  Can he dance?  These are things you'll never know on g-chat, and could be deal breakers.

The thing is, I am getting the sense from your letter that nothing would be a deal breaker for you.  You want to correct this past hurt that you’ve held onto for all these years, and you’ll jump at any chance to do so.  It was not too much that when you expressed your desire for kids, he disappeared, or that he came back saying that he's sterile, then vanished again.  So far, this "relationship" is completely on his terms, and you are hanging on his every whim, like. . . well, like a teen with their first love.

It's like you took a snapshot of him at that time, over a decade ago, and you're in love with a photograph, not the real guy.  You're dying to get back that hormone fueled fusion the two of you shared, which, even then, was rooted in you pursuing and him distancing.

I understand your strong desire for a relationship -- the part of your letter that was about your longing for love, fun, and sex was the most relatable piece.  However, I have to be the un-fun boundaries holder that you no longer wish to be.

Reality is, none of your friends' loves are as easy as they seem from the outside.  Love is always messy, fraught with doubt, and everyone eventually has to do massive amounts of work to come to a good place with the other person.

To sum up, dear Deja Vu, Step One is to meet this guy.  Go ahead, have sex with him, get all your curiosity and teenage dreams fulfilled.  However, if there is even a glimmer of the pursuer-distancer pattern between you in person that you've established across the miles these past few months, run, Lola, run.  You don't want to spend your life offering him things just so he can turn them down.

I know you want a relationship with a long-term partner.  However, don’t settle for Old Flame if it turns out he’s really just looking for a flash in the pan.

Love,

Sibyl

XXI. états-unis

Postcards are my inexpensive souvenirs of choice. I buy them everywhere I go in lieu of gimmicky shot glasses or key chains. Soon I have a collection of dozens — romantic black and white Robert Doisneau photographs, prints of Chagall paintings, and pictures of the Norman countryside in the fall.

Some I put up on my walls, but most I place into books to stumble upon later as I flip through the pages. There is one in The Odyssey, another two in Pride & Prejudice along with a pressed red poppy I picked along the road leading to Clémence’s house. Whenever I read my now battered copy of Postcards from France, it's like looking through a photo album. I can see myself and my friends in each of the pages, through each of the postcards tucked between them.

I remember exactly when and where I’ve gotten each one. Looking at them takes me back to that moment, that snapshot of my life. I can almost picture what I was wearing and how the air smelled; from this distance, it all looks perfect. And the memories make me happy, even though I might not have been at the time. It’s easy to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.

More or Less Like Family, Part IV

By Molly Bradley Read Parts I, II, and III

That evening found my siblings and me in the family room before dinner. I could smell it; I was hungrier than I’d been in a long time. I’d walked further than I had in days---it wasn’t much but it felt good. Earning things felt good, in any small way I could earn them.

Mamadou stepped inside. Instead of watching TV on his feet awhile and then sitting down, as he usually did, he addressed me immediately.

“Molly.”

I looked up. So did several of my siblings. Then I looked around: Binta wasn’t there. Neither was Hangout Girl. Khady, however, looked nervous again.

“Can I show you some things now?” he asked.

I glanced at Khady. She looked quickly down to the mat beneath her, picking bits of stuffing out of a hole in its casing.

“I think we’re going to eat soon,” I told him.

“It’s not ready yet,” he said. “I saw them. The rice has only started to cook. I will not take long,” he added.

“Alright.” I stood. I didn’t look to see who was looking at me, or not, as I followed Mamadou out of the room.

His room was right next door. There was a mat on the ground, a few trunks of his belongings, and three or four folding chairs. He must have had company relatively often.

He gestured toward one of the chairs, and took a seat himself on the trunk beside it. From beneath his mattress, within an arm’s reach, he pulled a ratty folder full of papers. He opened it and began to show me what was inside. Documents, forms: a visa application; passport-sized photos; an old school report. The picture of him photocopied on the report looked much like him now.

“I went back to school later,” he said. “I went when I was little, but then I had my siblings, and they needed school. So I went back after, to finish high school.”

We looked through teachers’ comments. He read them to me, slowly. The handwriting was almost illegible. Either he knew his teachers’ writing very well, or he’d read and reread these hundreds of times. I’m sure he could have told them to me off the top of his head. Mamadou is a very good student and wants very much to learn. Mr. Bah is slowly learning the language, but he has a lot of patience for the work. Mamadou is a good student who deserves not to be so timid in the classroom.

At the back of the folder was a slim notebook, like French cahiers brouillon: soft-cover booklets with exceptionally thin paper and faded grid markings. Every page was filled with Mamadou’s handwriting. His letters were round and small, but the stems reached high and low, tangling with the lines above and below.

“These are songs that I wrote,” he told me. “I know I can’t – I know I must work and do this---” he gestured out the window, vaguely toward the onion fields---“but I would really like to sing. I think singers are the most good people.”

He began to read me his songs. They were all titled in a self-explanatory fashion: “The Hussling Life,” “I Love You Baby,” “It Is For My Family.” After the titles, though, the lyrics startled me: they were frank, and they were true. I couldn’t help but smile a little every time he used “hustling”---on the page, “hussling”---to refer to work.

He paused before reading “It Is For My Family.”

“I have not seen them in many years,” he said. “It’s for them that I’m here. Yes I want to go to Europe, England, America, but more important is that they are there.” I caught the slip of Wolof into English. The way to say that you’re fine, or that your family is well, is maangi fi rekk, or nungi fi rekk: I am here only, or they are here only. That they are in existence in the world is, perhaps, enough.

I read along as he read aloud. The lyrics weren’t spaced traditionally with short four-line verses: all the sentences ran together, every line full. He didn’t heed the margin, either. The page was brimming with ink.

He wrote the song to his father, his mother, his sister, his brother. There was nothing really singular about what he wrote---nothing about the song was specific to him at all. All the song really said, very plainly, was that he missed them.

“I really like that one,” I said.

He was silent. We both looked at the words on the page.

Mamadou shuffled things around again and returned to the front of the folder, to some photographs we’d skipped initially. He flipped through them, and introduced me to the people in each.

“I want to give you one,” he said. “You pick one picture.”

“I couldn’t take that from you,” I said. There were none of him alone, and I didn’t want to deprive him of seeing his own friends or family.

“I want to give one to you,” he insisted. “I want you to think of me.”

He let me flip through the pictures again, slowly. I paused at one of him and some friends. He and three men occupied most of the photograph, one of them crouching in front of the others standing, in a field of green. Definitely onion fields. I’d never seen anything so lush.

“These are my friends where I worked somewhere else,” he said. Mamadou was definitely the coolest of the crew, standing shirtless in the sun, shades on his face, pointing one hand toward the camera in a gotcha gesture or like a thumb-and-forefinger gun. In the other hand he held up a leaf from the fields where he worked, where the four of them stood. The crouching man, though---“my best friend in that place”---had the best smile.

I made my choice. He was about to put everything away when I asked, “Could you write that song---the one about family---on the back of this picture?”

He paused. “Give you this song?”

“No, not the book---I mean can you copy it, write it again, on this photo?”

He thought a minute, then nodded. I watched those small round letters appear by his hand on the sleek back of the picture. He murmured the words as he went, correcting mistakes from the first copy, making new ones on this second.

“Thank you,” I said when he was done. “This is really---” I was going to say nice of you, generous of you, thoughtful of you---something equally inane. I’m almost glad Binta’s entrance cut me off.

She stood still in the doorway for a second before she said, “Mama. On mange.” We’re eating.

When I returned to the family room, everyone was indeed already eating. I held my spoon and reached reluctantly, guiltily. I probably didn’t deserve dinner, for having disobeyed orders. I was ready to pay my dues---but then, as usual, my siblings collectively noticed I was being timid and all began insisting, “Mange, Mama! Mange!”

 ***

I said goodbye to as many siblings as I could the following morning. All the students had to leave their families, wherever they were living, and meet in the town square at eleven. When the time came I couldn’t find a lot of the little ones. Some were at school, I was told; others were off somewhere playing with friends.

Khady clung to my waist and kissed it. She said she couldn’t promise to text me because she didn’t have her own cell phone, but maybe Binta would let her use hers. Over Khady’s head I looked at Binta, who shrugged. Khady released me and at first I didn’t make a move. But Binta came and wrapped me in a tight hug.

“Be good,” she told me. “Be careful.” She squeezed my shoulders, then let me go with a smile. I hadn’t seen that soft a smile on her before.

Hangout Girl had been hanging behind Binta. Now she came and held my arms at my sides to give me a clumsy bise, one kiss on either cheek, the way the French do. She snickered as she and Binta turned and went back inside the family room.

I said goodbye to my parents and held their hands while I thanked them. Before I left the place I looked toward Mamadou’s room, and I thought of asking where he was. But I knew, and we’d had enough of a goodbye. I had his name, address, and photograph. And his song.

He wasn’t there, but leaving my family felt more like leaving him. I wished I were going for his sake---were going to Saint Louis to find things to send back to him. Not necessarily money, but postcards, pictures, books. Music, certainly. Maybe a world map.

Khady helped me carry my bags to the town square. It was in part a parting, and in part a homecoming. I was relieved to see the friends I’d come to know so well in Dakar, to speak English, to joke around without explanation. We were all exhausted and ready to go.

Khady got quiet around all of the reunion noise. I reached for her hand and squeezed it.

“Don’t take out the braids,” she said.

“I’m going to have to, later,” I said. “But I won’t ever be as pretty again as I am now.”

She smiled. First it was tender, and then it was just smug. Another student’s host sister was watching our exchange. Khady stuck her tongue out at the scrawny girl and squeezed my hand back.

On the bus to Saint Louis we were chattering like children with new words. A few other students had seen the onion fields.

“They didn’t let me do anything,” said my friend Arielle. “The men just laughed when I asked if I could help.”

I thought of Mamadou and his perfect willingness to let me be a part of his work, a part of things. I could see sweating Mamadou, buckets in hand, sprinting (as well as he could) across my father’s field. I thought of him hustling his way up the coast of Africa, edging slowly, stoically and slowly edging up and out of his continent for mine, either of them.

“They wanted to let me. They tried,” I said, “but I don’t think I did much.”

See You On the Other Side

The extreme nesting has started. Despite previously professing my dislike of babies, I am a woman possessed by the need to finger small hats and little booties. I open his drawers, where Charley and I have washed and folded everything, several times a day to imagine the small person that will fill these outfits. A second kid, especially of the same sex has a very distinct position to fill with those outfits. His clothes are a mixture of the memories of Charley as a baby, each one still strong in my mind, and a few new things I have purchased, mostly little neon socks and hats. (Where do all those baby socks disappear to?) I want him to look like Charley and be his own little guy all at the same time. I seem to be much more curious this time what he will look like and how big he will be. The first time around, all babies seemed about the same size to me. I thought it was a bit silly putting their weights on announcements, did it really matter? Now, as a second time mom, I know there is a HUGE difference between a 6 pound baby and a 9 pound one. (And what that means for your labor). I also know how different they can all look. It feels a bit like I’ll be crossing the great divide soon. Maybe I will be wiser, but probably just more tired looking. (Good thing I invested in new mascara). I’m hoping one day I will be wiser, that I will look at their sibling relationship and see insight into my own. I hope that I will learn things about Charley I didn’t even realize through his sibling. And I imagine ‘baby brother’ will continue to teach me things where Charley left off. It will be a dance. I already look at my friends with only one kid and think, ‘Huh, that looks easy’. And my friend who recently had her second daughter with a similar age difference seems completely overwhelmed. I will agree that an adjustment from none to one is the toughest to get through, but adding a second seems like adding to the juggling act. A special kind of chaos is apparent in those houses with several children. They are a little bit messier and a little bit louder. We will be one of those houses soon, and I will see you all on the other side.

Both Sides

One year, shortly before we were to leave for Christmas Eve mass, and hours before the entire family was to descend on our house to celebrate the holiday, the basement pipes exploded. My father---not the handiest, to be sure---valiantly tried to patch the pipes, while balancing precariously on a folding chair. My mom’s parting words, as we fled the scene and my dad was almost electrocuted by the water gushing through the overhead lights, were not thoughts of concern, but threats in regards to my father fixing things FAST---and most certainly before our guests arrived. It turned out that the busted pipes were the result of a backed-up garbage disposal and 100% my mom’s fault. I can’t remember the culprit on this particular occasion, but she was known to put literally everything but the kitchen sink down the disposal---and that was only because to do so would have been impossible. Everything else was fair game, including the carcass from the Thanksgiving turkey. The actual events that unfolded on this particular holiday were unusual, but the stress and anxiety that came with the busted pipes were par for the course. My mom had a habit of spending the majority of the day, before a holiday or other special event, in a state of panic. She rushed all of us through showers and outfit changes, erupting from time to time as her stress level rose throughout the day. But without fail, regardless of the outbursts and pacing and hours of unnecessary tension, a much different scene played out as we, a family of five, were seemingly ready to leave the house.  While my sisters and I sat waiting in the backseat of the family car, arguing over who had to sit in the middle, and my dad stood waiting at the front door, my mom’s coat in hand, she slowly---patiently, even---applied one last coat of nail polish. She wore acrylics at the time (it was the ‘80s---who didn’t?) and I remember them as long and bright. My dad then led the way to the car, opening and closing doors for her, to prevent any smudged nails. She never seemed even slightly ruffled by this last minute detour, while the rest of us huffed and puffed, now waiting on her. Punctuality was not her strong suit back then, except when it came to weddings and funerals, a golden rule she reminded us of repeatedly. My aunt captured this perfectly, noting that “Your mom is always speeding, yet always still late.”

Oh yes, and the speeding. My mom came close to losing her license more than once, due to her propensity for putting the “pedal to the metal," as she called it. There’s folklore in the family of one such incident, involving a swim lesson drop-off for my sisters. I was still a baby, too young for lessons, but along for the ride anyway. With three kids packed into the car, and most likely running late, I screamed for the entire ride. A mile from swim lessons, speeding through a notoriously monitored area, you might guess what happened next. A police officer pulled out from behind my mom, turning his lights on. With a screaming baby and two whining kids in the car, my mom made the only logical decision: she ignored the flashing lights behind her. For five minutes, she calmly led the police officer to her intended destination. Once there, she finally pulled over, delivering my sisters to their lesson on time and feigning innocence to any and all infractions of the law.

My mom wanted things done how she wanted them, when she wanted them. She was known to direct my dad about a given household task in one breath---power washing the back windows or painting the family room, for instance---and in the next, pull out the ladder to start the painting herself. We hosted a bridal shower together a few years ago, planning to cook much of the brunch food ourselves on the morning of the shower. I woke to the smell of eggs and ham and the sounds of a very busy kitchen downstairs. She just could not be bothered waiting for me---or anyone, for that matter. Once, while visiting my sister in Atlanta, she decided that the pictures in the bedroom were hung entirely too high. Rather than waiting to discuss this observation with my sister, she took care of it in her own way: by re-hanging each and every picture while Meg was in the shower. I wasn’t there, but I have no doubt that she also told my sister exactly what she thought of her decorating skills, or lack thereof.  Her now infamous statement, “I’m not going to say a word,” was always followed by the exact opposite, and I’m not proud of how often I cut our conversations short when she didn’t agree with me. What I wouldn't give to hear her opinion on anything right now, solicited or not.

The thing is, my mom wasn't perfect. She was impatient and opinionated, bossy and loud. She broke rules that she didn't find important. She lived by her truths, her own moral code. A note I received after my mom died has stuck with me, almost a year later. A friend's mom wrote that although she did not know her well, she got the sense that my mom was fun. And she was right. My mom was also loving, and kind, and generous, and open-hearted, and funny, and honest. She will forever be the mother, the matriarch, the friend, the hostess, the woman that I strive to be. And not in spite of her imperfections---but because of them. As time passes and my memories mellow, I need to remember it all: the good and the bad. Both sides.

Reclamation

How do we reclaim spaces and moments that we used to exist in and define ourselves by? Loss takes with it pieces of our daily lives---pieces that sustained us and brought joy to our lives---whether we lost a home, a community, a relationship, or a person. I’ve experienced moments of mild unease or anxiety in returning to places that used to be “home,” or meeting up with people who used to feel like “home,” re-doing activities I used to do in relationships that felt like “home.” However, there is power in reclaiming these as my own; there is power in actively creating my own home. During this chilly winter season, I have been reminded of how reclamation is a powerful part of my own healing process.

Nearly seven years ago, on a typical sunny day in Colorado, my father was killed in an avalanche. He was skiing inbounds at a resort, following the rules. Without much conscious thought, I put my love of skiing (and winter outdoorsy-ness in general) in a metaphorical closet, nervous to tempt fate and to unsettle my own emotional healing.

My most recent story of reclamation happened this past weekend, among friends, high spirits, and blistery icy slopes in Maine. Leading up to the trip, I approached downhill skiing as something “I used to love” or that “I can still do moderately well.” Since my father’s death, it ceased to be a defining factor in my life. I had skied a few times in the years between that day and this past weekend, the most significant being a visit to the run he died on. The blue and white sign at the top of the run now reads “David’s run.” But, that experience, was more a sense of visiting---visiting the place he died, visiting his world---it wasn’t mine.

In Maine, I chased guy friends, who will always ski faster than me but are willing to pause to let me catch up, down the icy slopes. In some moments I felt transferred back into childhood, peacefully enjoying my skis gliding over powdery snow. In other moments I struggled, silently cursing the ice and shrubs sticking out of the snow. A sense of bliss followed the entire experience, aided by the surprise of still knowing how to ski and the forging of new friendships---where we share values related to being outside. Values that represent “home” for me. I am not sure what exact transformation took place or on which ski run, but skiing felt comfortable and peaceful. I can welcome the world of skiing and the community it encompasses back into my life.

Central to the outdoorsy world I grew up in, my family spent holidays at a YMCA camp tucked away in the Rocky Mountains. The camp is set between downhill ski resorts and hundreds of miles of cross country skiing. It is a gorgeous winter heaven. The year after my father died, we retreated to one of these cabins for a painful and lonely Christmas. We passed the holiday estranged from each other, engulfed in our individual grief. The camp felt haunted by childhood memories and impossible images of the future without my father.

It was six years before we plotted our return this past December. Together, we visited a sign the camp constructed in memory of my father. This year, the same space felt peaceful and healing. I felt my family take a collective deep breath and embrace this space, which was once ours and now is ours again. Reclaimed.

Curled up by the wood fire, I smiled as my mom and sister took out old card games, which contained records of highest and lowest scores throughout the history of our family playing the game. They lightheartedly reminisced about my dad’s competitiveness and my grandmother’s love of dominos with joyful memories of past holidays. As the pain withdrew from the memories over the years, we stepped back into our relationships with each other and again became a family that visits the places where it grew together over and over again to make new memories.

The sound of one door closing

I’ve never liked the word “closure.”  I know what people think they mean when they say it---this relic word from a self-help era gone by.  The concept of closure seems almost darling, with its naiveté, it’s aspirational quality.  In my experience, if you are employing this term, it is in the context of searching for answers and resolution to the wholly chaotic and mysterious.  Human relating is sloppy and the sad fact is that much of it never ultimately makes sense.  Whether relationships are historic or enduring; whether they are romantic, familial or with friends. . . chances are you might never totally get what they were as you look back or how to operate successfully within them moving forward.  And this is actually good news. At the beginning of the end of one of my young relationships, I was confronted with the fallacy of seeking tidy understanding when it comes to other humans.  I sat in a therapist’s office, where I had come week after week, unpacking stories of conflict and misery.  I was living with a man (a boy, really) who didn’t know himself and didn’t appear to even particularly like me most of the time.  I spent countless hours and too large a ratio of a non-profit salary on parsing this mess.  I’m not sure whether my therapist had just had it with me or whether she saw that I was ready to be nudged along, but when I said something about needing “closure” in order to walk away, she simply said, ”Why?” (a question, I later learned in my own clinical training, you almost never ask a client).

I had taken for granted that this is what adults did in relationships.  I assumed the idea was to make a careful, rational selection of a partner, ride the arc of the relationship to some logical conclusion and then part ways with a mutual understanding of the facts.  It goes without saying that I never made any kind of clear-eyed choice when it came to being with this man and virtually every moment with him was one baffling disconnect after another.  So, damned if I wasn’t going to try and exert some control over its’ ending.

What I learned from her “Why?” and the succession of “Whys” that followed---pursuing my train of thought until I ran out of answers (“Why do you need to make sense of it?” “Why does it matter what people will think?” ad infinitum.)---was that most of the need for closure was about him or other people.  I was completely engrossed in his behavior, what it all meant, whether or not he was capable of change, what it said about me (to whom?) if I just gave up on this person I had claimed to love.  It was also a way to remain perpetually engaged in a relationship that I felt terrified of ending.  What a brilliant excuse for staying stuck if you just continue to hang in there until you make your way out of the labyrinth!  Except that almost nobody emerges to see the light of day when they are entangled like this with another person.

Like for most people, true lightning bolt moments are incredibly rare in my consciousness.  This happened to be one of them.  I felt the gears shift in my brain and a single thought shoved all others aside---“There is no reason why.”  There was no explanation THERE WOULD NEVER BE AN EXPLANATION for why he acted the way he did or why I felt the need to spend many foundational years working on the calculus proof of this person.  The very instant I accepted that closure wasn’t necessary, wasn’t even possible, I had no other choice but to leave him for good.

It was fucking beautiful.  I don’t say this so much as an endictment of that particular relationship as much as acknowledging the liberating psychic gift it was.  Once you realize that full and true understanding of others, especially when you are embroiled in love, isn’t critical or all that promising, you are much more free to go.  Paradoxically, this also gives you the best chance at making it work.

Today I have a few friends mired in relationships or wrestling with ghosts of relationships with the aim of achieving this emotional state of closure.  I want so much to release them from the bondage of this notion.  Days, months, years pass with large swaths of their emotional lives occupied by this thing that will never happen.  The fantasy of closure is that you will be somehow elevated to more sophisticated relating in the future, if you can just get some perspective on the thing that came before.  The bottom line is that when you are engaged with an appropriate partner, you evolve together and tackle things along the way and could therefore never be left holding a heavy bag of unanswerable questions at the end.  The trick, then, is to choose well at the outset or recognize that you are barreling toward a dead end.

You should sell that

I’ve been reading Etsy’s “Quit Your Day Job” series since my senior year of college. Although I didn’t have a full-time job, something about the mystery of the “alternative” career path held my attention. I graduated in 2009 with the inaugural class of recession babies, and like many in my cohort, I went to grad school with the hope of staying out of the tanking job market for just a few more years. I wasn’t exactly sure where my studies would take me, or how I’d make a living after another round of coursework, but I was fascinated, albeit terrified, by the upheaval that seemed to be taking place in the hierarchy of professions. While many were devastated by layoffs and cutbacks, it seemed that every corner of the internet was highlighting another creative entrepreneur who had left her “safe” day job to make a living through her art.

As jobs that had once been considered stable became obsolete, creative professions and other more “risky” pursuits were being thrust into the spotlight. What once seemed risky came to be viewed as self-sufficient, as less traditional paths began to redefine success and professional freedom.

Part of why I’m obsessed with reading all of those quit-your-day-job stories and interviews with full-time bloggers and creative professionals, is not that I want to do what they do, necessarily, but rather that their trailblazing inspires a bit of confidence in my own choices as I find my way in a new professional landscape.

One of the downsides of the greater visibility of creative professions, however, is the “You should sell that” mentality, otherwise known as the death of the hobby. It’s the idea that every handmade gift or creative passion is the seed for a money-making venture. It’s the sense that your art is not legitimate if you’re not selling it, or that you’re not a real writer if you don’t make a living through your writing.

For my own part, I admire those who make a living through their art, as well as those who are creating beyond business hours. There are as many ways to practice creativity as there are creators, and I think it’s so important to honor them all. As I juggle multiple roles, all under the umbrella of words-on-paper and words-on-screen, I am especially inspired by those whose creative integrity infuses all of their work, whether it takes place in an office or a studio, whether for love, leisure, or livelihood.

The Same but Not Equal

I’m a big believer in asking questions.  Lots of them. Ask until you understand or until the person you’re talking to runs out of explanations, then ask some more. There’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a few years now. What’s the difference between marriages and civil unions and why is it important.  From the outside looking in, I just didn’t understand, not really.  Was it a name thing, like you say potato I say potahto? Was it an injustice, a matter of civil liberties? Was it black and white or shades of grey? Was there a right answer? I just didn’t know. And I didn’t ask enough questions.  I didn’t push for answers or ask the folks who would know, and I had opportunities to. I accepted that it was different, that it was less than, and that was a bad thing. But I didn’t really get it.

Sometimes you experience something and it strikes you to your core.  Maybe you read it, maybe you saw it, maybe you heard it, but all of a sudden there is a wealth of knowledge and emotion that wasn’t there before.  That’s how I felt this week when I read This.

I have a cousin who lives in Illinois.  She’s quite simply amazing, and when Illinois passed legislation allowing civil unions she and her equally awesome girlfriend joined thousands of other couples and got unionized (no, that’s not a real word). They’ve been a couple for longer than my husband and I, so as I was reading the article I couldn’t help compare, my relationship to hers.

For example, I’m married everywhere I go.  Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, Mount Rushmore and Disney World.  Always Married.  My cousin is legally committed only in the state of Illinois.  Only.  If she so much as crosses the border into Indiana, poof, she’s single.  Her legally recognized partner is now her girlfriend.  And those rights she has in Illinois, don’t apply in Indiana.  She has no legal claim, no legal responsibility, no legal anything with a woman she has committed to.

If my husband and I are (god forbid) in a car crash in Tennessee, I have rights. I can talk to the doctors, I can make decisions for him and about his health if he were unable to do so himself.  My cousin and her girlfriend might as well be college roommates for the legal rights they would have in such a situation.  I cannot imagine the pain and helplessness of such a situation.  I think of my husband. I think of the unthinkable, if something happened to him, and I was told I had no say, no rights, no voice. I don’t know how I wouldn’t live in fear of that every day.  I don’t know how that wouldn’t break me, the mere thought of it.

I hesitated before writing this.  I hardly ever talk politics, even with my closest friends and family, for several reasons---one of them being I believe people have the right to make choices, and just because someone makes a different choice doesn’t mean that they’re wrong and I’m right, it just means we made different choices.  Did I really want to get political on the Equals Record?  Then I realized two things: one, just because this has been made to be a political issue, does not mean that is all it is. And two---this is the Equals Record.  So maybe it’s a good place to talk about equality.

I believe my cousin is equal to me in every way but those she surpasses me.  I believe her heart and her brain are roughly equal to mine as are her abilities to reason, to make decisions, and to love.  She and I are both the same in that we love another.  But that is where the similarities end, at least for now. One of us is married, and one is not.  I don’t have the words to express how wrong that is. To express the injustice. To express the pain and the fight.  I just don’t have them. I hope someone else does.

For all the tables we danced on

These words sound better to the tune of this.

"we've lived in bars and danced on the tables hotels trains and ships that sail we sim with sharks and fly with aeroplanes in the air"

- Cat Power, Lived in Bars

"It is always important to dance."

This phrase recurs in my friend Jonathon's book, as a life philosophy that merits reiteration.

I had never thought of dancing as something that invites the adjective "important" until I moved to Guatemala, where Jonathon and my friendship was born. My Guatemala was steeped in importance and imperatives, in trauma and injustice. It was an outsized kind of importance, the kind that shows you the limits of your knowledge and highlights the boundaries of what you can do to understand mass atrocities and serve their survivors. At no point did I feel qualified for the tasks required of me in Guatemala; and even if in some universe, I were qualified to perform the tasks themselves, no part of me was prepared for the emotional weight, vicarious trauma, and ceaseless heartbreak.

It seems curious, then, that Guatemala was where we danced. We danced with vigor and with no shame, with no reservation and with gusto---every single time, with gusto. We danced on beaches and atop volcanoes, in living rooms and on coffee tables. Perhaps that was the place that inspired Jonathon to posit that "it is always important to dance."

In my homeland Greece, dance is barely a contact sport. Fingers may graze each other, but for the rest of it, you are on your own. You are fully responsible for wiggling your own shoulders, moving your own knees, swaying your hips, without the help of hips glued onto your own. Much of what I love about dancing in Latin America calls back to my original conception of dancing. While salsa and merengue inspire more affection than my native Syrtaki, they evoke jubilation and look like hugs in motion. It is perhaps these preconceived notions of mine about dancing that made "grinding" an enigma when I arrived at an American college campus at the age of 17. My idea of dancing involved synchronized skipping around, jubilant bopping, wiggling and nodding along and smiling, endless smiling---and maybe doing all that atop a table or two, yelling Opa! for good measure.

Rediscovering that obscure genre of dancing in Guatemala felt like a homecoming---a realization that when the workday came to an end, others would wish to join me for a round of salsa or a wiggle on top of a table. Others felt, like Jonathon did, that "it is always important to dance." The Guatemalan table-dancing marked me in ways that became impossible to forget, delivering another imperative: to continue dancing, with gusto, everywhere.

And so there was the summer of 2012, on a Halkidiki beach in Greece, with some of my best friends, sweat dripping down our faces, sand on our feet. There were hoarse voices and tsipouro and broken glass and stomping around and knowing every word. There is a beauty to dancing in your own language.

There was the first Los Fletcheros concert, put on by the illustrious band of my beloved graduate school. This, too, came with ample stomping and hugging---so much hugging. Every dancing experience comes with its own soundtrack. If there were a soundtrack to my Los Fletcheros this year, it would be that of nostalgia: The Killers, Mumford & Sons, MGMT. It would be the soundtrack of youth.

This past weekend, Los Fletcheros performed on my graduate school's annual ski trip, a tradition imbued with wine, flurries, and more kissing than a library typically inspires. Graduate school dancing reminds me of all I have loved about Greece, Guatemala, and everywhere in between: it is affectionate, but not intrusive; jubilant, but (ehm, usually) not sloppy. It is undeniably alive. This is what has motivated me and Taryn---jokingly, I hope---to want to open a club called The Graduate Student.

True to our graduate student selves, Katherine and I danced on a windowsill. Friends kissed in the background. Yet other friends nearly spilled drinks on the band. Thirteen of us left our cards at the bar. Who-knows-how-many actually collected them the next morning. We went home with the wrong jackets, each other's scarves, or no jackets and scarves at all.

We all need hugs in motion, sweaty faces, hoarse voices. All hearts need to move, and be moved. And, courtesy of Los Fletcheros, I am starting my life this week with an extra dose of whimsy. This column is called Eternally Nostalgic and, in some senses, I feel that this reflection is doing its namesake an injustice. Can you be nostalgic about an experience that you just had---an experience which you are, in effect, still having?  Los Fletcheros inspire a different, sweeter sort of nostalgia: a nostalgia for the moments in which you felt truly alive. An ode to whimsy, if you will.

Sacagawea: Guide. Interpreter. American Symbol.

 

She adorns our dollar coins and she makes a cameo in almost every fifth-grade textbook, but how much do you really know about Sacagawea?

If you’re like me, not that much. It’s all very gratifying to imagine the stalwart Native American guide for the Lewis & Clark expedition leading her white hosts over mountains and across rivers, all while carting a small baby on her back in a leather baby-sack; but the real story is both less romantic and potentially more impressive.

Sacagawea was born to a Shoshone tribe in present-day Idaho around 1788, just a few years after a certain British colony had gained independence on the other side of the continent. When she was 11 or 12, a battle with the Hidatsa Indians resulted in Sacagawea’s capture and transport to what is now North Dakota.

It was here that young Sacagawea met the man who would be her husband—one Toussaint Charbonneau, a Quebecois fur trapper who was living amongst the Hidatsa tribe. I can just picture the bearded man’s man, covered in mangy fox fur, courting the thirteen-year-old (yuck) Shoshone transplant in the snowy wastelands of North Dakota. Let’s be honest. No one will ever make a love story out of it.

A few years later, two dudes named Lewis and Clark were on their way to chart the newly-purchased Louisiana Territory, of Louisiana Purchase fame, and they enlisted Charbonneau to help guide and interpret. Sacagawea was an added bonus: since they would largely be passing through Shoshone territory (oops---I mean America), her expertise in that language was an asset.

The romantic images of Sacagawea summiting mountain crests, arm outstretched to beckon a weary but bright-eyed Lewis and Clark into the next gleaming American valley, are kind of, well, idealized. Surprising, I know. In reality, Sacagawea served as more of an interpreter than an actual guide, and Lewis and Clark frequently make reference to her as “the squar [squaw],” “the wife of Charbonneau,” and, inexplicably, “Janey.” Ever so occasionally, by her actual name (or more, their best approximation of it).

At one point, the expedition nearly lost a boatload of letters and other important crap that Lewis and Clark were toting around. Sacagawea speedily retrieved the items before they sank or were swept away; and in gratitude, the pair named the waterway the Sacagawea River.

Which kinda seems like a really typical Lewis/Clark move to pull, if you know what I mean. “Oh geez, thanks, Sacagawea! . . . You know what I’m gonna do? This river? I’m gonna name it after you. There. It’s been named. I’ve decreed it. From now on, everyone will call this the Sacagawea River. Okay, let’s keep moving. Keep up.”

Which she did, even with a baby on her back. The baby, Jean Baptiste, was a big hit with the guys. Clark liked the little guy so much that, it seems, years later, after Sacagawea’s death, he adopted him. (Toussaint was still alive, but probably kind of a deadbeat, anyway.)

While Sacagawea’s role in the Lewis and Clark expedition can be overstated, it doesn’t diminish the significance of what she did. Her knowledge opened up new frontiers to the American explorers, and she was hence able to practice an autonomy and freedom of movement unknown to most other American or native women of her time. It’s been speculated that another of her important roles in the expedition was to serve as a symbol of peace—most native groups understood that the presence of a woman in a party meant there were no intentions of war. (Which in and of itself is an interesting kind of powerful not-power. For more on this, read Juliana Barr’s excellent Peace Came in the Form of a Woman.)

In the end we all know very little about Sacagawea, the person. The images that adorn our statues and our numismatics are based on the faces of more contemporary Shoshone women, as no likenesses of S herself have survived the centuries. We don’t even know when she died---while most believe she died in 1812, just a few years after the expedition, some think she actually lived to a ripe old age and eventually returned to her people in Idaho.

But who needs an accurate likeness or a detailed minutiae of her life? What we can say, is. . . the fact that she’s remembered so well when almost all we have to go off of are some scant, fairly dismissive mentions in the journals of two important men, means she’s a pretty damn important woman. That’s only logical.

What’s Your Story, Little Friend?

As Milan Kundera said, “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring---it was peace.” ----------------

Last Saturday I went to the dog shelter with Husband. Since I lost Gaia I have spent so much time crying and thinking of all the precious memories of our time together. Sorrow can be the worst enemy, a dangerous emotion, a sort of secret that you hold near you, that sometimes comes and knocks at your door, which you would never want to open.

Gaia left such a big hole in my life, and at some point I thought how risky it could be to let the wave of pain flow into me without trying to defeat it. I can’t consider welcoming another dog in my heart, yet. I just don’t think there would be as much room for him as Gaia had for herself. But I have found very helpful to visit other dogs at a shelter near home.  Their company comforts me, it helps me think that I can see Gaia in their eyes and that somehow she is still alive in them. And maybe I can bring them little drops of happiness, too.

So I met Tata. She is the sweetest dog of all. Almost 14 years old, a little chubby, and quite lazy as the volunteers told me, she wouldn’t have enough of cuddles. She was literally attached to the fence, which unfortunately I could not enter---only volunteers can. She has lived the last six years at the dog shelter. I wonder who could get rid of her this way. A dog like this is a friend, not a burden.

And then there was Pelo (the one on the left). Pelo was brought to the shelter by a woman who found him near her house weak and hungry. He can’t walk well, and he limped a little as came towards me. One family decided to adopt him a few months ago, but as they took him home he was not eating and looked very uncomfortable, he was basically untouchable. Pelo is still traumatized by his past and he doesn’t seem to want to forgive humans for what they did to him.

Ciuffo, probably a crossbreed with a border collie, was brought to the shelter ten days ago. He is only 1 year old, and you can see how much he needs to run and play. Certainly, a shelter is no place for him. His story is weird---the two women who brought him there were mother and daughter, and they simply said they couldn’t take care of him anymore. No further explanation, just like that. As I approached Ciuffo, he came to me with wide open eyes and hopeful. But when he saw my husband, he literally ran away. No matter what we tried to do to placate him, he wouldn’t trust him at all. We thought he must have suffered for some severe trauma . . . maybe Husband reminds him of some bad person who used to hit him?

What’s your story, little friend? What is your journey? What happened to you that made you so distrustful?

In the end, I’m happy all these dogs, and many more, found a refuge in this shelter. Some of them would prefer to live with the company of a new careful family, spending their days on a couch. But some of them would rather stay at the shelter, close to other dogs and far from humans. Anyhow, I’m thankful to all the volunteers who offer their service. They take the dogs to the closest field for a walk, they feed them, they clean them. But over all, they have given these dogs friendship, and hope for a better future.

Drinking Deep

I love fresh starts: springtime, birthdays, the turning of a new year. January always gives me a feeling of limitless possibility, as well as a craving for inward-turning, reflection, the chance to take stock of where I’ve been and where I want to go. I rang in the New Year this year with a grateful heart, filled to bursting with amazement at everything that has come into my life in the last twelve months: A new home, a true medical miracle, a tiny life kicking and growing inside me. This time last year, I could not have imagined the wealth of happinesses that 2012 would bring. Now, in retrospect, I am awed.

As the weeks of December ticked by, I found myself thinking about my hopes and dreams for the new year. I am a lover of goals and a maker of resolutions; I love having things to bring structure and order to my life, and ideals to strive for. Since high school, I’ve faithfully set resolutions and chosen themes to focus on for each new year, and many times I’ve seen my life change in profound ways as a result.

Still, as I pondered on 2013, I felt stumped. What could I resolve to do in a year that would bring so much change, so many unknowns? While this year is still young, my husband and I will be welcoming a newborn into our lives, adding a completely new element into our otherwise familiar existence. Could I really make resolutions when I had no idea what this year would bring?

Could I ask anything more of myself than simply to be there, living and breathing the new adventures that 2013 brings?

I just want this to be a year of drinking deep, I found myself thinking. I don’t want to miss a second; I don’t want to get to the end and regret the times I wasn’t present for the moments that counted.

And that, in the end, sums up my sole resolution for this new year:

Drink deep. 

Be there, wherever “there” may be.

Give myself a little grace when I inevitably fall short.

Let go of a few of those things on my to-do list.

Cherish these last weeks of pregnancy, and cherish the hectic newborn weeks to come afterward.

Let myself be filled with love for my new little daughter—this soul that stands on the cusp of this world—and let go of less important things.

I don’t know, here on the threshold of the coming year, what 2013 will bring. Like most years, I imagine it will carry its share of pain along with the joys, and I’m sure that keeping my temper and equilibrium after one too many nights spent soothing a newborn will be a challenge. There will probably be moments of exhaustion, of bleary-eyed apathy, of downright frustration.

But there will be so many moments of beauty, too.

And I don’t want to miss a single one.

Cooped Up

It’s not a city thing, exactly. The wintertime in this hemisphere means spending large amounts of time indoors for lots of people. But in a January that’s filled with both wintry days and looming deadlines, time spent indoors can reach epic proportions. Last week I tallied up the hours that I spent within the four (very close) walls of our apartment and the number honestly shocked me. If I was being kept here against my will, I’m pretty sure my captors would allow me more time to see the outside world than I’ve been allowing myself lately.

It’s not that I don’t get out at all. I take a walk almost every single morning of my life. But when juxtaposed with the hours that I’ve been spending hunched at my desk, the habit hardly seems notable.

I keep records of my morning journeys, snapping pictures of the sights that I encounter around the neighborhood and offering them up for public viewing as proof  for other people, and myself, that it hasn’t been 24 hours out of 24 that I’ve spent inside. Sharing photos publicly gives me ample opportunity to encounter the various record-keeping of other people’s moments. More than once this month I’ve caught myself near to drooling at someone’s trip to the local pharmacy---to say nothing of someone else’s brightly colored journey to the Amalfi Coast.

Of course I know that lusting after someone else’s peripatetic tendencies doesn’t get me any closer to making contact with the outside world. The only thing to do is to finish the projects I’m in the midst of and pay better attention to allowing myself a bit of breathing room in the next month. For now, I’ll rely on my old tips for surviving life indoors and find comfort in my flowering paperwhite bulbs and my still birdless bird feeder. In my socked feet I’ll move from my bed, to the couch, to the kitchen table in an effort to get my writing done and not turn into a lump of mush in the process. There’s comfort in knowing that deadlines will be met and spring will come again, and in having a hunch at least, that I’m not the only one out there who’s feeling a bit cooped up.

Looking Forward: Storytellers.

Over dinner this week, my sister-in-law (Calla’s mother, and a fellow writer) and I discovered that we share a common fear: the bedtime story. “Tell me a story,” Calla will say on nights when I babysit. She’ll look at me imploringly, tucked in her bed alongside her stuffed warthog and plush pygmy lemur.

This is when the cold sweat begins. “Will you help me tell it?” is my response, every time.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Great. Once there was. . . a banana,” I’ll start, choosing my words haltingly. “A banana named Jim."

Usually, at this point, Calla is staring at me, eagerly awaiting what spellbinding fate might befall an anthropomorphized fruit. “And then what?”

“Hmm. And then. . . and then. . .” I’ll stammer, before inevitably admitting defeat. “You know what? That’s a great question. Why don’t you tell me?”

***

In the tenth grade, I wrote a short story for my English class that was told from the point of view of a man on death row. The same year, I wrote another piece from the perspective of a little boy who heard voices. I followed that with yet another, about an inner city teenager who’d been kicked out of school. (Clearly, at fifteen, I was interested in exploring the darker side of the human experience.)

I received good marks on these stories at the time; still, they’re pieces that embarrass me now---full of vague details and street slang I didn’t know how to use.

These were stories I didn’t know how to tell.

Today, as a writer, I still doubt my story-telling abilities. Essays, I can handle. Interviews are no problem. But a story is a different animal.

I once overheard a college classmate of mine wonder aloud, “do you have to live like a rock star in order to be a good writer?”

At the time, I understood exactly what he meant. We were being told in our workshops to write what we knew. But in order to tell good stories, did this mean we had to live them first?

***

There came a time last summer when, in the midst of a sort of quarter-life crisis, I decided to prioritize adventure above (almost) all other things. Whenever I was invited out---or presented with a new experience, big or small---I resolved to say yes.

As I’ve shared with you at times here, the results of that decision have often come at the expense of comfort. I can’t think of a more tumultuous time in my life, but then again, I can’t think of a period more exhilarating, either.

My friend Megan sent me a quote yesterday morning from Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which reads, in part: “to live. . . is to acquire the words to a story.”

Yes. At the very least, what I’m doing now is collecting stories. “Sometimes,” I told Megan,” I’m so interested in certain emotions that I’ll put myself in situations---even if they’re uncomfortable---just so I’ll know what they feel like.”

If I live them, I’ll be able to write about them. Share them. Use them.

Whether or not this will improve the quality of my bedtime stories remains to be seen.

Labor Pains

I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon among mothers, myself included. It seems that as soon as they have finished labor, they completely forget it. I ask my other mom friends for advice, and their eyes glaze over, they tilt their heads. ‘Hmmm, did I have an epidural? I can’t remember if my water broke.’ The same often goes for developmental stages. I look for sympathy among women my mother’s age and it seems they don’t recall the specific struggles of a toddler, or the pains of pregnancy. I can remember trying to recall my labor pains directly afterwards and them slipping from my memory like so much water in my hands. Speaking of water, the other evening I had quite a scare. I still have five more weeks until my due date, but I was convinced in the middle of the night that my water was leaking. It was the strangest feeling and I called my husband down from his office upstairs so that we could freak out together on the bathroom floor, frantically googling until I had scared myself enough not to sleep a wink. There’s so much emotion with childbirth. I didn’t have as many crying fits during this pregnancy, but that night I was laughing and sobbing all at the same time again. I don’t think it was leaking, nothing more came out and I had no contractions. The whole experience scared me enough that I went into extreme nesting mode. We spent the weekend at Ikea and I washed miniature baby clothes. It reminded me that there are many different ways to deliver a baby, no less valid than another. I had stupidly assumed, being a second time mother, that my labor would be the same. Charley came one day early, I had felt prepared and ready. But there’s no guarantee this one will come the same way. He could be early, he could be small, he could even be a C-section, and I have to be okay with that.

I had fallen into the trap of thinking everything would go just like with my first, both the good and the bad. That in many ways this kid would just be Charley 2.0, and I have to remind myself that might not be the case. Every kid is different, sometimes especially siblings. I used to look forward to the differences. ‘I can’t wait till I have a smaller baby that isn’t so active’, I would tout. Or ‘Maybe the next one will color with me?’ But instead, the closer I get to labor, the more fearful I become of things being different. It feels like the great unknown all over again, stumbling into the great void of parenthood. Just when you think you know something, you realize you have no idea.