Some days, I survive only because I am caffeinated. Where the sea used to be my savior, I am now routinely rescued by the coffee bean.
And when my feet race over hot concrete on my downtown walk home, I can still feel the sunned boardwalks like a phantom pain and I'm confused for a moment- not quite sure of where I am and less sure of where I should be.
These moments, more than a year and a half after I left those boardwalks for the true last time, still happen. They still catch me off-guard. There are days when I search my floor for a bigger gap to sweep the sand into. There is no gap. There is also no sand. When I run through one of the city parks, I still dodge shadows or leaves that look like lizards, and most nights I wish to the stars for the sound of my tree frogs. I imagine these things will go away eventually. They'll fade and turn vintage. But I suppose that I'm not in any big hurry for that to happen.
On that note, in a different color, I will say this: Walking home yesterday, the air smelled like flowers. Now, I am accustomed to knowing the personality of the world surrounding me. I am used to knowing the plants, the creatures, the wind. I am used to jasmine. Aloe. Agave and frangipani. But city air doesn't smell like jasmine. No, no. City air smells very much like a city. Fried food and street steam and diesel exhaust piping out of delivery trucks. If a city smells like flowers, it is the result of a million perfumed women, struggling to walk more quickly than men in their pant suits and high heeled shoes. Right?
Maybe not.
Denver, Colorado, for the month of June and maybe July and we'll just see about August but I'll let you know, smells like flowers. Not perfume. As luck would have it, though I miss my plumeria, Capitol Hill wind carries the sweet scent of yellow honeysuckles. Honeysuckles! Past row houses and over cracked concrete, they spill from backyard fences onto rose and lavender gardens. They don't discriminate day from night like those snotty jasmine blooms. They are as fragrant in the middle of a cloudless Tuesday as they are in the cool dark. I love them. And I needed that.
I thought St. John gave me flowers, but what it actually gave me was the heart to notice them.
In related news, there are night frogs in Cheesman Park.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Dear Mom, I don't like chocolate chip cookies, anyway.
My mother did not teach me how to bake cookies. Not ever. I still don't think that I know how to grease a pan properly, and the concept of pre-heating is fairly new. My mother has a meatloaf recipe, but I do not know what it is and the chances of it just being a general mash of hamburger and ketchup are high. For the most part, her recipes came from a frozen box and not from a soft, crumbling book of beautiful handwritten notes. She never showed me how to fill a mop bucket. She never showed me how to vacuum stairs. I still throw the occasional red sock in with my white clothes assuming that everything will be ok. I learned how to fold a fitted sheet when I entered, as a grown adult, the world of housekeeping. Not before. No one has ever referred to Candy Kelly Vandenberg as Suzie Homemaker, and no one will confuse her oldest daughter with a girl who has been raised by someone with such a title. She regrets at least some of this, I know. I know because when I finally moved into my own big girl apartment, I Facebooked a tsunami of domestic ineptness, allowing my own typing fingers to be the keyhole through which nearly everyone I know has been able to spy and snicker at my tendency to explode things in the microwave and my embarrassing inability to predict that one might need shower hooks to accompany a shower curtain. Or a hammer to assemble Ikea labyrinths. Or, you know, forks. And my mother, sometimes getting stuck in that keyhole, apologized.
So, here's the thing. It is almost Mother's Day. My sister and I do the cards every year. We do the flowers, the mix CDs, the spa day gift certificates. These things mean less to her than the fact that we both moved the 3,000 miles it was going to take to actually hug her on Mother's Day, but we do the little things when we can. This year has been eye opening for her, I think. Watching her two girls live as real life humans. Getting the phone calls when we don't know how to boil an egg at altitude or when we don't know how much a vacuum cleaner is really supposed to cost. Walking through Ikea or Target or Walmart for what has surely culminated to more than a day's worth of minutes trying to explain that, yes, you need a cutting board and no, you probably don't need a fancy serving bowl because who is it that you think you'll be serving, anyway, when your dining room table is an ironing board? She is looking at us, these two dizzy creatures, trying to make our way based on what she either has or has not taught us about living. I have decided to use her favorite keyhole to show her that I might not know how to bake cookies, but the traits I am most proud of came directly from her.
My mother taught me how to play foosball. My dad and I were playing one night on the table they had just bought. He was hyped up about it, and I was terrible. 14 and awkward on every level and I'm pretty sure I spun those little men a more than a few times before I knew that an actual foosball player would rather die than play someone who spins. Daddy and I played for hours and hours getting slightly more skilled and slightly more rambunctious and I pretty much figured out that I might end up being better at something than him, which I still don't completely believe is possible. We were on top of the world for a while with that table. We thought we were better than everyone. And then, in a floating ball of sunshine, which is her preferred method of travel, my mother walked down the stairs and into the foosball cave. She smiled at my dad, smiled sweetly at me and asked if we thought she might be able to play a game or two. It is entirely likely that I rolled my eyes. And then she kicked my ass.
My mother taught me how to shake hands. At the end of my driver's ed class, which was a bajillion dollar course complete with reverse slaloms, skid pads and lunch breaks, all the newly minted road masters shook hands with our twenty-something year old Mr. Miagis. It was kind of a graduation. As a sixteen year old girl, I'm not sure that I had ever really shaken hands with anyone at that point in my life. Why would I have? My mother, eyes open to being female in a venue dominated by men, leaned down and whispered in my ear, "When you shake their hands, you are to shake their hands. Do not let your hand go limp. Do not let them shake yours like you're a little princess. If they grip too firmly, grip too firmly back. Look them right in their eyes. And remember to say thank you."
There are a thousand more anecdotes just like these, beginning with me being fairly naive about who my mother is and ending with the realization that she is a spitfire dressed like a Care Bear.
What my mother taught me--the most important thing she has taught me--is that there is strength in kindness. That women don't need to play the "bitch" role in order to succeed. A woman can be intelligent and interesting and opinionated. She can be successful and independent and fierce and ambitious. She can kick a man's tail at bar games and shake hands as firmly as anyone. And, if she wants to, she can still wear a Broncos Santa hat at Christmastime, cry every time she watches The Notebook, and rescue any lost creature she sees wandering the cold streets of suburbia. My dad, who is one of the smartest people I know, will maintain to the ends of himself that my mother is smarter. He can also attest to her being among the kindest of kind people. She is both. She is a business woman and a family woman. A mother to latchkey kids who came home and threw a frozen dinner in the oven before she took off her high heels for the day. She is also a glittering example of the healing powers of a living room dance party and a bleeding heart who has owned at least four different pets that started out as strays.
And she travels inside a floating ball of sunshine.
Here is where I thank my mother. Thank you for sacrificing the cookies and the mopping in the name of firm hand shakes and bar games. Thank you for showing me how far a heart can really get someone. Thank you for being a truly inspirational woman, and a weirdly cheerful one at that. Your inability to frown and your drive to be happy is something everyone around you, especially your daughters, strives for. You are beautiful, funny, successful, intelligent, quirky, kind, and, honestly, the best role model anyone could ever even dream up. I love you. The whole world does.
Happy Mother's Day!
So, here's the thing. It is almost Mother's Day. My sister and I do the cards every year. We do the flowers, the mix CDs, the spa day gift certificates. These things mean less to her than the fact that we both moved the 3,000 miles it was going to take to actually hug her on Mother's Day, but we do the little things when we can. This year has been eye opening for her, I think. Watching her two girls live as real life humans. Getting the phone calls when we don't know how to boil an egg at altitude or when we don't know how much a vacuum cleaner is really supposed to cost. Walking through Ikea or Target or Walmart for what has surely culminated to more than a day's worth of minutes trying to explain that, yes, you need a cutting board and no, you probably don't need a fancy serving bowl because who is it that you think you'll be serving, anyway, when your dining room table is an ironing board? She is looking at us, these two dizzy creatures, trying to make our way based on what she either has or has not taught us about living. I have decided to use her favorite keyhole to show her that I might not know how to bake cookies, but the traits I am most proud of came directly from her.
My mother taught me how to play foosball. My dad and I were playing one night on the table they had just bought. He was hyped up about it, and I was terrible. 14 and awkward on every level and I'm pretty sure I spun those little men a more than a few times before I knew that an actual foosball player would rather die than play someone who spins. Daddy and I played for hours and hours getting slightly more skilled and slightly more rambunctious and I pretty much figured out that I might end up being better at something than him, which I still don't completely believe is possible. We were on top of the world for a while with that table. We thought we were better than everyone. And then, in a floating ball of sunshine, which is her preferred method of travel, my mother walked down the stairs and into the foosball cave. She smiled at my dad, smiled sweetly at me and asked if we thought she might be able to play a game or two. It is entirely likely that I rolled my eyes. And then she kicked my ass.
My mother taught me how to shake hands. At the end of my driver's ed class, which was a bajillion dollar course complete with reverse slaloms, skid pads and lunch breaks, all the newly minted road masters shook hands with our twenty-something year old Mr. Miagis. It was kind of a graduation. As a sixteen year old girl, I'm not sure that I had ever really shaken hands with anyone at that point in my life. Why would I have? My mother, eyes open to being female in a venue dominated by men, leaned down and whispered in my ear, "When you shake their hands, you are to shake their hands. Do not let your hand go limp. Do not let them shake yours like you're a little princess. If they grip too firmly, grip too firmly back. Look them right in their eyes. And remember to say thank you."
There are a thousand more anecdotes just like these, beginning with me being fairly naive about who my mother is and ending with the realization that she is a spitfire dressed like a Care Bear.
What my mother taught me--the most important thing she has taught me--is that there is strength in kindness. That women don't need to play the "bitch" role in order to succeed. A woman can be intelligent and interesting and opinionated. She can be successful and independent and fierce and ambitious. She can kick a man's tail at bar games and shake hands as firmly as anyone. And, if she wants to, she can still wear a Broncos Santa hat at Christmastime, cry every time she watches The Notebook, and rescue any lost creature she sees wandering the cold streets of suburbia. My dad, who is one of the smartest people I know, will maintain to the ends of himself that my mother is smarter. He can also attest to her being among the kindest of kind people. She is both. She is a business woman and a family woman. A mother to latchkey kids who came home and threw a frozen dinner in the oven before she took off her high heels for the day. She is also a glittering example of the healing powers of a living room dance party and a bleeding heart who has owned at least four different pets that started out as strays.
And she travels inside a floating ball of sunshine.
Here is where I thank my mother. Thank you for sacrificing the cookies and the mopping in the name of firm hand shakes and bar games. Thank you for showing me how far a heart can really get someone. Thank you for being a truly inspirational woman, and a weirdly cheerful one at that. Your inability to frown and your drive to be happy is something everyone around you, especially your daughters, strives for. You are beautiful, funny, successful, intelligent, quirky, kind, and, honestly, the best role model anyone could ever even dream up. I love you. The whole world does.
Happy Mother's Day!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Oh, man. Am I really writing about this?
I have a first date on Saturday. What, exactly, is supposed to be accomplished on a first date? You are commissioned to be the very coolest, most interesting version of yourself, so as to secure a second date. It seems to me that first dates consist so much of making sure you are intriguing that you don't listen to the other person try to advertise their own best facets. First dates are forced narcissism disguised as outward interest. I can count on one hand the number of first dates that I have been on. I usually go through the side door, doing the friends thing that turns into the whatever comes after friends thing. I am, admittedly, a relationship girl. But maybe more than that, I am a spark girl.
A little while back, I wrote about the first time I was ever in love. Like, IN. LOVE. Though I would never put myself back in that relationship, I find that I have been dissatisfied by anything that made me feel...less. So, against, better judgement, here is an account of that spark. As written by a girl recently back out of what she had hoped was love.
I was 21 years old when I met him. Quietly sweeping fallen leaves from the store front, I was wearing a flowered scarf on my head to hide unshampooed, salt-bitten hair. I had a green tank top, a long white skirt and tan lines. I had just moved to the mystery Caribbean from the mountains of Colorado, and I was going for "islandy." I was new.
He sat on the wooden bench behind me and asked my name. Where was I from? I had not even known he was there until he spoke. And it was unremarkable, wasn't it? That curious boy with brown curls and deep eyes and a gap between his front teeth said hello and walked down to the beach and I thought nothing of it.
Did I know that he was beautiful? How could I have not seen that?
One, or maybe two nights after that first encounter, we had just gotten back to Maho from town with a group of rum-drunk twenty somethings who all gleefully ran up the boardwalk stairs to their own tents. He turned to me at the top of my own staircase,this boy whose name I did not know, grabbed my hand and said, "Let's go." And then I was with that curious boy in the Caribbean Sea, mindless and thinking out loud that more stars seemed to fall from the sky there than ever hung where I came from. He thought that was beautiful. He thought I was beautiful and he held my hand under the clear water and showed me bioluminescence as he guided my fingers with ocean fireflies. My God, I had no idea who he was that night, but I could not have named another soul. No one else existed.
The solid Earth I had been standing on began to crack open, and he kissed me. I barely knew his name and he was the only thing I could see.
We moved in together two weeks later. There was nothing to question, and questions were never asked. Not even by those around us. It was clear that we were supposed to be together, and so we never entertained logical thought about it. We were, then, together because we couldn't not be together.
That first year. That first year was the Garden State Soundtrack and Christmas lights hung on deck railings and doors always open to soulmates and kindred weirdos and people who loved each other at our best and at our living-in-Spring-Break worst. There was a softness that year, and I felt the entire thing to the very tips of my toes.
And him. He would play his guitar shirtless and tanned, his curls reaching for his dark eyes.
There was no television. No internet. We had one cell phone and never bothered to look at it. We did not have distractions from one another, and so we fell explosively in love. Deeply, and with true madness.
Our bungalow had screen for walls and vinyl for a roof and we slept to the white noise of a box fan and tree frogs and the laughter and music of new friends on the green hill we were coming to call our own. I would read out loud to him. From my books, from my journals, from whatever he wanted. And he would play his songs. I would curl against him and he would brush my salty hair out of my eyes, strum his guitar and say, "This song is you." My fingertips would trace his ears, his neck, his face. And then we would run to the sea, the way we did the night we began to understand everything, and we would strip off our clothes. Pad through the white glowing sand and disappear in the midnight water, cold until we were warm, the fireflies tracing our bodies.
Explosions, by their very nature, do not sustain. They are an instant. They spend all of their energy illuminating the entire sky until nothing is left to burn.
We began to argue. And we could not figure out how to stop.
What did we have to argue about? I can't remember now. The flames lasted for about a year until they sucked all the oxygen out of the air and died. The end was incineration, as nothing that intense ends easily. We were all or nothing. A sparkler, meant to exist as lovers and burn out.
I can remember the very last time I saw him. He was wearing a red shirt and he wheeled a small suitcase behind him, past the tent we lived and loved and fought in together for that fiery year. He was leaving our little island, the one we both stayed on just to keep close to each other. It had been more than a year since we were us. A good deal of life had happened in the interim, and we were beyond repair.
We walked by each other like the history was false, like we always did. As if our first year was some sunlit Narnia, a Never Never Land impossible to revisit. But we looked at each other this time. I am not sure what I wish I would have said. When I really think about it, there may have been nothing to say. But to pass by him like that--this curious boy who took my entire world and showed me how to love and showed me who I could be--to just walk by him, my head darting down as soon as I saw his face, felt unjust. Due weight was not given.
I could not have touched him or we would have combusted. But could I have thanked him? Could I have finally leveled with him that moment? Just the two of us, ending as strangers the way we started.
I will never see him again. I know this to be true. There is no chance of running into this boy on another wooden bench somewhere, and there is no other Caribbean Sea.
I should have told him at least--at the very tail end of least--that I was grateful to him for showing me how much I could feel. The regret is in the muted, matte ending. Where we walked by each other on a creaky boardwalk, inches away from the person who had been bigger than any empty space, and said nothing.
I will probably delete this post as soon as this wine wears off. But I think some of the issues I have with boredom, particularly in the light of dating, can be directly attributed to this island boy and the kind of spark that doesn't actually last, anyway.
Chasing sparklers.
A little while back, I wrote about the first time I was ever in love. Like, IN. LOVE. Though I would never put myself back in that relationship, I find that I have been dissatisfied by anything that made me feel...less. So, against, better judgement, here is an account of that spark. As written by a girl recently back out of what she had hoped was love.
I was 21 years old when I met him. Quietly sweeping fallen leaves from the store front, I was wearing a flowered scarf on my head to hide unshampooed, salt-bitten hair. I had a green tank top, a long white skirt and tan lines. I had just moved to the mystery Caribbean from the mountains of Colorado, and I was going for "islandy." I was new.
He sat on the wooden bench behind me and asked my name. Where was I from? I had not even known he was there until he spoke. And it was unremarkable, wasn't it? That curious boy with brown curls and deep eyes and a gap between his front teeth said hello and walked down to the beach and I thought nothing of it.
Did I know that he was beautiful? How could I have not seen that?
One, or maybe two nights after that first encounter, we had just gotten back to Maho from town with a group of rum-drunk twenty somethings who all gleefully ran up the boardwalk stairs to their own tents. He turned to me at the top of my own staircase,this boy whose name I did not know, grabbed my hand and said, "Let's go." And then I was with that curious boy in the Caribbean Sea, mindless and thinking out loud that more stars seemed to fall from the sky there than ever hung where I came from. He thought that was beautiful. He thought I was beautiful and he held my hand under the clear water and showed me bioluminescence as he guided my fingers with ocean fireflies. My God, I had no idea who he was that night, but I could not have named another soul. No one else existed.
The solid Earth I had been standing on began to crack open, and he kissed me. I barely knew his name and he was the only thing I could see.
We moved in together two weeks later. There was nothing to question, and questions were never asked. Not even by those around us. It was clear that we were supposed to be together, and so we never entertained logical thought about it. We were, then, together because we couldn't not be together.
That first year. That first year was the Garden State Soundtrack and Christmas lights hung on deck railings and doors always open to soulmates and kindred weirdos and people who loved each other at our best and at our living-in-Spring-Break worst. There was a softness that year, and I felt the entire thing to the very tips of my toes.
And him. He would play his guitar shirtless and tanned, his curls reaching for his dark eyes.
There was no television. No internet. We had one cell phone and never bothered to look at it. We did not have distractions from one another, and so we fell explosively in love. Deeply, and with true madness.
Our bungalow had screen for walls and vinyl for a roof and we slept to the white noise of a box fan and tree frogs and the laughter and music of new friends on the green hill we were coming to call our own. I would read out loud to him. From my books, from my journals, from whatever he wanted. And he would play his songs. I would curl against him and he would brush my salty hair out of my eyes, strum his guitar and say, "This song is you." My fingertips would trace his ears, his neck, his face. And then we would run to the sea, the way we did the night we began to understand everything, and we would strip off our clothes. Pad through the white glowing sand and disappear in the midnight water, cold until we were warm, the fireflies tracing our bodies.
Explosions, by their very nature, do not sustain. They are an instant. They spend all of their energy illuminating the entire sky until nothing is left to burn.
We began to argue. And we could not figure out how to stop.
What did we have to argue about? I can't remember now. The flames lasted for about a year until they sucked all the oxygen out of the air and died. The end was incineration, as nothing that intense ends easily. We were all or nothing. A sparkler, meant to exist as lovers and burn out.
I can remember the very last time I saw him. He was wearing a red shirt and he wheeled a small suitcase behind him, past the tent we lived and loved and fought in together for that fiery year. He was leaving our little island, the one we both stayed on just to keep close to each other. It had been more than a year since we were us. A good deal of life had happened in the interim, and we were beyond repair.
We walked by each other like the history was false, like we always did. As if our first year was some sunlit Narnia, a Never Never Land impossible to revisit. But we looked at each other this time. I am not sure what I wish I would have said. When I really think about it, there may have been nothing to say. But to pass by him like that--this curious boy who took my entire world and showed me how to love and showed me who I could be--to just walk by him, my head darting down as soon as I saw his face, felt unjust. Due weight was not given.
I could not have touched him or we would have combusted. But could I have thanked him? Could I have finally leveled with him that moment? Just the two of us, ending as strangers the way we started.
I will never see him again. I know this to be true. There is no chance of running into this boy on another wooden bench somewhere, and there is no other Caribbean Sea.
I should have told him at least--at the very tail end of least--that I was grateful to him for showing me how much I could feel. The regret is in the muted, matte ending. Where we walked by each other on a creaky boardwalk, inches away from the person who had been bigger than any empty space, and said nothing.
I will probably delete this post as soon as this wine wears off. But I think some of the issues I have with boredom, particularly in the light of dating, can be directly attributed to this island boy and the kind of spark that doesn't actually last, anyway.
Chasing sparklers.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Even Single Girls Like Valentine's Day
Oh, Valentine's Day. Here is it. Am I supposed to care? I am supposed to care. As a single girl who is sometimes happy about that and sometimes not, or really just as a girl, I am definitely supposed to care. So, here is my favorite quote about love that ever existed:
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker
Ooh, ooh, or this:
“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
Maybe this whole post should be about how Tom Robbins is probably the love of my life.
Cynical I am not, and I am not a Valentine's Day hater. I feel like that's a bit dramatic. Anti-Valentine's Day parties are not my bag any more than the inevitable pictures of sweetly tagged roses that will take over Facebook like a petal tsunami. Plus, I LOVE love. And I love this holiday, even if I do think it means a bit too much to too many people. It is a pink-shaded day where Necco wafers come in heart shapes and Hallmark sells massive amounts of the same sentiment to shrugging men who hope they're doing it right. Growing up (and still), my dad always bought flowers for my mom on Valentine's day. Growing up (and still), my dad bought flowers for my mom on random Wednesdays or Sundays or Thursdays, too. And that's what I have to say about Valentine's Day.
“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker
Ooh, ooh, or this:
“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
Maybe this whole post should be about how Tom Robbins is probably the love of my life.
Cynical I am not, and I am not a Valentine's Day hater. I feel like that's a bit dramatic. Anti-Valentine's Day parties are not my bag any more than the inevitable pictures of sweetly tagged roses that will take over Facebook like a petal tsunami. Plus, I LOVE love. And I love this holiday, even if I do think it means a bit too much to too many people. It is a pink-shaded day where Necco wafers come in heart shapes and Hallmark sells massive amounts of the same sentiment to shrugging men who hope they're doing it right. Growing up (and still), my dad always bought flowers for my mom on Valentine's day. Growing up (and still), my dad bought flowers for my mom on random Wednesdays or Sundays or Thursdays, too. And that's what I have to say about Valentine's Day.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
A Mountain Morning
This is the only place on earth that makes me feel guilty about wearing my headphones. What is there to drown out here? There are no bicycle bells or car horns. No one us trying to sell me anything or ask me for anything. No awkward strangers. No sirens, but the trees. Not even an airplane to break the silence. Which leads me to the sad conclusion that what I truly seek to drown out is probably just me. There are too many moving parts and I need music to distract the ones that buzz and get in the way.
You can only write one thought at a time.
But then, being here makes me want to put the pen down and stare at the siren trees. I can't even tell what the real distraction is here.
You can only write one thought at a time.
But then, being here makes me want to put the pen down and stare at the siren trees. I can't even tell what the real distraction is here.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
It's a start....
On May 24th, 2005, in the heavy-humid dark, with no understanding of what surrounded me, I stepped off of something they call a "cab," paid the quiet man with a wide-brimmed straw hat, and did something that would shape at smallest my twenties and at most honest, the entire rest of my life and who I, it would turn out, am. It took a step. It took a man with a shadowed face named Jordan asking what my story was before he even knew my name. It took one breath.
Man, that first time you walk up those stairs, you have no idea. It had rained the night I got there, and my footing had never been less sure. If I had been able to see what was under the boardwalk, I would have been less scared to soar off. If I had known what was under the boardwalk, I would have been more scared. Catch and keep was not in my vocabulary yet. We trudged up to E3, right next to what would later be my own staff tent, and picked our sides of the two twin beds that had been smushed together. The sheets were damp. Now I understand that Maho sheets are roughly 50 thread count and walls are screens are giant, rain-welcoming holes, and if the night is damp, so are you. At the time, I just thought it was...weird.
But then the morning came. A Maho Bay morning is one of the truest of sacred things, and I would learn in time to be there at 7:20 to drink bad coffee out of a blue cup, resist scratching at my ankles, smell the bacon and discuss who was cooking so we knew whether or not to order the potatoes. But that first morning had not given me time to learn anything and so I was astounded. Truly. I woke up with the sun, as you do when the sun is Caribbean and shines into your eyes before you have even thought about saying good morning. The Caribbean sun does not wait. It has far too much to offer. That very first morning, as a preamble to (let me do some math, here) roughly 1500 more of them, I padded down the boardwalked green, past signs nailed into the splintering rails and felt, I don't know, everything. Like I could fill my lungs, though that may just have been the sea level. Like I was being held by something.
If you get up early enough on a sacred Maho morning, the night is still palpable, touchable. You can feel on your skin that the air was cooler, and you can watch dew evaporate off of the black asphalt road and up into the canopy. The earlier the better. That twilight cool is elusive and quick to warm, and you relish the opportunity to wear that one hoodie that makes you miss the states just a little every time you look at it.
Cool, wet, early mornings start long sticky days and you draw them out until their arms are stretched too wide and you give in to the daytime heat, when you lull through the thick air and trace hibiscus leaves onto beer cooler condensation to pass the slow time. These things I would learn.
Man, that first time you walk up those stairs, you have no idea. It had rained the night I got there, and my footing had never been less sure. If I had been able to see what was under the boardwalk, I would have been less scared to soar off. If I had known what was under the boardwalk, I would have been more scared. Catch and keep was not in my vocabulary yet. We trudged up to E3, right next to what would later be my own staff tent, and picked our sides of the two twin beds that had been smushed together. The sheets were damp. Now I understand that Maho sheets are roughly 50 thread count and walls are screens are giant, rain-welcoming holes, and if the night is damp, so are you. At the time, I just thought it was...weird.
But then the morning came. A Maho Bay morning is one of the truest of sacred things, and I would learn in time to be there at 7:20 to drink bad coffee out of a blue cup, resist scratching at my ankles, smell the bacon and discuss who was cooking so we knew whether or not to order the potatoes. But that first morning had not given me time to learn anything and so I was astounded. Truly. I woke up with the sun, as you do when the sun is Caribbean and shines into your eyes before you have even thought about saying good morning. The Caribbean sun does not wait. It has far too much to offer. That very first morning, as a preamble to (let me do some math, here) roughly 1500 more of them, I padded down the boardwalked green, past signs nailed into the splintering rails and felt, I don't know, everything. Like I could fill my lungs, though that may just have been the sea level. Like I was being held by something.
If you get up early enough on a sacred Maho morning, the night is still palpable, touchable. You can feel on your skin that the air was cooler, and you can watch dew evaporate off of the black asphalt road and up into the canopy. The earlier the better. That twilight cool is elusive and quick to warm, and you relish the opportunity to wear that one hoodie that makes you miss the states just a little every time you look at it.
Cool, wet, early mornings start long sticky days and you draw them out until their arms are stretched too wide and you give in to the daytime heat, when you lull through the thick air and trace hibiscus leaves onto beer cooler condensation to pass the slow time. These things I would learn.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
A Late December Ramble
So you start over. You get a new apartment in a new neighborhood. You move sadly and silently past the old boyfriend and go on dates you're not sure you really want to be on. You remember breath. You watch the calendar creep and move and you're sure you can't stop it but you're not sure how you really feel about that. This is good, right? Newness. You need to learn all the creaks of your home so that it is, just now, home. It is almost January. Almost the time of those resolution things, and you are supposed to look into your hand mirror and pick out the flaws. You are to spot them, positively identify them, and make a tangible, trackable plan to rectify them. Is that supposed to work? Does that work for anyone?
It is a tricky time of year, this. Jingle bells! Joy! Santa hats and eggnog lattes! I love this time of year. I really, really do. I tend toward the annoying side of humanness, living inside car ride dance parties, multi-colored fingernails, googly eyes faces on light switches, etc. My morning alarm is the song, "Good Morning," from Singing in the Rain. Though my writing can be rather melancholy and far too introspective, I love..I don't know...cheer. And late December.
Ooh, but that New Year gets you, doesn't it? This summer was fire, the fall was a blink and winter has just begun, but it is already time to put your thoughts into what you will do with the next June, September, Halloween. We are silly humans. Taking only a few days out of 365 to reflect. Spending the rest of them filling out new planners. I just realized that I do not have plans. It feels shaky. Like those moving bridges in a fun house where the walls move in optical illusion and you have to hold on just to stay upright. It is at once terrifying and awesome, ending in a question mark and an exclamation point. How did I get out of that? I want to go again!
This year is interesting in that a new start does not necessarily mean a new start. It feels new. Everything does. But this is what people do, right? You move out, you break up, you cut your hair, you get to step back from what the year was and decide what to keep and what to throw out, and it's like new paint. It's the same thing, really, but it shines and some of the scratches have been covered up. Historically, my new starts have entailed moving roughly 3,000 miles away from whatever it was that was. There is no fun house about it. It's a footbridge, suspended above clouds and the past and once it has been crossed, it falls.
So. This year. Progress as opposed to leaps. No sharp turns, here. The road I have come down is clearly visible from the one I am on.
Do not be upset by your past, especially if you can see it. Be it the last year or the last decade or an old lifetime, look at it. Hold it. Brush the dust off with your fingertips and look at your new face and be thankful for the wear. Wear is growth is a shrinking staircase. It can be easier to climb when you see both where you were and where you are going. And cheer on this time of year, when reflection is expected, required. Miss what was, love what is, and prep yourself for the funhouse bridge.
It is a tricky time of year, this. Jingle bells! Joy! Santa hats and eggnog lattes! I love this time of year. I really, really do. I tend toward the annoying side of humanness, living inside car ride dance parties, multi-colored fingernails, googly eyes faces on light switches, etc. My morning alarm is the song, "Good Morning," from Singing in the Rain. Though my writing can be rather melancholy and far too introspective, I love..I don't know...cheer. And late December.
Ooh, but that New Year gets you, doesn't it? This summer was fire, the fall was a blink and winter has just begun, but it is already time to put your thoughts into what you will do with the next June, September, Halloween. We are silly humans. Taking only a few days out of 365 to reflect. Spending the rest of them filling out new planners. I just realized that I do not have plans. It feels shaky. Like those moving bridges in a fun house where the walls move in optical illusion and you have to hold on just to stay upright. It is at once terrifying and awesome, ending in a question mark and an exclamation point. How did I get out of that? I want to go again!
This year is interesting in that a new start does not necessarily mean a new start. It feels new. Everything does. But this is what people do, right? You move out, you break up, you cut your hair, you get to step back from what the year was and decide what to keep and what to throw out, and it's like new paint. It's the same thing, really, but it shines and some of the scratches have been covered up. Historically, my new starts have entailed moving roughly 3,000 miles away from whatever it was that was. There is no fun house about it. It's a footbridge, suspended above clouds and the past and once it has been crossed, it falls.
So. This year. Progress as opposed to leaps. No sharp turns, here. The road I have come down is clearly visible from the one I am on.
Do not be upset by your past, especially if you can see it. Be it the last year or the last decade or an old lifetime, look at it. Hold it. Brush the dust off with your fingertips and look at your new face and be thankful for the wear. Wear is growth is a shrinking staircase. It can be easier to climb when you see both where you were and where you are going. And cheer on this time of year, when reflection is expected, required. Miss what was, love what is, and prep yourself for the funhouse bridge.
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