hopeful exuberance

High winds predicted -- check the flashlight batteries!

2011-11-30T23:12:00.002-05:00

We are in for a windy night and day here, hoping the power won't go out. When I was a kid, a forecast of wind was an assurance that the power would go out. One good gust would do it.

I don't remember power outages interrupting anything very important. Usually they were kinda fun. During the daytime, they would send us away from the television and toward the windows to watch the trees dance. In case of an evening outage, we'd pull out the flashlights, and sometimes candles, and mostly stick together in one strangely lit room. We played flashlight tag and made shadow puppets. Someone would call the power company and get a busy signal. We'd wait.

A few years later, the power company redid their phone system and distributed refrigerator magnets with instructions about how to report an outage. It was all automated, and every time I called and punched in our zip code, the recording let me know they had already documented the outage and were working to fix it. The new system must have been recording data on the outages, because it was long before they came out and did some major work (replaced a transformer? I'm not sure) to make the neighborhood's power supply more stable. That mostly put an end to our no-electricity adventures.

Origins?

2011-11-27T23:02:00.004-05:00

The first day of fourth grade went surprisingly well. I had been nervous about it because my two best friends had left the state, one during third grade, the other right after. Would I even have any friends this year? I wasn't sure.

I was hopeful because there were to be several new kids in the class this year -- a big change because most of the rest of us had been classmates since kindergarten. Only two new kids were girls, though, and I had already been warned by the popular girls that Lizzie M was a meany. I wouldn't have minded befriending a boy; I'd always been friends with boys and girls, but I could sense that the social scene was changing and cross-gender friendships were getting harder to defend. I figured I had basically one chance at a new friend: new girl number two, Jennifer.

It took me a few minutes to find new girl Jennifer for the first time. Her hair was super short, but she wore a skirt, so I introduced myself. She was nice! We sat together on the carpet during the read aloud, we played together outside at recess. I barely had time to notice the popular girls vying for the attention of Lizzie M (baffling! hadn't they told me she was mean?! It was only later that year, when I forgot about the book fair and Lizzie M lent me money that I fully understood the ruse. It was my first lesson in what I stood to lose by letting others tell me what to think.) At the end of the day, I said goodbye to Jennifer, and I felt secure in my new friendship. This was going to be a good year after all!

That night I threw up. I threw up a lot and had to miss school. I missed two whole days of school. By the time I returned on day four of fourth grade, Jennifer had made friends with Andrea. Maybe I was invited to play with Andrea and Jennifer; I don't remember now, because I never considered it. Nine years old and fairly judgmental, I found friendship with Andrea unacceptable. She was annoying. She hit people. She ran with scissors. She picked her nose and ate it. She wore skirts and sat with her legs open. You could see her undies.

And thus began the loneliest year of my childhood. I had no friends. I was sweet and obedient, so the teacher put me at a table with five rowdy boys. I didn't really mind it during class -- we got along well and they talked about more interesting things than hairstyles and clothing brands -- but they all played sports at recess, while I wandered the playground, half-wishing I hadn't fought with April, again, this morning in the carpool. I knew April and I would make up again during the ride home, but that didn't help me during recess, and anyway, she still played with Barbies. Ick. Sure, Jadie usually invited me to play, but her idea of a good time involved narrating the romantic dates of her pet doorknobs, who were expecting a doorknob baby any day now. No thanks.

So I wandered. I stood by the fence and watched the world go by. Sometimes I took a book out and read. Often I begged to stay inside to read or write or play alone in the classroom, but usually I was denied. I was very lonely and, for the first time, I felt very different from my peers. That feeling of difference and distance settled in. I suppose I could have joined a crowd -- the popular girls were always looking for admirers -- but I've never been happy in a supporting role. Instead, I began the long process of learning to accept the difference, and learning to hold myself apart.

By the end of the year, Jennifer and Andrea had had a falling out and Jennifer and I became friends again. She invited me to her birthday party in July, though I had not invited her to mine the previous December. We remained good friends for several years, while neither of us was much of joiner or conformist. We accepted each other's weirdness and found other weird, unpopular kids to befriend over the years. Our friendship faltered only later, during high school, as Jennifer struggled to fit herself into the expectations of her church. She became critical of difference and I became critical of her efforts to erase it.

I do not like to be erased, and I hate to be misunderstood. Yet I'm fairly private about many things I believe to be different about myself. I suppose I am proud of my feeling of difference, though I feel a bit ridiculous admitting it. I'm still not a joiner, but I don't believe that holding myself apart is particularly functional. I make easy friends with only a few people, all of whom are at ease with weirdness.

Did my loneliness in the fourth grade create this feeling in me, or did it only bring it to the surface? I'm betting it's the latter, though I know it doesn't matter. What matters now is finding ways to fit into the social fabric of the actual world without erasing myself to do it. I've seen this struggle in others and I know it's a life-long challenge.

Here's to the weirdos.

It's over

2011-11-26T23:21:00.002-05:00

Dear flour, sugar, rice, and potatoes,

This isn't working out. I know it's a bit humbuggy of me to bring this up now, just after Thanksgiving, as the Christmas season hits full swing. It feels ungrateful, after how much I've enjoyed your presence on my plate. And I have enjoyed it. However, I'm experiencing some seriously diminishing returns, lately, and it's really not worth it to me to wait another month before reconsidering my involvement with you.

I'll be 30 in a month (wonders never cease), and I'd like to keep on living for as long as possible, with as little additional intervention as possible, thank you. I don't want my life to be burdened by carb-induced mood swings, insulin resistance, and high triglycerides. You taste good, but with so little staying-power, you don't do much for me. And I'm pretty sure it's your metabolic roller-coaster keeping me up nights and making me sluggish during the days. I need more durable building blocks like vegetables, good fats, and proteins. They strengthen me and don't abandon me an hour after breakfast.

I tried feeling bad about this, but I know you have plenty of followers. In fact, in the current cultural context, it might seem extreme of me to say goodbye. I think it's actually the context that's extreme (How did the diets of Americans devolve this far? Alas, that's a question for another day.)

I know it won't be easy, but change never is. Actually, after a couple weeks, I doubt it will be very hard. This isn't the first time I've left unhealthful foods behind. I'll miss you, though, and think of you often. As I head into this new chapter of eating, I'll always look back fondly on the good times we had.

Regards,

Gretchen

A/Typical

2011-11-25T01:42:00.002-05:00

All our secret struggles bubble through --

we step-counting triple-checking hand-washers,

we finders, keepers, worried weepers,

we pillow-prisoners of our fears,

with voices just behind our ears

(hearts breaking, wide-eyed, shaking)

and dreams too big to follow,

so they swallow us.

We gurgle down in guilt and grief,

the world beyond in high-relief,

with no way through except ourselves.

With no way through, accept ourselves.

I see. My mistake.

2011-11-24T13:32:00.003-05:00

It was the weekend, so the trains were running with delays or not at all. I was among the slightly irritated masses of people just trying to make our way from one place to another. I was on a local train, next to the door because I knew I'd have to transfer in just a few stops. The train pulled up to a crowded platform and four people boarded through the door in across from me: three young men, apparently friends, and an old, disheveled woman limping along in dirty jeans and an unseasonably warm green and pink coat. They all jostled through the door, but I wasn't really paying attention until I heard the tallest of the young guys shout, "Whoa! Back off!"

My sensibilities offended by his rudeness to this poor soul, I (uncharacteristically) snapped, "Geez! Chill out." He turned to me, eyes wide with disbelief, "But!" he sputtered, "she pinched my nipple!"

A Cheesy Gratitude Post

2011-11-23T15:26:00.003-05:00

For the past five years, we've celebrated Thanksgiving once a year in a variety of contexts in Eastern Standard Time. We've hosted friends and family; we've traveled to Harlem to dine with friends and to Virginia to celebrate with the in-laws of my in-law; we've risen way too early to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade; we've waited until way too late to find a turkey -- breast only that year -- frozen, which failed to thaw well in the microwave. Sometimes it was a happy challenge to make the holiday happen at all.

This year, however, Thanksgiving is in joyful abundance around us. We're mid-way through preparations for our second of three family celebrations. With so many parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews around us, we are surrounded by warm memories, silly moments, and sincere hopes for the future.

Matter

2011-11-22T22:40:00.002-05:00

I'm back in Salt Lake now, where courtesy is so contagious everyone is infected and we don't need constant reminders about it from the transit authority. My biggest complaint so far is the unavailability of a decent bagel, a concern so cliched I feel like leaving Brooklyn immediately, just to get away from myself. But alas, I have already left. Like matter through an early teleporter, my partner and I arrived with dozens of boxes, several large bags, and our kittens: scattered, in need of reconstitution.

As we slowly regroup, we encounter our possessions like lost treasure. There! There is the coffee grinder! And there! The ramekins! How happy, these trivial moments of self-re-discovery. We like coffee; we bake eggs. The biggest discoveries, though, are found another layer down, packed lovingly in boxes we had left behind when we left Salt Lake. Here are some yearbooks, a skateboard, cookie sheets....

Happy birthday, Dad.

Public Stairs

2011-06-17T23:21:00.011-04:00

It's amazing how differently people navigate public staircases from one city to the next. I first noticed it in Washington DC. I was visiting my sister, who managed with ease to navigate the eerily clean and labyrinthine public train system. The DC system is called The Metro -- a name that implies an urban population that resides actually in the underground; this is impossible as eating is so forbidden within the system that any resident would starve or be evicted five seconds into breakfast. The stations involve escalators that seem to stretch from Purgatory to Hades, with a grade dramatic enough to cause vertigo. They are exactly wide enough for two people to stand comfortably next to each other, another forbidden act. My sister had to constantly remind me to stand behind her, to the right, so I wouldn't be shoved down multiple stories of escalator by grocery-wielding folks intent on barreling down the left side under the power of their own muscles. More than once an elbow of mine strayed over the imaginary mid-line to be instantly bashed by a sea of passing elbows. More than once my sister's attention lapsed and I was only warned back into place by an unfathomably irritated "EXCUSE ME" from half a story up. I wasn't trying to be rude, I'm just not used to people acting so civilized in public.

I used to be. In fact, when I lived in Salt Lake, the public trains (Traxx, a name that is not stupid only as part of the portmanteau describing a collision with a train: Traxxident) were so new that everyone was still deciding how to deal with the matter of sometimes needing to pass others on public stairs. Add to this the fact that the citizenry is compulsively polite, and two people might spend whole hours poised at opposite ends of a staircase, absolutely insisting on stepping aside to let each other by.

None of this cordiality exists in the New York train system (The Subway, of course, a moniker that clearly defines both location and purpose). First of all, unlike DC, we don't have escalators. Okay, there are a few, but those that exist are barely wide enough for one, and the passengers riding up and down them sort of lounge wherever they feel like, apparently recovering from the break-neck walk there and preparing for the manic run that will start once they disembark. It's the only place in Manhattan where people relax when they could be rushing. Perhaps that's part of why there are so few escalators: city planners might have worried that building more would decrease the city's productivity.

Instead of escalators, we have gigantic staircases. They are divided into two sides, and wide enough that a group of four could walk arm in arm up the right side and never risk touching another group of four descending on the left. But alas, this is never possible because New Yorkers seem pathologically committed to weaving back and forth across public spaces, apparently hoping to bash into as many people as possible (except on rainy days when the goal is to gouge out record numbers of eyeballs with one's over-sized umbrella). I used to think that clutching the right side handrail on the right half of the staircase would put me in the best position to conquer the stairs unmolested. I was wrong; in fact, it is the best way to run head-on into a New Yorker who decided that weaving up the wrong side of a crowded staircase was not challenging enough without the added feat of drafting a text message that cannot be sent until reaching ground level after exiting the system: OMG! I just bashed in2 17 ppl -- nope, 18! It's a record LOL.