Transitions

Thoughts from those in-between places

“This is Mother Land”

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One of my grandma’s friends, Sally, was going through her old papers recently when she came across a scrap from September, 1998.  Apparently when I was little, my nana would take me with her to visit Sally, a retired schoolteacher who was fascinated by the stories that came pouring out of this jabbering toddler.  One in particular evidently demanded recording:

This is Mother Land – It’s a place for mothers with fevers. Would you like to have a seat on our bench? Rule number one is – I’m going to explain to you about mothers with fevers and babies with colds.  This baby has no cold.  This baby has a cold that is SO bad – This is a big sneeze – a really big sneeze.  The mother has a fever.  It started in her head.  The arrows show where the fever goes.  It went down to her belly button.  It went down her arms to her hands.  It went all the way down to her toes.

Age 4, 9/22/98

This subject matter probably had to do with the fact that my baby sister had been born not eight months previously.  I don’t know why I never explained what Rule Number One was, but I’m curious as to what my four-year-old self would have said!  Similarly, I kind of want to know if the bench was a real piece of furniture or just a figment of my overactive imagination, and if I was actually drawing arrows on some kind of diagram while I said all this.

My parents always said I was telling stories my entire life. As my mom liked to tell people, I didn’t start speaking in sentences; I started speaking in paragraphs.  I chuckled along, happy that my parents didn’t mind that I wanted to major in creative writing and work as a writer.  But to see it written down is to see proof that I really have been doing this since I could talk. Sally’s beautiful handwriting, left over from a day when penmanship was as important in schools as the Pythagorean Theorem, captures my four-year-old imagination’s ramblings, setting my sentences down far more coherently than I probably said them at the time.  Even though I can’t quite make out the narrative arc of this particular “story,” I can see the roots of one of my favorite fiction-building tendencies: fantasizing and describing new places and cultures, building a whole “land” out of thin air.  This is where the magic begins for me, the words that will spill over into every part of the rest of my life: a four-year-old jabbering away.

Housing

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any shelter, lodging, or dwelling place
the act of one who houses or puts under shelter

I’ve been frantically thinking, texting, and talking a lot about housing lately.  An internship for this upcoming summer would only work out if I could find a place to live for the duration of the internship – within a week.  I work best in specifics, so I don’t think it helped that the vague term “housing” could mean “any” place I could find to live.

“I would live under a bridge to make this internship work,” I joked to several people – and I half meant it, too.  This was my dream internship: an editorial position with a small company close to home that had connections to the larger publishing industry.  The interview process was nerve-wracking precisely because I wanted it so much, and I was so happy when I got the job, that to have it rescinded because I couldn’t find a distant cousin willing to let me live in their attic for the summer didn’t bear thinking of.  It frustrated me that I had too many options, rather than not enough, because it meant I had to investigate more of them, and choose from several, and investigation and choosing took time.

Eventually it worked out that I’ll be staying with the Engineer’s grandparents, for which I am exceedingly grateful.  I grew up in a home with a mother who is, as the Southern Belle put it, “an honorary Southern lady,” so I know the depth of true hospitality.  Housing someone is not just allowing them to sleep under your roof.  It is protecting, sheltering, providing a haven.  It’s appropriate that the word can be both a verb and a noun.  I will be housed.  I have found housing.  And someday, I hope, I can house and shelter and protect guests of my own.

Lent

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1. simple past tense and past participle of lend
2. (in the Christian religion) an annual season of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter, beginning on Ash Wednesday and lasting 40 weekdays to Easter, observed by Roman Catholic, Anglican, and certain other churches.

I grew up hearing a lot about what I should give up for Lent.  (By the way, guys, I’m Catholic.)  There were the traditional years where chocolate hypothetically never touched my lips.  When I got older and my mom introduced the idea of giving something to God instead of giving something up, I said a few rosaries before bed.  Lent was the technically-40-days-but-feels-like-forever season before Easter, when my parochial classmates and I had to sit through weekly Stations of the Cross and go to extra all-school Masses and I looked longingly at the Easter dress hanging in my closet that I couldn’t wear yet.

Meanwhile, I heard another version of the word, uncapitalized this time, in the old-fashioned books we read.  The people in them talked about having “lent” someone a book, or a cup of sugar, or a carriage.  Like “dreamt,” it seemed so much more romantic than saying you loaned something to someone.  So, naturally, I tried to use such vocabulary whenever I could.  (I probably sounded pretentious to my third grade classmates, but then again I could spell “pretentious” and they didn’t know what it meant, so they just called me a nerd instead.)

And yet I never connected these two meanings in my head, the capital L and the lower case, until recently.  The term for the liturgical season originally came from an Old English term lencten, which literally meant the lengthening of the daylight hours.  This is the part of the year when the days oh-so-gradually begin to stretch themselves out like cats elongating their spines in the sun, digging their claws in for summer.  (And yes, when I was younger, the Lenten season seemed to lengthen itself just to torment me.)  But, ideally, isn’t this time of preparation for Easter meant to help us stretch our spiritual muscles a little bit?  The idea of lengthening, to me, now calls to mind the idea of reaching out toward God, lending Him something precious to me and, having lent Him the time I used to spend on that Very Important Thing, perhaps realizing that the hours were always meant to be devoted to Him anyway.  It’s not really lending God anything, because I already believe that everything is His.  So maybe Lent is about stripping away the arrogance that leads me to believe that I am doing Him a favor.  Maybe it’s about realizing it’s He Who is doing the lending here.

The Flowers on My Kitchen Table

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images (2)

I got flowers yesterday.

My boyfriend, the Engineer, knows very well that my favorite flowers are sunset colored roses.  I don’t know why, exactly, I love these particular blooms so much, but they bring me a specific kind of joy.  Their subtle scent, their soft, smooth petals, their paleness tinged with fire – seeing a bunch of them on my kitchen table just makes me smile.

And yet, they’ll be gone, drooping and withered, within a few days.

In the Internet frenzy recently leading up to Valentine’s Day, I saw an image of a girl with about five bouquets of a dozen red roses.  The caption, emblazoned in large white print over her, asked, “Am I the only one who would rather have something useful than this?”  I used to agree (even though everyone in my family and friend group says I’m impossible to shop for) that I wanted something that would last.  I took a utilitarian approach to gift giving and receiving.  Books I could keep for years, coffee I could use to power through the day, a gift card I could use to fund the purchase of something I needed or wanted.  Other than looking pretty for a few days and maybe making for good Instagram pictures, what purpose did flowers serve?

But for the few days they survive in their vase on my kitchen table, I truly can’t help smiling every time I walk past my roses.  So maybe I’m allowed to have something with no purpose beyond that of making me happy.  After all, that William Morris quote doesn’t say that the things in your house must be both useful and beautiful – only that they should be one or the other.  If both, so much the better.  If only one of the two, well, the human spirit needs Beauty to survive as much as it does the Plain Jane Useful Things.

As for their transitory nature, their fleeting existence, the roses are perhaps all the sweeter for it.  There’s something about knowing they aren’t a permanent new fixture in my house, that I won’t become accustomed to their presence and hardly notice them at all in a few months like I do with my artwork and other Useful And Beautiful Things, that makes the short time I do have them around all the more special.  They make me smile precisely because they are new and beautiful and their beauty will not cease to be new to me by the time they wither.

Throwing Sharp Things

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I had just walked into the apartment when WHUMP!  Something flew into my roomie, the Commodore’s, closet door, followed by cheers from her and our neighbor, the Hamster.

“Um…whatcha doing?” I asked, tentatively tiptoeing toward her door.  The Hamster popped his head around the door frame, grinning at me.

“We’re practicing with our throwing knives!” he announced.  Sure enough, the two of them had stacked a pyramid of cardboard boxes in front of the Commodore’s closet and stood over by her window.  With a flick of the wrist, the Commodore sent another blade flying into an Amazon Fire box.  It stuck.

“This is so fun!” she exclaimed, reaching forward to pull her weapons out of the cardboard.

The Hamster proffered his knives to me, hilts first.  “Do you want to try?”

“Is that even a question?!”  I took the set of three knives and, after a few practice flicks, sent one hurtling toward the boxes.  It hit, bounced off, and lay flat on the carpet.  I sighed.

The Hamster and the Commodore told me they’d had several throws just end up sticking in the carpet, or even the closet door above and around the pyramid.  (Oh well.  We probably would have lost our security deposit anyway by the time we finally move out of the apartment.)  But as the night went on, a lot of throws flew straight and true to their targets.  I even had one go through a hole in a box to pin the back wall of the box to the closet door behind it!  The Commodore was aiming for a specific box with an enemy’s name on it, while the Hamster and I were just sort of trying to stab boxes in general.  The poor cookie mascot on one of them ended up rather tattered and scarred.

After a particularly bad round, where none of my throws stuck, I noted, “Even when they don’t hit, there’s something really satisfying about throwing sharp things at a great speed.”  The Hamster and the Commodore enthusiastically agreed.  It was like being little again and illicitly running with scissors (not that we ever did that, of course…).  It was the heady feeling of realizing that we were all legal adults and could, if we felt like it, spend the evening hurling sharp bits of metal at a pile of cardboard in our own home.  It was cathartic, stress relieving, and just plain fun.  I could imagine myself as one of my childhood heroines in battle – never mind that the target was stationary and less than five feet away.  Even though I’d never thrown a knife before in my life (and keep in mind, boys and girls, these were sets of throwing knives, specifically designed and balanced for the purpose, not like your ordinary Cutco stock), I’d always wanted to try it.  And I didn’t need anyone’s permission.  The opportunity just presented itself.

Of course, I never exactly expected to come home one evening and find two people in my apartment tossing blades around as a way of blowing off steam.  But then again, that’s why I love my friends: we’re all a little weird.

[I feel like I should put a disclaimer: no one was hurt.  We took turns and stood well out of the way while throwing and never even jokingly aimed at one another.  Ironically the next day I stabbed myself while cutting an apple, but that’s another story.]

Decidedly Neutral Face

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The Southern Belle and I couldn’t help but shake our heads at the tightness and shortness of the skirts in the crowd around us. One girl actually pulled her hem up as she wobbled by like a baby giraffe in sequined stilettos.  Considering this was a business etiquette dinner and the dress code was supposed to be “business dress,” I could only imagine what “business” these girls were aiming for.

“Oh my gosh,” the Belle said, turning to me, “what if we get to our tables and we have to listen to them all night?”

I batted my eyelashes at her and said with a smirk, “Then we will wear our Decidedly Neutral Faces and focus on the food.”  She grinned; this was a plan my dear Southern Belle could get behind.

You know the expressionless expression described in books when a character very determinedly lets nothing of his/her emotions show on his/her countenance?  Well, the Belle and I have that down to an art.  Usually the idea is to keep our true feelings under wraps – except from each other.  We can take one look at the other’s face and know precisely how hard she is working to keep that Decidedly Neutral Face on.  It’s particularly useful in situations where outright eye rolling would be rather rude and we need a moment to muster up some faux enthusiasm.

We’ve utilized it many a time, but we first put a name to it during our attempt at Yogalates (yoga + Pilates) last year.  We had decided to take another class at the rec to balance out the cardio of Zumba with some muscle toning.  However, within five minutes of the class beginning, I knew I couldn’t spend a semester doing this.

As soon as the instructor said, “Namaste” and dismissed us, the Southern Belle appeared at the side of my mat.  “So, we’re never doing that again.”

“Oh thank goodness,” I gasped.

She laughed.  “I was looking at you to see how you felt about it and you had this Decidedly Neutral Face the whole time.”

“I was trying to be polite!” I protested.

“I know, but because I know you I could tell you were just so done.”

That’s the nice thing about our friendship, I suppose: we can communicate almost telepathically.  We also let each other rant and get a little bit judgey sometimes, because we both know that ultimately the other is a perfectly nice person with a little bit of sass that needs to be relieved every now and then.  Unfortunately, taking baby steps into adulthood means that the even nearly audible eye rolls of our adolescence are now harder to get away with, even if we are well-mannered enough to keep the actual thoughts to ourselves (we did complete the etiquette dinner with flying colors, after all).

I’m trying to shift my default thought process from the negative to the more positive side.  I’m dissecting why I have the reactions I do, and working on reminding myself that I don’t know the whole story from just a glance.  And generally, I’m getting better at not reacting so quickly based on my snarky inner monologue.

But sometimes, it’s really useful to just hide those habitual thoughts behind a Decidedly Neutral Face – and have a friend who knows exactly what I’m thinking.

On Ordering Books for Next Semester

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I despise ordering books.

I have requested that my password for my campus bookstore account be reset no less than five times, but has the email shown up yet? Nope. So here I sit, with a cart full of books that will probably be gone by the time I can finally sign in to pay for them.

Now, I realize that compared to my engineering and accounting friends, I, the English major, have it pretty easy (read, cheap). My textbooks, which tend to run along the lines of writing handbooks, are more like guidelines than actual requirements, not to mention most of the novels I read for class can be found at Half Price Books even cheaper than renting from the campus bookstore.

However.

It never seems to fail that I forget to order books until only a few days before the new semester, and that means that the rental and used book options are more limited, increasing the price and causing me extra stress when something inevitably goes wrong with the website. The whole process is just annoying, and I would so much rather spend money on the books I truly want to read.

How do you cope with ordering required materials, whether for school or work?

New Year – Now What?

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Have you ever noticed how the end of an old year seems like the perfect excuse to let good habits slide, because in a week or so you’re going to start new ones anyway? Maybe that’s just me. So I’ve been thinking about past resolutions I’ve managed to keep and new ones I’d like to try, and I’ve got it divvied up by a few different areas of my life:

1. This blog!

My posts here have been…irregular to say the least.  I’ll have to see what my work and class schedule is like, but my general goal will be to post at least twice during the week and once a weekend.  Fingers crossed I’ll be able to make this blog into a real thing!

2. Health!

The Southern Belle and I were pretty good about keeping up a workout routine this semester…until Dead Week rolled around.  Then we tended to go for Starbucks over the gym.  But I’d like to resurrect that workout routine with both cardio and strength training, as well as continuing to avoid packaged dinners.  I should probably also take my boyfriend’s advice and drink more water.  And eat more veggies.  You know.  General healthy eating.  But also not beating myself up over occasional slip-ups.

3. Communicating!

I seriously need to keep in better touch with my family.  And friends from high school.  I’m also filing more consistent journal writing under this, because I need to be better about communicating with myself and articulating what I’m feeling.  Along this same vein, I want to be better about keeping myself informed on what’s going on in the world, because for most of 2014 I seriously had no idea.

4. School!

This is my job right now, but I need to keep it balanced and give schoolwork the value it deserves, no more and no less.  Part of this is my resolution not to do homework at home.  Instead I’ll be utilizing the office I get a key to because I’m a managing intern for my school’s online journal (yay, power!).  I’ll also try not to rely on my tutoring shifts as time to get homework done – as nice as it is to get paid to do homework, it’s not a good habit to rely on that opportunity and then get annoyed with my students when I have to, y’know, actually do my job.

5. Fun!

I want to try new things.  I actually promised my boyfriend I would even *gulp* go skiing with him.  This semester I’ve realized that I got into a habit of writing off certain activities or aspects of life just because it’s easier to define myself that way.  For example, I tend to laugh about the idea of me going skiing because I’ve just automatically said that I hated it for so long.  I know that if I were to agree to try it, people would make a big deal out of it, so I don’t admit that actually I might be willing to try it again.

What are you trying to improve on in 2015 (or are you just staying your wonderful self)?

It’s Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas

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I sat in Starbucks yesterday working on an essay and found myself grinning like an idiot when John Denver and the Muppets came on singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Singing along under my breath to Miss Piggy’s “BA DUM BUM BUM” earned some alarmed looks from the students around me, but I didn’t really care. Christmas music makes me so happy. Even when I’m stuck at school until only a week before Christmas (yay finals!) and it feels like I’m missing out on all the anticipation at home that makes the season so wonderful, I can dance around in my kitchen to Dan Fogelburg and sing along to Idina Menzel in my room and it feels something like the magical season I remember from being a kid. We only haul out these CDs once a year, but I never fail to remember every single word. They’re carved deep into my memory, an accessible form of time travel as this thing called growing up slowly seems to steal some of the magic left over from childhood.

Through the Looking-Glass of Weird Insecurities

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As I leaned at an awkward angle over the bathroom counter, peering into the magnifying mirror (a torturous invention, why do we even have those?) and yanking out rogue eyebrow hairs with a pointy metal tool (hint: tweezers), I wondered why. Why was I bothering? Even I hadn’t noticed the extra hairs between my actual brows until I glanced into the magnifying mirror. Just to confirm this, I looked at myself in the wall-mounted mirror, the one that didn’t show every blemish in horrifyingly high definition.

Nope. No unibrow.

And yet I couldn’t help trapping yet another hair between the tweezers’ points and pulling it out. Now that I looked closer, I also needed to slap one of those blackhead strip thingies on my nose. Except…oh great, I had blackheads around my lips too. A pore strip there would only pull out the (also unsightly) little fuzzy hairs around my mouth, not to mention exacerbate my winter chapped lips. (I only know this because I’ve tried to purify those blackheads before. And it hurt.)

The truth is, I’ve had a weird thing about plucking my eyebrows ever since sixth grade. That was the year the boy in front of me, who I may or may not have had a mild crush on, turned around and said, “Do you tweeze your eyebrows? Because you’ve got a unibrow goin’ on there.”

As a result, that weekend I endured the painful ministrations of a friend and her tweezers. It just so happened that this cosmetically gifted friend had also gifted me with another random insecurity – when I wore my hair in a ponytail to school one day, she commented, “No wonder you wear your hair down all the time. Your ears are filthy!”

Who says those kinds of things to a 12-year-old? But more importantly, how is it that these off-hand remarks to the 12-year-old I once was still affect my view of myself to this day? Psychologists say we remember seven negative things for every positive comment about ourselves; to me, this ratio is unsurprising. I always used to journal or somehow record the compliments I got so they wouldn’t slip away, but I’ve never had trouble remembering the times people have asked me why I never tried lightening my freckles.

Now that I’m in college, you’d think the opinions of a few sixth-graders from way back when wouldn’t affect me so much. But if I’m being honest, it’s not even their voices I still hear anymore. I see stray eyebrow hairs and yes, I think of that boy twisting around in his desk to make a blunt observation, but it’s my own internal criticism saying, “Better get rid of that unibrow. We don’t want a repeat of Fred’s comment.” I put my hair into a ponytail and it says, “Shouldn’t you clean your ears, just in case? Remember what Sally said.” The fact is that although I am older and at least a smidgen wiser, I have so deeply internalized these critiques of my appearance that I no longer even need the memories to bolster them. They are standalone insecurities. I have made them my own.

I have learned from experience not to pin all my self-worth on others’ opinions. I am still learning, slowly, to accept my body and the self inside it. First, though, I’ll have to put the tweezers down.