day thirty: passports

When I was growing up, I used to imagine that I lived in a split ranch that was built exactly on the border between the U.S. and Canada. My parent's bedroom would be in one country and mine in the other. I'd have autonomy but would still be close enough to cross the border to their room if I had a bad dream.

I feel the same split today on my birthday, now that I've actually entered my thirties. I want a lifeline back into my twenties, but I'm choosing the best sort of autonomy--the kind with the people I love being right there, offering prayer and support, with me reciprocating. Instead of boxing what I could have accomplished so far into a corner closet, I'm learning how to age with intention.

Like you, I have this simple urge to love the people in my life, and to become more like grain or milk--something that can nourish.

day twenty-nine: steak and champagne

When my grandmother got married to my grandfather, it was a peanut wedding. "That's what we called all the Italian weddings in the neighborhood," she told me. "We'd carry trays of beef sandwiches through the crowds, and we were too poor to rent chairs so no one would sit for the entire reception." Before they left, the newlyweds stood at a receiving line. This was jut after the Depression, and when the they got home and opened the freshly licked cash envelopes, "Most people gave us one dollar, some two, a few four," my grandmother recalled, "but to save face lot of men put empty, unsigned enveloped in the receiving bag."

Things had partly been so bad when my grandmother was growing up in Chicago during the Depression because her dad was too proud to ask for help or stand in line at the food bank. "Every night, we'd get a cube of sliced bread with milk poured over it." It's amazing, that my mom and aunt, and then me and my cousins a generation later, came from her tiny body.

day twenty-eight: taking advantage

When I turned 29 last year, my dad sent me a big, bright yellow birthday card. On the front, in this meaty font, it says, "BE BAD". Open it, and an instrumental version of "Bad to the Bone" starts playing, which is obviously completely awesome.

It's official. Tomorrow, my wish is granted. I don't know how or when exactly, but I will find some way to be as bad as I emmereffing want to be.

day twenty-seven: what thirty looks like

I think thirty might look more than feel.
And I think it might look a little like this.

day twenty-six: I don't sleep, I dream

We live near Interstate 5, and in the summer I sleep with my head next to the window with tips of Seattle skyscrapers lite-brighting our wall. Sometimes when it's warm and we sleep with the window open, I dream big dreams. Once, I dreamt about this wild night scene. I'm convinced it was the closest I've ever come to leaving my body:

The air smells like a mix of sweet from the lavender in our flower box and stale from highway exhaust. I leave the window and crawl through field on field of purple flowers and reach this cliff that slopes toward the interstate.

Look right, there's Mt. Baker, Bellingham, that wall of mountains scuffed up against Vancouver. Look left, there's Mt. St. Helens, red lava like ketchup dripping from her chin. Then past Portland to Ashland. The Redwoods are a lincoln log patch. There's the Bay Bridge, wobbling next to San Francisco, the first city I lived in on my own.

If I look straight ahead, squint past the Sound and over the Olympics, there's the ocean like a thick blue moat--my private zoetrope--animating whole cities in Asia, Siberia, clustered skylines further west.

I am Jude the Obscure--a frame of ruffled feathers. And suddenly, quietly, I push back through the lavender, feathers floating every which way but up.

day twenty-five: you're invited

Saw this sign in Dresden last week for a party you can only get into if you're thirty or over. And the best part--the first gig is on my very birthday!

day twenty-four: pacify the elderly

I'm eating a bowl of frozen raspberries, which are the same color that the water turned when we cooked swiss chard for dinner, which is the same color as the ruby slipper tea I drank this afternoon.

It's funny when monotonous things are repetitive yet interesting. Hating and loving the idea of collaging my walls. Walls covered with old black and white newspapers would give me this easy leaning, like I'm on a 4 pt. Times New Roman road trip.

And so at work for instance, hours turn into days, then to weeks and so on. Time feels the same, but in a comforting way. That's until you look back, and see that we always have chocolate chip mint ice cream in the freezer, and you complain about having to take the dog out before bed, and I fall asleep with under the pumpkin-colored afghan in the den, and you keep awake until after the weather.

I think that's when repetition stops being the symptom and becomes the pacifier.

day twenty-three: artsy+crafty

I like living in Seattle, even though lot of artsy crafty young people are departing towards Portland or Austin, Buenos Aires even. But really, I can use the leg room, and D and I are pretty good at joining revivals. So I'm anxious to see where the city goes, and when things turn around again will I, then firmly in my thirties, choose to care?

Speaking of artists, here's my birthday present from D for my thirtieth. I didn't know what I wanted, nice sheets with a high thread count, or a thick, 80's digital watch with a velcro band, or feather on a roach clip for my hair (like the ones carnies wear!) were all the gift ideas I could think of. But then I saw this painting by Aaron Tucker, an old acquaintance from Indiana, and took the plunge. I love how it's just bright enough, but all quivery.

day twenty-two: changing what you eat

A gross sketch of the contents of my kitchen, a decade ago versus now.

day twenty-one: sukr kava limonada

In Europe, everyone is so quiet when they eat. We found this place in Prague, Sukr Kava Limonada, that already was so away from all the tourist stuff, but inside it was like each table was set endlessly away from the next, and each chair was a silent plant, so imagine what happens when you sit down!

day twenty: moving closer

The closer I come to my 30th birthday, the more excited I'm starting to feel. Which is totally surprising me. I can't think of anything I'm leaving behind, expect maybe good intentions, incomplete projects, and lots of slept in beds. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I imagine every bed I've slept in for more than two week's time. You should try making your own list--no matter how old you are, it makes you feel like your life has already lasted for miles and miles and miles.

Slept-in-Beds (two weeks or more)
Childhood bedroom Indiana
Basement guestroom (with termites!) in aunt's rowhouse Bridgeport, Chicago
Mint in the backyard, oatmeal in the mornings grandparent's house Indiana
Sun tea on the porch, watermelon in the creek lakehouse Sturgis, Michigan
Dorm rooms, various Indiana
Haight-Ashbury Victorian, summer internship San Francisco
10th and Waverly walk-up, across from Nine Lives Bookshop Greenwich Village
NYU dorm, by the farmer's market Union Square
Loft above the Civic Theater with a huge vintage vault, Green House with slugs in the garden, blue house by the river Indiana
House by the arboretum, house with rats in the basement, co-op by the doughnut shop, Seattle

day nineteen: L'chaim

I'm pleased to report that women I've seen in Germany and the Czech Republic eat food, don't seem to exercise but walk everywhere, and are healthy, average sizes! I haven't been to Europe since an August in Spain five years ago, and I'd assumed before coming to Prague that--to hell with early Spring snow showers--women here would surely be walking around in white spandex tights, heals, and terry tube tops, just like the women I'd seen in Seville.

Could I live here? Yes! The Frye boots, the sweaters, colorful Israeli scarfs, and women with real asses trotting down the little streets. L'chaim, to life!

day eighteen: towels and clouds

When you're flying to Prague and Stevie Wonder comes on one of those looping airline radio channels, close you eyes and bam. You're a kid, sit-and-spinning, pogo-ball-jumping on the shag rug in your living room. There's piles of unfolded laundry all around, and you pop off whatever you're bouncing on and dive into a mound of warm towels, just out of the dryer.

After you stay under for a little while, you lift a towel from your eyes, and you're somehow below the clouds. The whole of Europe is land-locking you in, which is surprisingly the safest feeling ever.

day seventeen: feeling swoony

Eating the end of a very crunchy peanut butter cookie, about to start on my mint tea in the window seat of Bakeshop in our Prague neighborhood. There's a big bowl of sugar lumps in front of me that look like tiny, snowy meatballs. A man next to me, a tourist, hides his camera low in his lap, picks it up when he thinks no one is looking and snaps photos in irregular heartbeats.

I used to collect sugar packets with my friend Amanda, who lived a few hours away from my hometown, in Detroit. We used to mail letters back and forth often. Each time I'd go to Big Boy, or Denny's, IHOP, whatever diner or restaurant, I'd grab a sugar packet and write where I was, with who, what time of day it was, on what occasion, that sort of thing. She did the same, and we ended up sending dozens of packets back and forth in letters. On a trip to my house a couple of years later, we brought all of our sugar packets together, read the notes we wrote on each one, and tore enough open until we had what we needed to make a cake.

So if you can imagine a sugar packet in your mind, let's say Sugar in the Raw with that nice brown color, here's what I'm going to send you:

Bakeshop, Prague
29 years, 357 days
All alone
Feeling swoony