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.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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