(no subject)
WHO
My mother in faded pink, my favorite, my small sleepy head on the rhythm of her worn cotton. My sister who looks at me when I am born and says I could never be ugly. Sheila my second grade teacher who matches Reebok high-tops to her outfit each day. My bus aide Miss Betty who gives us candy that tastes like soap. A man with frighteningly large nostrils who works at the neighborhood convenient store and tells me I will be a cashier when I grow up. Camp counselors who I want to be and first friends and friends who are not friends but hard-eyed girls who collect rules like Barbies. My first best friend who lives across the street but goes to a new school and disappears into a pack of new girls in matching plaid skirts. Every girl I wanted to become. The girl I became, and lost. And found, and lost. Boys I run from who gave smiles and burned CDs. Anonymous French Canadian men who help me up the icy trail of my first Adirondack high peak. Customs workers and toll workers and tour guides. Ipod, a homeless man who will sing any song for a dollar. Swim teams and writing classes and people whose names I paper clip and file each day, inventing their lives. Della, a woman who sits next to me on a flight to Philadelphia and tells me she is a prophet. A sad man on a New York City subway who tells my friend I have “a beautiful back.” The wispy-haired airline clerk who barrels down silent gray carpet with me, ushering me on to a flight I should have missed, shaking her head as she tells me she didn’t think I was going to make it. A high school teacher who tells me we bloom where we are planted and dies just before I turn twenty. A man whom I only see from behind, his muscled back dusty and tan in the heat of a summer musical festival, a paper grocery bag atop his head with a bumper sticker stuck on that reads “Live the life you love.” Men with strong arms and stronger accents who pull me from the churn of whitewater, and do not ask or advise, only help. Professors who push me and swim coaches who know me and people who get it. New friends from English classes who feel like more than old friends and sit in doorframes and hold me while I cry without warning. My father, his eyes still and serious when he tells me he loves me.
WHEN
1987. When I was two, and cried every time I was dropped off at preschool. The year pneumonia stung my lungs and when we finally left the hospital and all I wanted was the strawberry pop tarts we normally weren’t allowed to eat . The year we took our “family fall foliage” trip and I proclaimed that I “felt fun there.” Early spring, when I thought yellow tights underneath green shorts with pink high tops were all I needed. When I tried to learn cursive and failed and wept without sound for the lost words. The year I learned how girls worked (and was terrified.) Third grade and I start ice skating. Fifth and I quit for swimming. When I sat alone in my room and moved my arm or foot or self a certain way and imagined that maybe somewhere in the world someone or no one was doing the same. When the house was always too cold and I sat on the worn wood until the heat vent roared and warmed my face. The year I wrote stories and was certain it was all I would ever want to do. When my pet turtle died on my birthday. The time just before a sleepover or birthday party when I convinced myself there was nothing to be excited about, and was numb with the small horror of nothingness. 1999 and I am twelve and we pack a neighbor’s house and I drink slow champagne from a mug and wait for the lights to go off. When I thought I liked boy bands and blue eye shadow. When I sat at the end of the row on middle school movie outings. 10 minutes after I needed to be awake. When I wore cargo pants and wanted to be liked. When I baked Christmas cookies with their names in icing and was. September 2001, it’s serious when swim practice is canceled. When the sky was never bluer. When I wanted to kiss you for a year. When I did and hated it. Much too late at night. The moment before someone takes a sip of their drink, pausing to say something too important to be swallowed. When it is still very dark and I am bitterly awake, wanting only sleep, hating everything. When the water is all I need. Always. 2008.
WHERE
The space between the dresser and the wall, where it is safe. In the car on the way to grandma’s house, asleep every time. Under the dining room table, furtively scratching my chicken pox. In the “reading corner” I made each time I rearranged my small room with layers of blankets and crates of books. Not at my grandfather’s funeral because I am too young. The stump where we invented in jungles of ivy and sang loudly, unaware that anyone could hear. Past unused suitcases and stray sweaters in the back of Mom’s closet to my secret place. Creaking bunk beds at summer camp shared with girls who share my name and laughter during the best two weeks of the year. Wherever my feet can tuck under something. Ski lifts in winter silence and awkward silence and this pool and that pool and attics and near big windows and on canvas chairs in the library that made sitting more like laying down. In Lake Erie where we are mermaids then Olympians then nervous girls with boys from down the beach. In my grandma’s dining room eating thawed pie made by my now dead great grandmother when she was alive as if this is not strange. Too in my head, always. In the car to escape my parents’ fights, hoping that if we drive away from the moment it will be gone. The unnamed place my mother went after these fights, to look at the trees. Vacant grain elevators at sunrise, laughing heads circled on top of asphalt poked by a bramble of weeds. In strangers houses learning lives from facts. Anywhere we are. Beneath the Christmas tree, warm and looking up into the blinking dazzle of pine. The space across my parents bed that watches with me, just as silent, as they stand on either side each evening and trade stories of their day. The driveway my mother walks down after surgery while my father holds her waist and I watch from the window , forget to breathe. On line for kegs and cheering alongside flip cup tables and on top of tables learning to properly be a mess. In the backs of dark bars kissing boys without faces and on pillows alone and heavy with the dull fuzzy light of morning. On the floor by the speakers listening to our small voices. Thrown into rapids in Baños, tossed at the whim of the water, my head inches from rocks or something worse. Crowded backseats of cars. Bathroom stalls. On my bike. Buffalo, Buffalo. Canada when we are 19. The Dive. The five of us collapsed on top of each other, but never sleeping before watching a building downtown implode at dawn. Around campfires and on muddy trails and sprawled on to summits with a peanut butter bagel, finally grateful. In mirrors thinking maybe I am beautiful, in mirrors picking it all apart into ugly wordless bits. Walking down train tracks towards Machu Picchu in the dark because we cannot afford the Inca Trail. A place I have made mine own.
HOW
With many cups of tea. In two minutes. Never fast enough. Quietly. While talking too much, talking not enough, not at all. Like a tough cookie. Like a wimp. Carefully, recklessly, one practice at a time. With my legs and arms and feet and hands when they are all I have. Like it matters, like I care, like today will be different. Putting it off til the last brutal seconds. Wondering if I am good enough smart enough well enough. Anxious and worried and always inventing. With the faces of strangers and their lives for comfort. With a song in my head like a narrative. Narrating and dissecting and making too much of it. Like this is the first time I’ve done it. Faking it. Bullshitting. Honest and true but never together, flustered. Put together, but always a mess. With awkward haircuts and worse silences. Taking lots of notes. Bruised and freckled and without the right hair product. Like I am running late for a plane I will miss anyway. With strong legs and nerves like fire. With a lot of tissues and power naps and phone calls to my sister that our breathless and always end too fast. In dresses in the winter because there are worse things than cold. Like I am on the edge, in the middle, nowhere I know.
WHY
Because I always care even when I don’t. Because when you pet a dog’s ears it’s all you can think about. Because coffee always works. Because you work. Because I read anything and edit everything. Because I can’t walk by a gumball machine without stopping. Because I believed you. Because the hum of a school bus idle and waiting for parents to appear can be the saddest noise a bright afternoon will ever know. Because we all want it. Because last night I wanted to do work and instead we made cookies and drank too much wine and laughed even more and sang along to Christmas carols in ugly echoes that woke the neighbors. Because when you lose power you see what you miss. Because there is always something to miss. Because we all find ways to fill in the holes. Because I dance in my seat on airplanes in a way no one sees. Because I see what you see and in this way we know each other even when we do not. Because it matters to someone. Because words work. Because words are all we have even when they are nothing. Because when I read a good book I want to rip out the pages and give them to everyone. Because books. Because there are not enough pages and there is not enough time. Because we will always have pages and time. Because before anything begins I think about the ending. Because I’ll think, I will never get there but when I do I won’t believe I was ever here. Because we are all here. Because when I came back to the US after seven weeks in South America, the woman who stamped my passport said “Welcome home!” and meant it. Because when you cook a good dinner you think you can do anything. Because maybe you can. Because you know you can’t and do it anyway. Because I know now it is all in the doing. Because little boys hold red flowers out of car windows and tell me “This is for my Mom!” Because I am crazy in the same way that you are. Because there is no such thing as sane. Because ice cream is necessary. Because apple trees look sinister in the spring. Because we pile on beds and hunch over computer screens and talk until there is no breath left. Because I am scared and always want to do better. Because I will never be done. Because good days can start at the post office. Because other runners smile at you as they pass. Because I cry when it isn’t worth it and never when I should. Because tears still have a worth. Because it hurts. Because if we can make each other hurt we are doing something right. Because there is so much to be done. Because we can make. Because we. Because we cannot do it all now, or tomorrow. Because all.
My mother in faded pink, my favorite, my small sleepy head on the rhythm of her worn cotton. My sister who looks at me when I am born and says I could never be ugly. Sheila my second grade teacher who matches Reebok high-tops to her outfit each day. My bus aide Miss Betty who gives us candy that tastes like soap. A man with frighteningly large nostrils who works at the neighborhood convenient store and tells me I will be a cashier when I grow up. Camp counselors who I want to be and first friends and friends who are not friends but hard-eyed girls who collect rules like Barbies. My first best friend who lives across the street but goes to a new school and disappears into a pack of new girls in matching plaid skirts. Every girl I wanted to become. The girl I became, and lost. And found, and lost. Boys I run from who gave smiles and burned CDs. Anonymous French Canadian men who help me up the icy trail of my first Adirondack high peak. Customs workers and toll workers and tour guides. Ipod, a homeless man who will sing any song for a dollar. Swim teams and writing classes and people whose names I paper clip and file each day, inventing their lives. Della, a woman who sits next to me on a flight to Philadelphia and tells me she is a prophet. A sad man on a New York City subway who tells my friend I have “a beautiful back.” The wispy-haired airline clerk who barrels down silent gray carpet with me, ushering me on to a flight I should have missed, shaking her head as she tells me she didn’t think I was going to make it. A high school teacher who tells me we bloom where we are planted and dies just before I turn twenty. A man whom I only see from behind, his muscled back dusty and tan in the heat of a summer musical festival, a paper grocery bag atop his head with a bumper sticker stuck on that reads “Live the life you love.” Men with strong arms and stronger accents who pull me from the churn of whitewater, and do not ask or advise, only help. Professors who push me and swim coaches who know me and people who get it. New friends from English classes who feel like more than old friends and sit in doorframes and hold me while I cry without warning. My father, his eyes still and serious when he tells me he loves me.
WHEN
1987. When I was two, and cried every time I was dropped off at preschool. The year pneumonia stung my lungs and when we finally left the hospital and all I wanted was the strawberry pop tarts we normally weren’t allowed to eat . The year we took our “family fall foliage” trip and I proclaimed that I “felt fun there.” Early spring, when I thought yellow tights underneath green shorts with pink high tops were all I needed. When I tried to learn cursive and failed and wept without sound for the lost words. The year I learned how girls worked (and was terrified.) Third grade and I start ice skating. Fifth and I quit for swimming. When I sat alone in my room and moved my arm or foot or self a certain way and imagined that maybe somewhere in the world someone or no one was doing the same. When the house was always too cold and I sat on the worn wood until the heat vent roared and warmed my face. The year I wrote stories and was certain it was all I would ever want to do. When my pet turtle died on my birthday. The time just before a sleepover or birthday party when I convinced myself there was nothing to be excited about, and was numb with the small horror of nothingness. 1999 and I am twelve and we pack a neighbor’s house and I drink slow champagne from a mug and wait for the lights to go off. When I thought I liked boy bands and blue eye shadow. When I sat at the end of the row on middle school movie outings. 10 minutes after I needed to be awake. When I wore cargo pants and wanted to be liked. When I baked Christmas cookies with their names in icing and was. September 2001, it’s serious when swim practice is canceled. When the sky was never bluer. When I wanted to kiss you for a year. When I did and hated it. Much too late at night. The moment before someone takes a sip of their drink, pausing to say something too important to be swallowed. When it is still very dark and I am bitterly awake, wanting only sleep, hating everything. When the water is all I need. Always. 2008.
WHERE
The space between the dresser and the wall, where it is safe. In the car on the way to grandma’s house, asleep every time. Under the dining room table, furtively scratching my chicken pox. In the “reading corner” I made each time I rearranged my small room with layers of blankets and crates of books. Not at my grandfather’s funeral because I am too young. The stump where we invented in jungles of ivy and sang loudly, unaware that anyone could hear. Past unused suitcases and stray sweaters in the back of Mom’s closet to my secret place. Creaking bunk beds at summer camp shared with girls who share my name and laughter during the best two weeks of the year. Wherever my feet can tuck under something. Ski lifts in winter silence and awkward silence and this pool and that pool and attics and near big windows and on canvas chairs in the library that made sitting more like laying down. In Lake Erie where we are mermaids then Olympians then nervous girls with boys from down the beach. In my grandma’s dining room eating thawed pie made by my now dead great grandmother when she was alive as if this is not strange. Too in my head, always. In the car to escape my parents’ fights, hoping that if we drive away from the moment it will be gone. The unnamed place my mother went after these fights, to look at the trees. Vacant grain elevators at sunrise, laughing heads circled on top of asphalt poked by a bramble of weeds. In strangers houses learning lives from facts. Anywhere we are. Beneath the Christmas tree, warm and looking up into the blinking dazzle of pine. The space across my parents bed that watches with me, just as silent, as they stand on either side each evening and trade stories of their day. The driveway my mother walks down after surgery while my father holds her waist and I watch from the window , forget to breathe. On line for kegs and cheering alongside flip cup tables and on top of tables learning to properly be a mess. In the backs of dark bars kissing boys without faces and on pillows alone and heavy with the dull fuzzy light of morning. On the floor by the speakers listening to our small voices. Thrown into rapids in Baños, tossed at the whim of the water, my head inches from rocks or something worse. Crowded backseats of cars. Bathroom stalls. On my bike. Buffalo, Buffalo. Canada when we are 19. The Dive. The five of us collapsed on top of each other, but never sleeping before watching a building downtown implode at dawn. Around campfires and on muddy trails and sprawled on to summits with a peanut butter bagel, finally grateful. In mirrors thinking maybe I am beautiful, in mirrors picking it all apart into ugly wordless bits. Walking down train tracks towards Machu Picchu in the dark because we cannot afford the Inca Trail. A place I have made mine own.
HOW
With many cups of tea. In two minutes. Never fast enough. Quietly. While talking too much, talking not enough, not at all. Like a tough cookie. Like a wimp. Carefully, recklessly, one practice at a time. With my legs and arms and feet and hands when they are all I have. Like it matters, like I care, like today will be different. Putting it off til the last brutal seconds. Wondering if I am good enough smart enough well enough. Anxious and worried and always inventing. With the faces of strangers and their lives for comfort. With a song in my head like a narrative. Narrating and dissecting and making too much of it. Like this is the first time I’ve done it. Faking it. Bullshitting. Honest and true but never together, flustered. Put together, but always a mess. With awkward haircuts and worse silences. Taking lots of notes. Bruised and freckled and without the right hair product. Like I am running late for a plane I will miss anyway. With strong legs and nerves like fire. With a lot of tissues and power naps and phone calls to my sister that our breathless and always end too fast. In dresses in the winter because there are worse things than cold. Like I am on the edge, in the middle, nowhere I know.
WHY
Because I always care even when I don’t. Because when you pet a dog’s ears it’s all you can think about. Because coffee always works. Because you work. Because I read anything and edit everything. Because I can’t walk by a gumball machine without stopping. Because I believed you. Because the hum of a school bus idle and waiting for parents to appear can be the saddest noise a bright afternoon will ever know. Because we all want it. Because last night I wanted to do work and instead we made cookies and drank too much wine and laughed even more and sang along to Christmas carols in ugly echoes that woke the neighbors. Because when you lose power you see what you miss. Because there is always something to miss. Because we all find ways to fill in the holes. Because I dance in my seat on airplanes in a way no one sees. Because I see what you see and in this way we know each other even when we do not. Because it matters to someone. Because words work. Because words are all we have even when they are nothing. Because when I read a good book I want to rip out the pages and give them to everyone. Because books. Because there are not enough pages and there is not enough time. Because we will always have pages and time. Because before anything begins I think about the ending. Because I’ll think, I will never get there but when I do I won’t believe I was ever here. Because we are all here. Because when I came back to the US after seven weeks in South America, the woman who stamped my passport said “Welcome home!” and meant it. Because when you cook a good dinner you think you can do anything. Because maybe you can. Because you know you can’t and do it anyway. Because I know now it is all in the doing. Because little boys hold red flowers out of car windows and tell me “This is for my Mom!” Because I am crazy in the same way that you are. Because there is no such thing as sane. Because ice cream is necessary. Because apple trees look sinister in the spring. Because we pile on beds and hunch over computer screens and talk until there is no breath left. Because I am scared and always want to do better. Because I will never be done. Because good days can start at the post office. Because other runners smile at you as they pass. Because I cry when it isn’t worth it and never when I should. Because tears still have a worth. Because it hurts. Because if we can make each other hurt we are doing something right. Because there is so much to be done. Because we can make. Because we. Because we cannot do it all now, or tomorrow. Because all.