January 12th. Stay tuned….
My Funny Valentine
I have run the gamut of emotions when it comes to Valentine’s Day. As a child, I spent hours pasting together red and white paper doilies with glue-covered hands. I remember sifting through my box of valentine’s from the sundry store, reading each cheesy message carefully before selecting a recipient–careful to save the valentine with the cutest picture for my best friend du jour, and the card with the most BE MINE-worthy sentiment for my crush du jour.
As I grew older, and crushes–and the teasing that often went with them for me–grew more serious, my enthusiasm for all the Valentine’s Day splendor diminished. I would still dress in my most cupid-inspired pink and red, hoping to catch the eye of some last-minute admirer. Sitting in my last period class, I would listen to the P.A. as the secretary called a long list of girls (and a few guys) to the office to pick up flowers from their sweethearts. I would feign nonchalance, doodling on the back of my notebook as the list droned on and the classroom thinned to a few lonely hearts. I never held my breath, but grew a bit more melancholy each Valentine’s that passed with not so much as a candy-gram from a secret admirer.
Until I met Big. We dated the last two years of high school, and off-and-on through college. There were flowers, and teddy bears, and special evenings, perhaps even a bottle of wine or two. Those were years when I was so completely intoxicatedly infatuated that I didn’t even notice the poor lonely out-of-love folks (or anyone else) on Valentine’s Day. But, the higher you soar, the harder you fall, and when things fizzled between Big and me, I went a little, well, dark.
After a few bitter breakups, I went totally anti-cupid. I wore a lot of black, and some pretty severe makeup, and treated myself to some nice gifts and decadent girls-nights out with other single girlfriends.
My Valentine’s angst was still in effect two years ago, but was waning after a weekend in January with Big had given me new perspective (I can now see that it was closure). I was feeling a little less cursed by love, mostly stupid–and stupefied by it, so I dropped the all-black on Valentine’s Day routine and put on a simple taupe sweater dress that made me feel pretty (and showed off my legs). I straightened my hair; I curled my lashes; I sprayed the back of my neck with a spicy perfume; and I went out to celebrate Valentine’s Day–not drink to its demise–for the first time in years. Continue reading
“A year goes by so fast…”
November 1st marked one year since I put my life and career on pause and moved back to my hometown to . . . re-evaluate. Day-to-day, the year has crept along at a pace only those who have lived in a truly small small town can understand, but the months and seasons continue to sneak up on me. The weight of summer’s humid air lifted from my shoulders so slowly I hardly noticed it leaving. A late summer drought slowly leeched the color from the hills of trees, taking them from lush, saturated green to the washed-out golden-green of a faded polaroid, then seemlessly to the rust autumn tones with no announcement. It was all very stealthy–so stealthy, in fact, that I only appreciated the transition from subconscious memory as I glanced at the hills in late October hoping to take in the beautiful fall foliage, but instead found a treeline of dark skeleton arms up-stretched, groping horrifically at the grey clouds overhead. The hills had donned their ghastly costumes in time for halloween.
I’d like to say that I’ve taken advantage of the slowed pace this past year to do all the things I never had time to fit in my busy schedule before. The truth is, Continue reading
“Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.”
And sometimes you want to go where nobody knows your name. Sometimes you want a clean slate–not so much to reinvent yourself, but more to reintroduce yourself. After finally closing a door on the guy I always kind of thought I’d end up growing old with, I realized I’d been treading water, marking time, waiting for him to grow up and see that we were meant to be together. But we weren’t, we aren’t, and as hard as it was is for me to admit: we’ve grown up, and into people those wild-eyed high school sweethearts never imagined they’d become. I’d thought I’d shut that door many times, only to find it flung back open again. But all those times shutting the door had been a sad, mournful act. This time was different; it was empowering, and for the first time in my adult life I felt like my own person, finally untethered and free to move in any direction I chose.
Later that week I chose to celebrate some work success by letting loose my new-found freedom with a girls’ night–solo. While I could’ve had a fine time going out on a more traditional girls’ night (you know, with other girls–plural!), being surrounded by people who knew me as I was before my recent epiphany would only enable me to continue my old water-treading ways. I needed to do something bolder, something out of my comfort zone and a little bit scary. Plus, He’s Just Not That Into You had just come out in theaters, a tie-in/spin-off of one of my greatest guilty pleasures–Sex and the City. So I headed out for a SATC-worthy pre-movie snack at one of my favorite chain bar-and-grill restaurants from college.
I walked into the restaurant and found a seat at the bar with the confidence of a woman who’s just solved one of life’s great mysteries. Continue reading
“The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire.”
I hear this song and suddenly I’m cruising down the street I grew up on in my electric blue ’93 Chevy Beretta with a carload of my fellow high school cheerleaders, windows down because the air conditioning was broken (or, actually, never really worked), letting the easy breeze that comes from hitting 40 MPH between stop signs relieve us from the soupy mid-July air of Southern Ohio. We’d spent the weeks since school let out practicing non-stop in preparation for the cheerleading competition at the county fair, and now that the fair was over we were relishing our free time. However, we soon realized that there wasn’t much for a bunch of 16-year-olds to do with so much free time and so little cash; at 78¢/gallon, a tank of gas split four-ways would give us hours of fun doing what all the other teens did on hot summer afternoons: cruising.
Those afternoons cruising in a wide, distorted loop around the eight or ten blocks of town, represented some of the only typical teenage behavior I can remember. Aside from the fact that we were all cheerleaders, I didn’t have much in common with my cruising pals. I’d never really dated–in fact, never been kissed–while they were completely boy-crazy, hopping from one “relationship” to another. At parties I preferred to get a nice sugar buzz from too much Pepsi so that I could remember all the sloppy, embarrassing antics my more inebriated friends might pull, though always playing the good sober baby sitter who stops them from doing anything truly regrettable. I attended a fairly strict church, helped with Sunday School, and participated in the church’s bible quiz team on Sunday mornings while my friends slept in and slept off their Saturday night indiscretions. They were still my friends–great friends–and we got on with only a tiny bit of teasing for my Sandra Dee persona.
That summer we couldn’t get enough of The Bloodhound Gang–probably because none of us had CD players in our cars, so we were at the mercy of the repetitive playlist of the one radio station we could get in that wasn’t exclusively country music or gospel. The music of that summer always conjures up warm, happy memories, but this past winter on an unforgivably cold February morning, the droning repetition of The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire. had a cold, numbing effect as one of my old cheerleading friends and I sat in my living room watching her house across the street burn.
Filed under Change, Friends, Growing up, Loss, Who am I?
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy…
Summer came early this year, with a suddenness that took my breath away–and replaced it with steam. Thick, humid, steam fills my lungs with every inhale, and like a steam engine I chug along through the sticky summer days and nights, months before the summer solstice. Thank you, Ohio, for the warm welcome.
Late May days of my childhood were always approached with anticipation of the beachy sunshine and balmy temps promised by the Memorial Day sale ads on TV, but were all-too-often realized with sharp, biting rain as I bravely marched with the scouts in the Memorial Day parade in my defiant shorts. However this year, weeks before the long Memorial Day weekend we were greeted with July-like weather: temperatures in the 80s and humidity well above. In Northern California, summer weather often flirted with me as distant a month as February, and I naively took this Ohio early warming as a similar flirtation. But this was no quick caress–this weather has become a clingy, sweaty lover whose cuddles and nuzzles have long overstayed their welcome, all the way into legitimate summer territory. The steam is here to stay.
And so I find myself walking through the dense air in the two blocks from the grocery store to my home, fighting the urge to practice my breaststroke in order to propel my body forward. The air is heavy with … something. Water? Perhaps, though it seems to have taken a form that is neither liquid nor gas nor solid, but something akin to an ionic charge. It seems impossible that my body courses through this substance without evoking little static bolts as it shifts and alters the particles. Butterflies flutter a little less fleetingly from bloom to bloom, and I wonder at their ability to move their wings at all through the soupy summer air. It is the very portrait of (literal) oppression.
For better or for worse, the heat and humidity have inspired me return to my blog. Maybe it’s the slow bopping Gershwin-esque melodies of tree frogs and crickets in chorus or the gentle lilting lightshow of the lightning bugs their song accompanies. Whatever the source of the inspiration, here’s hoping the urge to write remains after the heat subsides.
Confession: I’ve never had a New Year’s Kiss
10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…Happy New Year!
I’m one of those saps at the party who actually yells “Happy New Year!” as the clock strikes midnight, while everyone else’s lips are otherwise occupied in a New Year’s kiss with the one they love. Or I’m not at a party at all, opting to clear the collision course for the braver drivers on New Year’s Eve by staying home and watching old movies, baking cookie, cleaning house, or crocheting. Or blogging. Ok, when I say it out loud like that it sounds a little sad. But really, I’m not sure what the fuss is all about. Continue reading
Filed under Confessions, Dating, Growing up, Men, Who am I?
A thousand points of light
Who is your personal hero? Write a personal essay about your hero's accomplishments and what makes that person a hero.
How many times did I write essays about my personal hero as I moved from big, clumsy letters scratched from an oversized pencil to smooth careful curves flowing from a ballpoint pen to awkwardly fumbling fingers on a computer keyboard? When I was a child my heroes were important adults in my life; they were people who had accomplished great feats, faced great fears, and overcome great obstacles. These were people whom I aspired to be like. Some might have called them role models, but to me they were much more. They were heroes. They are heroes, still–those still with me, those far away, and those gone but not forgotten.
My heroes were not generic, faceless do-gooders, nor were they impersonal figures in a book or on a television screen. They were real, tangible humans who made up my day-to-day experience. They had faces, names, quirks, flaws, shortcomings, blood, tears, voices, laughter. However familiar and close to me, they were at the same time years and years away because they were adults and I was a child. Their actions and their hero status were out of my reach, if only by a few years (or a few inches).
Now I am an adult, and, as such, a member of that vast pool of potential heroes. I’m casually aware of this when interacting with children and young adults, but became acutely aware of it yesterday listening to the President speak at the memorial for the soldiers tragically taken in the Fort Hood shooting last week.
“We need not look to the past for greatness, because it is before our very eyes.”
–President Barack Obama
November 10, 2009
Filed under Family, Friends, Growing up
