Grace.

According to a self-help pamphlet I found at a church, I learned that forgiveness consists of four steps. The first is to acknowledge the hurt. The second is to own the feelings of hatred, blame and anger. The third is to accept the need for healing, and let go of the need to get revenge. The fourth is to wish the other person well and offer a chance for a restored relationship. A notable quote is the following:

“Forgiveness is not quantifiable, and it is not contingent upon the repentance or remorse of the offender. Sometimes those who hurt us later realize what they have done and express regret, but often they do not. Our forgiveness of others cannot await this uncertain outcome and actually has nothing to do with it. If we wait for others to be sorry that they have injured us, we may wait forever. The forgiving spirit is a quality within the forgiver, and is not dependent on the moral caliber of the offender. Our spiritual growth must proceed regardless of what others do. The three “Cs” of recovery programs remind us that we did not cause others to be like they are; we cannot control them; and we won’t be able to cure them.”

What or whom have you had to forgive? Please share stories with me in the comments.

[Author's note: This is a mixture between fiction and ideals, between reality and dreams, between satire and embarrassing truisms. Do not interpret this in the context of my life.] 

“My son, the battle inside each of us is between two wolves. One is evil. It is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Dear ____,

I want to get married and have two kids. I don’t really care if both are girls, but I’d like to have at least one girl. I also want to buy a house with a yard, so that I could plant lilac bushes and a variety of roses. I’d do the yard work myself, even the mowing. Preferably, the house will be in a nice neighborhood, and the other kids on the block will play with my kids. I’ll serve their moms lemonade on the front porch, while we talk about how hard it is to juggle everything, and how nice it is to have neighbors who are so close to each other. I’ll watch the school bus come by in the afternoons, and I’ll look forward to the day that my kids start school. I’ll live in a great school district.

I want to stay at home with my first child until I’m done breastfeeding and then I’ll think about returning to work full-time. Most likely, given the type of house I want to own, and the financial flexibility I want to have, I’ll need to return to full-time work after about two years. I’d work for another three years, and then try for my second child. So, it looks like the timeline goes as follows: I get engaged at 25, married at 26, buy a house at 27, have my first child at 29, and my second child at 32. I’d return to the workforce full-time at 33 again, and work for the next 27 years until I’m 60. If I’ve calculated the amount of money I’ll need at retirement correctly, I might even be able to retire a few years earlier.

If you are my fiancé, the groom at my wedding, the co-signer on the mortgage, the father of my children, and fellow RV-operator, you will be 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, and 58 respectively when each of these things happen.

You’ll have to do some planning, but I think you’ll be able to join me on this grand adventure. At 23, you’ll be in your first year of the graduate program you’ve chosen. It’ll be a tight squeeze for you financially because you’ll have student loans, and you won’t be able to work full-time.

If you’ll be proposing with an engagement ring, you should ask your mom and dad if there are any family heirlooms that you can have for this purpose. It will not cost you anything, and I’ll appreciate the meaning behind it. We can pay for the re-sizing of the band together, and that shouldn’t be too expensive. If you’ll be proposing without a ring, that’s not a problem for me. I’ll love you anyway. The proposal doesn’t have to be an elaborate thing either—just talk to me about our future and say that you want me to be in your life forever. That will probably make me cry.

Forever is a long time, considering you’ll only be 23 at this point, but I once read that a man knows within the first few moments of meeting a woman whether or not he’s willing to have his life turned completely upside-down for her. And marriage can certainly do that to your life, but you’ll be ready for this.

At 24, you’ll be completing your masters program, and you’ll be working with various choirs. You might be working at a high school, or even a junior high. Maybe you’ll be conducting the after school musical, but that’s up to you. If you’re thinking of doing it for the extra money, that would certainly help us, but if you’ll feel overwhelmed by the extra workload, then you shouldn’t exert that kind of pressure on yourself. We’ll find a way to get by just fine. Don’t take odd jobs to compromise your talent—and I believe you have great talent.

You’ll also be composing at home in our apartment in the evenings, while I’m in the next room, writing my novel. We’ll cook dinner together most nights, but sometimes, we’ll order Chinese food or pizza. We’ll be very happy together, and we’ll take turns introducing each other as, “My fiancé.” Sometimes, we’ll laugh at how silly we are because we can’t stop saying the word “fiancé” in ridiculous, French accents.

That summer, you’ll have a flexible schedule, so you’ll be able to set aside two weeks for our wedding and honeymoon. I don’t think it’ll be a very big wedding, but then again, you have a very large family. I know that there are family politics about who gets a wedding invitation, and I don’t really mind if you invite people I’ve never met. I understand how difficult it can be to appease everyone at the same time.

I don’t particularly like the showiness of a big celebration. Maybe we’ll have an intimate ceremony in front of our families on the east coast. Or maybe we could do a destination wedding, and have our friends and family join us for the honeymoon. It doesn’t need to be fancy, as long as you’re there and everybody is happy. If you’d like to help plan the details, I’d be happy to have your help. You could pick the band and what songs you’d like to have playing as I walk down the isle and as we walk back together, as husband and wife. If you’d like your mom to help plan the wedding in your place, I’d be happy to work side by side with her. She’s a fun lady, and she brings me comfort, like you do.

After we get married, you can decide if you want to pursue a PhD program and what school you’d like to go to. I’ll come with you and support you emotionally, of course, and financially as well. If you choose a big city, we can rent for a while longer, or maybe buy a condominium at some point. Instead of a yard, I’ll just grow flowers and herbs in windowsill pots. If you choose a smaller town, I’ll be happy with that, because we could buy a house then. You’ll be 25, with about $25,000 of debt. I’ll be 27, and I won’t have any debt. That’s just how our situations will have played out, and I won’t blame you for the added responsibility that I will have of paying off your student loans. I’ll be happy for you that you were able to pursue your passion.

Anyway, I’ll have saved enough cash to have a down payment on a house, and probably have enough left over to furnish the rooms. The house will be on a nice street, and we’ll have the good neighbors that I’ve already described.

I’ll start a part-time MBA program that year, at age 27, while working full-time at a fulfilling job. Wouldn’t it be great if we went to the same school? We will, in fact. You’ll have a brilliant advisor, and you’ll have many responsibilities. But you’ll be happy with the quality of music you’re writing. I’ll have long hours at work, and weekends packed with homework and group projects, but I’ll feel like I’m getting a good education.

Time will fly by, and two years into your PhD program, I’ll tell you that I’m pregnant. It won’t be a huge surprise, because we will have been trying for a few months already. By the time I give birth to our first child, I will have graduated already from my MBA program, so I won’t have to worry about school anymore. My job will be flexible, and I’ll have six months of guaranteed leave, but only 12 weeks will be paid leave. Don’t worry, we’ll manage just fine. I’ve planned ahead.

It’s a good thing that our mortgage payments won’t be very high. We won’t have many other major expenses. For example, we’ll have a car, but we’ll use it only occasionally. You’ll bike to class, office hours, music lessons, and we’ll live close to a park and a community swimming pool. Our savings will supplement the money you’ll be earning as a choir conductor at a church, and the private piano lessons you’ll be giving to kids and adults at the University. We won’t go out to eat often. Instead, we’ll cook at home together like we always have.

We’ll tell the doctor not to reveal the gender of the baby, and we’ll paint the nursery in gender-neutral colors: yellow and green. The toys will be animals, mostly. Lots of frogs and teddy bears. I won’t mind hand-me-down toys and clothes, as long as they’re properly sanitized, although people make too much of germs, I think. We won’t have hand-sanitizer in the nursery, for example, and we won’t need to have anti-bacterial hand soap in the bathrooms. You know what else we’ll have in the bathroom? Teri-cloth hand towels and wash clothes. I love that material. It’ll be a gift that we get for our wedding. I suppose we can decide the gift registry later, even though you’ll probably just say, “Anything you want is fine with me.” It’s true that the money situation will be very tight after we have our baby, but we’ll be happy to have our child, and the entire family will be very happy for us.

They’ll help us in any way they can. They’ll visit often, and both sets of grandparents will drive one weekend every month to stay with us for four days. Of course, if any of the grandparents want to stay for an extended visit, they’ll be more than welcome to. They’ll get along with each other, and they’ll understand the boundaries that we’ll set up implicitly. They’ll simply understand, because they remember what it was like to be our age, even though they had very different lives.

We’ll have a small guest room next to our bedroom. I’ll cut fresh flowers from our garden every morning and place them in the guest room. During the winter, I’ll serve hot cocoa in the kitchen and put mints on the pillows for turndown service. Everybody will love that extra touch, and it’ll make me happy to see others happy.

I’ll enjoy having our parents’ company during the day, and their help with the baby will be appreciated. You’ll be able to spend time with us during the evenings and weekends, although on Sunday mornings, you’ll have to get to church early so that you can warm up the choir. This part will always make us laugh because we’re Jewish, and you’ll go to church more regularly than a Christian person. But we’ll understand that that job is only temporary. Once we move to a bigger city, there will be synagogues for you to work at, and we’ll join our favorite one. I’ll join the book club, and the women’s band, so I’ll be able to keep playing the flute.

When you’re 30, you’ll be completing your PhD and we’ll be making our decision about where to move next. Maybe we’ll move back to where our parents live, or we’ll move to another city, but we’ll be very happy with the decision in either case. After we sell our house, we’ll be able to buy a slightly bigger house. We’ll want to have a third bedroom for our next baby. As we’re looking for our home, I’ll ask the realtor to give us a moment to talk about the property, and that’s when I’ll tell you that we’ll be having another child. I will have just found out that morning. And this time, you will be surprised, because you didn’t think it would happen that quickly. You’ll be thrilled, and I will be too.

I know that I’m leaving out a lot of the details in this timeline, but don’t you think it’s better not to plan everything? Life does have a way of ebbing and flowing on its own, and it’s nice to think that we have some control over it, but something tells me we don’t. Over the next few months, I hope you’ll consider your role in the rest of my life. Think about what our lives will look like for the next 35 years. Several pages of a typed letter can really hold a lot of information, although not all of it, but I hope that this letter helps to ease some of my your concerns.

Love,

Marina

Dear _____,

I sent you the last letter because I wanted to speak to you about our future as if I knew what would happen in our lives. And I don’t know if you interpreted it that way. You must have been frightened by what you read, and I don’t think you would’ve called even if you had my number. It was probably too soon to send you something like that, since we don’t really know each other that well. I wondered if maybe I could be completely honest with you, just to see what you’d say. I was hoping you’d say that what I wrote touched you somehow. I was hoping you’d show up at my door with that heirloom ring and ask me to marry you right on my front step.

I’ve been thinking lately that I don’t know if I believe in people. I don’t know if I like the idea of being with one person for the rest of my life. You’d be that person, if I believed in you.

I hear the loving things you say to me. I thank you each time you open the door for me. I reach for you at night, placing my hand between your thighs because I like the warmth of what I find there. My hand curls around your penis and I fall asleep again.

I hear you say, “I’m a lucky man.” You tell me that you think I’m beautiful almost every day, and I know that you’re not counting, not keeping tabs. If I needed anything, you’d find a way to get it for me. I know that’s love.

But what of everything else? How do I know that these plans will ever come to fruition, and how do I know that planning my life doesn’t guarantee some great doom?

Even as I write this, I want to believe. I crave walking down the isles with you, the isles of Target and Crate & Barrel. I want to feel legitimate next to you, picking out dinner plates and flatware, napkins and wine glasses.

Legitimacy. How could it be that our society has been divided into such black and white halves—the haves and the wants, the lucky ones and the disposed-of. How easy it is to be either one, and most are both at various points in their lives. I see how women turn from lost to found, from waywardness to innate purpose. We have the capacity to take care of ourselves, I know, but it seems so much easier to care for others first, and only then, to feel content with our own place in the context of them.

Who are they? They are the lucky ones who cross our paths at the right place, at the right time. The ones who hear family members say to them, after meeting us for the first time, “Don’t let this one go. She’s a good one.” And they get that warmth in the very pits of their stomachs, that knowing warmth. If we are lucky, the timing is right. They’ll be ready to receive us, to make room for us in their lives, to even love us very deeply.

Most men know within the first few weeks of meeting someone whether or not they are willing to have their lives turned completely upside down for this new person. I didn’t invent that line. I don’t know who did, but it must be true because I don’t think there’s an original source for the quote, it just simply is.

There are so many variations to this story, but the basics have to be there in order for anything to happen. Both parties must have had some rough times in their pasts. I don’t like to call it baggage, the weight they carry on their shoulders that guides them in their decisions, but I don’t know what other name to give it, other than perhaps personal history or wisdom. I don’t think it gets any easier each time a new type of hurt envelopes us. Some are rescued in the arms or legitimacy at the right moment, just before her head hits the pavement. Some are lost forever to the wanting, the self destructive lust that comes from shiny packages and glossy finishes.

The truth is that the words “shiny” and “glossy” are meant to be said in a sneering way, snidely, better-than-you, but try as you might, you can’t say it meanly enough because you want those things. Matching dining table and chairs, placemats for six because you love to entertain.

I love the feeling of getting off a bus after work, and the stress of the day is slowly melting off because I’m reading a novel that I really enjoy, perhaps the last third of The World According to Garp, by John Irving. In the back of my mind, as I turn each page, I know that I’m coming home to you, and I can feel the smile on my face growing. You aren’t making dinner in an apron, or anything cliché like that. You’re probably rubbing your head, or twirling a pencil between your fingers, thinking of a new melody at the beautiful piano in our living room.

I wouldn’t even care if you were sitting on the couch, drinking a fancy Belgian Ale in your pajama pants, which you’ve worn all day. I’d walk in through the door, noticing how hot the apartment was, thinking why you hadn’t opened a window, but I won’t do anything but drop my purse by the door and come to you. I don’t know how exactly I’d touch you first, if I’d kneel before you and kiss your neck, parking my face in that perfect spot above your collar bone, breathing into your skin and inhaling it at the same time. I’d love that you’d smell like bedtime and it would only be six-thirty in the evening. Nothing would be on the stove, the sun would slowly be dimming and we’d sit in the mostly dark living room, holding each other for a few moments. Before I’d notice, it would be eight o’clock.

I know I intended this letter to be an explanation of the modern definition of legitimacy, but the only legitimate explanation for how I envision my future, how my real desires transcend the imaginary realm, is to say that because I love you, I want these things. I live imagining my reality, and it’s so entirely possible.

Maybe I am limited in my capacity to love in non-conforming ways, but God, how good it feels to conform to you—to let my body give in to yours. You exhale, and as I inhale, my stomach fills in the curve. You lay on top of me for ten more counts, and then we shift so that our legs become like woven Challah, the down comforter like butter on bread fresh out of the oven. How beautiful it is to give into your body, your desires, your needs. How beautiful it is to love you and to come home to you.

Yours always,

Marina

Dear _____,

If enough time goes by, I can see myself regretting these things I’ve written. That is why I’m mailing them right away, so that I don’t have time to feel as though I’m mistaken. Mistaken in these innate desires, could that even be? That’s why I haven’t written a return address—I don’t want you to come looking for me. I want you to understand though, that you probably already know me. Or maybe you met me a long time ago and just haven’t thought of me in a long time. In any case, I’m not that different from when you first knew me, but maybe you just didn’t know me completely then, so you’d be surprised by who I’ve become. Maybe you’re just very different now, so you finally see me the way I was meant to be seen.

I think I’m not so different from other women. Except maybe women who have been hurt enough that they no longer wish these things I’ve described. Really, there are women like that. My grandmother was like that. After two husbands and a medical career, I think she was mostly content helping people in her life, and raising her own daughter, as well as adopted children and their families.

She’d mend my ankle when I twisted it, she’d disinfect my bleeding knee when I fell off my bike, she’d feed me, anytime, hungry or not.

Before my Baba, my grandma, passed away, she pulled her daughter towards her and said in Russian, "You have to live life gracefully." Her brain tumor had been making her say strange things, sometimes inappropriate things to relatives and friends. She once started swearing like a sailor when one relative walked into her hospital room to see her. Baba said, "I never liked you anyway."

And when another relative walked in, Baba said, "I luff you, my sunshine," with her heavy Russian accent, and she stretched her big arms out for a hug. Her words were random, I wanted to believe. It was the tumor speaking; not her.

I held my breath before I walked in to see her, not knowing what she'd say about me. That's how I've always been. Sensitive. Deeply concerned with what people think of me. And she reached her arms out towards me and said, "Come here, crasavitza, beautiful girl." And I collapsed into her, relieved that she didn't think badly of me, that she'd liked me all along, truly loved me even.

And so the debate within me was settled. I believed the tumor was like a truth serum that had somehow gotten into her brain. It's not that she was ever a woman to hold back what she really thought, but I took those words and that moment as proof that indeed, she really did love me, all walls broken down, hospital gown, IVs and food trays. She loved me, and wasn't afraid to say so. And that meant a lot to me. Because there she was, dignity sort of stripped down, hair unwashed, big scar and red stitches across the side of her head from where they had to perform brain surgery to remove the tumor, and there she was telling people that she loved them, hugging them, telling them they were beautiful. I thought those acts in themselves were painfully beautiful. Graceful, even. And she was.

But I know that grace came with a price, and so I write to you now, please see me in my old age. Notice how my face has changed, sun spots, loose skin, droopy earlobes, gray hair and flabby arms. My eyes haven’t changed though. They still crave the way your old body bends and shakes when you laugh. My finger tips still feel enough to graze your back when you’re sleeping, as I reach across the bed to place my palm on your shoulder just to feel your warmth. Please remember me and discover me, lose me and forget me at the same time, before it’s too late.

Love,

Marina

I like how my bed smells like you. You’re out there, somewhere. It’s 7:30 PM and I think other people are eating dinner with their families, and those that don’t have families and are very much alone are somewhere else entirely—bars, streets, crouched in corners.

There are so many homeless people in DC, and so many hungry people. Others are neither, but they sit on the front steps to their buildings, tank tops over dark, wet skin. Necks crane as the one white girl passes through their neighborhood, nods, “Hello, how are you,” bikers on sidewalks speeding by, sticky kids screaming, teenagers hanging around street corners checking each other out.

I like the sense of must and the feeling that responsibility gives me. It’s a sense of purpose, because for me, that’s what keeps me from being one of the people on the street. I like to walk and think about what my future holds. It’s not some sort of set-in-stone road map. It’s a dream, a long dream that starts and stops as I run my errands, stop at CVS to buy shampoo, soap, smell the soap, buy the bottle on sale, will I have children? Do I have my CVS discount card? I can’t separate these thoughts from my daily life because my sense of purpose is very much connected to what I want in the future. I survive today, and I come home today, instead of hanging around on street corners or bars because I have an understanding of what today is for. It’s for tomorrow.

Sure, today is fine for its own sake. But how much time is left? I know, dramatic and trite, really the stuff that juvenile essays are made of. Maybe.

There’s no real difference between being homeless and being lonely. Transience takes many forms. How sad it is to be alone.

I’ve never been happier, and I’ve never been more afraid of losing what I have found. If I don’t fight for what I want, then no one will just come and hand it to me.

Seven layer dip: green chili peppers, black olives, mild salsa, chopped lettuce, shredded cheddar cheese, softened cream cheese, taco seasoning mix, refried beans, one medium tomato. Serve with chips. Delicious. Don’t have too much or you won’t fit into that dress. Strapless dress, three weddings coming up, swimming suit season, okay, you can have just three chips. Pick around the part with the cheese on it.

Twenty minutes later, half the dish is gone and I’ve given up on the chips. They keep breaking, and I have salty fingers and corn crumbs all over. I’ve moved on to eating the dip with a spoon. Beans. Beans are healthy, right? It was either this or eating the Coco Pebbles, but the milk was bad.

I wonder what the recipe is for suburban living and why every home has the same set of chairs in the kitchen breakfast nook—those wooden, highly sturdy farm chairs that never quite match the table. They’re made to be that height so that when kids sit on them, they can exercise the full force of their hamstrings, swinging wildly under the table, ample room to kick siblings. Wind-up and all. They eat Coco Pebbles too, but in that context, chocolate cereal doesn’t seem sad, and milk never goes sour. Bowls made of fax-porcelain, when they fall in the sink they make a very light clinking sound that reminds me of a toddler’s high chair, the way things sound when they’re dropped from that height.

I could do these things on my own, I could do this all by myself, yet it seems grotesque unless it’s in the right setting. What would I do with a breakfast nook? A mismatched table and chairs? The milk in my fridge would always go sour anyway, even the quart containers, because it would still be just me. And the ants would get into the cereal box before I could finish a second bowl. When my place is messy, it’s sad. When a family’s house is messy, it’s somehow right. Even when it’s messy, everything is as it should be.

I think there isn’t enough room in this world for single living—it can actually be cheaper for me to go out to eat for every meal than to cook for myself. It’s cheaper because having to throw out the leftovers costs me too much emotionally. I hate wasting food, but cooking for one and saving the leftovers is grotesque again. I actually feel like I’m taunting myself. And happy hours with hot wings and half price ciders is like a field trip for the lonelies, even those who are with someone.

I’m not sure what everyone else is doing right now—my neighbors, my family, you. You’re probably at that place you were heading tonight, going about your business, and I know that I’ll see you later tonight. And only then will I feel like things are in their right place, when you lay down next to me, into that spot on my bed that already smells like you.

I have two halves, the one that wants that breakfast nook legitimately, the one that can add something to a conversation about how Target brand diapers are really good quality, and then roll my eyes at how idiotic it is that baby formula costs so much. I’d love to go one step beyond and be one of those parents that never talks about these things, the kind of mom that slings her baby over her shoulder in a hammock-like cloth and takes a long walk through the park, pockets loaded with granola and baby wipes. I would love to be that woman who does it all, and you know she’s happy because she treats those in her life with the utmost respect and admiration, like when she looks at her husband, everyone around her knows that she’s in love. That’s not so bad, is it? It’s not too much to want.

I haven’t been happier since I was a child myself. I remember standing at the side of the road on Christmas Eve, freezing and loving it, holding a candle for the one car every ten minutes, even though I’m not Christian. I was so happy that others were happy that night, probably driving with their families to church, that I wanted to let them know that I knew. That butterfly stomach giddiness that kids feel before they go on a flight, or before they open their birthday presents. I was happy then, and I’m even happier now.

I’m slowly unwrapping my future, and I have to remember to take it one day at a time. Even the little things that I do and feel are legitimate, regardless of the times I hear people say to me, “Well, your body bounces back much faster if you have kids when you’re young.”

Feist says it all:

Helping the kids out of their coats
Oh wait the babies haven't been born oh
Unpacking the bags and setting up
And planting lilacs and buttercups oh
But in the meantime we've got it hard
Second floor living without a yard
It may be years until the day
My dreams will match up with my pay
Old dirt road,
(mushaboom, mushaboom)
knee deep snow
(mushaboom, mushaboom)
Watching the fire as we grow
(mushaboom, mushaboom)
o-o-o-o-old
I got a man to stick it out
And make a home from a rented house oh
And we'll collect the moments one by one
I guess that's how the future's done oh
How many acres, how much light
Tucked in the woods and out of sight
Talk to the neighbours and tip my cap
On a little road barely on the map
Old dirt road,
mushaboom, mushaboom)
knee deep snow
mushaboom, mushaboom)
Watching the fire as we grow,
mushaboom, mushaboom)
o-o-o-o-old
(mushaboom, mushaboom)
Old dirt road rambling rose
(mushaboom, mushaboom)
Watching the fire as we grow
(mushaboom, mushaboom)
Well I'm Sold...

I came home at 11 PM and they were sitting on the couch, under a very thin, brown, fleece, cat fur covered blanket. I’d spent the day on a plane traveling back from San Francisco with my boyfriend. He dropped me off at my door, and I came in the house with my beat up bag. Chances are that, some day, she’ll find this post and get angry at me. She’ll be angry because I’m about to make her look very vulnerable and naive, even though I know she’s not. Then again, she might not find this post, and I will have avoided a head ache.

I came home and she was sitting with him on the couch in front of the TV. He was eating an ice cream cone, mint chocolate chip. She was very approachable, no make up, nice face. He (some of you may know of him, some of you may not) was as he always is. Extremely full of himself, like a Cheshire Cat. (I know this because I’ve seen him offer up women to me in that way before: very ordinary women, the type that deserve to be treasured specifically because they’re so ordinary. But he offers them to me in the way he lets the conversation drift along between me and the woman, going somewhere and not at all, and meanwhile, he thinks to himself, "See? This is why I’m friends with her. Isn’t she interesting?" And I use the word "friends" loosely, very loosely. And I use the word "interesting" with a snide tone. Because friends need each other, and I don’t believe he needs anyone. And lovers need each other, and he doesn’t want to be needed. So I don’t know what all of those other women were. Friends at times, lovers too, and he’d introduce us, if even that, and he’d sit back to watch the conversation between us. Crossed arms over his chest, See? Isn’t she interesting? His posture would say. His conceited mouth would say it too. Throwing two interesting mammals of the female gender in a circus ring together.

Forget the times we’d walk to the metro together, and forget what he used to say to me during those morning walks, "So, who’s the latest guy?" He’d be speaking of someone I’d gone on a date with the night before. "You’ll be bored with him in a week, I bet," He’d say, without even knowing what the hell he was talking about. Conceited prick.

I know that he offered her to me for scrutiny, like examining a taxidermist’s victim, because the kill reflects on the hunter well. Look at her shiny coat, that minx. She ran and ran, but I caught up with her in the woods, cornered her.

He was proud of his kill. He let me ask her questions like, "Where did you go to school?" and she and I talked: Oh, you live in Minnesota. "Who do you know from there?" Oh, it turns out we know a lot of the same people. "Did you ever participate in that synagogue retreat thing?" Oh, then you must know what’s-his-name. If he didn’t want to show her off, he would’ve monopolized the whole conversation, the way he normally does.

He offered her to me as a token, as two people who had to exchange pleasantries with the third, who just got home from a long trip, who was cornered herself. I stood in the living room and chatted for a few minutes, but she took the conversation somewhere else.

"I’m wearing my underwear." And I looked down, to see that she was, indeed, wearing her underwear. I knew this for sure because she had pulled the fleece blanket aside to reveal her Minnesota-white thigh, which almost blended with the white cotton underwear she had on. That was the only thing protecting her poor, bare bottom from the nasty green couch that we have in our living room (which smells like cat piss and has had numerous things spilled on it, including cat vomit and probably other interesting women’s juices.)

"Well, that’s good," I manage to say. "I’m glad you’re wearing your underwear." And then I turn to the tiny space between them and say to neither one in particular, "You should really put something down on that couch–you don’t know what’s been on there. You could catch something." And he shoots me a look along the lines of: What’s the matter with you? Don’t you see this interesting person has come to stay with me for the weekend? Because he knows the truth of what kind of things have been spilled on that couch.

I change the topic by saying that I’ll be in Minnesota over Memorial Day weekend, and Oh, we should hang out when I’m there (We all know that what I’m really saying is, "Trust me, I have no intention to.")

I see her eyebrows lift up as she says to him, "Oh, you should come too." And she begins to steer the pleasant conversation towards the subject of how they were discussing visiting her parents, who live in Wisconsin. So they might not be free after all to "hang out."

But I see him hesitate. And I say to him, "Tickets are really cheap right now. Have you bought yours already?" And she nudges him, "See? They’re really cheap right now," her elbow says. Her whole body says it. Thighs, legs, brown eyes, brown hair, delicious lips. I see her in a different way now.

She is all of a sudden interesting to me.

He looks like he’s not certain about wanting to be paraded around in front of her parents. But he was so certain about what was hidden underneath the blanket just a few moments ago. He knew that part of her well. And I saw at that moment a woman who was old enough to legitimately want a family, a little house, a toddler boy and a baby girl, a husband who would know her thighs and her parents. Next to her, I see a man who doesn’t need anyone. I see a hollow, selfish thing with a penis and an ice cream cone.

I see her, and I like her. I imagine what it would be like if I could somehow become a man. If I could turn my innie to an outie and have the one thing that she would miss if she was with me as a woman. Besides that one, intimate detail, I am certain that I could fulfill her needs better than he ever could. And I want to. Because I understand her. I want to see her happy, at age 27. I understand her so well that I sympathize with her, this strange girl in my strange house, and I understand the entire situation in a way that he never will.

He sees a fun girl, someone who likes to fuck around on long weekends. She’s even willing to fly halfway across the country to partake in dusty, cat fur covered sex. She’s willing to host him too, in her home and in her. But at that moment, I see him like the little shit that he is: a user, a perverted, egocentric infant. Incapable of taking care of anyone but himself.

And I want her so badly; I want to speak to her about what it means to be a woman. What it means to be made of "fine china," like my junior high band director said once, while bitching out my 9^th grade band for inappropriate behavior on a band trip to Missouri (he found out about a clarinet player giving a sax player a hand job in the back of a theater).

I want to protect her above all, from his type. Stone cold, like a frozen fetus, so young and infantile I can see through his eyelids still. "She must know this," I think to myself, "Surely, she knows this about him already." And she knows in the way that I know, the way that I knew. But I walked right into similar situations, time and time again. And I might be doing it again in the not-too-distant future.

I’ve never wanted to have a penis so badly, never so curious than at that moment, never desired a weapon so badly. She and I could take him, just the two of us. She and I could teach him what it meant to need something, to want something so badly that you’d do anything for it.

There’s an alternate reality where you are still with him. The plans you made actually came to fruition. The house you were supposed to buy and the babies you were supposed to have are all doing fine. And by "fine," I mean the house has an actual address, and the kids have names.

The way that life veers into new directions isn’t always a gradual shift. Sometimes, it’s a sudden shock to your system, sort of like Tom Robbins says in his book, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas:

"Something has changed. You have changed. Your dad told you once that Dizzy Gillespie sat on his trumpet and bent it, accidentally creating an instrument that transformed his career. Change can occur that fast. Snap! Ouch! And the next thing one knows, one is blowing a whole new tune. Something about the telephone call, the disappointment of the call, the "Bozo" that slipped out at the end of the call, the last straw of it, as it were–something ordinary yet indefinite, mundane yet mysterious, silly yet profound, something tiny but very, very pure, has happened, and you may never be the same." (Pg. 122)

I don’t think about the alternate reality often, but when I do, it hits me like an unfortunate weight. Sort of like walking in mismatched shoes, one high-heeled the other a flat. It’s seldom about the person in that alternate reality, but more often about the feeling of some great injustice occurring to me, as if I was only a bystander in my own life.

The truth is that I played a hand in how things went. There were so many fragile tipping points that I think entire weeks could have been massive universes, hanging like soap bubbles in the air. A mean comment here, a careless word there. And the wind finally blew the flock in one direction, but not the other. Direction-driven, accidental change.

I’m not the only one who thinks of parallel universes. It’s common for people who live lives in the gray spectrum, not the black and white one. The question is: What do you do now? Knowing that there’s a you somewhere, living the life you thought you always wanted?

But it’s not you out there. Would you even want to be friends with the other you, knowing what you know now? Knowing that you wanted all the right things for the wrong reasons?

I know I wouldn’t. And that hurts sort of. Like estranged siblings, you and you, loving each other, understanding each other deeply, but just deeply enough to see that you’ll never agree on anything. And you’re not even sure that you like each other, even though you love each other. Sometimes that sort of mixture of emotions makes the difference between love and hate almost indistinguishable, so you end up hating yourself and who you have become in that alternate universe. And it pushes you closer to who you are now, like finding a new best friend because your old one moved away.

If you shift your perspective just enough, you see that fragile tipping points happen an infinite number of times per second. Split second decisions that change your life in little ways. They happen so often that you could thread them through a needle and spin them on a loom. Sometimes, you just don’t see them—entire patterns go unnoticed until you’ve stepped far enough from the scene. The earthquake-type changes don’t happen that often, yet they have the capacity to shatter us, so that pieces of us move away to live life in alternate universes. You’re probably better off that way, because you really couldn’t stand another minute with who you were becoming.

***

I spent the weekend in Pittsburgh with Schubert, and it rained a lot. It rained pungent, hyacinth watercolors and scandalous orchid body parts. Secret, moist areas. Divots like belly buttons collecting water, petals opened up to the heat of the sun to reveal the seedy, powdered, pollen inside. I felt like a voyeur, looking through the glass walls of the arboretum, examining poor things that couldn’t flee because they were planted so firmly in the ground. Roots working against them, for once.

***

When I wake up, I sometimes feel like you’re looking at me through the glass. You see me even in the dark with the curtains drawn. And I love that.

I’ve spent so much time wondering if I’d ever meet you. And when I’d meet you, what your hands would look like, and who I’d be then. If I’d become the person I’d always dreamt of. I thought about the normal things, the size of your pupils and the tiny eyelashes in between the bigger ones. Or the way your feet look like hands if you let your vision blur. I thought about the detail of elbow-skin, how it looks like elephant knees, and the way you have the sweetest underarms, sort of like leavening bread. I imagined you, because these things are universal–you could’ve been anyone. And then you came to be (to me) in your own way, even better than I had dreamed. Or I might still be sleeping. (Next to you?)

I fell asleep one night, not sure how I’d feel when I’d wake up: would I inch towards you or turn my back to you? Would I sense the need to fast-forward time so that it would be the convenient hour of 10:17 AM instead of that unsure hour of 4:12 AM? (One time speaks with authority, being the point of no return. The other speaks of hunger pangs and soap bubbles.)

I fell asleep one night, next to you, and found myself breathing vanilla sugar with each exhale. Contentment because I hadn’t known before what I was missing–I had a vague idea, sort of like a sketch, but you’re a Turner painting to me now. Full of mystery and massive waves, but always with a sense that the storm has just passed, copper strings holding up battered masts. And ease, such warming ease, as if breathing was the most difficult thing I could do. The rest is simple.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when I woke up, but I understood that the worry was only a bad dream, as I burried my face in your chest and wrapped all of me around you. I understood it then, at that moment.

I like to pretend I’m sleeping, and then open one eye just a little bit at first, only to see that you’re doing the same thing. And we both smile, as I laugh into the pillow and pull the blanket over us.

I like the way sunlight passes through sheets. I like the way it feels like camping; the walls are trees, swaying in the morning breeze. Filtered light means a rainstorm is coming. We are surprised to find snow on the ground when we peek through the netted window, and we laugh at how such a giant descended so silently (or was it that we were so oblivious to its noise?).

Parts of us are similar–-textures of earlobes or the way our fingers lock, interlaced, like thighs between thighs. Other parts...still not so different, if you understand the whys and hows.

I just didn’t know how light and airy each morning could be, or how warmth wasn’t a vague idea, that it was, in fact, a blessedly anchoring reality. How simple you make each moment, how happy. I couldn’t have possibly known.

I was careless yesterday, and now I’m not. I thought that good people were a right, and now I see that they’re a privilege. I used to think that I was invincible, that I could say whatever I wanted because, well, that’s just how I felt. Now, I see that the wrong words can make a person love you a little bit less. I used to rush through the minutes, and when the days were finally over, I couldn’t wait until the weekend. I’ve found enough patience not to measure my life in deadlines, ultimatums and lease expirations. I look forward to what I can give myself, not what someone else can give me. I look forward to the day when I no longer have to keep cardboard boxes for the next move, but in the meantime, I’ll hang up pictures and buy nice curtains. Someday, I’ll have a dog. For now, my roommate’s cats are a great addition to my life. I’ll know my neighbors by name. I’ll cut them a piece of cake if I bake one. In time, I’ll master the art of making my parents feel comfortable when they visit me wherever I’m living. For now, I’m happy to meet them on neutral ground (Panera?). I might even own a tea kettle. I’ll be one of those women who can make fresh cookies while participating in the conversation. In the meantime, I swear, I’ll figure out why when I bake, the bottoms of the cookies are black and the tops are too doughy, even at 325 degrees. I’ll have clean counters and fresh flowers (tulips in the spring), and I won’t be sad when they tilt their heads and let their hair fall. I’ll plan out my summer garden soon. Someday, I’ll have a mailbox, and I’ll paint it myself. I’ll ask the realtor about the school district—Is it any good? What about the grocery store down the street? I’ll pack lunches for two, and then three or four. In time, I’ll make dinners for five, yes, your friend can stay for dinner. I’ll knit in the evenings, write on weekends, take walks in the park, and become giddy when the air smells clean. I’ll call my brother and talk to his wife first. She’ll tell me how her husband made a new bookshelf out of bricks and wooden planks. I’ll ask where he stole the bricks from.

***

Sixty more years? Seventy, max. I play this game all the time. It scares me as much as it soothes me. And then I take a little bit longer playing in the snow.

***

I thought about calling my mom last night, but my parents are on a cruise. So, I called my brother instead, and then Natty. I had a very morbid glimpse of what family means when parents are no longer around.

I’ve heard that when people die, friends still want to pick up the phone and call them. Perhaps to share something funny they heard, or to ask about the recipe for taco salad—you used to make it with that special ingredient, what was it?

***

Grandma hoarded her recipes. Once, I asked her how to make Russian bread—the dark, heavy, sourdough bread. She told me, "It’s too harrrrd. It takes a lot of vork. When you’re older, I’ll show you." I understood what she meant. Making bread wasn’t for domestic lightweights. It was serious business.

If you didn’t know why you were making it, and if you didn’t love the person you were giving it to, then the bread was just as bad as store-bought Wonder Bread.

I wrote the following before I got on a plane headed back to DC from Minnesota a few days ago:

I used to write resolutions in my diary. They were always excruciating to read afterwards, sort of like hearing a tape of yourself speaking during a drunken night of complaining to the girls. There were resolutions that made me want to slap my face from embarrassment, like, "I want to kiss so-and-so." There were resolutions that were permanent goals that I never really cared about achieving, like losing ten pounds, because then I’d be perfectly happy with my body. The other resolutions swirled around some form of emotional health and self betterment, usually dealing with finding true love and blissful happiness. I’m not knocking either of those last ones, because I’d still like them to come true, but I think I’ve started to look at resolutions on a smaller scale.

This year, I’d like to be able to commit to something. Like deciding what city to live in long enough to hang up artwork on my bedroom wall, which I still haven’t done at my current apartment. I still have boxes of random things at my parents’ house, and yet more boxes and odd pieces of furniture at a friends’ house in Wisconsin. So it seems that my physical possessions are scattered across two states and a district, and I’m sort of scattered with them.

I’d like to commit to DC long enough to not travel anywhere for two whole months. I seem to use weekend trips as mini escapes from the reality of where I’m living.

I imagine it must be peaceful to be certain of something. Certain that barring some major catastrophe or random bit of bad luck, there is at least something that will be permanent in your life.

Perhaps certain that the person you’re with will still be there if you mess up and do something mean. Or certain that you’re making the right decision by staying at your current job, and that passing up another opportunity won’t swing your life into some sort of abysmal downward spiral of other bad decisions.

I see people who are living lives of loud contentment, as opposed to quiet desperation. The loud contentment that answers compliments like, "Wow! Your body looks great after the pregnancy," with statements like, "Well, that’s what happens when you have kids young."

I see these people, and I wonder if they ever look back and ask themselves, "Why did I make that decision?" I wonder if they ever wish they’d done things differently.

The strange thing about this question is I can’t imagine an alternative to the way things actually went–if not this life, then what would I rather be living? I think it’s easier to feel discontentment in abstract terms.

...And then I got on the plane.

***

I love Robert Frost and I just read a poem called Home Burial. Here’s a clip of it:

‘My words are nearly always an offense.

I don’t know how to speak of anything

So as to please you. But I might be taught

I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.

A man must partly give up being a man

With women-folk. We could have some arrangement

By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off

Anything special you’re a-mind to name.

Though I don’t like such things ‘twixt those that love

Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.

But two that do can’t live together with them.’

I know a dog that’s tiny. Her name is Gumball. It might be some sort of strange breed of poodle, but it’s gray and could probably fit into a shoebox.

It squeaks, too. I kid you not. Like a mouse, but louder—it squeaks when it sees a person come to the door. What’s more? It pees too. Just a little bit. From excitement. And then she rolls over on her back and into the puddle, and I love her just a little bit more.

Every time I see this dog, I want to smother her with love in order to heal its leaky bladder and to calm its asthmatic-sounding squeaky goodness. It’s some sort of incarnated Hello Kitty in a dirty cotton ball, with the soul of a two year old girl. And I adore her. I felt that way the first time we met. I couldn’t even pretend to be aloof—I simply didn’t want to. If I’d had biscuits in my pockets, I would have given all of them to her at once; I wouldn’t have waited until she performed tricks. I would’ve just dump-trucked them into a pile on the floor and I would’ve lunged at her to rub her piss-soaked belly. Alas, I didn't come prepared and I had no biscuits in my pockets.

Some creatures have a way of breaking through your guard and you don’t even know how they do it. Humans have a way of doing the same. And they stay with you for the rest of your life, even when some of your emotions start turning away from burning warmth to bleeding hate—you’d still rub their wet bellies and feed them biscuits.

You don’t know how you started liking them in the first place. It just happened. And so you don’t know how to stop liking them, even when you know they’re no good for you.

The line between bleeding hate and Gumball-induced love is so fine that, at times, it doesn’t even exist.

**
Currently listening to Ray Lamontagne's Till The Sun Turns Black. He's quite possibly the most naturally talented song writer I've ever heard.

Last night, after all the turkey was gobbled up and all the guests were distributed evenly throughout the house (naturally, I slept on the floor of my parents’ walk-in closet), I read Kirsten Major’s post titled “Kinds of Help Available in This Edition.”

I say I “slept” in the closet because there isn’t a word to describe the feeling I had as I lay awake for hours, refolding my down comforter under my chin, shifting from one side to the other, tying and retying the draw string on my sweat pants, checking my alarm clock to make sure it was still set to 5:45 AM.

I couldn’t shake the hopped up feeling I had—like I had witnessed an autopsy or brain surgery, and then the patient got up mid-way through the operation and asked for a hamburger and a Diet Coke, no ice.

The truth is that I wanted to read the post three more times, but I forced myself to turn off my computer and try to get some sleep.

I’d like to write a response now, but I’m sort of unsure about how to approach this daunting task, partly because I’m still very much shocked at how on Kirsten is in all of this, and partly because I’m still reeling from the shock of how dishonestly honest I’ve been with myself.

As a detour, a distraction, a breather before I begin to really dig through the enormous heap of Help, I want to convey how comforting it is to see my mother’s old cookware. She has a pan that used to have a handle, and after that broke off, my brother and I used the pan for baking frozen pizzas. Sometimes, like when we’d buy Red Barron pizza, the pan wouldn’t be quite big enough and the pizza crust would curl up the sides, creating a bowl for holding grease. Jack’s pizza fit perfectly, but my brother never liked that brand, so I’d be forced to eat the whole pizza by myself. My point is that I used the pan last night to make triple berry crisp, and I had a flashback to my childhood home when I saw those old, familiar pizza-cutter scrapes on the bottom of the pan. I thought about how I used to chase my brother around the kitchen island, running around until I was either exhausted, or I’d slip on the hardwood floors. My mom would just stand there, fixed in front of the stove, because she knew that if she moved, she’d be a casualty in our war.

I thought about that pan during my ride on the metro this morning, as I listened to The Cure on my Ipod. I thought about it because if I didn’t, I’d think about Kirsten’s post, and I didn’t want to open that can of worms. Yet.

Which brings me to the can of worms.

Premise #1

“… there are a few obvious reasons for liking someone who is not available … you are sick sick sick sick sick and when you aren't busy doing that then you are being stupid stupid stupid taking breaks only to be self destructive.”

Musing #1

I have an acquaintance that I studied with in Israel during high school. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in six years, and then BAM, I ran into her by the Chinatown Metro in DC, while on my way to meet Jewish Atheist. We agreed to “do lunch” that Sunday. As we sat talking over our organic omelets, discussing our lack of boyfriends, she told me that she kept her schedule packed so full of networking activities and other things that “made her interesting” that she had no time to sit still. I wondered if she was exhausted from all the running-from-something she was doing, and she answered my look by saying, “If I didn’t do this, I’d go crazy.” Crazy from loneliness.

Moral Gleaned #1

The more you run from your problems, the more likely they’ll fester and poison you later on. Find something that calms you and forces you to sit still.

Like my friend, I’ve been running around for a while. I’m embarrassed to give any details about how this running around has been manifesting itself, but I’ll say that it certainly has been mentally self destructive.

Random trip back to Minneapolis ? Sure, when do I leave?

Skip over to New York City for the weekend? Okay, let me check the bus schedule.

Falling for an emotionally unavailable man? Yup.

I recently bought my dream flute. It’s a brand new Yamaha 574, open-holed, silver-plated body, solid silver head… It’s so good it practically plays itself. When I play it, I don’t notice time going by. It’s one of the few things that keeps me sitting still.

When I went to the music store to pick it up, my dad came with me. The salesman shook my dad’s hand as we stood by the cash register, not knowing that I was the one who would be forking out the dough. He noticed my glare, and then shook my hand too.

I have a friend who criticized me for spending that kind of money on “just a flute.” I didn’t say anything to him about his lack of hesitation at dropping $200 on beer and fries in an afternoon.

The moral is that each person finds their own way to reign in their panic—and it’s an absolute must, because without some way of slowing down, you’ll run yourself off a cliff being sick, stupid and self destructive.

Premise #2

“You make a living munching on the bones of humanity, you unintentionally give yourself permission to transcend it. That is a powerful thing to be around, it empowers you.”

“… you need their distance to have room to find yourself. You may know this without knowing it.”

Musing #2

Ever read The Perks of Being a Wallflower?

My dad once told me that it’s better to seem a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. I lived most of my life by this rule, not because my dad planted this idea in my head as a seed, which then grew into a complex tree (or just a complex), but because I was always comforted by the idea that I was somehow above the situation at hand, that it was my choice to participate or not. I had control of what people thought of me until I spoke.

I once talked to Kirsten about how if she could get paid to sit in her apartment and just think about the way that people think, or dissect human nature and behavior, she’d never step outside.

It’s a balancing act, interacting and not interacting at the same time—if you get too close to your subject matter, you stand the risk of influencing it too much, thereby changing the very thing that drew you near. If you transcend, you’ve become empowered, but even more vulnerable to the inevitable. You stand the risk of being rejected, being utterly devastated, being utterly human. To live in reality, you have to give up control.

Moral Gleaned #2

Hiding behind distance is safe but highly damaging. I don’t know what else to say other than it’s risky to let your guard down, but if you don’t, you’re living a lie.

Truthfully, I don’t want to be held at a distance. I don’t need the space, and I know it. I want to be held so close that I can see his pores and smell his hair. Anything less than that isn’t worth my time right now. And that’s the Honest Truth. It’s also a compass and a moral check for me.

Premise #3

“Now, lets say you meet a kind emotionally available guy who likes you and wants to talk about your feelings, remembers things, asks you questions about yourself, is earnest and wants to squeeze you on an hourly, if not minutely, basis.”

Musing #3

What an interesting premise. I don’t think I would ever turn this away, but only if one more thing was added to that list… that I don’t feel alone with him.

Lovesong, by The Cure

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again

I agree with Kirsten’s assertion that, “This lack of interest in nice dude is less self-destructive than a lack of self-knowledge.” I can now point to Honest Truth #2: There are plenty of Nice Guys out there, and the ones who are just that will never make you doubt them or their intentions. They’ll never make your life more complicated in unwanted ways. They’ll serve their souls to you on a platter, open and trusting. And they’ll bring a warm, close comfort to your association with them—not a cold, insecure anxiety. They'll make room for you in their lives in all possible ways.

Moral Gleaned #3

The “blindness of happiness” and the “falling down laughing” (from “Last Dance” by The Cure) doesn’t have to be a painful process. You don’t have to fight to justify living in peace.

Love don’t gotta hurt to feel good.

As an aside, this makes me think of the movie The Piano Teacher. Dear God. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE ALONE. Thanks to Madox's recommendation, I had nightmares for days after watching this movie, not to mention I felt very dirty for several hours after I saw it.

Thanks, Kirsten. I’ll take one of those postcards.

**End of Dissection.**

Hi. It’s me again. I’m back. I’ve been gone for a while, off under some rock, going through the necessary motions of living. Something huge happened that knocked some sense into me, and I just wanted to say that I’m back. It’s nice to see you again.

***

Thanksgiving is coming up, and I have been thinking of taking up cooking again. I think this is neurotic, but I haven’t really cooked anything since the beginning of June. I’ve tried, but each time I picked up a pot and filled it with water, or got a spatula out of the drawer, I’d get nauseous and really depressed. It felt sort of like date rape. Like someone was trying to take something from me that I wasn’t sure I wanted to give.

Cooking is a nurturing act. Bowls of pumpkin soup and red-leafed lettuce and kiwi salads—these things need attention and care. And the people who eat these things? You have to care about them—care enough not to poison them, not to over-salt this or over-pepper that. Care enough to ask, “Well, how is it? Do you like it?”

***

I’m looking for an apartment in The District. You should’ve seen the way my mom looked at me when I told her that this morning.

It was a mixture of defeat and betrayal. Et tu, Brutus?

I plan on asking all the important questions of my potential roommates: How do you feel about guests staying overnight? Do you expect me to participate in the cooking? What if I don’t come home for days? Will you send a search party?

***

In the fall of 2002, my cousin committed suicide. It was about a week before Thanksgiving, and my parents told me to stay home and not fly to Israel with them for the funeral. I didn’t fight them on this. I was a coward and didn’t want to face the surviving parents, my beloved aunt and uncle, the very same ones who I gladly visited this October.

I knew strange things about my cousin—that she liked Armani’s Aqua Di Gio perfume, the same kind I use today. That she hated being photographed, which is why she was an excellent photographer. That she was a complicated person with a long history of depression. That before she died, she reconciled a feuding father and son, some distant relatives of ours who hadn’t spoken in three years. That she was a high ranking officer in the Israeli Army, and that her soldiers feared her. That she loved cats. That she had wanted children but couldn’t have any. And that she was a very good cook.

On Thanksgiving Day, my parents came home from their long journey. They were tired and emotionally drained. I had taken over my mom’s traditional responsibility of cooking Thanksgiving dinner for our usual guests. My grandma had offered to host Thanksgiving at her house that year, but I insisted that I was old enough and responsible enough to do it myself. Grandma stepped aside in the end, after a few grumbling words between my father and aunt.

That day, I cooked The Best Turkey Ever. Everyone agreed. It was so good that there weren’t any leftovers.

The following year, we spent Thanksgiving without my grandma. She passed away several months before the holiday, and needless to say, I felt guilty that I robbed her of such a beautiful memory—the Last Supper, especially since she wouldn’t live another full year.

***

“Mom, we’ve had this many people at our house for Thanksgiving before.”

“Marina, I know. But I just don’t know where eleven people are going to sleep.”

“It’s not a big deal. The youngest four will sleep on the floor.”

“What? No, I can’t have guests sleeping on the floor.”

“Mom, don’t worry about it.”

“Maybe we can ask the neighbors if some people can sleep at their house.”

“Seriously, don’t do that. We’ll manage just fine.”

***

I’ve been wondering what I’ll cook this year, and how I’ll feel about it. If someone dies from massive gas problems (please refer to the movie Like Water for Chocolate), it won’t be my fault. I only wish the best for my unsuspecting guests. If my karma gets mixed into the recipe, I can’t be held responsible.

Maybe yams with marshmallows, or stuffing with cranberries. Mashed potatoes with butter and chives or baked squash with cinnamon. Warm apple strudel or triple berry crisp with vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. Who knows? I might surprise myself.

Old friends are hard to let go of, especially when they come back to you through long shadows and afternoons spent catching up on tragedies transpired since the last time… since the last time we caught up on tragedies that were maybe more recognizable, since we’d been around for at least a part of them.

I don’t know how his life would be different if I had stayed with him since we were ten years old, if I had kept watch over him as I wish I had, if he had let me play that role in his life, if he had nurtured that desire in me.

I have seen him stumble through life in a very purposeful way, as if he was defying random chance and yet egging it on at the same time, yelping the battle cry, “Bring it on! I can take you down.” Secretly, I have wished that he wouldn’t fly the kite in nights so dark, amidst storms so fierce, that he would exhibit a little more humility or even fear, so that perhaps he would not foul quite so flagrantly.

I’ve waited for years to see if he would notice how fragile those tipping points have been in his life, where each decision has led him down a new path of some sort, each one inevitably further and further away from me.

I haven’t stayed in one place either. I’ve climbed all around the perimeter of the pool, sometimes kicking my legs away from the wall in weightless pauses, drifting, dead wood. But I’ve kept an eye on him the whole time, and I’m sure he has done the same for me.

I worry that if I wait too long, the next time we have an afternoon of dusty rays and sad honesty, we may have traveled those miles and miles that Frost has talked about, miles and miles through roads best not taken, fragile tipping points and all.

In time, I may forget that I felt love for him in that moment, and in those countless prior moments too. I may forget that I had wanted to sweep him up in my French bread arms and smother him with understanding and accomplice-infidelity. That moment might hang in the air, right where we left it, untouched, forever, a paper-thin glass ball filled with oil. Or I may remember that moment as long as I live, always looking back at it as the point where our paths diverged for the final time, where I failed to see the fragility of who we had become and the improbability of having crossed paths again in that particular way, so innocently.

I checked out Jennifer Weisz's blog this morning, and I swear, she inserted a small probe into my brain (probably through my ear or nose while I slept). I can't believe how accurately this summarizes my life right now:

They call it the "Quarterlife Crisis."

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too and aren't really as cold, catty, mean, or insincere, but that they are just as confused as you are.

You look at your job, and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom. That scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try to cling on to the past for dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away. There is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and you talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future, and making a life for yourself.

And while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender! What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

Send this to your twenty-something friends. Maybe it will help someone feel like they aren't alone in their state of confusion.

My mom is a wise woman, and I’m oftentimes stunned by what she says. The false simplicity of her wisdom surprises me most. That’s because I’ll analyze something to death and still not reach the same beautiful “aha!” moment that I get from one conversation with her.

A long time ago, I went through a phase of loving rabbits, rabidly loving them. I would go to the House Rabbit Society website and click on the pictures link, probably annoying my roommate at the time because I’d squeal each time I’d hit “show me another picture.” My mom didn’t understand this phase I was going through, considering I was in college and I was well beyond the “please please please get me a pony” age.

It was just something my boyfriend and I both loved at the time. We loved looking at cute animals and bonding over something so simple and innocent.

The little things are easy to overlook, in almost any context. I tend to complicate things by nature too, which makes it hard to get to the Real.

Last night, my mom and dad returned from a weekend mushroom-picking trip to Ithaca, NY. It’s a Russian thing. Once my parents descend onto a forest, no mushroom is safe. As a disclaimer, don’t try this at home, kids. Skillfully avoiding poisonous mushrooms is the culmination of a Russian upbringing and cultural nuances, which take decades to seep into the bloodstream until they become just as much a part of you as Sunday night football or Chinese take-out and poker nights.

My mom once got admonished by a park ranger for picking wild mushrooms at a state park. Little did the ranger know, my dad’s pockets were filled with white tops and gray stems too. They work as a unit, like Bonnie and Clyde. And they work quickly, which is key when pilfering mushrooms from public lands.

While my parents were gone, I spent the weekend the way I usually do—doing things that complicate my life and that make me feel alive.

I also went to Rosh Hashana services on Saturday and Sunday morning. It’s been a year since I went to services, and I feel like I’m in confession right now, or maybe some sort of 12-step support group.

“Hi, my name is Marina, and I haven’t gone to synagogue in a year.”

I went for the same reason that women insist on wearing a thong: even though it’s uncomfortable, it’s necessary. High Holiday services have become crucial to the wellbeing of my soul. I use the time to meditate, and I rarely follow along with the prayers. If I do, I do it absent-mindedly. I think about myself a lot more than I do about God, but somehow I don’t think God minds. I enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by other Jews in various states of belief and non-belief. Tradition creeps up on you, in much the same way that becoming an avid mushroom-picker does.

As I was getting ready to go to sleep last night, my mom sat on the edge of my bed and we talked about our weekends. Mostly, I blabbered and she listened. She listened to my drama with boys and relationships, about falling for someone who is keeping me at a distance for the same reasons I want to keep him away. I talked to her about wanting more than pedestals, about wanting to be independent, about how much I’ve changed in the last few months.

My mom didn’t say anything at this point about the gallon jar of mushrooms that were in the fridge downstairs. She let me go first with my sycophantic me-me-monologue. About how I’m not sure if he likes me or not, but I…like him a lot. And about how he intrigues me, and how he’s so much like me right now, it’s scary. And then, I quoted one of my mom’s little bits of astonishing wisdom back to her: “Don’t be afraid to love someone who doesn’t love you back. It only matters that you love something.”

My mom sat on my bed, nodding. “Exactly, that’s what I’ve been telling you all along.”

In my strange bunny-loving phase, my mom’s heavy-hearted, soviet-émigré view of the world obstructed her ability to see why I was so obsessed with something as idiotic and mindless as a pet rabbit. I’d have to say, in retrospect, that this phase coincided with the nation’s post-September 11^th depression, and with my simultaneous interest in anything to do with the Iron Chef and the Cooking Channel, in general. Avoidance. Reclusiveness. Introspection. These became the nation’s pastimes.

I could’ve pursued anything but CNN and my-then boyfriend’s real life problems, like his cousins and family home in Afghanistan, and the drunk veteran who hissed into my ear on a city bus, “You know he’s only with you to get his citizenship.” I imagined myself turning around and clobbering the man’s face with my shoes, just until I’d collapse on the floor in hysterical sobs of complete and utter defeat: “This world will never be the same.” I managed to turn around and say to the man, "You are cruel."

He replied in alcohol breathe, "This world is cruel."

What the veteran didn’t know is that my boyfriend and I had spent the afternoon at Marshall Field’s, shopping for a friend’s wedding gift. In the fine china department, I pointed to a Lennox statue of a man and woman in an embrace that was beautiful, corny and comforting. A piece that my boyfriend remembered, and which he gave me one week later for Valentine’s Day. What the veteran couldn’t have known was that my boyfriend was already a citizen and a PhD student in physics. What the veteran couldn’t have ever imagined was that I was madly in love with this dark-skinned man, and that we both loved rabbits more than people at that time in our lives.

Don’t be afraid to love something that doesn’t love you back. As long as you love something, that’s all that matters.

I eventually grew out of my obsession with rabbits in much the same way that home theater sales have leveled off and declined in the last few years. I stopped watching the Iron Chef and returned to CNN.

My parents still love being surrounded by trees and nature, smelling the clean air of an isolated forest, picking baskets full of mushrooms. And I am no longer afraid to love something that doesn’t love me back—an unmistakably bittersweet and Real emotion that makes me feel alive, an emotion that I am grateful for.

I’ve thought of a thousand and one different ways to start this post. I’ve thought of cliches, and maxims. Garbled, jumbled thoughts with cherries on top, like grandiose realizations of purpose. An opening worthy of oral recitation.

I’ve settled on a quote from the back of my tourist’s map book of DC:

"Looking for an Adams-Morgan bistro or a Georgetown boutique? A downtown nightclub or the nearest Metro station? Wherever you want to go, Flashmaps will get you there quickly. First-time visitors or life-long residents–anyone can easily navigate DC with Flashmaps."

I wish it were that easy. Navigating anything, at this point in my life, seems like navigating the Potomac with a dead otter for an oar and colander for a boat.

I’m not a first-time visitor, and I’m not a life-long resident. I’ve had one toe on DC’s soil and the other 99% of me anywhere else but here. Minnesota, Israel, Manhattan, anywhere but here. And I’ve known this for a long time, it’s not a sudden realization that I’ve actually been avoiding my own reality.

Please forgive the utter girliness of what I’m about to say, but last night, I watched "Rumor Has It" starring Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner. Costner’s character uttered absolutely drivelish lines like–and I’m paraphrasing here–"You’ve got to do something crazy once in a while. Otherwise, life becomes a bunch of Thursdays strung together." Immortal words, I know.

He also tried to comfort Aniston’s character, as she completely fell apart in her pre-mid-life crisis, by telling to her to "be present."

So, that’s what I’m trying to be–present.

I feel that I must add some things to this post before I get into the meat of what I want to say. I have two rules when I blog. And I probably got them from Stephanie Klein, because she’s a blogging diva, and she’s had plenty of years of experience with this medium.

Rule number one is don’t blog about something that you couldn’t tell your friend face to face. Rule number two is don’t blog about the person you’re seeing. I’ve written about men on here, people who’ve graced my life with their presence and have made me feel great, and people who have made me want to scream and lose all hope in humanity, especially the male variety.

It’s pandora’s box, however. Once I write about a man, I know that I will never pursue him again, or try to see him. I just lose interest in him, and I no longer want to keep him close–I want to show him to you, and throw him to the wolves for scrutiny. It’s fucked up, quite possibly. I don’t care.

What I’m about to disclose is true. It really did happen.

I started chatting with Jdate loser number 198, 237, 998. I liked him. I liked him enough to call my best friend in Minnesota to talk her ear off about how this one is different.

We had two great dates, and I only got a quirky, fun-loving vibe from him. He didn’t make me want to vomit, and I told him so. This guy was unique.

The third date rolls around and we agree that I’ll be spending the night at his place. I didn’t have anything in mind necessarily, other than I just wanted to be by him, with him, near him, next to him, on top of him, beside him, you get the point.

He didn’t object to the idea, needless to say.

Fast forward to imagine a man, a woman, a bed and dim lights. It’s eleven o’clock. Things are going well, and I can only assume that we’re both enjoying each other’s company because suddenly, as if a lioness has grabbed her cub by the neck, the guy bolts out of bed and runs out of the room. I thought he was going to let the cat in, or something. Or something, indeed. It turns out he was tending to another sort of pussy. His female roommate.

Ten minutes later, he comes back into the room, shuts the door, and says, "I don’t know how to tell you this, but my roommate is crazy and she doesn’t want to have anyone staying over. She’s pissed at me that I invited you over because she doesn’t feel comfortable with strangers spending the night in the apartment, and she doesn’t want anyone seeing her when she gets up in the morning..."

All of this was interspersed with awkward-ass silences and pierced by an utterly mind-fucked look on my face, much like the look that Katherine the Great must have had when she realized she was about to be crushed by the horse that she was trying to have sex with.

I have to give some details for this story to make sense. It turns out that this guy had just moved into the apartment with a young woman who was recently divorced. She moved across the country to start a new job, and these two didn’t know each other very well when they decided to live together over email.

Well, he certainly got to know her a bit better when, after explaining to me that he was kicking me out, he received a cell phone call from her while she was standing right outside his bedroom. Yes. Instead of knocking, and having to face me, she decided to CALL HIM to scream at him some more. Flustered and really fed up with my entire existence, I changed into normal clothes, got my shit together, and agreed to let him drive me to my car. Correction, my parents’ car.

He proceeds to tell me that once, when psycho-bitch was drunk, she confessed to him that she thought he was "hot" and "her type." So, I stepped into a rabid lion’s den there, ladies and gentleman. Yes, again. Jealous crazy bitch, allow me to introduce you to your new roommate: spineless-jelly-beans-for-testicles man. You deserve each other.

I should work for the DC police because I’m really good at finding where the crackheads hang out.

This place was crackhead central.

I now have to admit the most embarrassing part of the entire story–the part that shows how insane I am, and how utterly ridiculous I can be. I emailed the fucker the next morning to find out if he was okay. And guess what? He didn’t email me back.

I called two days later to see if maybe, just maybe, he’d say to me, "Oh my god. I was so embarrassed by all of that... I just didn’t know how to face you again." But no. He proceeds to tell me over the phone that he has a "friend" in town, and that they’re going to be staying with him. And that the two of them are going dancing and to the zoo.

I’m the monkey. I should charge people money to see me. I could make a fortune, I’m sure.

Fast forward to tonight. Friday, September 8^th, 2006.

I’m on my way to meet a friend for drinks and dinner–yes, a real and actual friend. I walk past the Supreme Court, the Hart Senate Building, the Library of Congress. I’m vaguely aware that these buildings inspire a sort of awe in me. The weat