Playing with Words

This past April I drove to Sacramento to see my friend Alex Russell's story performed at the Sacramento Poetry Center as part of a wonderful monthly series called Stories on Stage. The series is curated by writer Valerie Fioravanti, whose recent collection Garbage Night at the Opera  has garnered critical acclaim, and features work by emerging and established writers based in Northern California. During my two years at Davis, I fell in love with SoS, and was delighted when a local performer interpreted one of my stories as part of the spring 2012 series. When I returned this spring to the Poetry Center, the building was full of writers and artists, up-and-coming and well-known, and I realized how much I missed that feeling: of belonging to a creative community. As the night was ending I turned to Valerie and said, "I really wish we had something like this in San Jose."

"You should start one," she said.  "That's what I did."

Somehow the idea hadn't occurred to me before--that if the community I was looking for wasn't yet there, then why not find the people and the space and the time myself and make it happen? I make frequent trips to San Francisco to attend a number of amazing literary series; there's Quiet Lightning and Action Fiction and Why There Are Words and Write On and Lit Up Writers and so many more that I honestly haven't even had time for.  Many of these series are submission-based, which means that the organizers carefully select the pieces weeks ahead of time, sometimes arranging them in themes, sometimes working with performers, sometimes giving writers a certain number of minutes to read. Some of these series have become so successful and created such a following that they have become, in essence, nonprofit organizations.

These series are so inspiring and so much fun, I had always figured that I would find time to participate when I could make the drive. But then I started thinking. How wonderful would it be if I could attend a literary series for emerging writers just down the street from where I live? San Jose has an amazing resource in the Center for Literary Arts, a nonprofit that attracts nationally recognized poets, fiction writers and essayists for regular readings and booksignings throughout San Jose State University's school year. I attend their readings religiously, because few things inspire me more than getting to see Stephen Elliott or Nick Flynn or Dana Gioia, and because the feeling I get when I leave the building is always the same: I want to write. That, to me, is the power of a great reading. It gets people talking and it gets people creating.

So when I came back from Sacramento I did the natural thing: I reached out to two of the most creative and innovative writers/artists I've met here in San Jose, Nicole Hughes and Melinda Marks, and asked them if they were interested in helping plan a reading here, just down the street, featuring writers and performers who, like us, had ideas, liked collaborating, and needed a place to go. And that's how Play On Words began.

We're thrilled to announce our debut event at the glorious, brand-spanking-new show space at Blackbird Tavern , an amazing bar and restaurant located in the center of downtown San Jose. We'll be featuring original work by 2010-2011 Steinbeck Fellow Leah Griesmann, writer/teacher Ryan Alpers, poet Eric Sneathen, playwright Adam Magill and a monologue by our own Melinda Marks. This has been a definite labor of love, one that fuels me forward every day, and I am so excited to see this happen--excellent work, performed live, in my very own neighborhood. We are in for a treat.

If you feel so inclined, swing by our Facebook page and read contributor bios, or better yet, stop by the Blackbird Tavern on Thursday, October 24, at 7:30 pm  to see it all in person.  

a cajillion million thanks to people like Valerie, Evan Karp at Quiet Lightning, Scott Lambridis at Action Fiction, Graham Gremore and Jennifer Lou at Lit Up Writers and so, so many more movers and shakers that help create literary communities 

Dear Health Insurance Provider,

Dear Health Insurance Provider,

It's time you and I had a chat. 

While this may be hard to understand, the very nature of living with a chronic condition is that it requires regular attention. I understand that this poses an inconvenience to you, because that means that every month you must process paperwork for the same drugs and the same services. That's probably a lot of work. And likely a lot of money. Let me break a few things down for you:

  1. The more conversations we have about what supplies are covered and which ones aren't, the longer it takes to get the things I need. The longer it takes to get the supplies I need, the greater I am placed at risk. The greater I am placed at risk, the more you are liable. 
  2. You don't get to decide how I treat my condition, or in what way. Those decisions are up to me and my doctor. And no, I am not going to discuss those decisions with you, though I can describe to you, for the fourteenth time, the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes, even though you are a grown-up and can Google that shit yourself.
  3. Please don't refer me to your website. Your website is terrible.

You're right; I'm lucky to be covered at all, because without you, the things I need to live a healthy life would be so expensive that I wouldn't be living a healthy life. You and I, we need each other. I'm willing to spend my lunch breaks and Sunday mornings on the phone with you, you, who are in Alabama or Missouri or Tennessee, you who probably have this conversation with hundreds of other people just like me. There are thousands of us out here, asking for expensive medical supplies and appointments with specialists and brand-name drugs. We must appear so anonymous, so faceless, so very annoying to you. And you're right. We are annoying. We are annoying because if we were anything less, we wouldn't get the care we need. We ask for your name, and your supervisor's name, and you better believe we'll call back tomorrow.

I care about you, Health Insurance Provider. I care so much that it affects my blood sugar, which means I need more test strips, which means I need more from you. Are things beginning to make sense? 

I'm glad we had this chat. Something tells me we'll be having this again soon.

Until then, I remain your faithful - and annoying - patron.

Yours,

Julia

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yom Kippur

While on the phone with my father yesterday, he interrupted himself to say, "Julia, I'm sorry for the things I've done this year."

I waited. What had he done? And then I remembered: it's Yom Kippur. 

"Oh, yeah," I said. "No problem. Me too." 

I suppose it's fitting that I felt bad to have forgotten the Day of Atonement.  As a child I used to dread Yom Kippur. What was the point of fasting, of spending the day in dresses and uncomfortable shoes, forever standing and then sitting and then standing again in High Holy Day services?

I'll never forget the year that we came home from service to find a small domestic crime in our kitchen. My cat Nighttime had crept into my brother's room and snagged his pet parakeet Jib, a small, green joyful thing, and dragged him down the stairs, leaving behind a trail of green and orange feathers. There wasn't even any blood. Josh had only had Jib a few weeks. We'd picked out a special cage and special toys and everything. When he saw what happened, he chased Nighttime outside and threw rocks at him, yelling, "Stupid cat!" I stood on the porch, trembling, thinking, so this is what it means to feel sorry.

In college I went to Hillel because they served delicious (and free) Shabbat dinners and because a boy I liked agreed to go with me. That first Yom Kippur, I remember the palpable relief I felt when we stood up and I knew the words to the Hebrew prayers. At 18 it is so tempting to live within the confines of what only you can see. Hell, the same can be said for any age. But to remember the melody of a centuries-old prayer, even if you're still grasping its meaning--that was a reminder that there is so much more to this world than what's right in front of us.

Frankly, I could use more moments like that. 

It's Yom Kippur and I'm thinking not just of Syria, not just of the flooding in Colorado and the fires, well, everywhere, but also of the 9-year-old boy who lives upstairs, who just opened his screen door and said, out onto the patio, "Could you please be quiet? I'm trying to watch YouTube and my baby brother is crying." I'm thinking of the phlebotomist who drew my blood at 7:30 this morning (ironically, I was fasting), a Vietnamese man in his 50s who handed me a green ticket and asked that I call the number and rate his customer service. I'm thinking of all the anonymous errors in our lives, and how sometimes we try to fix the wrong ones. Or that problems aren't always for fixing so much as acknowledging. I'm thinking of my grandparents, dead and alive, and the traditions they have observed. I'm thinking that Ryan wants us to be carried on chairs at our wedding--how I'd said, "You don't really want that, do you?" and then immediately regretted it.

It's Yom Kippur and I've turned off the music. I'd be able to remember the prayers if someone else started singing. The kids at play have gone inside. I may not be at synagogue but I am observing the quiet. And maybe this year, that's enough.

 

 

Loveloaf

My fellow waiters.

Remember these names. Top row, left to right: Margaret Ross, Celia Bell, Lydia Davis, Kai Carlson-Wee, Jessamine Chan, Keith Wilson, Mario Ariza, Nina Emery, me, Sally Wen Mao. Middle row, left to right: Bryan Castille, Brian Simoneau, Jaquira Diaz,…

Remember these names. 

Top row, left to right: Margaret Ross, Celia Bell, Lydia Davis, Kai Carlson-Wee, Jessamine Chan, Keith Wilson, Mario Ariza, Nina Emery, me, Sally Wen Mao. 

Middle row, left to right: Bryan Castille, Brian Simoneau, Jaquira Diaz, Jonterri Gadson, Julia Yost, Conor Burke, Nathan McClain, Casey Quinn, Alexander Lumans, Keith Leonard, Chaney Kwak.

Bottom row, left to right: Beth Lyons, Jesse Donaldson, Lauren Johnson (Kay Halloran), Michelle Penaloza, Nicholas Boggs, Solmaz Sharif.

Love letter to writing camp

Last night I couldn't sleep. Bread Loaf has infiltrated my brain. Brain Loaf. I close my eyes and hope that when I open them, the world will be green with the sound of summer cicadas. I half expect Charlie Baxter to hold a pitcher of coffee above my table, snickering as he says, "Sure, you can have some, but it's very dehydrating."  And his stories, his glorious stories, and his wisdom, and his humor. And Cheryl Strayed and Ross Gay and Antonya Nelson and Robert Pinsky and Ted Conover and Terrance Hayes and Kristiana Kahakauwila and Jamie Quatro and Carlene Bauer and so many more.

I remember listening to my fellow waiters read aloud, stunned into silence by their talent and clear ambition. I dream of cloth napkins and tiny plates of butter. I hear the bell against the flagpole and the morning dew awakening. I remember those quiet moments when I sneaked down to Otter Creek or wandered down forest trails, listening to the world hum. And playing Frisbee outside the A&W as twilight fell. And swimming across Lake Pleiades on a rare afternoon off, watching tadpoles await the growth of their legs.

On the flight to Houston, a Norwegian oil baron asked me what I do, and I told him that I am writing a novel. That's the first time I've ever told a stranger that. The first time I ever said that aloud with the understanding that perhaps this is a thing I can actually do, in time. I was sitting, quite by accident, in first class, and as the waitress brought us glasses of wine that I kept passing them off to him, preferring to watch the clouds growing whiter and brighter outside the window.  By the time we had arrived in Houston, he turned to me and said in all seriousness, "Well, you know, my wife and I know an American writer."

"Really?" I asked. "Who?" 

It took a moment, and then we both laughed. I had my running shoes on and had to sprint to the opposite side of the airport to make my final flight.  It was on that third and final flight, after several hours of traveling and ten days on my feet and in my head, that my throat began to clutch with exhaustion, my legs began to cramp in the chair. My body knew it was time to go home. And when I arrived and Ryan was there waiting, his face eager and full, I knew that though writing camp was over, so many wonderful things had just begun.

 

Writer camp, day four

What I did today:

  • 7:15 am: awoke to shower and dress for breakfast at 7:30 in the dining hall
  • 9 - 10 am: attended Charles Baxter's lecture, "The Request Moment, or 'There's Something I' Want You to Do," in which he illustrated the importance of making demands in fiction and poetry
  • 10 - 10:45 am: printed out stories for workshop and meetings with editors
  • 10:45 - 11 am: snuck in a much-needed nap
  • 11: 15 - 1:30: set the dining room tables, served coffee, and bussed tables for lunch
  • 2:30 - 3:30: attended a publishing panel hosted by a group of literary agents and editors
  • 4:30 - 5:15: attended a reading by Emilia Philips, Terrance Hayes and Lia Purpura
  • 5:30 - 8: set the dining room, waited on and bussed two tables, snuck in a late dinner
  • 8 - 8:20: found time to shower
  • 8:30 - 9:30: attended a reading by Vievee Francis, Anthony Marra and Helena Maria Viramontes
  • 9:30 - 10:30: attended a reading by the Bread Loaf Scholars, a group of emerging writers who were awarded fellowships

I believe that Sunday will be my longest day; I'm set to work breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as an hour-long barista shift. I have an informational meeting scheduled with a literary agent and plan to attend a writing class lead by my aforementioned writer-crush Kristiana Kahakauwila. There are also two other readings scheduled and a special talk about submitting to literary magazines. Oh, and a dance. Did I mention that there's an entire population of Bread Loafers who make up the social staff? Apparently they organize and host 45 separate events over the 10 days of the conference--cocktail parties, pizza parties, picnics, dances.

This really is writer camp. 

Day Three

Yesterday the skies opened up in the middle of the afternoon. I had hitched a ride into nearby town of Middlebury to pick up supplies (earplugs, razors, granola bars, wine) and as we were climbing up the narrow curves of these old Vermont roads, the rain thrust itself upon us. It was furious and fast and necessary. A few hours later we were serving our first tables of Bread Loaf writers, taking orders, clearing tables, stopping occasionally when others asked, "Are you fiction? Or poetry?"

Later, after Michael Collier's introductory remarks, we gathered outside the barn, under the stars, and the woods were within arm's reach. After the talk died down, after the acoustics of our dorm had settled into the ground, when the quiet began to settle, so, too, did my bones. Minutes pass differently here; the quality of light, the quality of sound, it all warrants attention. I am surrounded by writers who hop from residency to residency, accomplished poets and essayists and novelists and cartoonists younger than I who have already published books, who don't say that they are Stegner fellows, but they don't have to. I feel like the girl in a high school cafeteria wandering from table to table with her tray, wondering how, exactly, I ended up here, but grateful that there is a seat somewhere for me. Excited to be along for the ride.

This morning when I woke up the sun was already brilliant. For the first time in three days I've taken off my down jacket. The mid-westerners are fine in t-shirts and shawls; last night they laughed when I put away my black jacket in favor of a larger, puffier red one, this one with a hood. "You are from California," they say. I don't mind, especially now that the sun is back, and my body has finally caught up with this time zone.

Perhaps what is the most refreshing about being here is the reminder that pursuing a literary life is not only worthwhile, but important. Or, better yet, possible. I'm using every single one of my available vacation days to be here, and it is absolutely worth it. While I long for the lifestyle that so many of these writers describe--spending their summer months writing upstate, their semesters teaching here and there--I know that there are as many ways to be a writer as there are to write itself.

This morning after breakfast I wandered down to Otter Creek. Who knew there were so many shades of green. That the ground could be so soft underfoot. The kind of quiet that happens here falls lightly. Living in a city, you grow to dread the quiet, because it means something entirely different is happening--some underbelly has been exposed. But out here it brings a peace I haven't felt in some time. The marketer in me wonders if you could bottle it, that feeling. 
But that would defeat its purpose.

I better go. It's nearly time to set up for lunch service. Wish me luck. 

First Day

I think I know what the word "bucolic" means now.  Bucolic means Vermont. Three shades of green woven together across rolling hills. Clouds furrowed deep and white, lilac startling against yellow farmhouses.

I arrived in this morning, after an overnight journey from Northern California to Chicago to Burlington, Vermont, where a friendly taxi driver picked me and another writer up for the hour-long drive to Middlebury College. I'm attending the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference on a work-study scholarship, which means I'm attending Charles Baxter's fiction workshop and meeting writers at all stages of their careers while serving food in the dining hall. And I am here a day early, when the campus is eerily quiet and calm, a summer camp spell waiting to happen. 

I had enough time, between my two layovers and long flights, to steam through Kristiana Kahakauwila's debut collection, This is Paradise. The stories are all set in Hawai'i, very beautifully rendered, featuring a wide range of characters whose relationship with the islands are complicated, emotional and honest. My brother recently moved to Honolulu, with his wife soon to follow, and as someone who likes her stories very firmly steeped in place, the book kept me going from San Jose to LAX to Chicago, even on the tiny express plane that took me here. Word has it the writer herself might be here.

I am already awkward in my fandom, and only a small group of us are here yet. I walked out down a long, pebbly lane, stopping to take pictures of the light on the hills, still not quite awake. When I arrived this morning it was lightly raining, and though raindrops have let up, the air still hangs with heavy anticipation. There are words in the air, waiting for us. Bucolic, they whisper. Pastoral.

We're here, we whisper back. We're ready.


On hope

I found myself awestruck in a candy store yesterday.

I had wandered in with the intention of buying a treat for a friend. I wanted to find some trinket or treat that would somehow communicate get well  and this is shitty but you're awesome  and  if you're not feeling well why the hell not indulge in retro candy ? The store was glittery and gleaming with glucose. Everything was very brightly lit, almost too lit, because the shelves gave off a neon glow as I walked by. There were rows and rows of saltwater taffy, long gummy bacon-shaped candies, vintage mallow candies and bottles and bottles of Jolly-Rancher-colored sodas.

Within a minute two young bespectacled men appeared before me. It was a slow night. They asked what I was looking for, and I paused, thinking, they don't really care why I'm here, they just want to sell me something. But they had very earnest faces, well-scrubbed glasses and kind, friendly smiles. They were positively eager. They reminded me of the boys I fell in love with growing up; boys who had very specific niches, boys who had creative obsessions. And before I knew what I was doing, I told them why I was there. That a person I cared about was struggling to accept bad news, that though the universe sometimes has no reason, that sometimes there is no ideal antidote, the impulse to do something, to act, to believe as if by sheer will we could redirect the cells in our own bodies--that is a fierce, powerful force. 

The boys listened and nodded and in complete sincerity recommended a brand of herbal root beer.  

It was refreshing, actually; the way they talked so confidently about the healing powers of certain herbs and spices, rattling off names of candy companies and the various ingredients they espoused, as if they were pharmacists prescribing me a drug. 

They asked how old she was, divining from that what kind of candy might have been popular when she was growing up, and if, perhaps, the simple act of seeing a now hard-to-find peanut butter brittle bar would somehow trigger a positive chain of events. "Maybe," they seemed to say, "maybe, she'll see this and..." 

I stood there in the candy shop, whose iridescent glow shone particularly bright as the sky outside grew darker, thinking of the lunch break I'd taken mere hours earlier, and how mad I'd been about something far less important than a 1980s candy bar.  I thought about all the conversations I'd had that day, and which ones were important, and which ones were not, and how on my lunch break I'd had the time to change into my running clothes, weave through the parking lot and speed out on a bike path for 30 minutes, charging because I felt like charging, thinking of the things that mattered and the things that didn't, imagining it all as a series of concentric circles. And how on that run, it had all felt so complicated, and in the candy shop, the bullshit just fell away.

I eventually purchased a small token and brought it to the counter, listening as the cashier detailed his girlfriend's father's miraculous recovery from an irregular heart condition. By this point there were other customers in the store, but both boys stood there by the counter, their faces serious and earnest, recommending this and recommending that. When I finally extricated myself from the store, I couldn't help following the glow of the windows on the street. It looked like hope. 

On time

It's funny the things that wake us up. 

Last week I got a sad phone call. A dear friend, a wonderful woman who I grew up with, called to say that her partner of many years had fallen very ill. It was the kind of conversation where more is communicated in tone of voice, in the gasp between words. The kind of conversation where the universe more or less bottoms out beneath you, because there is really nothing to say, nothing to do, that will make it better.

Ryan was on his way to pick me up at work and when I got off the phone it seemed that everything we said and everything we did was all at once so very trivial and so very important.  The time it took to run errands, the feel of the sun on our faces, the way we cooked our dinner -- they were all short privileges.

It has become clear to me that as I get older, there is a premium on time. Where I used to worry about how often I saw the people I loved, now I block out the days months ahead of time to ensure that the time does, indeed, exist, and not only that, but it will be honored accordingly. This can be challenging when jobs and opportunities take people elsewhere, but the value of the time itself does not diminish. There are friends that I see only once a year - or less, even - whose imprint is still indelible. My friend on the phone is one of those friends.

For S and for C: that you get well, that you find what you need, that you revel in each other.

 

 

Glimmers

I called my 91-year-old grandfather to wish him happy birthday and the phone went first to voicemail. I was unprepared to hear my grandmother's voice still on the machine nearly two years after her death. When he got to the phone mid-message I was almost disappointed; there was something about the quality of her voice, the pitch and timbre of it, that I desperately wanted to hear again.

~

I am relieved that the Supreme Court has effectively made gay marriage legal in California, but am very disappointed in Scalia's summary of the Voting Rights Act earlier this week. Sometimes it feels like American progress is a fickle thing. It definitely is a slow thing. Luckily, it is a thing.

~ 

Ryan and I have officially started our dog search. We have been talking about adopting a dog for over a year, but it wasn't until recently that we began filling out applications on Bay Area rescue sites. We got close earlier this week, when a representative from a local shelter sent us some pictures of a Nova Scotia duck trolling retriever, a brown shaggy guy who looked like he'd fit well at the end of our bed or snuggled in our tent on a camping trip. Someone else must have thought so too, because by early the next morning, he'd already been adopted.

I don't really mind, though, because this gives us more time to dream up the very best dog name in the history of dog names.

~ 

I've been waiting for a woman like Senator Wendy Davis. 

~ 

While cleaning out our bookshelf I came across Danzy Senna's latest story collection, You Are Free . I bought the book two years ago, while attending her writing class at the Tomales Bay Writer's Workshop, and I'd somehow misplaced it amidst a stack of grad school reading. I had forgotten how effortless her writing is, how seamless, how it is driven so clearly by ideas, but still somehow manages to surprise you in its subtle tricks and maneuvers. Her debut novel, Caucasia, is still one of the best novels I've read in recent years, and though this collection has a different tone, a different pace, and a different intention, it is still undeniably her voice, the voice of a writer still obsessed with the same cultural phenomena, yet somehow able to return to the same themes with a more mature, textured voice.  

I am always grateful for the writers who remind me why I read. 

 ~

Wise words from my mother, the one and only Lyra Halprin: "The best thing about being a writer is that you can do anything, be anyone, and then you can write about it." On days when work feels long, when the cubicle walls feel like they beginning to cave, when, frankly, I am just tired of testing my blood sugar, when someone near to me says something I never want to forget, something I'd like painted on a flag that I can wave whenever I need, I can always, always, trust that there is a way, some way, to make it all meaningful. I live for that very pursuit.

On blogging, Mary Englebreit, and the lost art of journaling

I haven't been blogging much because I've been writing in a physical journal, a small red notebook given to me by my friend Dumindra. I had forgotten the great joy that privacy can be, and how lovely it is to write completely uncensored, unliterary, unbeautiful observations about the world.

My perception of blogging has shifted ever since I attended a social media conference for work and was schooled on the "best ways to blog for business." The session was thirty minutes long and we were to write a snappy headline and three call-to-action bullet points for our product. That was it. These were all things I knew already, practically speaking, and could rationally understand, and had actually put into practice myself in the past, for different publications, but I left the conference terribly depressed, thinking, I wonder if this is how children will learn to write. In bite-size, profit-oriented bullet points that are sharable on social media and measurable on Google Analytics.

There is, of course, a huge difference between a personal diary and a blog, and an even greater  divide between a personal interest blog and a corporate blog. I suppose what I miss is writing without an audience. As in, no one will ever read this. As in, I am writing for the sake of writing, or for the purpose of working this idea out. As in, what I write right now will have no effect whatsoever on my profit margin. I am not convinced that children of the twenty-first century will have any sense of what it means to write privately or purposelessly.

I was given my first diary on my tenth birthday, a Mary Englebreit number with a locking key. [Note: total scam. The key never worked.] The diary was structured into two entries per page, allocating a mere three or four lines per day. Somehow I got it in my head that what mattered most was frequency, not quality; what mattered was that I wrote every single day, and I didn't bother to filter if any of it was actually meaningful. Thus many of my entries were things like:

"Dear Diary, 

Today I went to soccer. Then we ate pasta for dinner. Then I read Laura Ingalls Wilder. 

Sincerely, 

Julia" 

I think at that age I equated writing a diary with writing a book. Quite literally the difference was merely prepositional: i.e. "I'm writing a book" versus "I'm writing in a book." This was further encouraged by the fact that all the diaries people gave me were hard-bound books with pictures of waterfalls or kittens. I felt an allegiance to my diaries that I felt to little else. Though I gave up on my fourth-grade diary after a few months, I returned to journaling as a seventh grader, after reading Harriet the Spy.  I made a commitment to myself the night of February 19, 1997, that I would write every single day, for as long as it took to become a writer.

I wrote every day, or at the very least, summarized every day, until the end of my freshman year of high school. When high school started, my family got a new computer, which for some reason I thought would make my writing better. I tried writing entries for a few weeks, but soon gave up because, well, high school was busy, and even though the computer was more efficient, it wasn't the same as sitting on my bedroom floor in my pajamas with the radio on, playing with the size and style of my handwriting, creating a physical artifact of my adolescence.

These are all the things I wanted to say at the social media conference, but of course I knew I never could. People write for different reasons and under different circumstances. It always amazes me the millions of ways you can push words around on a page. I am grateful that the professional work I do does challenge me and represents ideals and ethics that I support. It is remarkable, though, to think of how the Internet as a medium for communication has effectively rewritten the act of writing itself.

It seems fitting to end this post by remarking on its inappropriate length and total lack of bullet points and imperatives. Seen from the eyes of social media executives (because they are a thing now), this post is nothing more than a slowly deflating balloon. 

But it's my balloon, so there. 

 

Getting it all down

Things I worried about when I was five years old:

  • adults getting on their knees so they could look me in the face
  • what I'd do if someone actually passed me the ball on the soccer field
  • if I had somehow accidentally killed our cockapoo Sasha, who laid down on the grass and died about an hour after I fed her the remainder of my ice cream sandwich
  • if my part in the Teddy Bears Circus play required me to utter a single line

​Things I cared about: Beatrix Potter, dogs, cats, carrots, apples, pink jelly shoes, Sesame Street, Legos, my cousins, my parents, my kindergarten teacher Ms. Neu, my friends, palm tree ponytails

Things I worried about when I was ten years old:

  • delivering my first-ever hour-long oral presentation in Ms. Birse's class
  • whether or not I was officially too old to be watching Shining Time Station
  • ​being trailed by sixth-graders on BMX bikes on my walk home from school
  • Two words: Zach and Brad

​Things I cared about: all things Laura Ingalls Wilder, American Girl dolls, memorizing all 50 states and their capitals, winning the library reading contest, ​basketball, kicking the soccer ball against the garage door, writing in my diary, slip n' slides, Rollerblades

Things I worried about when I was fifteen years old:​

  • if, once my brother left for college, I'd somehow be an only child?
  • what I was actually supposed to do when a boy asked me to dance 
  • ​whether it was better to sag my corduroy pants below my waistline or fasten my overalls (yes, overalls) around the rib-level
  • getting an STD, inexplicably, without having sex

​Things I cared about: creative writing, rowing, youth group, disco dances, boys, theater, gardening, friends, family, the library, running a 5k

Things I worried about when I was twenty years old:

  • if I'd only get one chance at love, and I'd already messed it up
  • losing my insulin pump supplies in airport security, or, worse, being informed that I could not carry the medical supplies I needed
  • ​being mistaken for the "wrong kind" of American abroad
  • tsunamis and hurricanes

​Things I cared about: becoming fluent in Spanish, being in love, traveling, curing type 1 diabetes, writing, running a 10k, taking long bus trips around Granada by myself, tapas, housing co-ops, Weezer, Ben Folds, Wilco, friends, family, American politics, Rollerblades (still)

Things I worried about when I was twenty-five years old:

  • ​​whether or not I was in the right place; the right apartment, the right city, the right job, the right school, the right career
  • whether or not I had a "career," or rather, where one could pick one up
  • ever having the money or the job to afford the healthcare I needed

​Things I cared about: biking, running a half marathon, traveling, making the rent, finding a literary community, radio, Ryan, friends, family, getting into grad school, becoming a better writer

Things I worry about now:

  • finishing projects I start
  • finding time to maintain friendships while being a good daughter, sister, friend, partner
  • my 90-year-old grandparents
  • my privacy settings on social media ​
  • setting aside time to travel all the places I want to go, see all the friends I want to see, write all the things I want to write, run all the races I want to run
  • accidentally hurting the people I love the most

Things I care about: My family, my soon-to-be-family, my friends, Ryan. Writing well. Finding - and sometimes creating - community. Biking to work in the early morning along the Guadalupe River. Running faster. Tricking my body into thinking it's normal. NPR. Cooking. Really learning to listen. Books that wake me up. Camping. Pink Converse sneakers and green pants. Lighting a paper lantern and holding the corners of it with my favorite man in the world, watching as it gets ever smaller in the sky, surrounded by the happy grown-up versions of the people I grew up with. And always, forever, writing it all down.