Valley Girl

There is something sacred about swimming. Swimming pools.  It was never an option for me, my sisters, or my cousins, not to learn how to swim.  It was almost like it was a must do on our “To Do” list of childhood.  My mother’s mother, my grandmother, never learned how to swim.  Being one of eight children, it was never made priority in my grandmother’s upbringing to learn how to swim.  Therefore, it was her mission in life to make sure that her children and grandchildren all knew how to swim. We all had to learn, we all had to attend swimming lessons, and at some point in our teen years, we all had to become a swim counselor or lifeguard. We would all grow up to become proficient and avid swimmers.

            When my grandmother was forty-seven years old, she and my grandfather made the key decision to put and build a pool on their property.  Looking back now, it was that pool that made all the difference.

I grew up hearing stories of my mother and her siblings attending swimming lessons at the Fish and Game Club in Cherry Valley, New York.  She would tell me how they would get on the school bus at the old school, singing songs like “99 bottles of beer on the wall,” and “Found a Peanut,” the whole 5-minute drive up to the tiny pond on Fish and Game Club Road.  Upon arrival at the pond, all the children would race off the bus and run toward the crescent shaped row of Adirondack Chairs, throwing their towels over the chairs to claim their spots for lunch.  Not every child was lucky enough to reserve a chair, but my mother was one of the fast ones, and she was always ready to save her spot. Their swimming lessons would take place in the shallow fishing pond.  Something I always found fascinating and classic, as my swimming lessons, years later, would be given inside a Sports Center.  Swimming levels would be decided by each swimmer’s skills.  After the 90-minute session, and after hosing off their legs, removing any blood suckers they would find on their small bodies, my mother said they would then eat their bagged lunches brought from home on their fought after Adirondack chair.  Some days she would even go into the Club House and purchase an orange soda for 25 cents; the only time she remembers drinking soda as a child.  She said it was one of her fondest childhood memories and based on the number of times she would retell me her swimming lesson stories, it almost felt like I was right there with her, swimming in that lily padded and blood sucker filled pond.

I cannot say I remember learning how to swim.  There was no “Ah ha!” moment of it clicking for me.  Of me no longer swimming with my little blow-up arm swimmies.  My Gramma stored the swimmies on the legs of the plastic chairs that lined her pool deck.  After we used them, she would slide them up the chair legs, so they wouldn’t blow away with the Cherry Valley wind.  Gramma’s pool was like our meeting place.  The destination my mom would take us to on hot and humid summer days, the place we would all go.  My first swimming buddies were my cousins Tiffany and Chad.  During the summer months, when my mother would be off work from school, she would watch Tiffany and Chad, while my Aunt Kim still had to work every day.  Every morning, Aunt Kim would drop Tiffany and Chad down at our house, early, and I would be there waiting for them, my little buddies.  Having two grown sisters, almost a decade in age difference, Tiffany and Chad were more like a brother and sister to me, than just my cousins. From the time we were around 7 or 8 years old, to our early pre-teen years, the three of us spent our entire summers together. Many of those sweet summer days were spent in Gramma’s pool.

Not only did Gramma have swimmies for us, but she also had and saved up lots of fun things for us to play with in the pool. She had a couple pairs of goggles, noodles, and this big, old blow-up Whale floatie.  Nothing too crazy or too much. I can remember each time she got something new for the pool, it being a special occasion.  She didn’t have a treasure chest full of pool goodies; she had just a few things that we cousins used over and over again. She let the pool be the pool, and our imaginations would run wild with what we wanted to do in it.  We played countless rounds of games like Movies and Marco Polo, made hundreds of whirlpools, and one of Chad’s favorite games was to dive for the rings. Gramma had this set of four rings. There was a red one, blue one, yellow one, and green one. One person would stand on the deck and throw the rings into the pool and another person, usually Chad, would dive into the pool and try to collect them as fast as he could.  He always succeeded, scooping up the rings, one after another, and returning them to the pool deck.  The blue one always being the hardest ring to find. Once he dropped them, he would always say, “Toss them again!” and we would.

            Like how all things evolve in life, so did the swimming pool and how we spent our time in it. When we were young, it was once our playground, the foundation for learning how to swim.  Our place to become comfortable with the water and the act of swimming itself.  As we grew older, it became our chance to cool down after picking vegetables for hours in the scalding sun.  My grandparents owned and operated a Vegetable Stand for 30 years.  With their house being located along the bustling Route 20 that ran through Central New York, it became the perfect location for a successful vegetable stand, with vacationers and visitors coming up from New York City always in want of fresh vegetables.  A delicacy to them, compared to the store bought and pesticide filled produce they were used to.  Luckily, my grandparents were blessed with seven strong, hard-working grandchildren who during the summer months became their vegetable pickers and stand workers.

At one point in time, we all worked on the vegetable stand. My sisters, Celia and Bethany, and then the cousins Tiffany and Chad, Stephanie and Lauren, and of course myself. That pool kept us cool all summer long.  There were days we would jump in multiple times, just to cool off from the long, hot hours of picking potatoes or berries or anything out in the blazing sun.  Some days even, we would turn on the slide.  Gramma had this 1970’s Florida blue slide, that she ran a rubber hose up to.  Once the hose was turned on, we would then have to stand on both sides of the slide, rubbing the water over the slide’s fiber glass surface, to make the slide more slippery and to provide for a faster slide down it.  I remember watching the slide’s color change from a light blue to dark blue, as the hoses’ water became mixed in with the surface.  I can still remember the way the slide felt starch-like under my bare, wet legs.  Sometimes we would even go down the slide on our stomachs, something Gramma didn’t always like us to do.  We would have contests of sliding down the slide, then quickly getting out of the pool, running around to the slide, climbing up its ladder, to simply slide down it again.  We would do this over and over again, laughing the whole time, never getting tired, as the water gave us the energy and endurance to simply play after a day of hard work.

During my high school years, and amid training for the Fall soccer seasons, I would take an early morning run on the tracks that laid below Gramma and Grampa’s house and then swim. Pick raspberries for a couple hours and swim. Eat lunch and then go pick corn or potatoes, and swim. In the evenings, when my sister Bethany was off work, we would head up to the tracks together to run. We would grab the blue quart sized containers and stash them by the raspberry bushes, returning to pick for an hour or so, after our runs.  Those sunset stained nights down on the tracks, and along the raspberry bushes, felt like heaven to me.  Like a dream.  It was the way the light shone through the hedges that lined the vegetable fields, and how sometimes there would be a haze across the openness of the gardens from the July humidity. Bethany and I would walk back up to the vegetable stand from the raspberry bushes, our quart containers always flowing over with plump red berries, with the pool coming into view, along with Gramma and Grampa’s little cabin.  We would end our summer evenings with a jump in the pool, swimming in just our underwear and sports bras, never wearing a perfectly matched bathing suit.  We would do a couple laps around the pool, with Gramma always coming out to talk to us, inquiring about how many pints of berries we picked.  We would float on our backs, gazing up at the pink stained sky and name the clouds.  Pointing out which ones resembled cotton candy or zig zagged mountains.  We would dry off on the pool deck, lying our towels down on the hard wooden boards, and stretch out.  We would work on our abs, perfect our planks and eventually become dry.  We would wrap Gramma’s old and tattered towels around our bodies and head into the house to bid our grandparents goodbye and give them each a good night kiss.  Whenever I think of summer, I think of nights like this.  How they were so perfect and peaceful.  How we had our whole life just waiting before our eyes, but how we were so content in simply living in these moments. These sun kissed moments, by the tracks, in the raspberry bushes, around the pool.

After college and my stretch of time spent in Florida, I returned to Cherry Valley and Gramma’s pool.  Just how I began to age, along with Gramma, the pool felt as if it was aging too.  With Gramma slowing down, I remember my mother training me on how to hook up the pool vacuum and walk around the perimeter of the pool, cleaning the blue plastic lining and its sides.  Something I never remembered as a child, was watching my grandmother clean and get the pool ready for us.  Now, it was our turn to get the pool ready for her.  How responsibilities had switched, the tides had turned.  Year after year, Gramma had taken the time and put in the work to get the pool all clean and ready.  Now, it was our turn to carry the load. My mother and I went up to the pool every day, cleaning, inspecting, filling the pool with hose water until the level was just right.  Swimming that summer felt so rewarding, knowing that Mom and I had put in the work to get the pool up and running, for maybe just one last time.  The pool remained open for the next few years, eventually being torn down once both Gramma and Grampa passed.  It was a sad sight to see when the pool went away.  There became a void in the ground that once held and made up so much of my happy childhood. 

Today, my mother and I both have our own pools.  The act, the joy of swimming, we were never fully able to let go of.  Every time I step down my pool steps, I am taken back to being a child in my grandmother’s pool.  The initial sting of the cool water hitting my toes, then my shins, then my thighs, and eventually my waist.  Once half emerged in the water, I then let go of the ladder and take my dive into the pool.  Hands stretched out, legs expanded like a frog mid jump.  Eyes closed and my hair swirling around me. The feeling is always the same.  This feeling of shock, of excitement for finally jumping in, of freedom for breaking through the water and gasping back into the air.  The tingle of chlorine and how the smell always sticks to my skin reminds me that no matter what pool I swim in, no matter where it might be, I will always think back to the pool where swimming first started for me.

It never gets old or less exciting.

Coming home.

Back to my childhood house, back to the Valley.

         Back to my family.

                   Back home.

There is a sensation wrapped around the journey, my trip back East.

The familiar packing. The laying out of jackets and my Bean boots for the muddy fields.

Always remembering to buy and pack those pita chips my mother loves.

There is a preparation of my heart and mind to be home once again.

There is an anticipation, a feeling, of when I know I need to leave.

I can go for months without being there and then eventually my body hits a wall of deprivement.

My heart yearns, it begins to ache, for the sight of the Valley.

To be there among the farmed fields, to walk out to the back pasture, to run on the tracks,  

      to be in the barns, to hear the creak of our upstairs hallway.

 To simply be on I-90 driving home.

The car ride invigorates me. I never seem to mind it.

The 8-hour road trip gives me the time to cross over from one home to another.

To transition.

I blare the songs I grew up with through my car speakers.

The music serving as my own soundtrack, a backdrop to the scenery that changes with every passing mile. I drive from the suburbs of Detroit, past the Great Lakes, by the windmills and plains of Canada.

Entering New York, I always feel a little bit easier.

Almost like I belong again.

Even though my license plate reads Michigan, I am a New Yorker through and through.

The city names, the highways, the landscape become all so familiar.

The smell of the manure covered fields, the farms dotted along the freeway, the foothills slowly emerging along the horizon. The carved-out rocks that rise along the road, the sharp icicles dripping down their dark walls. Remains of the Erie Canal, the melting Finger Lakes, the fading green Native lands.

These are the characteristics of home. Of coming home.

The closer I get, the louder I sing.

The faster my heart beats, for the homecoming it has so long yearned for.

After months of patiently waiting to take in the view of my Valley, and to hear the howling Cherry Valley winds, it is now time to be there again.

I always drive a little slower on the back roads leading home.

I try to take it all in. Savor every glimpse of this heaven on Earth.

Nothing changes, I know these roads from memory, from running down them when I was young.

When I turn onto our road, a wave of joy comes over me.

I feel as if I am coming home for the very first time, although it could be the thousandth.

When the Valley comes into view, I want to scream.

I roll down my window, no matter the weather, and reach out and try to grab the ridgeline.

The one I have tattooed under my right arm.

I beep as I turn into the driveway, always parking under the trees by the sidewalk.

I see my father’s head pop above the kitchen curtains. He waves.

He comes out to help me with my bags as my mother waits by the front door for her long-awaited hug.

It is a Bridgerton type of homecoming. The daughter who moved away has come home to us once again.

It is always the same.

The smell of our house. A warm and comforting mixture of soy candles and Melaleuca oils.

My room is always made up to perfection.

Clean towels and extra blankets laid out on the chair in the corner, fresh flowers on the nightstand.

Old pictures of Gramma and I, or the cousins, line my dresser. A candle always waiting to be lit.

It is flawless. My room, the house, the creak of the upstairs floor.

My heart instantly settles into the routine of being here again.

The first day I always stay close to home.

I join my mother for morning coffee, I run around the block, getting my lay of the land.

I put on my Bean boots and hike out back, saying hello to the ancient trees, the creek, my sister’s cabin as it peaks out over the hills of the back pasture.

I stand over the worn tractor bridge and remember the forts of my childhood, built along every curve of the creek.

It is almost like the Queen has returned to her kingdom.

    Her Valley.

It is almost like I have never left at all.

The view of the foothills, always remaining the same, always looking stellar.

Always being the most consistent thing in my life.

Knowing that wherever I travel, no matter how long I am gone for, they are always waiting for me here.

      To come back to.

           To love, to cherish, to adore.

There is no greater feeling than coming home.

The void and the hole that grows in my heart from being away for so long, is replaced with this reclaimed energy and joy that only the Valley and home can give me.

Filling me up and nourishing me until the next time I will be back.

        Until the next time I will come home.

There is something empowering about being born in February,

            in the dead of winter.

There is a strength.

           A different type of skin, a thicker one.

            If you’re from the depths of the North, the higher latitudes of the world, you take on a different attitude.

The girls are grittier, the men braver, even the sports teams seem just a little bit tougher.

There is something about us. Enduring the long winters, the iced over lakes, the Arctic winds. There is something about these conditions that make us fierce. Ready to take on anything, ready to embrace and withstand whatever comes at us. Living in the North just makes us that way.

It could be a sunny 36 degree day, and we still drive with our car windows down. We might even take the tops off our Jeep, get the motorcycles out, run in a t-shirt again. After a stretch of single digit temperatures, anything above 30 degrees feels tropical.

Jackets became unzipped, gloves aren’t always necessary, the cold becomes more like an insulation, an added layer, wrapped around you, keeping you bundled up in a strange way.

The wind blows hard, to the point where it takes your breath away, your voice. A sensation you only know if you have felt it. The wind tunnels of the city are a real and violent thing.

Walking to the theaters, the clubs, between the tall buildings of downtown in subzero wind chills, wearing nylon tights with high heels, short skirts and not nearly warm enough jackets. Your perfume soaking through your scarves, always reminding you of the night before when you pull them around your neck the next morning. There is a fashion, a cold weather look, that fits you just right.

Oddly enough, it was in the middle of winter, in the freezing temperatures, when I loved being in a theater, an arena, a cozy restaurant the most. The body heat of everyone huddled together, warming you up with love and communion, something you didn’t feel in any other season. There is a heat, a light, on those dark winter days, that shines through when you are gathered around the ones you love, listening to the music that revives your soul, eating the food that nourishes you, and watching the games you obsess over.

There is a different sense of community, of gathering in the winter. Where our connection to one another is what we endure on a day-to-day basis. The cold makes us become closer, become one.

There is something empowering about being born in the middle of winter.

Something special.

Something unique and raw. Something bone chilling. The winter weather, and what it does to you, gives you a coat of armor that you wouldn’t have any other way.

With every freezing cold birthday you celebrate, your skin grows thicker with age, your memory on fire for the upcoming summer.

How with every winter that passes, it makes you that much more appreciative of the longer days ahead and the warmth that comes with them.

Of the green pastures, soon to be sprouting up on your horizon.

France

It was happening to me all over again…

A reawakening of my soul, my bones, my body.

I can remember feeling this same way many years ago, when I first came, and now here I was again.

Older, stronger, wiser, married.

The streets smelled the same-

The people with strong perfume mixed with cigarette smoke.

A vigor, with a slowness of life, no clocks required.

An oldness-

A history that wasn’t ours to live.

It is good to be a visitor, to not know everything about the place and its people.

It is good to be reminded of seeing something new for the very first time.

Again.

Italia

Ancient, colorful buildings along the sea.

Narrow streets, carnivals at every port.

Bookstores, library visits for the Wi-Fi.

Bon journo! Buon Natale!

The wind and the waves.

Ruins at every corner.

Thin pizza, stone statues, pieces of the rainbow.

Dark mornings, crescent moons, Aperol spritzes.

Perfumeries, drinking wine by the bottle.

Cobblestone streets, the Coliseum on Christmas.

Silence in St. Peter’s, the Eternal City.

Country roads take me home, or back to Rome.

Rain in Spain

We passed through the streets, with no conclusion.

We came upon a quaint wine bar, with green vines growing down from the ceiling.

It seemed like the perfect place to be,

on a rainy day in Spain.

We ordered two glasses of the local red, an omelet, with bread and olive oil on the side.

The wine tingled our bodies, the bread and oil soaking it up.

We lingered, enjoying every last sip and bite.

The moment hanging on by a thread, to every single drop of rain.

We left, pulling up our hoods, my scarf raised above my head.

As the rain came down, we began to run, from this street to that.

Retracing our steps, trying to remember the way from which we came.

We came to the bridge, over the gardens and ruins, and we could see the bus in the distance.

Our dry ride back to the boat.

On the bus, the windows steamed up, fogged over,

And with our cold fingers, we left on the glass, an

“I Love You…”

Casablanca

A view from the top, looking down on the city; beeps, honks, whistles, never following the street signs or traffic lights.

Learning from the women on the rooftops of when to put out your clothes to dry and when to bring them in.

Waiting for the pharmacy across the street to reopen after hours of prayer, watching for the green light to blink on again.

Remembering to weigh and package the bananas first before checkout.

Always start by saying, “Ca va?”

Taking in the sunset behind the mosque, watching the waves rush in from the Atlantic, the        freighters waiting patiently like soldiers out in the tide.

Following the winding streets of the Medina, not knowing what’s behind the next corner.

Spices, cats, old women peddling away.

Incense burning, small cups of espresso. A game of soccer in the street.

A happy New Years, without the toast, but the dawning of the next adventure.

A train ticket heading South.

Marrakech Mornings

I loved waking up in Marrakech.

The glass door always slid open to let in the morning breeze, the sound of the birds chirping.

I loved lying there with you in bed, not rushing to wake up, not anticipating the leave.

Just lying with my hand over your chest, letting the world slowly wake us up.

I loved the snow spotted mountains, the mosques popping up like chess pieces across the city skyline. The tinkering of the construction workers, the circling of the cranes, the beeping of the never ending round abouts. The hassling of the vendors at the Souk, getting lost down the maze of alleys, the soft sound of rain in the mornings, to only dry up in the Moroccan sun.

I loved the feeling of knowing that this was exactly what my soul needed in order to

Be.

London

If it wasn’t for Andrew, the Asian man we met in the London Underground at 12:10 in the morning, we would have never made it to the hotel.

It’s sometimes better to have a third opinion when traveling, than compared to the two we were used to having; his and mine.

It’s more reaffirming to have a third. And a smart one at that.

Andrew was on his way back from a debate competition in Bulgaria and was just as lost as we were trying to find Terminal 4 in Heathrow Airport, where no trains were running to at that time in the night.

It was a near disaster.

We flew into Gatwick airport, having to then hop on a bus that would connect us to Heathrow Airport, an hour away, for our departing flight the next day. A 12-hour layover at two different airports. I had never heard of such a thing.

4 trains, 2 in the Underground, and 2 bus rides later, we arrived at the Holiday Inn Express, where we were able to sleep off our stress just long enough to then wake up and try to figure out how to get back to Terminal 3.

This time, without Andrew.

At least we had the light of day.

If I was the girl from Cherry Valley, then he was the boy.

The boy from Cherry Valley.

He was our grandfather’s pride, our grandmother’s joy. His father’s humor, his mother’s love, his sister’s loyalty. A proud uncle, an inspiring god father, a dependable cousin. He was a little bit of everything, of all things good, all mixed into one. And he carried the spirit of the old, with the light and hope of the present.

He was the image of what any man from Cherry Valley should look like.

The avid hunter, the proud son, the prolific gardener, the champion catcher, the handyman, the jokester, the man of so many trades, everybody’s best friend (his tribe ranged from the Gage boys, to the Freer’s, to the South Valley crew, to the hunting teams who ventured up North and all across the county, to Dalton, Dana, Brett, The Ryans, Lukey), the one boy cousin in our league of all girls. The Capital C, that signature “Ch” sound that I teach my kids in school, always representing and reminding me of “Ch”ad. The one person we always just felt a little lighter, a little better, by being around. That was Chad.

It recently occurred to me, that whenever I think of Cherry Valley, my mind instantly thinks of him.

When the memory of what our town is and represents to me, whenever a picture of it pops into my head, it takes me right to Chad. And I never realized that until now.

That piece of land that used to be the gardens, the stoney path through the woods from Aunt Kim and Uncle Lyle’s house to his, the stretch of birch trees along the tracks, the four-wheeler paths cut through the woods. The way the sun set looks on the western horizon, right below Rt. 20. The old tree that was cut down, right in front of his house, that we would swing from as kids. That was all him.

To walking on the tracks, and having his four-wheeler ride up beside me, asking “want a ride?”, when he always knew my answer was “Na. I’d rather walk.” To stretching on his back deck and tying my running shoes, having a quick catch-up conversation with him every time I came home. To running along the road into town, and the beep from his truck, his hand waving out the window and his yell of a “Hey Moooooook,” fading into the wind.

To watching his sunflowers grow in gramma’s old garden. To waiting for him when I was young to ride out to the best blackberry patch on the other side of the tracks. The patch that Chad found, the one that Gramma was so proud of him for finding, and the one I was always afraid to go to alone. I only wanted to go with Chad. I felt safer with him.

Cherry Valley was walking the woods with him looking for Ginseng. Waking up with the hunters one early Thanksgiving morning and tracking the deer with him. Parking four wheelers at the Water Works, just to simply listen to the water after a hard rain. To Judd Falls, to the railroad bridge, to late nights in the Shop, to golf cart rides, to the fort that Beth and him made out back along the creek, to playing with Legos and our road as kids for hours in the back bedroom. To riding our bikes around the Hop house. There was a time, later in life, when I would meet him at the rock ledges every time before leaving Cherry Valley. It was almost like a ritual. Say goodbye to Cherry Valley, say goodbye to Chad.

Little did I know, he was the Valley.

He’s the deer, the buck you rarely see. The fresh tracks of footprints in snow. The howl of a Beagle. The stir of an old tractor. The smell of wood smoke and how it clings to your clothes. The smell of damp motor oil that would linger in the shop. The clang of a horseshoe, the smack of a cornhole bag. The songs of ACDC and Foreigner blaring through an old speaker. The taste of venison jerky and sour black berries from his patch. Always the winning hand in game of Pitch. The yellow of his sunflowers. The dirt under your fingernails, after picking potatoes all day in the hot summer sun. The brilliant stars in the night sky, as you look up to the Valley ridge and search for his house light.  How you always felt comforted, just knowing he was there. The beep from your car, every time you rode up his drive, hoping he heard it and knew that it really meant an “I love you.”

The last time I was at his house, I remember getting ready to leave, and remarking on his Rubber plants. We stood beside the plants together, and he told me, if you cut one of the leaves, it will sprout a new plant. He asked me, do you want one. I said, “No, I’ll get it my next time home.” Well Chad, I’m home again, and instead of just me taking a leaf, may we all take one and continue to grow your memory. (I’ll have this Rubber plant in the back after the service and can help anyone who wants to take a leaf and regrow it on their own.) May each leaf, each new plant, serve as a beautiful remembrance of who Chad was.

We love you Chad- more than words could ever say, and more than all of our memories could ever explain. Thank you for showing me, for making me realize, that wherever I go, you will always be here. You were born to be, and will always be, my favorite Boy from Cherry Valley.

7:00 am

We wake up together. The sun lightly shining through my bedroom window, falling onto our warm quilted bed. We hold each other, not wanting to let the other go. We kiss. Since I was a young girl, I dreamed of waking up in my childhood room on my wedding day. That day was today. That moment was now.

10:12 am

I am sitting on our old kitchen stool, as Sam does my makeup in the laundry room.  Not only does our laundry room have the best natural light, it has the best view of the Valley. I have whitening strips on my teeth and my “Get Ready” playlist softly plays in the background.  Celia sits on the ground doing her nails, Jossalynn plays with the dog, Bethany is in the chair behind me getting her hair done. We all have on our silk floral robes, all a different color. Savannah runs from room to room, modeling different dresses and asking our opinion on which one she should wear for the wedding. Mom yells up the stairs, “Brandi is here!” (that’s our photographer).  I feel calm, collected, and like there is no other place I would rather be, than sitting on this old, fold up kitchen stool, getting ready for my wedding. The morning is flawless.

11:44 am

I get dressed in my mother’s room. My dress hangs from her mirror, and my mother helps me take it off the hanger. I step into the dress and slide it up over my hips, my mother zips up the zipper and carefully hooks the few buttons in the back. We look in the mirror together, taking the first look at the same time. It’s hard to say anything at all, and it was hard to hold back the tears of pure joy. Of finally being able to see myself here, in my wedding dress, with my mother by my side. She hooks the necklace around my neck, and gently kisses my cheek, almost telling me, “You look perfect.”

12:06 pm

I’m running late, but it is a beautiful chaos. I buckle on my heels, I gather up my bags, and grab my veil for someone to put in my hair later.  “Me and Bobby Mcgee,” is playing in the background, and Savannah sings the lyrics to me as I hurry down the upstairs hallway. We sing in the mirror together, taking a quick mental selfie. I walk down the stairs, my white high heels clicking on the wooden steps, my bags slung over my shoulders, all ready to go for the day. I make it down to the dining room and my mom yells out to my dad, “Do you want to see her Tom?!” I walk out onto the porch, and it is the first time I have seen my father all day, he begins to cry. “You look beautiful,” he stutters through tears. I hug him and look over his shoulder to see Jonathan standing by the cross in the distance, with the Valley and the cornfield behind him. It looks like heaven.

12:12 pm

The sun is out, and the land is quiet. I begin my first walk down the aisle on my wedding day. There is no congregation, no priest, no wedding party. It is just him waiting for me at the end. His back is turned and as I near him, I tell him “I’m here honey.” He turns around and his face lights up. His eyes widen and his hands grasp his mouth as if in surprise. It is his pure reaction. He comes to me, and we kiss. We hug. We embrace this moment with the other. We stand in front of the cross and he reads his vows to me first.  I cry. He tells the story of how we first met and how I changed his life for the better. Forever. He is a beautiful writer, even when he doesn’t think so. Next, I read mine. I cry when I begin reading the first line. I tell him how I could not imagine my life without him and that I would not know God the way I do if it wasn’t for him.  After we finish, we hug.  This long, hard hug, that felt different than all the others.  Like we cared for each other a little differently now, a little deeper. It was the hug you would hug after exchanging your wedding vows for the first and last time. Brandi snapped the perfect photo of that iconic hug.

1:30 pm

We finish up our wedding party pictures, next to the hop house stone wall, in front of the sunflowers, by the corn field. The boys crack jokes and make the girls laugh through our natural smiles. The sun stays out, but the wind picks up. My veil keeps falling out and eventually we must use 15 or more bobby pins to hold it in place. A bug crawls up my dress, and my sister almost has a heart attack thinking it is a stain.  We could stay out here all day; giggling, feeling like models, sneaking a drink from the coolers in the hop house and taking pictures under the hops. My mother yells out to us, “You better get in here before any of your guests see you!” We retreat to the house and head to the basement. We gather around my father’s bar, where only a couple months ago Jonathan asked me to marry him. We show everyone where he hid the ring and retell the story.  I pop my bottle of champagne and pour a glass. We all do a toast; a full circle cheers. We are relaxed, yet excited. The basement was the perfect place to be, no windows where you could see people walking in or for them to see you. My father was in his glory, showing off his favorite antiques that adorned the walls and shelves of his restored basement. To have our friends and family all together in one place, looking our absolute best, felt like a dream within itself.  As the minutes passed, and the time grew closer to the ceremony we slowly made our way back up into the light.

2:22 pm

We quickly make our way to the hop house. The wedding party all huddled around me as we walk across the driveway. Goose’s “726” plays over the speakers as we enter the barn. We explode into excitement, trying to remember what we practiced only the night before and the order we are supposed to be in. I giggle to Tanner over the Walkey Talky, “Finish out this song and then start the procession song!” We have to end on Goose.  Before we line up, I gather the group to say a prayer. We circle around each other like a football team about to head out on the field.  Jonathan is by my side, holding my hand. Eric leads us in a prayer, our “Amen” in perfect unison.  The procession song “Sigh no More” begins. We hurry and line up, remembering now how it is supposed to go. I stand in the back with my father, taking some last looks in the mirror he strategically placed out in the hop house for this very reason. My mother looks back at us, my sisters and niece in front of me, my nephew about to walk her down the aisle, and she begins to cry. This deep and hard cry, because it has got to be one of the most beautiful moments of our life. Our family together, all lined up, me, the last daughter to get married, and not just anywhere, but here.  At home, our home.  In Cherry Valley. Her face, her tears brought tears to my eyes. I lost it right there, right when I didn’t think I would, or could. Right before walking down the aisle, our aisle, out into the Valley and our corn fields and the blue sky.  I lost it right there, standing in the hop house, watching my husband begin to walk down the aisle with his mother, and then my mother follow behind them with my nephew.  It was a culmination of all feelings. Of love, of gratitude, of appreciation for this place, this family, this human I was deciding to spend the rest of my life with.  It was all the feelings, all at once, and it was hitting me now. Just moments before I had to walk down the aisle.

2:30 pm

Somehow, we are right on time. The boys and mothers get down the aisle and now it is our turn.  My song starts to play, Mumford and Sons, “Malibu.”

In all my doubt
In all my weakness
Can you lead?
I fall behind
But like you promise
You wait for me.

And I feel a spirit move in me again
I know it’s the same spirit that still moves in you
I don’t know how it took so long to shed this skin
Live under the shadow of your wings

You are all I want
You’re all I need
I’ll find peace beneath the shadow of your wings…

I have it perfectly timed as to when the girls begin their walk. I had been playing this song over and over again for months, fixating on the timing of how this would all work.  Now it was time to finally implement my plan, live out my well thought idea.   At first the song starts slow, acoustic, the lyrics could not tie more perfectly into the landscape and this time of our lives.

I’m still afraid
I said too much
Or not enough
You’d only see
The ghost still rising
A broken touch

But walking through the valley was what brought me here
I knew I would never make it on my own
And I don’t know how it took so long to shed this skin
Live under the shadow of your wings.

My sisters, Celia and Bethany, my beautiful niece Jossalynn, and my maid of honor Savannah have all made it down the aisle. They are standing at the cross with the boys now. My father and I are left. We inch up closer to the open hop house door. We stand there on the barn’s edge, the sun shining through the hop vines and bright onto our faces. For a moment, I just bask in the light. I look up to the heavens and I smile.

You are all I want
You’re all I need
And I’ll find peace beneath the shadow of your wings…

My eyes are closed, and I am waiting for my cue, for the song break, for the speed up. For a moment I forget what it is I must do and just feel the warmth of the sun. And then the song reminds me, it’s time. The break is coming, I nudge my father and tell him, “This is it,” and so we begin our walk down the aisle.

Walking through the valley was what brought me here

As I walked through our Valley, towards the love of my life, the sun breaking through the clouds, our friends and family surrounding us, it was, without a doubt the climax of all moments of my life. I had my eyes fixed on Jonathan the whole time. I almost don’t even remember noticing where people sat, I was only looking for him, at him. It was only him and I. I had never felt more focused, than I had in that moment.  Locked in on my soon to be husband and what we were about to do. It was our mission, the force driving us forward, together, to become one and say, “I do.” It was a prayer we had prayed for so long.  And just like that it became true.

Later…

The rest of the day was pure bliss. I don’t think we were ever not smiling. From the family photos to the big group photo at the end of the ceremony, to Brandi stealing us away into the field at sunset for our golden hour photos. We smiled so hard; my jaw grew sore. But I didn’t care. I would smile until I died, I was so happy. It was the little moments that day that stand out to me now. My mother, Savannah, and Celia bustling up the back of my dress for the reception. Walking over to the barn for the first time and seeing how beautiful it looked. Aunt Jane getting me my first drink of champagne. Sitting at the head table with Liz and finally eating my appetizers. 10 minutes of photos and saying hi to everyone. Standing out in the courtyard with the wedding party, waiting to be announced “Mr. and Mrs. Upshur” for the first time, squirming with excitement like we were kids again. Savannah’s maid of honor speech and her singing the song from Beaches at the end. Dancing our first dances. Ms. Elaine dancing with her tambourine to “Twist and Shout” and watching her smile the whole time.  Pictures with the SLU crew and in the sunflowers. The speaker fiasco. Photo shoots and polaroids in the van. Greta and Solomon dancing in the courtyard. Trying not to cry through all the thank you speeches. All the dances, with my mother, my father, my sisters, our tribe. Watching the painting form.  Samba break dancing. The sun setting and the stars coming out. Lighting the tiki torches. The first band ending and dancing to “Fireball.” Taking a group of people to our tent and taking Tequilla shots. Putting on my white fringe jean jacket and boots. Grabbing a different girlfriend to go to the bathroom with each time. Dancing in the dark, under the barn lights to the second band, Becca playing all my requested songs (even “Possum”). Drinking up the last of the good beers. Noah scavenging wood from the nature trail and making a fire in the courtyard. Sal jamming the light night tunes on his guitar. Forgetting to pick up the pizzas at the Tryon.  Jonathan attempting to undo all the buttons on my dress. The feeling of getting out of my dress and putting on pajamas. Tanner and I scoring leftovers from the fridge. Lying down with my husband at 3:30 am. Hearing the coyotes howl all through the night. Waking up and realizing we did it. We lived out our perfect day, we held the perfect wedding, and we will never be the same couple again.

I have always wondered what it would feel like,

      what I would feel like.

To finally be at this point in my life.

To finally walk down the aisle and join my life with another human.

      It wasn’t that I was just getting married, it was this feeling I had as I came closer to it.

This feeling I acquired within.  With time.  

This feeling that came with years of self-work and slow maturity.

Of finally realizing that this was what I really wanted.  That he was who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. There were so many years, so many times, where I was so unsure of who I was and who I wanted to be. Who I wanted to be with.

I always tried to picture what my life would look like. Who I would look like, feel like, and live like as I approached this monumental time in my life, but it looked nothing like who I am today.

Today, I am better.

Today, I looked, I felt, I was living better than I could have ever imagined.

Today, I did myself proud.

It has been a long time coming. A long, slow climb to this personal sense of success and satisfaction.  

It has been a long time coming of trial and errors, changing jobs, leaving states, breaking bad habits, and creating better ones.

It has been a long time coming of perfecting the balance between home and here. Of understanding that it is okay to love and miss where I am from, but to be content and fulfilled with where I live. How I have learned far more from both places, than I would have from one.

It has been a long time coming of finding a purpose. Teaching, writing, praying, smiling. Loving.  Your purpose can change, it can be many great things but always keep it a consistent forefront of who you are, and what you are aiming to be. To have a purpose, is a purposeful thing.

It has been a long time coming of putting God first. Of putting in the work. Reading his words and living by them. Exemplifying them. Finding someone who cared enough to reinvent and refresh my soul with the Holy Spirit, changing my life and restoring it. Making my spirit stronger than I ever thought it could be. For that I am blessed.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a long time, because it was. It took years of developing myself, in order for me to be proud of it.  Of rising above the chaos, developing stability, maintaining order, strengthening relationships and holding on to the good ones.

It has been a long time coming of understanding what it takes, the shear commitment and constant determination, of making myself proud.

But I feel it now though.

I feel it right now.

Proud; In constant appreciation of the work I have put in, and the years of joy and fulfillment that have come from it.  That will come from it.

It’s been a long time coming to get to where I am. Where we are.

Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically.

If we could get here, we can get anywhere. With God, with our love, with time.

I have always wondered what it would feel like. What this would feel like.

Getting married.

Little did I know that I, we, would surpass any feeling I once had and replace it with our greater reality of what we are right now. Who we are.  

If this is only the beginning, I have no doubt I will die some day with a proud, full heart.

And that will be my greatest achievement of all.

My prayer come true.

They were always there.

A consistent backdrop in the way of our life. A stoic prop of the Valley.

Barns.

There were little ones, big ones, old ones, new ones, red ones, blue ones.

The red ones were my favorite, because we had a red barn. The Hop House. Built around 200 years ago, in the middle of the “Hop Belt” in Central New York. My father, the well-versed historian he is, was sure to educate his daughters on the history of our hop house, and the antiques that were found within it. He was always walking us through the barn, explaining what piece of bygone equipment did what and how each part of the hop house was used in the process of making beer.

I loved the hop house. I grew up in that barn. When I was young, my cousins and I would play there, riding our bikes around the squeaky wooden floors, creating imaginary story lines of the lives we would someday live. The hop house was like our self-created playground, keeping us occupied and out of trouble for hours. As I got older, I began to explore the upstairs of the barn, where my father kept his collection of acquired antiques. The hop house soon became the “cool” place where I would take my high school friends. It became the backdrop and inspiration for art projects and now framed photographs. My father strung Christmas lights along the ceiling and tailored lights to shine on different areas of the barn to create a dramatic nighttime effect. The hop house at night was pure magic and one of my favorite places to be. To me, the hop house served as an iconic symbol of home. We held my high school graduation party there, retirement parties, and milestone family birthdays. My father built a staircase to the “loft” of the hop house, the highest elevated point, and it became the place where we would share a beer or two on a cool summer night. The hop house was the happiest of barns.

Close to 20 years ago, my parents bought the parcel of land adjacent to our house. The land came with another barn. A retired dairy farm. Demolition began right away with removing the bull pen addition, taking down the silo, and relocating and reusing the calf barn for my sister’s off grid cabin. My father’s vision was to gut the barn to its original post and beam structure. Little by little, the new and ugly parts of the barn were taken away, and the main structure of the barn was all that remained. This became the Big Barn, and my father worked tirelessly at restoring it to its old and beautiful bones. The hay mount came down, the cow stalls came out, the metal siding was replaced with lumber logged from our woods out back. The only thing that remained intact were the beams. My father thoroughly explained the historical importance of how this barn was built in a post and beam format. Post and beam construction is a building method that relies on heavy timber framing to form the skeletal structure of a building or barn. Post and beam barns are examples of exceptional structural integrity that allow for open floor plans and high ceilings. Some beams of the Big Barn were over 50 feet long, and the ceiling was well over 30 feet high. The Big Barn was a structural marvel, and my father had big plans for her, as I had some of my own.

My father and I would scheme and dream together that the barn could one day become a brewery. The local brewery boom was in full effect, and we truly believed our barn could become the next one. With the hop barn next door and the hop yard that my father maintained annually in the backyard, it would be perfect. But it would also be a lot of work, and as more small breweries opened up around our area, we scratched that idea. As the years rolled by, and as I reached more of a marriageable age, my vision of the barn shifted from a brewery to a wedding venue. How did we not think of this before? The Big Barn would make the most perfect wedding reception venue. I took mental notes of where the band would be, where the tables would be set, where the food would be served, and how the courtyard would look all lit up at night. I knew deep down in my heart that the Big Barn was where I would someday get married, and I set out with my father to make that dream come true. Even before I got engaged, even before there was a wedding to plan for, my father would run ideas by me to ensure that this was what I wanted the barn to be and look like on the somewhere down the road “big day.” It was a sweet and endearing labor of love, that became all too real once I finally did become engaged. Our dream now had a date.

I could not imagine getting married anywhere else then by a barn. Our barns. I grew up in a barn and I would get married by one. To me, a barn is where I feel the most natural, comfortable. How the smell of old wood on a hot summer’s day can take me back to riding bikes with my cousins or loft beers with my father once I was old enough to drink. Sometimes I will just sit in the stillness of the hop house, walking the aisles of my father’s collected antiques, always thinking back to a much simpler time, and how I wished I lived back then instead of now. Sometimes, I will walk over to the Big Barn just to simply be in it. Look up into the high ceilings, admire the thick old beams, and pretend I am in a wooden cathedral. The barns make me understand that I am a small and vulnerable being, in this big world of things. It is the barns that give me a sense of peace and hope, when it feels as if there is none outside of their walls. The barns ground me and bring me back to my original core. The barns are always there, even when others aren’t. Trends may pass, tours may end, stories may die, but the barns will always live on. They will always stand their guard.

My father has made it known that his favorite sound is the sound of rain drops hitting a tin roof. Not just any tin roof, but a barn roof. When it rains in the Valley, I always know where I can find my father. In a barn. Upstairs in the hop house, on the drying floor, lies a two seated swing. One of those old swings that rocks side to side, not back and forth. A swing that you might have found on the grand front lawn of an old money house at the turn of the 20th century. When I was little, my father would take me to the hop house on rainy days and we would swing, listening to the rain drops hitting the tin roof. Sometimes it was a hard rain, sometimes it was a light rain, always a different rhythm, always a slightly different sound. Always the same feeling. Always that same feeling of youthful magic, of a little girl’s smile, of a father’s pride. Always that same smell of musty rain mixing into the worn-out and weathered wood. Only that smell from within our barn. Only that sound from on top of our barn’s roof. There is a comfort in knowing that the barn will always give us the gift of these memories, and the room to make more. Maybe it will be a wedding, maybe it will be showing my kids and then their kids the beauty and history that these barns hold. Maybe it will be a rainy day, when all you need to feel right again in the world is a swing and the sound of rain on a tin roof.

Maybe it will be the squeak of an old barn floor, always sounding like home.

2015

I believe in running; through blizzards, over bridges, outside. 

I believe in red wine; with straws, in mugs. 

I believe in carrots, tea, and clif bars.

I believe in picking wildflowers along the road when you have nothing to give to your grandma.  

I believe in Beatrice Gross’s chocolate chip cookies.

I believe in short dresses, wool tights, and lace up boots.

I believe in glitter; over your eyes, in your hair.

I believe in poetry; reading poems before bed and out loud. 

I believe in thrift stores, in that bra you couldn’t find anywhere else. 

I believe in records; the Stones, double disks, static.

I believe in disposable cameras and Melaleuca vanilla bean flavored chapstick. 

I believe in home, in travel, in sleeping in your car.

I believe in the soul.      

I believe in peeing in the shower and painting each of your toenails a different color.

I believe in ice cream; making your own sundaes, lots of sprinkles.

I believe in the Bible. 

I believe in Bruce Springsteen.

I believe in dancing; under the moonlight, next to the crowd.

I believe in incense, candles, and Christmas lights.

I believe in telephone calls, cowboy coffee, and waitressing when you have to. 

I believe in borrowing clothes, beer, an orange scarf.

I believe in Thursday nights.

I believe in always having bubble gum.

I believe in hiking; in the rain, with no snowshoes, a black sports bra.

I believe in tattoos, the small ones.

I believe in old cars and my mother’s 8th grade jacket. 

I believe in journals and writing down your dreams. 

I believe in spirit animals.

I believe in sisters.

I believe in serendipity.

I believe in this…

2025

I believe in herb gardens, sunflower seeds, hummingbird feeders.

I believe in paddle boards and my Trek bike.

I believe in bike rides to the beach and Raquetball courts.

I believe in chores and doing the laundry on Sunday.

I believe in oil diffusers and Lancôme perfume.

I believe in saunas and sweat.

I believe in swimming; in pools, in lakes, all year round.

I believe in lemon juice in my hair.

I believe in Jeopardy and learning two languages at once.

I believe in red wine; by a fire, at a fancy dinner, on a beach at sunset.

I believe in handwritten letters, Mary Oliver’s poems, and always knowing when the moon is full.

I believe in going home when you need to, at least always for Thanksgiving.

I believe in Cherry Valley, Detroit, and all the small towns I don’t know about.

I believe in getting away for Christmas, even if you plan the trip three weeks before.

I believe in eye masks, mud masks, and icing your face every morning.

I believe in campers, road trips, and going up North.

I believe in jam bands and always having the next show lined up.

I believe in the bible and reading it every day.

I believe in thrift shopping and grabbing that free pair of blue jeans at a festival.

I believe in gel nail polish and pampering yourself to a pedicure.

I believe in the woods, the trails, the nature, the birds.

I believe in the sound of geese.

I believe in stickers on your dashboard.

I believe in framed concert posters and using tie dye scarves for curtains.

I believe in having the good coffee, with the good creamer on the weekends.

I believe in girl’s nights, date nights, going downtown or staying in.

I believe in writing; about the past, for the future, to keep the blog alive.

I believe in song lyrics, Psalms, Proverbs, and good night texts.

I believe in cuddling before bed and holding your hand on walks.

I believe in always having a journal and a to do list.

I believe in salad bowls and fresh meat from our land.

I believe in the heat of summer and your breath in winter.

I believe in going for runs, any time of the day, even if they aren’t for long.

I believe in making your bed every morning.

I believe in the railroad tracks, the rivers and the roads that lead me home.

I believe in love and the heart ache that comes with it.

I believe in the hop house, the barn, the white house on Mill Road.

I believe in my mother’s homemade jam and my father’s antique collection.

I believe in my best friend who lives in a different state.

I believe in my sisters and the families we are making.

I (still) believe in disposable cameras and looking through my photo albums from time to time.

I believe that joy comes every morning.

I believe in always having a fresh start.

They’ve all been memorable. Different in their own ways, yet all pavers of their own path.

It occurred to me a couple of months ago, that most to nearly all of my bosses have been female. Pretty incredible to say the least, especially in a time when equality isn’t always equal. To me, being led by women, has only made me realize that anything is possible if you simply work hard and try your best. That your status is what you make it. You can choose to be suppressed, or you can forget about all barriers and rise above what once was and now can be. I have always lived with this mindset. That you can be whatever you rightfully want to become, if you simply try and of course work hard. If it wasn’t for these women before me and who showed me that this way of life is possible, I wouldn’t be writing this today.

JoAnn Loucks

            She will always be my favorite.  The first boss I ever had.  My grandmother.  One of the hardest workers I will ever know. She carried her responsibilities effortlessly and never complained, not once. In the late 1980’s, my grandparents turned their many acres of land into vegetable gardens and opened a vegetable stand along Route 20 in upstate New York. The stand catered to summer vacationers coming up from the city to escape the unbearable heat, and it gained the attention and admiration of many locals as having the freshest produce around. The vegetable stand served as my first job, along with both my sisters and all my cousins. Lucky for my grandparents, they had a handful of workers, and they paid us fair and square for our hours of labor in the hot summer sun.

            It all started in the garden, with my grandmother. When my cousins and I were old enough to work, we started in the garden. We learned early on the fundamentals of what it meant to work hard. To be on time, to follow directions, to get your hands dirty.  I watched and observed how my grandmother worked on every garden task, how she made something that might seem hard, look so easy.  From cutting the lettuce, to tying the cauliflower, to preparing the tomato and potato orders, to moving through the berry bushes, always reminding us to look under the leaves for that perfect berry. My grandmother was never not doing something. She was the image of what a hard-working vegetable farmer might look like. There is that iconic image of two farmers standing side by side with their pitchfork and shovel in hand, and in my mind, my grandmother was always that woman. Stoic and solid. Never giving up amongst hardship. Something about the way she worked gave her such a power that not many women carry today. My grandmother was a dying a breed, and how grateful I am to have gained her work ethic.

Laurie Schmitt

            As if working in the garden wasn’t enough, by my early teens I was hired to work for one of the largest greenhouses in our area; Sunnycrest.  Laurie Schmidt hired me and ran the grounds as smooth as a well-oiled machine.  I thought my grandmother worked a lot, but Laurie opened my eyes to a whole different kind of hard work.  She was at the greenhouses before I arrived and stayed well after, working constantly around the clock, every day.  I wondered if she even had a day off.  I wondered what her life looked like outside of work, or if she had any time for it?  She was a renown gardener and could identify any plant and the remedy one needed to stay alive. Not only did she run the numerous greenhouses, but she also stocked the warehouse sized gift shop with unique knick knacks. Weekends in the spring, Sunnycrest would be packed with people and their wagons full of flowers and plants. Of all the places I worked, this place felt the most natural. Open aired, with the windows and doors always open, and the smell of herbs wherever you walked. I took my lunch break, hidden amongst the many greenhouses, and at times I felt like a garden fairy, being serenaded by all the plants and greenery.

            Not only did I earn my green thumb from Laurie, I saw what it took to run a business. I watched Laurie and how she made smart business decisions and paced herself with tasks and errands. She was a superwoman of her trade. I understood that as a business owner, your business is your life. That was a hard realization to understand for a young teenager, who thought only of herself at times and what she was going to do once she got off her work shift. Looking back now, working at Sunnycrest instilled in me the moral that the work you do, impacts a community, not only just yourself and the paycheck you receive at the end of the week. Working at a place like Sunnycrest felt wholesome and real, like the work I was doing was pure and good. Sunnycrest served as a staple greenhouse for the small towns and villages that surrounded us, and it would not have been made possible if it wasn’t for Laurie and her business sense. Laurie is retired now and Sunnycrest sold to the Amish a couple of months ago. I often imagine Laurie is off somewhere, enjoying her well-earned retirement. I hope she never has to work a day in her life again.

Cathy and Carole

            It was by mere coincidence that I ended having a job throughout my college years. I lived in one of the dorms on the outskirts of campus, close to the Art Department, and every day I would go there to study in this area called the “Green Room.” It was an area full of windows and sky lights with desks and couches laid out in a cozy space. I would study there at the same time most days, and so did this other girl. One day she came up to me and asked if I wanted to work at the art gallery on campus.  She was a senior who was soon graduating, and her position needed to be filled.  If you got a job working at the art gallery, it was almost like you hit the jackpot. Pretty much you got paid to sit and watch the gallery (that sadly not a lot of people came to) and do your homework.  It was the most laid back, yet creative job I ever had. What made it even better, was the fact that the art gallery was run and directed by two women: Cathy and Carole. 

            The only “real” work I had to do at the Art Gallery was putting up and taking down the art installations every couple of months. Cathy and Carole were eclectic and dedicated women, who made every task we had to complete easy and fun. They would call all the gallery employees in for these installation “parties” and for 2-3 days we would tear the gallery apart, only to be able to put it back together with a whole new art exhibit. I learned how to hang various pieces of art and in various ways.  I was educated on different artist and different genres of artwork. Working at the art gallery served as a very eye-opening experience for me.  I was welcomed into a world I did not know much about by two artsy woman, who encompassed me not only as a worker, but as their friend. It was Carole who told me to listen to Sylvan Esso and who showed me you could have humor, even as a boss with a long list of responsibilities. It was Cathy who let the English Department hold our Open Mic night at the gallery my senior year, and I will always remember the refreshment table she made up herself and the piece I read aloud titled “Hair.” It was both Carole and Cathy who came to my graduation and gave me a card of congratulations on that very special day. My college years were impacted, along with funded, by these two unforgettable women. Word has it, they are still successfully running the gallery today.

Debbie and Natasha

            If there was one job that taught me something about the world and all the different types of people that live in it, it was waitressing.  I began waitressing my first summer back from college, when my great Aunt decided to reopen one of the well-known restaurants in our small town.  It was special to be trained to be a waitress by Aunt Debbie, and she taught me a lot about serving etiquette and how to make the biggest tip. Very quickly I learned how to juggle multiple tables, 10 top orders, and how to fake a smile, even at the customers who didn’t deserve it.  I learned working at a restaurant, you create your own restaurant family.  From the cooks to the front of the house, to the bussers, the bartenders, and lastly the wait staff, each night at work was like a whole new adventure with them. How we all worked as one that summer to create a successful first year of the Tryon reopening. How if it wasn’t for Debbie and her vision, I would have never gotten a taste of restaurant life, and my small town would have never seen the Tryon in action for a second time around.

            With a summer of waitressing under my belt and realizing how much money serving tables could actually make you if you did it right, when it came time for me to graduate from college, my mind turned to waitressing. Not having a job lined up with my Creative Writing major, I instead lined up a house on the outskirts of Lake Placid and from there could look for a job. I applied to different restaurants down the main street in town and got a call back from one. Generations. It was something and I took it. Not exactly remembering the restaurant itself, but I remember the woman who gave me a call back and the way her voice sounded like she meant business. And she did. Her name was Natasha. She was a powerful, beautiful force of a woman. There was an air to her, that seemed like no one could touch. She was the manager at Generations, and I worked hard to impress and gain her approval. She was always around the restaurant, and she made work feel as if we were all in it together, like she wasn’t one step higher up the ladder than all of us.  She would bus our tables when we were slammed, yell at the chiefs if we needed her to, and the first table that made me cry, she walked right over to without question and set them straight. I could trust Natasha and she could trust me. She wasn’t only my boss; she was my ally. Her own confidence and work presence spilled over onto me.  Because of Natasha, I began to hold myself with a higher respect, and that forever changed the way I worked and lived.

Wynde-Kate and Tammy

            I’m not exactly sure how I came about landing a job at Green Goddess, especially when I was already waitressing full time at Generations. But somehow, I got an interview and was hired. I remember sitting down with both Wynde-Kate and Tammy, the owners, and not sure what I was getting myself into. I had worked a lot of jobs, that required a lot of skills, but making fresh pressed juice and vegan sandwiches was not in my job repertoire. Then again, how hard could it be?  Green Goddess was a health food store and small café, which accommodated the more health-conscious side of Lake Placid, especially the Iron men and women who took over the town every summer. The store had aisles of organic food options, and the café was always cooking up something handmade and healthy. I applied and was hired to help out with the café, and I would be lying if I said it was an easy job.

 I watched and learned. Wynde-Kate and Tammy were both independent and ambitious woman, but they also both had families and young children. Not only did I learn how to make protein filled smoothies that summer, I learned what it took to juggle your job with your family.  These women had it down packed; Tammy would be in the store one day, while Wynde-Kate was playing mom, or vice versa. When you see a successful business owner, sometimes all you see is the business and not their life beyond that. These women balanced both work and life, and prioritized their mental health, along with their employees. I will never forget the staff Christmas party we had at Tammy’s house.  Sitting by the fireplace, around her Christmas tree, our secret Santa presents all in a pile, a table full of yummy food, and the most delicious craft cocktails, it was truly evident that this was the life I wanted to live. The family and home I wanted to have someday. Sometimes it’s not only the job skills we learn from our bosses, but it’s their way of life that we want to recreate within ourselves. That is exactly what Wynde-Kate and Tammy did for me.

The Kate’s

            After my stint of time in Lake Placid, I headed south, all the way down to the Florida Keys.  I had no plan, no job lined up, no apartment.  My early 20’s were all about adventure and the art of not having a plan.  It was the time in my life, where I felt the most free and that was enough for me. The first thing I did upon arriving in the Keys, was find a newspaper and scourge the employment section.  I found a job ad for a bakery called Sweet Savannah’s. I went straight to the shop and that’s where I met the Kate’s.  There was Kate Kohler and Kate Chapman.  They were both the owners of Sweet Savannah’s, one of the more popular ice cream parlors and home of the best Key Lime pie in the Keys. The little shop was decorated bright pink, and it smelled of rainbow sprinkles and buttercream. It was almost like unicorns lived here. The Kate’s immediately hired me, after realizing my magical energy and spirit matched theirs.           

            It was at Sweet Savannah’s where I met Heather and Sage, the two head bakers, that took me under their wings and trained me with such love and kindness. There were days I simply never wanted to leave work.  Sweet Savannah’s captivated me and made me feel apart of something extraordinary. We laughed, we worked hard, and we ran the bakery efficiently and effectively. The Kate’s trusted us and gave us the power to work the way we wanted to. I loved my mornings at the bakery. I would get there early, tie on a pretty apron, put on my favorite station and began baking. Dozens of cupcakes, batches of buttercream, cakes for Heather to decorate, brownies, and of course the famous Key Lime Pie. For a year, I watched how the Kate’s ran their business, and how they let Heather, Sage, and I carry the workload as well.  Out of all the jobs I had to leave, leaving Sweet Savannah’s was the hardest.  I cried when I told the Kate’s I was leaving, and it was because we became such a family during my time there. We created this tight womanly bond and held each other up when we needed that support. Whenever I am down in the Keys, I make sure to always stop into Sweet Savannah’s. The smell of walking into the shop always takes me back to that magical year, and the memories with some of the most magical women I will ever know.

Tamera Jr

            After Florida, I made my way up to Michigan. I found a job as an assistant Kindergarten teacher and quit after 5 months, realizing teaching maybe wasn’t for me. The gym I had joined was switching over owners, and the new owner just happened to be a woman named Tamera. Tamera was a tiny, but fierce blonde, who had long, always decorated nails. She wore high heels or platforms to make up for her height. She wore bright lipstick and always looked presentable. She was beautiful.  A force to be reckoned with. I had noticed Tamera at the gym, running around, managing the front desk, cleaning here and there, and soon came to realize that she was taking over ownership of the gym. All on her own.  I never had an actual interview to become her assistant, it just sort of happened. Tamera began her ownership by closing the gym for a week, and together we pulled up our work boots and began to renovate the place. We painted the walls, tore up the old carpet, we even got to sprinkle pieces of glitter into the new epoxied floor. She knew what she wanted, and she made it happen. It was inspiring to watch her vision come to life day by day. That gym was her baby, and she wanted to give it the best possible life.

            After the renovation, the real work began. She taught me how to use the gym membership software and soon I knew the online system better than she did.  I watched Tamera do payroll, and soon I was the one putting it in.  Not only did I manage the front desk, I controlled our online website, I looked over our group fitness instructors and Kids Club, I cleaned the bathrooms and treadmills, I hired personal trainers, I trained the new employees, and I was Tamera’s right hand girl. Whatever she needed, I did. I picked up her kids from school, took the laundry to the laundry mat, placed Amazon orders, I even babysat. Anything. I was living in The Devil Wears Prada, only the Metro Detroit gym version. That gym soon became my life. This was the job where I held the most power. If Tamera wasn’t at the gym, I was running it. She believed and trusted in me. She taught me how to approach any complicated situation, with ease and a level head. She taught me how to be forceful with my decisions and how to talk to people with purpose. Tamera truly taught me how to be a boss woman. A bad ass. When Covid hit and the gym was forced to close down, I left a completely different and empowered woman. Who because of Tamera, found a new home and life in Michigan.

Sherry Halleck

            I had never wanted to become a teacher. After my failure in kindergarten a couple years prior, I firmly believed teaching was not something I wanted to go back into. That was until I met Sherry Halleck. Upon leaving the gym, I took on unemployment, and promised myself I would take time to consider what it was I really wanted to do. For work, for money, to feel like I had some sense of purpose in the world. I had a friend who made extra money as a substitute teacher, so I decided to give it a try.  I lined up a phone interview at a nearby charter school, and that was when I first talked to Sherry.  I didn’t feel like I was in an interview, it felt like I was having a conversation with an old friend. She asked me a couple of questions and then we talked about scuba diving and my upcoming trip to Mexico. Within 20 minutes, I was hired and had a start date. It was a job, and it was a start. I had no intentions of it ever being more than just that.

            Sherry started me off in fifth grade; teaching a virtual class for a teacher who was on maternity leave. Then she moved me to a sixth grade class, covering a teacher who again was on maternity leave. Then I bounced around, covering any class they could find for me until the end of the school year.  It was a busy and confusing time to say the least, learning the ins and outs of a new school and the students within it. Those beginning months allowed me to get my feet wet in new and rough waters. I helped with summer school that summer, and then Sherry called me one day asking if I would like to accept the 5^th and 6^th grade special education position. Not knowing much about special education, I remember asking her if she truly believed in me and my capabilities of holding this job.  I remember her quickly answering, “I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t think you could do it.” With her faith and encouragement, I accepted the position and began that fall. Now, four years later, I have completed my State of Michigan Special Education certification and have mastered the art of writing countless IEPs. I quickly learned the love/hate relationship of teaching. There were some days, I had no idea why I decided to become a teacher again. But with time and the more confidence I gained, the more I loved what I was doing and who I was doing it with. The students of course stole my heart, and the group of women teachers I worked with became my role models. I watched and listened closely to the best of the best, forming relationships and a sense of trust with these women, learning teaching techniques I couldn’t read about in my online classes. Little by little, I became a smarter and stronger teacher, feeling a sense of pride within myself that I never felt before.  If it wasn’t for Sherry hiring me and believing in me from the very start, I would have never made it to where I am today. To this place of utter fulfilment and purpose. Something I had been waiting for my whole life.

            They will all be remembered. Carved out in my mind as the women who paved the way for my course of life. How if it wasn’t for all of them, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.  The worker, the employer, the student and the teacher. How I watched all these women put tireless and countless hours of their life into their work, not always understanding how they had it in them to do so. How at times I felt for them, ached for them to take a break, to not do so much, to not work as hard. How I did not always understand why they put all this effort into a just a job, when they had their whole life to live and enjoy. Perhaps it was because, we as women, haven’t always had this power. This chance in life to become the BOSS. The owner. The decision maker. The bad ass.  How it has taken generations for women to get to where they are today.  How if it wasn’t for the hardworking women before me, I would have never had the opportunity to have had only women bosses in my lifetime. What an incredible feat that is. How I hope for so many other women to experience and feel what it truly means to have a woman boss…and to someday maybe even be one. To have and hold the title of a Boss Woman.  

Bring back the howling winds and the manure covered roads.

The imperfect houses and not always mowing your lawn.

The dirt roads lined with corn fields.

The locally owned shops with inconsistent hours.

Bring back not finding a place to park on Main Street on a Saturday night.

The packed full brew pub and the little market next door.

The Quick Way and the smell of its oil-stained pavement.

The bank on the corner, the Limestone Mansion, and the historic cemetery.

Bring back the churches and the ringing of their bells on Sunday.

The big-tired tractors taking up both sides of the road.

The signs on every streetlight of the men who served our country.

The art walks in the summertime.

Bring back the museum and the volunteers who help to keep it open.

The town boys who make sure our roads are plowed after every snowstorm.

The flower shop with Jackie’s most beautiful bouquets.

The Old School gym named in honor of my grandfather.

Bring back the Saturday morning soccer games on Alden Field.

The bank parking lot and the bands that play there on Folk Fest for Food.

Bring back the Memorial Day parades, story hour at the library, and reenactments of the massacre.

Bring back the small-town pride.

            The heart, the knowing that someone will always have your back,

                        always know someone you are related to, and which road you grew up on.

Bring back the feeling that all your needs can be met in a small town.

            That all you could ever want can be found in a small town.

There is no place like this in the whole world.

No feeling,

like growing up into the girl from Cherry Valley.

I will always remember the year I turned 10.

There was something about turning ten that seemed a little extra special to me. Something about turning a whole two hands full of fingers just made me seem older. A little more important. A little more mature.

 And perhaps it was the way my grandmother talked about me turning 10 that made me a little extra excited. She kept telling me, “I have something very important to give you.” Now in my nine-year-old mind, I was thinking of presents along the line of Barbies, Polly Pockets, or that new Lego set I wanted. Grandma Garretson was always the one who spoiled me silly and went over the top with presents on Christmas and my birthday. My mother always pointing out, “You don’t have to get her that much next year! She has enough stuff.”  I couldn’t imagine what this present could be now, even after my grandmother said it herself that it was very important. In the days that led up to my 10^th birthday, I dreamed of what this very important present could be.

            My grandmother and I always celebrated our birthdays together, because we were born on the same exact day. I would always hold a unique place in her heart because I was the one grandchild born on her birthday, and the last of her granddaughters. She loved the girls, because she gave birth to all boys. My mother gave me her middle name, Viola, and that sealed the deal for our one-of-a-kind connection. Every year, we would have Grandma down to the house for a birthday dinner with cake and presents. But on my 10^th birthday, I remember her coming down late in the morning one Saturday to give me this one special gift. I noticed the small gift bag right away and my heart sank a little knowing that this gift was no new Barbie or Lego set. I began to wonder, how could something so small be so important?

            What I loved most about my grandmother, and what I worry we are lacking more of in today’s world, was her sentimentality for the old. How she would tell us stories of her mother’s mother, of her upbringing and family traditions, how she held onto childhood heirlooms and would bring them out from time to time to show me. She valued her family’s history, and it was hard not to see. She was a walking artifact of the way the world used to be. Proper, polite, always put together, always speaking with a purpose. We called her the “Queen” of our family. How she held herself to such a high standard, just like any queen would.  And if she was the Queen, then I was her little princess. Absorbing and holding onto every story she would tell and keepsake she would show me. It was a beautiful relationship and how I yearned to be like my grandmother in every way.

            She put the neatly wrapped gift bag in front of me at our sunny, dining room table. “Now that you are turning 10, I feel like this belongs to you,” she said as I began to unwrap the tissue paper. In the bag there was a thin square shaped box, held shut by a string. I undid the string and opened the box, and there inside lay the most delicately made beaded handbag. It was small and dainty, but beautiful. This color of blue, mixed with silver beads, showed just how old it was. The beads perfectly fit together and dangled off the bottom, glittering in the late morning sunlight. It was a purse fit for a queen. There was a note inside the bag that read, “Viola hand crocheted this evening purse for her mother when Viola was about 16 years old.” Viola being my grandmother’s mother. My great grandmother. I was amazed at how such a young girl was able to make something as stunning as this, in a time not nearly as advanced as now.  How now, living in such a developed world, I could not fathom making something as intricate as this.

            I held the bag in my hands, running my fingers along its smooth beads, questioning why my grandmother decided to give me this now upon turning 10. What was I going to use this bag for? Why did she feel the need to give it to me? I thanked her and gave her a great big hug, trying not to show my slight disappointment in not getting a “real” toy for my birthday. Once she left, I took the box up to my room and placed it in my keepsake trunk at the foot of my bed. It would stay there for years to come. Only being brought out and admired, on the occasion that I did need to go into my trunk. I would pull out the small box and hold the purse in my hands, running my fingers along the beads that dangled off the end, realizing that my great grandmother once touched these same beads. Slowly and over time, I would come to the understanding that the purse was never meant to be played with, it was meant to be cherished and valued. Passed down from one generation to the next, with the hope that its beauty and craftsmanship would never fade away.

            Recently, my father cleaned out my old bedroom and put all my childhood belongings into totes, which he carefully packs into my car every time I come home to visit. “Dad, I don’t need all this stuff anymore,” I tell him slightly irritated and thinking where I am going to put all this stuff now in my adult home. But he never listens, and in a way, I am grateful, as he continues to pack the totes into my car. On his last visit out to see me, my father brings three new totes. One full of photo albums and yearbooks, one full of old college binders and schoolwork, and one I wasn’t expecting. This tote was heavy and held my grandmother’s old China collection. Even the tissue paper smelled like her. Rummaging through the tote of old China, I came across the small square box. Having it been years since I last held and felt the purse in my hands, small tears bubbled up in the corners of my eyes. There it was; the purse. The same way it had always been. I undid the string, uncovered the thin tissue paper, and looked down at the blue beads, that hadn’t seen light in years. I picked it up and held it in my hands, feeling my grandmother close by. I ran my finger along with beads and admired the creation of a young 16-year-old through teary eyes.

It was in that moment that I understood why my grandmother gave the purse to me. It served not only as a way to hold onto her memory, but all the great memories before her. All the women of my bloodline. That tradition should never be lost or let go. How family heirlooms like the purse, aren’t made anymore, and it is our duty to hang on to and cherish the ones that are. That someday on my daughter’s 10^th birthday, I will give the purse to her and explain the story, and all the other stories that my grandmother passed down to me. It is our job to be the story tellers and memory keepers of the family before us. If there was one thing the purse taught me, it was that. From one small gift that I never expected, the past once again becomes our present.  And if we take the time to pass it on, the stories and heirlooms will never be forgotten.

Just how my grandmother always wanted it to be.

To this day, it surprises me that I travel as much as I do. Or that I have traveled as much as I have. Most people, know me as a “the free spirit.” The one who travels with the wind. Never staying put and always up for an adventure. But knowing myself 20 years ago, I would have never imagined studying abroad in India for four months or spending Christmas in Guatemala or scuba diving in the cenotes in Mexico.  Brave was just not who I was. I was actually pretty far from it.

When I was younger, I was a very scared child. A “scaredy-cat,” you could say. I had a hard time sleeping alone in my bedroom, with fear of the boogie man coming out of my closet. I remember my father having to bolt a heavy iron lock on my closet door, with hopes to keep the boogie man from coming out. Even that didn’t work though. I was still scared.  I had a set of bunk beds in my room and my mother would have to sleep on the bottom bunk in order for me to fall asleep at night. Once I did and she made her way back to her bedroom, I would follow her there and retire to my homemade sleeping bag bed on the floor. In my pre-teen years, I had this stint of sleeping on my parent’s floor, right at the foot of their bed. I laid layers of sleeping bags upon each other, creating a cozy “floor” bed which I religiously came to sleep in every night.

Being that I was even too scared to sleep in my own room, I could barely imagine the thought of spending the night somewhere else. I remember a few attempts I made at my cousin’s house, always resulting in my mother having to pick me up early in the evening, from me being too scared to stay over.  I was a big, wimpy scaredy-cat. There, I said it, I really was. I couldn’t join in with my friends when they had sleepovers for their birthdays and I missed out on my sixth grade Safety Patrol field trip to Washington DC, all because I was afraid. I was scared.  I let my fear of the unknown and unfamiliar take over my life and what I could and could not do. I knew it was a problem and something had to change. I couldn’t sleep on my parent’s floor forever.

After I was too big for my bunk beds, my father and I set out to find a bed for me.  At a garage sale one weekend, we came across this $30 brass bed.  It was beautiful and my father shined it up, put it together, and it became my bed for the next 17 years.  In some ways I will always thank the brass bed, and my father for adamantly buying it for me.  Maybe it was just that I needed a change. A symbol of maturity, to grow up and reclaim my strength. My independence.  I remember sleeping in it the first night and feeling scared, unsure. Wanting so badly to feel that sense of protection from my mother and comfort of my sleeping bag bed but knowing that I needed to push through my fear and finally sleep on my own. Waking up in the morning, alone in my bed, I surprised myself with what I just accomplished. Stunned, that I needed to feel uncomfortable in order to feel free. That feeling continued to stay with me, pushing me through my teen years, making me embrace and enjoy sleepovers, class trips, and spring break trips with my friends. This sense of independence began to grow larger and larger, pushing me to the point of my first big trip. The summer I went to France.

France will always be the trip that opened the traveling abroad door for me.  It wasn’t just a little trip; it was a 23-day voyage from Paris to the Loire Valley countryside. It was the first time I flew on a plane by myself.  I remember taking a book and my journal and writing poems the whole way to France. I remember feeling very grown up. Having the complete freedom of sitting at the gate by myself, being whoever and however I wanted to be, because nobody around me knew who I was; where I was coming from and where I was going. Nobody knew I was a girl from a small town like Cherry Valley, heading to Paris, one of the grandest cities in the world. In a way I loved this feeling. I could pretend I was a whole new person. Daring and courageous. Not some scaredy cat who used to sleep on her parents’ floor. As intimidated as I was at the chance to be traveling solo, I also embraced this new unknown feeling, as it made me braver. Stronger. Smarter. And little by little, this concept of discovering more and more of this great big world and stepping out of my comfort zone again and again, became the way I chose to live my life from then on.

After France, I felt like I could travel anywhere. It took me 2 years in college to decide where I wanted to travel abroad for my senior semester. I first took Italian, thinking Italy would be a fantastic semester abroad.  Then I took a course in Kenyan culture and believed Kenya would be a better fit. Somewhere completely different from anywhere I had ever been.  Italy seemed a little too easy and straight forward. Finally, I was approached by my English advisor about a trip she was hosting to India. India. A country that never crossed my mind, but a place that would humble me in every way. India. Something so far out of my comfort zone, it made me even braver just thinking about. After a vigorous application process and interviews, I was accepted into the India study abroad program and conducted my senior thesis project along the banks of the Ganges and Yamuna River.  How rewarding and eye opening that trip was for me. Culturally, religiously, spiritually. After a trip like that, it was hard to not crave and seek out all the places that are so entirely different from the United States and what I knew.

Guatemala came at just the right time. 10 years after India, my heart was ready for a challenge. A breath of something new. Again, a country that never crossed my mind of wanting to visit or explore, but one that will always stand out to me in its beauty and differences. From its black sand beaches to its mountain line of volcanoes, to its luscious green rain forests, Guatemala gave me a sense of knowledge and excitement that I couldn’t simply get from staying put in the all too familiar. Guatemala served not only as a pre honeymoon vacation with my soon to be husband, but as the “Aha!” moment of why traveling is so important to me after all. Of how traveling has changed me into a stronger and braver person. We all have the choice to stay put and exactly where we are in our lives. It is comfortable, it is easy, it is all too familiar. We come to like this feeling and somehow become stuck in it. But we also have the option to explore, to travel, to put our feelers out into the world that was created for us to see. We have the freedom to go to new places and experience so many different cultures and traditions. The world is like an open textbook, waiting for us to read and receive. To live in.

            I know it’s not easy.   I know it’s scary to stretch yourself into doing something that does not feel familiar or comfortable.  But maybe if we simply tried, took the baby steps to accepting something entirely foreign and frightening, it would expand into a space of bravery within us. Molding us into more courageous and confident humans.  That sleeping bag bed on the floor may seem warm and cozy, but it was the brass bed that made me realize how hard and uncomfortable sleeping on the floor really was. My fears became so scary and intimidating, that I had to break free of them altogether in order to grow and thrive again in my life. If I wasn’t afraid for a moment in my youth, I would have never matured into the human and traveler I am today. Looking back onto who I was, I am thankful that I got to experience both extremes, to understand better my place within this world.

From scaredy-cat to free spirit, we all have the choice to surprise ourselves just a little bit.

“It’s happy Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving today!

We’re going to have dinner at Aunt Kim’s today!

We love it at Aunt Kim’s, it’s cozy and snug!

We love giving Aunt Kim our Thanksgiving hug!”

–It’s Thanksgiving

It happened the same way every year.  We would all gather at Aunt Kim’s house up on the hill and sit down as one big family for Thanksgiving dinner. Aunt Kim and Uncle Lyle sat at the head of the table, Gramma and Grampa on the side by the windows, Uncle Bobby and Aunt Colleen next to them, my Mom and Dad across from them, and then the children and great grandchildren to follow. From the elders on down. Hierarchy of the generations played out before our eyes.

            It started with my sister Celia sleeping over at Aunt Kim’s house on the night before Thanksgiving, to get up early and help Aunt Kim with the dinner preparations. Setting the table, peeling the potatoes, filling the milk and water red glass pitchers, setting out the butter and gravy dishes, toasting the dinner rolls.  It was no easy process and definitely not a job for one or two persons alone.  After Celia retired the role, the job moved on to me.  It was more fun and exciting, something I looked forward to every year, than a laborious task. It was the one night I got to sleep over at Aunt Kim’s house and wake up to the sounds of the Macey’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Tiffany, my cousin, and I were always giddy with holiday spirit, and would stay up late watching Christmas movies the night before and then sleep in until we awoke to Aunt Kim’s voice announcing the “Parade is on!” She never let us miss when the Rockette’s would perform their newest routine or when Santa would wave by in the end.  The older I got; the more sentimental the parade felt to me.  Always representing those early Thanksgiving mornings at Aunt Kim’s house and the start of our holiday season.  

            Looking back, I’m not sure if putting Tiffany and I together in charge of helping Aunt Kim with dinner, was the best idea.  I remember laughing until my belly ached listening to Tiffany bicker away with Aunt Kim about how to set the table or where each person should sit. I remember Uncle Lyle chiming in with his additional commentary, “Tiff, would you just listen to your mother.” I remember Tiffany being sent off to vacuum the floors, as a way to hush her up and simply keep her out of the kitchen.  Being no green thumb in the kitchen myself, I tried my best in helping out, as there was always so much to do.  I would help peel the potatoes, but one year I remember washing my hands over the pot of snowy white mashed potatoes that sat in the kitchen sink. Tiffany must have been making me laugh or I was busy trying to think of what I needed to do next, and all of a sudden, I see a layer of bubbles forming on top of the potatoes. I’ll never forget the way Aunt Kim looked at me when she found out.  Not my finest moment in the kitchen, and that was probably the year I stopped helping with the mashed potatoes.  Holidays are never perfect, and maybe that’s what makes them so memorable.

            With Thanksgiving always falling around the start of hunting season, I’ll always associate the sound of a gunshot with Thanksgiving morning.  I remember one year, Tiffany and I waking up and being rushed outside to see Chad’s freshly shot buck. The hunters all gathered around his prize, Aunt Kim running in to grab her camera, telling the men to gather up for a picture, one that could potentially make our family calendar next year. Misty running around the yard. The smell of wood smoke spilling out of the shop. A numbing frost lingering in the air.  Fog rising up from the Valley. The faint smell of a turkey roasting in the oven. This is one image I will always have of Thanksgiving. This one moment right here.  How it’s taken me years to realize that this is some very special moment in my life. That not everyone in the world gets to remember Thanksgiving the way I do.  We do. That being born and raised in the Valley, I was able to experience and hold on to moments just like this.

            As I aged, the way Thanksgiving looked changed. One year, we were blessed with a thick layer of snow, and I remember Tiffany and I rummaging through the shop for our old sleds. We hiked up to the top of the sledding hill and for hours we were the children we used to be. Racing down the slope, to simply get to the bottom and hike up and do it again.  Laughing and forgetting our adult duties, grateful that Aunt Kim even let us go out to play.  Some years it would be warm. Throughout my college years, I remember waking up early with Bethany and we would join the hunters on their Thanksgiving morning hunt.  Dressing in cameo, with hints of orange and flannel poking through, we would quietly follow the pack of men through the woods. Like a maze we covered the floor of the valley, searching for that perfect buck.  How I am grateful now to have seen how it was done.  Watching firsthand, my grandfather do what he so loved to do, along with my uncles and cousin.  Observing the men of my family in their glory.

            While the day of Thanksgiving may have changed and come to look different with time, the dinner part never did. We all sat in somewhat of the same place. We ate at right around the same time. We started with the same prayer that Gramma used to say, and then we would go around the table and say our “thankfuls.” What we were grateful for that year or in that moment. Not one person failed to mention their family. Our family. After we made our way around the table, we all joined hands and began to sing the Johnny Appleseed song that my father had taught us when we were young and later came to be our “prayer” before all meals. Everybody knew it and with time we even added in a “yee haw, let’s eat!” at the end, that would make everyone giggle and laugh.  This was our tradition, our Thanksgiving dinner every year, that until I moved away and wasn’t always home for, did I come to understand how beautiful of a tradition we had and still have today.

            After dinner, we would clear the table. Uncle Lyle would load the dishwasher, Aunt Kim would wrap up the leftovers and get the desserts ready. Games would be played from pitch to spoons to charades.  There was always a football game on TV, or that silly national dog show. We would lounge and catch up.  Drink the little chocolate liquor bottle candies Aunt Kim would get from BJ’s.  Stephanie and I would sneak off to the back bedroom and fill each other in on our latest life gossip. Pictures would be taken, and the great grandbabies would be played with. Uncle Bobby’s birthday would always be celebrated. The house would always get too hot, and we would open the side doors to let the wintery air in and cool things down, always joking that it felt like Gramma’s house on Christmas morning with her wood stove constantly running.  And then slowly, one by one, we would all make our way out.  Bundling up, taking our leftovers, giving the last of our hugs and farewells and thanks. We would step out into the frigid air, where we could all breathe again and feel how full we really were, and stop for a moment and just take it all in. Looking up at the bright stars and thanking God for another Thanksgiving at Aunt Kim’s house.  Of being all together once again and realizing that this didn’t happen much anymore.  How after decades of this one tradition, we can all still be grateful for our Thanksgivings spent at the top of the Valley.

The late September heat strains through the diesel infused clouds and land upon the Northern end of Chaura Rasta Road that runs through the pink city district of Jaipur.  Walking along the cart crowded sidewalk, vendors pop out of their narrow shops like puppets, trying to act out an encore for the last half hour of the workday.  Kurtas 150!  Beautiful sari’s here, in here!  Do you want nose ring? You have beautiful eyes.  I hurry past the persistent puppeteers, wanting simply to catch a rickshaw home, when suddenly I hear something above all the hassling and commotion.  The gongs.

            It sounds like brass church bells.  The sound that I will later learn to be two silver gongs, reminds me of ringing the lonely morning bell at my childhood church in upstate New York.  Every Sunday before the 11 am service, I would climb the steeple stairs and tug on a corded rope, producing a sound that would pierce my ears and shudder through my body.   Dong dong dong dong.  Following the sound of the heavy gongs, I arrive at an upward leading set of marble stairs.  Leaving my sandals behind, I climb them.  The chaos of the street below is drained by the thunderous clashing of the gongs. The honking of white cars and the prodding of cow hooves on the Indian street are quickly forgotten, replaced by heavy harmonies and Eastern notes. 

            It has been my understanding, until this particular moment, that temples are supposed to be quiet.  Silent.  Respectful.  Hushed.  Upon entering this cobwebby, hole in the wall shrine, scrunched between two apartment buildings with overgrown vines and a broken gate, the first thing I notice is the fullness of sound.  A skinny man with thin ankles bangs a wooden hammer between two twin sized gongs.  The noise is deafening.  A hollowed out echo that stings the air with electricity.  The noise does not stop, the man’s hammering hand never slows down.  I make my way to the front of the temple, a green iron gate circling around the smudged mirrored walls that hold in the idol of Lord Radha-Damodar, the young child image of Lord Krishna.  Men in neatly ironed plaid shirts circle around in front of me, hands wavering in the air, bodies dropping to their knees, heads to the marble tiles, lips moving fast to the rhythm of the gongs. Chanting prayers. Soft prayers that I am not meant to hear.

            Every day, after the late afternoon shuffle and before the closing time of most shops within Bapu Bazaar, the gongs will play at Mandir Shri Radha Damodarji; an unnoticeable temple by appearance, but hard to miss when the gongs begin to play.  The temple worships the young image of Lord Krishna, the damodar image that all great Hindu gods, saints, and seers love without exception.  Six smaller shrines are carved out of the outer walls and hold gods like Brahma, Mahesh, and Indra who protectively keep watch over the little one, the young Lord Krishna.  The central purple sheeted shrine of Krishna, the incarnation of Vishnu, shows him holding a flute to his lips.  The God-child’s eyes glow a neon orange. 

            The gongs continue to play as I circle around the temple, inspecting the sparkly and chipped deities.  I stand again before baby Krishna, remembering my once small hands tugging on the thick cord of the church bell.  Dong dong dong dong.  I remember Christianity, communion at the altar, the moth ball smell of ancient hymnals held by my grandmother.  I look up at Lord Krishna and my heart mixes with the noise of two religions.  The two gongs, the church bells, crashing against each other.  Will the sound ever stop? 

I turn to exit the temple and finally there is silence. The skinny man holds back on his hammer and walks away.  The echo continues to ring, but the gongs are quiet now, slowly swaying side by side with the other.  I know I should continue my search for a rickshaw, but instead I stand in the sound until it fully fades away. 

My obsession began long ago. When they would come in flocks, flying over the fields, onto their next home. The geese.

            They would come back every spring. Landing on the small pond behind Uncle Jim’s house. They built their nest out on the tiny peninsula, where it was even hard for us to get to. But my father would take us over and when the Mama goose had left her nest, we would quickly count the large eggs and touch the softness of the small goose feathers mixed into the sticks of her perch. It was a beautiful process to observe. We would go back when the eggs hatched and watch as the babies would swim behind the Mama, never leaving her sight. The family would move together as one in the water, back and forth through the twists and turns of the creek.

            Every fall the geese would leave. Scavenging the fields for fuel for their long journey south. It was in the fall that I remember hearing the geese the most. As they would fly over our house and land in the fields. The honking and slight sound of their wings flapping felt like the sound of freedom, and how I wished at times to be flying with them. To have a bird’s eye view of the valley below. How different the Valley would have looked from above and how I tried so hard to imagine it.

            When I began playing soccer, the geese became a prominent symbol in the start and end of every season. My school was built amongst the farm fields and high hills of Cherry Valley.  Our soccer fields were some of the most beautiful in the county, maybe even the state. On the occasion of a night game, the sun would set right over the horizon, displaying sunsets I will never forget. How privileged we were to be playing soccer games in the essence of nature in upstate New York, as opposed to amongst concrete buildings and city streets.  I have moments that take me back to those “under the lights” soccer games and the feeling of being invincible. Like a gladiator in his Colosseum. To us, we felt like superstars in our little hometown under those great big lights. And when the wild geese would come, it was a whole new ballgame.

            We would be playing, and then start to hear them. Louder and louder they became. The honking, the wind under their wings, and when they passed over, it was like a bolt of lightning hit us and sent the extra energy we needed right through our bodies. As they flew over, we would run with them and sprint to keep up. The geese would push us to fight harder, to score, to win. They were our unofficial coaches, urging us on in a way I sometimes couldn’t understand. Their calling was different than a lion’s roar, it was the celebration of a group of individuals all playing as one. The geese were always with their flock, as we, the players, were always playing as a team. We were just like them. Always flying onto victory.

            My sister calls me the goose girl. My heart has seemed to take on the spirit of the geese. How they come and they go. Never staying stuck in one place, but never abandoning the flock. Their family. Mating for life and protecting their partner with loyalty. I couldn’t relate to any other animal in the way I did with a goose. I was envious of how they could swim, fly, and even walk if they wanted too. How I yearned to be on the water with them, or in the fields, and over the Valley.  What I would give to fly south with them each winter and return to the Valley in the spring.  In a way, I have come to live like the geese. Being pulled to the warmer places in the dead of winter, and fully committed to one person. “We are like the geese,” him and I say to each other.  Not needing a piece of paper or ring to officiate our relationship and commitment to one another.  How our bond goes beyond the title and encompasses the love we have for this land and our connection to it. Our connection to each other. How like the geese, I shall always return to my true homeland.

How we all should be a little more like the geese. Our calling to what came before us, and will always continue to carry us, all the way home.

It didn’t matter how happy I was, or how perfect my summer was going, I still couldn’t help but cry on my drive out of the Valley.  I tried to sing along to the happy song on the radio and think of all the good things I had waiting for me to go back too, but I couldn’t hide or cover up this feeling of longing and homesickness I had for the Valley already. And how it felt right now to be removing myself from it, inching further and further away from the view.

            Like a doe from its mother, or a sunflower without its sun.  It always feels foreign and unnatural for me to leave the Valley.  Like the marsh girl being ripped from her marsh. The geese scattered from their summer pond.  There was something about this time in the summer and the way the light fell on the Valley as we were leaving it that made me think of my past; Gramma and Grampa, the garden, the raspberries, long runs on the tracks, the view from the overpass, the way the chlorine of Gramma’s pool clung to my skin, peanut butter ice cream sundaes, morning song’s view. There was this feeling of great youth and freedom in the glimmer of light that shone through my car windshield that I had never felt anywhere else in this great, big world. Only here. Only in the Valley.

            Where just my house isn’t my home, but the whole horizon line; the sunsets, the smell of the hop house in the humidity, the crescent moons, two bonfires always burning at once. That was home. All of it.  And it didn’t matter how satisfied and happy I was with my life in Michigan, it only made me realize how the Valley takes ahold of me when I’m there and fights to not let me go. How when I always do leave, it hurts my heart with sadness, like a slow breathless death. How the Valley yearns for me, like I do for her.  Apart from the other, we are not quite whole.

A piece of me is always left in the Valley when I do leave, as I drive away with tears in my eyes, and my boyfriend slowly reaches for my hand and tells me it will be okay.  Because we both know it will be. My heart will ache and patiently wait for it to be back in its native homeland again. Back to its roots. Once a Valley girl, always a Valley girl.

It was almost like I had been there before.

Like I had one of my deja vu dreams right there on that front porch.

            Right there in front of the faded yellow paint of the farmhouse.

Right there next to the neighbor’s aged bull, with his horns broken and coming loose.

            Right there, down at the end of a dead-end road, over a small bridge with no running water.

Right there next to the painted horses, the Temple water tower, the roads under construction, the trains that constantly passed, the wild sunflowers that grew by the sides of the road, the cowboy boots as lawn decorations.

Texas, felt to me, like it had long ago. In that dream I once dreamt.

            How the heat would creep up and attack you, hardening the ground and cracking it into pieces. Piercing the grass and making it prickly under your feet.

            How the sunsets took over the whole sky. Dying the clouds pink and illuminating the fading light into watercolor shades. How the sunsets would linger, holding on to every ray of light for as long as God would let it.

Texas, they say was God’s country. Prayers before meals were mandatory. Churches on Sundays were always full. Flea markets in every county, antique stores on every street corner. Front porches always decorated and fit to the finest.

Texas was the state in the shape of a star. The Lone Star state. Wherever you saw an American flag, there was a Texas flag flying right beside it. Always. If you thought Texas was big, think even bigger than that. When the roads would reach a knoll and you could look out over the land, it was almost like the horizon never stopped. Texas went on and rolled into the sun.

In Texas, sunflowers would grow wild. There would be fields of wild sunflowers every now and then.  They would be popping up in cracks along the highway, piercing through pieces of concrete, rising through the dry ground always making their way to the sun. Following the sun’s track all throughout the day. Never leaving it hanging.

Texas simply smelled like the sun. Always basking in the haze and mixing it into the heat of the day. Like my dream predicted, Texas was full of light.  Relentlessly shining down on that lonely wooden swing, out in the middle of a hay field, always welcoming you back home. Always offering you shade from the sun or cover from that storm that always seemed to pass when you were least expecting it. Cooling you off from the fire that always remained lit.

The heat of Texas was also its heart. Beating on and on. . .

I had no trouble playing by myself when I was younger. Having two older sisters, so different in age, it was normal for me to play on my own. This was when I began to use my imagination. I liked to pretend and makeup scenarios of living elsewhere and being someone completely different than I was.

There were times I would pretend I was living in a city, far away from Cherry Valley. I used to read books set in a hot and busy New York city. I pretended I lived in a high skyscraper building and had to catch the subway to get to school. Something about a landscape different than the one I was raised in fascinated me. Why is it we are always intrigued by something we can’t or don’t have?

There were times when I would play out by the creek behind our house. I would pretend my family was rich, and our white farmhouse was a white mansion. I would look back at my house, half a mile away, and pretend I was running away from home. That I didn’t want to live such a frivolous life among the riches anymore. That my parents were forcing me to be someone I didn’t want to be.  Arrange my marriage and make me grow up prime and proper.  The complete opposite scenario of how my life actually was.  I loved using my imagination.  It kept me busy and occupied.  Something I needed with no busy streets or internet or friends right down the street. The only person I had to keep me busy, was me.

It was my imagination and creating different stories and scenarios in my head that made me into a dreamer. My parents never told me I couldn’t use my imagination or daydream up stories, so I never had a wall standing in front of me of what I could or couldn’t do. I had the open fields and the horizon stretching far before me. I had the whole valley for my dreams to be created and come true.

It was the vastness of the valley that allowed me to dream, to think of where I really wanted to go some day. What I really wanted to be. It was the valley, that all along, told me I was going to travel far beyond that horizon line.  That this land was only my staging grounds. My launching off point for traveling some place greater and dreaming of something bigger, than I ever knew my mind or body had the capacity for. The valley was where I strung my dreams together, little by little and piece by piece.

In a world that revolves around time, running makes me forget about it.  I have never worn a watch while running, or at all for that matter of fact.  I do not like how a watch takes hold and leaves marks around my wrist.  I do not like how a watch can be controlling, making me revolve around its numbers until they are all I see.  Watches are just something that have never looked good on me.

Time is something I try to run away from when I run.  It is the only time in my day when I do not have to think about it.  The time that is.  When people ask me how long I  run for, or how fast my mile time is, I look at them blankly.  I don’t know?  I was running.  Not watching the clock on the wall. 

            I hate stopwatches.  I always have.  Which is why I find it so surprising that for four years of my life, I ran four seasons of track.  Every spring during high school, I continually found myself writing my name down on the track sign-up list. 

A track meet is made by a stopwatch.  Not by the runners who are actually running in it, but by the time that the stopwatch records when that runner crosses the finish line.  One second or one millisecond can change everything from first place to fifteenth.  My two male track coaches lived by a stopwatch.  At every practice and meet, they always had one in their hand.  I grew queasy of how they would clench the watch with their palms, holding it upright, clicking it to start and end every race.  Running for me is timeless, so why then did we have to time every lap, every mile, every step?  Then again this was track.

 I was beginning to think I chose the wrong sport. 

One of the only reasons why I signed up for  track to begin with was because somebody told me I was good at running.  And once I started running track, people began to tell me I was too good to stop.  So there you have it.  The reasons for why I ran track.  Not because I particularly wanted to, but because once I found out that I was good at something, why should I not want to keep getting better at it?  Why should I skip out on winning races, earning awards, getting my name printed in the paper, and traveling long distances to semi small towns where my mother and I would not leave until the early hours of morning because my 2 mile races were always the second to last event? 

Why should I skip out on all the glory of being a great track athlete? 

            My freshman year of high school I started off strong.  As nervous as I was, I think it was my nerves and the thought of getting beat that made me run faster.   Before every race, when the time came for my foot to come to the curved white line, my stomach jumped into my throat.  I never threw up, like many of my teammates did, but I still felt like I was going to.  The gun would shoot, the stopwatch would start, and off I would go.  Running.  The one thing I knew how to do at this point.  I would run for as fast as I could for as short of a time as I could (so my actual time running on the track would not be for so long).  Who wants to spend all day running around a circular and monotonous track?  Not me.

 So instead I would win.  I would win big.

            At first, I stood out in the 1500 meters.  Not always placing first, but at least in the top three spots.  In my last two years of Varsity track, I took over the 3000 meters.  Breaking the school record that only a few years before my good friend had set, and eventually finding myself standing atop of the first-place podium at our league’s Sectional finals.  I even made it to State qualifiers three years in a row for the girl’s 2-mile race.  Though I try to forget the one time I fell over the girl in front of me and ran the remaining 11 laps with blood dripping down my knee.  My coaches did not seem too worried.  They were never too concerned with the girl runners.  Especially the good girl runners.  Like me.

            Perhaps it was because at the time of my striving, when I was earning the most points through winning long distance races for our girls team, our boys team, especially the long distance runners, only dwindled.  It was not unusual for me to bypass or beat the 3000 meter times of the boys I was running against.  At smaller track meets, we would run the girls at the same time as the  boys for the 2 mile race.  This is when I would stand out.  By the fourth lap I would pass boys who tried to stay ahead of me for the first few minutes.  By the fifth lap I would take the lead, leaving them looking like fools. 

I felt like the county’s Iron Woman.  I felt like the strongest person in the world.  But the crowd never seemed to cheer me on when I passed the beloved boy runners.  I could only hear my mother’s voice yelling “Go Mall!”.  That was all I needed to hear.  The silence made me run faster, triggering in my mind the thought that if I could pass one boy I could pass them all.  And sometimes I did. 

            I suppose it was a good thing then that for four years of my running life it was controlled by a clock, a stopwatch to be more exact.  It made me realize my potential as a runner, the fast times I could have while running if I really tried.  If I really thought about it.  In the beginning, I was only interested in my placement.  As long as I came in first place what was the problem?  Wasn’t that all that mattered; to be a winner?

            No. 

That is what the stopwatch made me understand.  Running under a clock pushes us to our extremes.  It scared me so much that it chased me to beat my best times.  By the end of my track career, I had gotten both my 1500-meter and 3000-meter times down to the lowest they would ever be.  I do not know if I could run 2 miles in 11:26 today, but I know that I could have at one time. 

Now a wooden plaque is hanging on the wall in my high school saying that I did. 

Today I do not run with a watch.  Or a stopwatch.  Running to me cannot be timed.  After running around in circles and under the clock for four years it was time for my track days to end.  After my last track meet, I never wore my track shoes again. 

 One of my track coaches asked if I was going to run cross country when I went away to college in the fall.  No I told him. 

            “But you’re so good,”  he said as he sat behind his desk.  It was a few minutes before first period and students began to pour into his room.  

            “I can still be good and not run for a team.  Maybe I just want to run on my own.  Maybe I just want to run for myself,” I told him.  I really wanted to say Maybe I just want to run without the clock,  but when he would run with me during track practices he always wore a watch.  He always timed our runs.  I never asked him how short or long they were after we finished.  Did that irritate him?  My carelessness to know compared to his precision.  There are all different types of runners.  Some who live by the time and some who cannot stand it.   I was the type of runner who did not care about time.  He was the type of runner who could only run with it. 

I have seen many runners like this, many of them men, many of them still asking me what my mile time is or how long it takes me to run a 5k.  I still look at them blankly.  I still believe that time does not matter.  Not now.  Not ever.  At least not for me.  I am just that type of runner.  I prefer to run free.

As a teenage girl who had the house mostly to herself growing up, I always looked forward to my sister coming home from college. Bethany in particular.  Celia, nine years older than me, was already well out of the house and living with her future husband by the time I was 10. Bethany, on the other hand, college hopped and finally landed on one 4 hours from home. She enrolled at Paul Smiths College in the Adirondacks, and most would say she was some sort of tree huggin’-Earth lovin’ hippie. She was an Environmental Studies major, who cocreated the organization called “Step it Up.” Her group of friends were committed to cleaning up and saving the planet. I remember her memorizing and preaching facts about how long it would take cigarette butts to decompose. Well over a year to be exact, and those stats came as a startling shock to me. Ones that I could never forget. Bethany was a rebel; paving the way for how so many of us think today, only she was thinking these ideas light years before. Before Earth Day became popular, Bethany was the one remembering to celebrate it. And not just once a year, but every day.

I remember when she would come home from college; wearing crowns of vines and flowers pinned up in her hair. She made necklaces out of shells, earrings out of pinecones. She shopped at only thrift stores, flaunting hand me down outfits made up of long skirts and colorful scarves. She traveled mostly barefoot, with the exception of moccasins. She looked like an Earth angel, the spirit of mother nature in human form. She had this green shoulder bag which fashioned pins of recycling signs and slogans such as, “Keep your butt off the grass,” (cigarette butt that is). Every time she came home, she brought a new energy. New ideas. New people.

One spring, Bethany brought her two girlfriends home for Easter dinner. Jenny and Korinna. I remember smelling their patchouli oil scent and noticing how they dressed like Bethany.  I began to realize how different we as humans can be. They, like Bethany, were earth lovers, and together their crazy ideas manifested into one after dinner project.  After they raided my parent’s plastic bag supply in the pantry closet, they hopped in the car and headed up to the main road. Of course I went with them. Any chance I had to hang out with the cool, older girls, I did. But little did I know that all along, we were going to pick up garbage.

We pulled on old winter gloves and began picking. Strolling along the roadside, bending down to any sight of garbage or piece of plastic. We picked up anything unnatural that didn’t belong beside the road.   We picked up cans, cigarette butts, bottles, old CDs, leftover fast-food packages, losing lottery tickets.  We filled one bag and quickly began to fill another. It was like a contest, trying to see who could fill their bag the fastest.  Bethany always won. She was a fast picker, in the garden, along the road, in life. She came in first a lot, without even trying.  

Some called it crazy.  In fact, I even did at first. Who would ever imagine wearing your Easter best and picking up roadside litter after a lavish meal.  But they, and eventually me, called it the change we wanted to see in the world. If Bethany and her college friends taught me one thing, it was to not ever be stuck, or try to fit, into a mold.  They showed me how to break out and become someone I had never seen in myself before. They showed me how to get dirty. How that sometimes you must reach down and pick up the garbage along the road to spread the message. To show others that we are the ones that can only clean up the mess we’ve made.  No matter how bad it is, no matter how deep down in the hole we are.  At some point, we have to start taking responsibility for our actions. Sadly, not all of us will.  But better some, than none.

As cars sped by, I prayed they got the message.  To not litter.  To not throw your trash in the grass.  To never let pretty, hippy girls walk along the road and pick up the mess for you.  I truly hoped our message was getting across to all of those who saw us.  But more than the point we were trying to prove, something about that day and what we were doing, simply felt good. Picking up litter felt downright good.  A pure act of kindness for Mother Earth.  Not only were we picking up bagfuls of litter, but we were also making our neighborhood look that much better.  That much more beautiful.  That much cleaner.  Who wants to see garbage lying along the road, crowding our drainage pipes, and peeking out of the grass?  We for sure didn’t. And so that’s why we began to pick it up.  To not put up with it anymore.

Fast forward 15 years. I’m living in Metro Detroit and don’t get me started with all the garbage laying around here. I thought the roadsides in my little hometown in upstate New York were bad, but the city streets in Detroit were 100 times worse.  Cities tend to be hot spots for trash. I’m not lying.  I could pick up a bagful of garbage and not even walk two steps on a Detroit street.  Sickening and sad.  That’s when I realized I had to do something more than just look at the situation with disgust.  Spring came, and as Bethany always told me, it was the best time to pick up garbage.  When the grass wasn’t yet long enough, and the world hadn’t fully bloomed.  That’s when I grabbed a pair of blue plastic gloves, a couple of old grocery bags, and headed for the road.  And that’s when I started picking.  I started reaching down and picking it all up.  Vodka shooters, Fireball bottles, plastic bags blown away.   I filled one bag, two bags, three.   I could have stayed out there all night and was quickly taken back to my sister’s college days and how they deeply impacted me.  How they showed me how to care and clean up our one and only Earth.  How it takes only one person, one young woman picking up trash along the road, to cause another young girl to do the same thing.

Not only did Bethany inspire me to start, she moved me to be the change I wished to see in the world every, single day.

Peanut Butter m&ms

            She would only give us five.  Or six.   No more than seven.  After a lunch of cheese spread sandwiches and a glass of 2% milk, she would walk around the table with an old Skippy peanut butter container filled with peanut butter m&ms.  She kept the container on the left side of her lazy Susan.  We all knew where it was.  After lunch we would hold open our hands, as if waiting for communion, for her to fill with our favorite-colored candies.  There were blue ones and red ones and yellow ones and orange and brown.  She would dip her hand into the container, pulling out handfuls of rainbow m&m’s, dropping a few of each color into the palms of our hands.

The red ones were my favorite.  Mostly because red reminds me of her.  Reminds me of how each red m&m could stain the inside of my hands, making them blush like roses and raspberries, making me think of her throughout the rest of my day. 

“Who has some m&ms?”  She says as she wraps her arms around each of us, tickling her fingers lightly under our chins.  Behind our ears.  Against our necks.  Making us giggle, making us laugh, making us squirm.  

“I think you do,” she whispers into Tiffany’s ear. 

“And you do,” she whispers into Chad’s ear. 

“And you.  Do you have some too?”  She whispers into my ear.  Her nose kissing the side of my face, nudging into my ear, whisking away at my blond curls. “I think you have some too,” she rocks me back and forth; trying to make me open my hands full of red and blue and brown m&ms.  All I can do is laugh.  My hands squeeze tighter around the candies.  I do not want to lose them.  But we never do.  She never takes them from us. 

When I open my hands later they are stained a bruised red. 

They are stained the color of my grandmother.

Raspberries 

            The July sun hits my bare back and raspberry vines tear up my uncovered legs.  I wear only a mismatched bikini and a pair of old rain boots in the bramble of bushes.  I hold a blue quart sized container that is half full of raspberries and am softly singing a song to myself.  She comes to the edge of the patch and stands a few feet away from me.

“Hello my songbird,” she says to me.

“Hello my grandmother,” I say back.  Berries fall into our buckets.  Sweat drips down our foreheads, onto our shoulders, and down our backs. 

“You don’t have to stop singing just because I am here,” she says lifting a vine to pluck that one perfect berry from its leaf. 

“I know,” I say back.  “Why don’t we sing something together?” 

“Okay.  What do you want to sing?” She asks. 

For the next hour we sing shortened versions, or as many of the verses that we know of, “I’ll Fly Away” and “Amazing Grace” and “Wildwood Flower” and “Go to Sleepy Little Baby”.  We sing like the songbirds that rest in the trees.  We sing like angels.  We sing like the stars. 

After picking our containers full we begin the walk back up to the garden stand.  With each of us having only one hand free, I grab her hand with mine and we walk side by side.   The red dye of the raspberries we picked on our palms mixing together, swirling into one cosmos of red between our hands. 

I can feel it.  I can feel the heat; the warmth of the color red.  The scratch of blood.  The element of the heart.  The feather of a cardinal.  The petals of a rose.  The stain of an m&m.  A red peanut butter m&m. 

I can feel it all.  And I understand at that moment that this is the color of love.  The color I feel every time I think or see or sing with her. 

The color of my grandmother.  How glorious the color red can be. 

For my entire life, my birthday has always been a spectacular and memorable celebration. I was born on my grandmother’s birthday and wedding anniversary. My father’s mother was an identical twin, and she and her sister held a double wedding on their birthday. What a way to commemorate the day. From the moment I was born, my grandmother and I became connected and close in a way that no one else could. When I was young, we celebrated our birthdays together. Dinners of salmon and mashed potatoes, and birthday cakes homemade by my mother’s close friend from school. Lavish, butter cream frosting always died shades of purple, our favorite color.  When I was young, I remember having sledding birthday parties and taking trips to the mall with my friends for shopping and to see the latest Rom Com.  In my high school years, my mom, aunt, cousin, and I would take bitterly cold trips up North to see my sister at college and explore Lake Placid. Dinner at all my favorite places, ice skating at the Olympic center, ice cream sundaes from Stewart’s.  Every year my mother religiously hung the multicolored birthday sign from the same dining room window. I blame her for how I take my birthday so seriously nowadays. It was my mother, along with grandmother, who showed me how to cherish and proudly celebrate the beautiful day on which I was born. February 23^rd, 1993. 2/23/93. I loved how my birthday had a jazzy ring to it.

            Once I hit college, the celebration of my birthday changed. My parents would still make the cold trek up north to wine and dine Savannah (my best friend and roommate throughout college) and I. They packed the van full of presents, cards, and baked goods from my family and friends back home. They would unpack the goodies in our dorm room, keeping us stocked up for another month or so with homespun goodness. After my fancy birthday dinners out, Savannah and I would hurry back to our dorm room to change and pregame for the night. Quickly getting the latest scope on where the party was and what band was playing at Java. There were many hungover mornings of saying goodbye to my parents in the parking lot, them always wishing me another wonderful trip around the sun. My 21^st birthday was unforgettable. My whole entire family seemed to come up for this one, my aunts, uncles, cousins. After waiting patiently for 21 years, I could now legally order a glass of wine at the restaurant and beer from the bar. It was a celebration of constant cheers, raised toasts, and multiples wishes. Without ever learning of her surprise, Savannah carefully went on to throw me a flapper themed birthday party in our dorm room. Sending me away to get ready with Alyssa and having a dress already picked out for me to wear and party the night away in. A “bouncer” stood guard by the dorm door and ushered me into a fully decorated hallway that led to our room. The room was packed full of our closest friends, a chocolate cake made by Al, the record player blaring, boas being worn and passed around, and streamers hanging from the ceiling. It was a beautiful night and to this day my only surprise birthday party. Everybody should have at least one. Thanks to Savannah I had the best one.

            After my 21^st birthday, Savannah set the bar even higher on how I should be celebrated, and it was a year later that I would make the biggest wish of my life. The winter of my 22^nd birthday was cold, with temperatures dipping below zero almost every other day. I can still remember moving back to college in a snowstorm after my semester away in hot and humid India and having the worst culture and climate shock one could have. North country winters were no joke. In hopes for sunnier days, I decided to throw myself a beach themed party. Wearing nothing but a yellow bikini top, orange skirt, and a flower luau crown around my head, I danced the night away drinking tiki rum drinks and pretending like I had a killer tan, forgetting all about the yards of snow outside my dorm room window. When the clock struck midnight, I closed my eyes and made my wish. One that would forever change my life. I wished that for my next birthday I would be celebrating it on a real beach. In the Florida sunshine. Swimming freely in the Gulf of Mexico. When I opened my eyes, I had this strange and altering feeling. I knew I was the only person that could make my wish come true. And if I was going to Florida, I only wanted to do it with one other person, and that person was Savannah.

I find it interesting how you can remember emotions, colors, tastes, sensations. But for some reason I don’t ever specifically remember planning that trip to Florida with Savannah.   I had dreamed and mulled over the idea of it sure, but when it came to us packing up and leaving, I can’t quite remember what I thought of it all. Did I think we could make it work? Did I think we would come back? Little did I know that this trip would forever change the course of my life for years to come. Savannah and I left on a Sunday night. Hugging my parents’ goodbye and not knowing the next time we would see them. Some called it crazy; we called it freedom. Looking back, I’m surprised my parents even let us go. We barely had a plan. I remember having around $600 to my name and a few bags packed with my summer clothes, and food and snacks all supplied by my mother. The plan that Savannah and I did have was semi sketched out. We had a list of stops we would make along the way and a paper full of contacts we could crash with if we needed to. This was the time before smart phones and Google Maps, and the only directional device we had was a Rand McNally map. We knew what we wanted to do, and we set out to do it. In Savannah’s ’93 white pickup truck, we left New York and headed south, fulfilling the American dream of the classic American road trip. I was 22 and she was 23 years old. The world was our empty slate, calling for us to make it our own. The only thing we knew when we left was that our end destination would be Mallory Square, Key West. My sacred named place. The furthest point south you can drive in the contingent United States. I knew that was exactly where I wanted to be for none other than my golden birthday. The day I would turn 23 on February 23^rd.

After numerous stops, multiple breakdowns, and one magical music festival on Biscayne Bay in Miami, Savannah and I eventually made it to Sombrero Beach in Marathon, Florida for my 23^rd birthday. We celebrated with our toes in the sand, drinking coronas with lime and soaking our hair with lemon juice. Looking out across the ocean, I realized that we as humans are capable of anything we set our mind to. Even if it’s something as simple as making a birthday wish and setting out to make it come true. Since the day I turned 23, my birthday has served more as a day of reflecting on what I accomplished within the past year. Almost like my own personal “New Year.” A check in with myself, asking what did I accomplish over the past year, and what do I wish to accomplish moving forward? What wish am I going to make when I blow out the candles and what dream am I going to try my very best to fulfill before turning one year older?

After successfully making it to the Keys and securing an apartment and two stable jobs, I rode out my time there for well over a year. My 24^th birthday was celebrated with all my new Florida friends, on the catamaran I would first mate on for tips at night. We sailed into the most glorious sunset, and I was showered with the most beautiful gifts and a dreamcatcher homemade cake (thanks Heather). Living in the Keys was where I met Kevin, and Kevin became the reason for how I made it to Michigan. For the next 7 years my birthday would be spent in the bitter cold of Detroit, a place I never saw myself moving to. But how thankful I am that I did. My mid 20’s to early 30’s birthdays were spent in booths downtown listening to DJ sets, Greektown suites with a view, parties never leaving the hotel room, champagne toasts, ski trips to Boyne Mountain, Savannah coming out to visit, fur coats, and dinners at Highlands with the man I now love. How these glorious and ceremonial birthdays all came to be because of one birthday wish I made in my college dorm room 10 years prior. And how so many more wishes have come true since. Starting my own blog, learning to dive, reconnecting with home, finding my soulmate, traveling to new places, becoming a teacher, writing more regularly, and remembering to always dance to the music that makes my heart sing. Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it all.

After I watched Mr. Holland’s Opus, I knew I was born in the wrong time. If you have ever seen the movie, it depicts perfectly, in my opinion, how life in America evolved and changed from the mid 1960’s to the mid 1990’s, all through the eyes of a high school music teacher. The music, the style, the trends, the protests, the breakout of Motown and Rock n Roll. The bell bottoms, the old cars, static still on the radios. It all seemed so beautiful and simple to me, making me wish I was living my youth back then and not now.

  I always knew I was never meant for this time. There were so many signs. I preferred vintage over new, records over CDs, paper backs to Kindles, and I held out on getting a cell phone for as long as I could. I was an old soul at heart, and everybody knew it. In my high school yearbook, I quoted The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen, stating that one day, I wanted to be living in a van down by the river. For some reason, every bone in my body rejected what was modern and craved what was old.

   I became engulfed in learning about this time in America, where I longed to be. Those 30 years, from the 60’s to the 90’s, of such dramatic and influential change. It was such an exciting era. I truly believed that nothing would compare to this time in our history, ever again. After something is original once, it is only repeated and slightly altered, never fully having that unique touch. That’s how I feel about where we are today. Nothing seems new or one of a kind. Everything is an idea replicated, trying to stand out as being shiny and grand, but never fully living up to the splendor of what it once was. Ideas are reused and movies remade. Songs either remixed or over sung. Stories being retold. All the good ideas that were once had are no longer good anymore. Not to downplay where we are now, but it seems like we are trying to make wonderful something that never can be so again.

I blame it on phones and technology. How our connection is becoming further and further away from the earth and the truth that we can’t hear it speak to us anymore. The truth we no longer listen to. How the simplicity of not knowing and being at times unavailable, has been overtaken by knowing everything and always being available. It’s unnatural. It’s too much. The days of reading lyrics from the sleeve of a new record, or sending letters in the mail, hitch hiking to shows, having a home phone, are no more. We are the generation now of new, new, new. All I wanted was old, old, old.

There are moments, even still today, when I feel like I’m living back then, in that sacred and sweet time.  At shows, when the concert hall is full and everyone is listening to the same music, being serenaded by the same song, that feels old to me. Or when I wear my hair pulled back tight behind my ears, it reminds me of how my mother used to wear her hair in high school. How hippies might grow out their hair and wear it to a festival. The sound of static on my records and watching them spin around in circles, slows down the fastness of my life, where I can truly reflect on how I want to live in today, with still a bit of those yesteryears. I know it’s a dream that can never come true, but my spirit will always be a somewhat mix of a Penny Lane and Joni Mitchell. Like Jenny from Forest Gump, embracing the change and the music scene from one year to the next. How I always wondered what it would be like to hop on that bus and not know where it was going.

There’s a moment in the movie when you can see in Mr. Holland’s eyes, the sadness he has for the fast-changing world and how complicated it was becoming.  How he wishes too for a simpler time. How I always admired how he kept his record player and shelf full of records and continued to teach his students the fundamentals of music theory in a way that tied into America’s growing, but classic culture. How he held true to his morals and did not let the modern world taunt him or change his ways. How I wish we had more Mr. Holland’s in the world. How I’m going to try my very best to always be one. An old soul for life.

I was born with jet black hair. The kind of black that looks like ink oozing from a leaky pen. My sisters thought I was from China.  I could have been an Eskimo.  One of the nurses put a purple ribbon in my hair. It has been my favorite color ever since.

When I was five years old, I had burnt blonde hair that grew all the way down my back until it hit the top of my butt.  It curled at the ends with little tendrils of gold spiraling all the way through.  Sometimes my mother would part my hair down the middle and make two even braids.  My older sisters would tug on them like I was Pippy Longstocking when we danced in the kitchen after dinner.  My braids would spin around and hit my face like fallen feathers. 

In seventh grade my sister told me I should get my hair cut.  Her hair was short and all the boys in high school seemed to like her, so I thought why not.  She took me to her hairdresser and off it came.  Off like a pistol.  My hair fell right along my shoulders.  Shorter than it ever was, longer than it would become.  I liked the feeling of hair falling, of my head feeling lighter, a change being made.  I liked the feeling of looking brand new.

I got it cut right before my plane took off.  It is still my favorite haircut to this day.  Bangs that swept to the side with an angular cut of boy short hair in the back to longer length hair in the front.  A Posh sort of style that felt appropriate before my trip to Europe.  I left for France the next day and became a different person.  I would pick flowers from various window boxes in the little French towns I visited, pinning them up into my hair, handing them out to the young men I met.  Some would put them in their hair too.  Some would take them out of mine.  A collection of dried petals formed at the headboard of my bed, leaving a trace of me behind when I left.     

Cut it.  Cut it right now.  I do not care who cuts it.  I just want it cut.  Let’s become somebody new again.  That was the tequila talking, or the beer, or the weed, or the bubble gum.  I grabbed my pink pair of scissors and handed them to Savannah.  She wrapped a teal blue towel around my shoulders and began snipping away.  Inch by inch my hair fell, more and more, until it covered the top layer of waste in our garbage bin.  Once she stopped cutting, I told her to cut more.  Until I could no longer run my fingers through it, or pull it back, or put it up, or throw it around.  The next morning, I woke up wondering where all my hair went.  I then saw the garbage.  Opps.

In high school, my mother had the most beautiful hair. Like the hair of a cheerleader captain or football players’ girlfriend or Jesus loving hippie.  She had hair that grew down her back in waves, in heaps, in moments. In golden strands of sun.  She has it cut really short now, like most middle-aged women do.  I ask her why she does not grow it long anymore.  She says it is just something she outgrew. 

Let it grow.  Let it grow long.  Let it grow out.  Let it grow like you don’t care.  Let it grow like a mermaid’s.  Let it grow like your mother’s.  Let it grow like trees.  Let it grow because you haven’t felt hair down your back in years.  Because you forgot that hair could grow.  Because you forgot who Pippy Longstocking was.  Let it grow back.  Let it grow like sunflowers.  Like India.  Like graduating.  Let it grow up. 

Unibrows, acne, and still trying to figure out your bra size.

For most, the stagnant years of puberty tend to be complicated and uncomfortable. The word “awkward” seemed to resonate with this particular time in my life. Awkward as far as figuring out who I wanted to be and what I wanted to look like. This was the time in my life where I began to figure it all out. Where I began to pluck and shape my own eyebrows (after my sister taught me of course) and care about what I was wearing to school.  I wouldn’t say these were my rebellious years (those would come later), these were the years where I analyzed how I was going to live my life. Was I going to be the best human I could be? The best daughter, sister, friend? Was I going to dance to the beat of my own drum? This was what puberty represented to me. Not just the awkwardness, but the revelation of what would come after.  After I figured it all out, or most of it.  Now what puberty sounded like was Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel singing “I am a Rock,” and memorizing all the verses to Don Mclean’s “American Pie.” Why it sounded like this was because I preferred spending time with my mother.

I particularly remember spending time with my mother on Sundays. It always started the same with going to church and coming back to the house for a lazy and relaxed Sunday afternoon. I loved how slow Sundays felt and how after a long week at school, or with sports, Sundays always seemed so sacred and untouchable. Like no matter what was going on in our life, or how much, Sundays always felt a little magical, always reserved for resting and recharging. My mom would take a nap, my dad would be either working down in the basement or out in the barn on a project, and I would do whatever I wanted. I would read. I began to scrap book. I cleaned my room. I decorated it differently. I decorated it again. I watched movies in the playroom, went for walks out in our back fields, ate Campbell’s broccoli and cheese soup for lunch.  And on those late Sunday afternoons my mom and I began to bake.

Our baking tradition began with this apple cake recipe my mom had found in a Country Living magazine. We looked it over and thought one Sunday, we would try it. And so, we did. The only trouble we had was perfecting the apple butter glaze for the cake’s topping, but once done, it tasted like any fall day should. Pure perfection and crisp bliss. It smelled like fall should too. Warm apples and toasted walnuts. After our first trial run, we knew we had to make it again, and again and again. The more we made it, the easier it got, the better our product. I loved those Sundays spent in the kitchen with my mother. All with the soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel songs in the background or Don Mclean’s hearty voice. I loved how simplistic the songs sounded as we beat the batter and licked the bowl.  I loved how natural it was to learn the lyrics, because like me, my mom liked to listen to the same CD over and over again. Until scratches formed and the irritating skips began to occur.

These Sundays with my mother made me into a baker and into a teenager who enjoyed spending time with her mother. Who enjoyed being home. I had to overcome the complicated and at times all so normal norm, that spending time with your mother was “taboo”, or gosh, who wanted to do that? We were different. I still loved it when my mother hugged me or when we cuddled on the couch before she went to bed. I had to overcome the fact that probably none of my other friends were doing this with their mom, but I wasn’t going to stop just because they weren’t. I was going to continue loving and spending time with my mother to the greatest extent possible, because I absolutely loved and adored her. I loved how she made me feel and how through her I grew into a more secure and confident person. That by choosing to be in her presence, it made me feel like I could be or do anything. Which was how I matured into living my life. By my own standards, not by my same aged friends or the tween girls I watched in my 90’s VHS tapes. I decided to be me, not them. If it wasn’t for that apple cake and the sacredness of Sundays in our house, I know I would have developed into a very different person. A very different woman.

I was raised in a house where we danced to loud music in the dining room after dinner. It could have been Tim McGraw, “Cecelia”, Springsteen, or Celine Dion.  My mom loved to dance, and that made me, and my sisters love to dance too. I was raised in a house where we all ate dinner together. My mother always cooked, or figured it out, and my father always asked us what we learned in school that day. By them asking and wanting to know, we told, and that only made our relationship more transparent. I was raised in a house where we played pitch and backgammon after dinner, where winning was favored by my mother and sister, who were always paired on the same team. I was on my father’s team, and we mainly lost and dealt with it. I was raised with opening a different Christmas present each night before Christmas, and where we always decorated for every holiday, beds were always made, the windows were always open, and candles were always lit. I was raised where my puberty was more a part of growing up and gaining knowledge, than a part of letting go and slipping away.

I learned more of who I was becoming through puberty and those years of becoming closer to my mother than any other time in my life. Those were my make it or break it years of maintaining my old soul and big heart. An angel on earth in my mother’s eyes. Those were the years of shedding my skin, for only a better, fresher one. It is hard to look back and see myself in my awkward and unknowing years, but after my breakthrough in puberty, I only bloomed into something more beautiful. Maybe it was baking the apple cake, maybe it was the way 60’s music sounded to my young ears, maybe it was how my mom still hugged and kissed me good night. Whatever it was, if I had to do puberty all over again, I would, knowing that everything would turn out okay.  Better than I ever imagined.

Still to this day, my mother drives a minivan.

At the time when she started driving one, it seemed appropriate.

I hate using the term “soccer mom,” but that’s truly what she was.

And not just her, my father too. He was my “soccer dad.”

After the farm sold, and my father took a more standard 9 to 5 job, he had more time on his hands. Time to coach his daughters soccer.

Both my parents became soccer coaches actually.

And not just for soccer, my mom coached basketball too.

And not just for my team, but for my sister’s team too.

It started with my sister and continued long after me.

I can honestly say that the only soccer coaches I had throughout my entire soccer career were my parents.

From 7 years old to 18.

Over a decade of time and for multiple sports seasons.

Hundreds, even thousands of games, scrimmages and tournaments.

For some it might have been hard, having your parents as your coaches.

It might have been uncomfortable, or of sheer annoyance.

But for me, it was seemingly easy, and truthfully, I enjoyed it.

I had more of an open and transparent relationship with both of my parents.

I was practically an only child once both of my sisters left home, and that gave me the headway to develop equally nurturing relationships with both.

The more time we spent together, the less time there was to have secrets and misdoings behind their back.

I was honest with them, as they were with me.

They treated me like any other player, giving me no special treatment or easy way out, and it almost made me work harder for my starting position.

I told them everything, and they knew everything.

Who my friends were, and who their parents were.

We were a tightknit community and it made for less surprises.

I did not have the terrible teen years like most do, because my parents were right there beside me for the whole ride. There was no room for me to lie or turn against them.  No room to hide and no need to want to.

They were in it all with me, cheering me on for every win.

Navigating me through all the losses.

Supporting me with every accomplishment and always allowing me to dream bigger than I knew I could.

They were the ones who made me into my most strong and reliant self.

Giving me a confidence and esteem that many may never find or gain.

By my parents coaching and leading my teams to victory, it was their leadership skills that made me into one. A leader, not a follower.

It was in the back of those minivans, on the way to and from games, that I connected with my parents.

That I heard about what ref gave the wrong call, which girls needed to get their acts together (sometimes it was me), and how some games we were simply on fire.

Unstoppable. Unbeatable. Invincible.

It was my parents who showed me how to exult in victory and find correction in defeat.

How to ride the highs and get out of the lows.

It was in those rides, in the conversations we had, in the country songs we sang, in the equipment we prepped, that I was shown how to lead a tribe.

My parents were the chiefs, and I was their pride…and joy.

Together we formed our own perfect storm, strong enough to take on anything that came our way.

A three-person army driving their minivan, all the way to the finish line and beyond.

A set of abandoned railroad tracks run through the Cherry Valley hills. By abandoned I mean “not actually there.” Only a five-foot wide pebble pathway lies clear in a deep, twisted forest. The wooden rails have been removed, the steel nails have been buried, and the trains have vanished.  No sign remains of a train ever steaming through these woods, except for the occasional rusty nail found along the tracks edge, or a soggy wooden rail that has turned antique with time hidden in the overgrown brambles.  For me, these tracks, this place, hold more than just history, or memories, or old rusty nails.  They hold answers.  The railroad tracks serve as a strong symbol of summer and sisterhood for me.

 If my coming of age happened in one secular place it was on the railroad tracks. The tracks as we like to call them, connecting one end of Cherry Valley to the other. It was the summer I was 13 years old, when my older sister, Bethany, took me to the tracks. It all started with me asking if I could go on a run with her. She was hesitant and I was persistent until she finally said yes. I hopped into her car with my new running shoes, and we drove up the hill to our grandparents’ house to park and begin our first run together. Beth led me down the tractor trail to the entrance of the railroad tracks. We stretched our legs and left our water bottles in the weeds. Then, we began to run. Her on the left side of the tracks and me on the right. Together, we ran through the woods, under the birch trees and along the wildflowers and berry bushes. We instantly found a rhythm. I let her set the pace, and I simply followed. Our breaths became one in unison, and we soon realized that we had found our perfect running partner. Little did we know that this run would be the start of a years in the making relationship.  One that would take us up mountains and across the country. Little did I know that this run, and these tracks, would become the foundation for who I was soon to become.

From that day on, every night after dinner I would look forward to our runs up on the tracks. Beth would blare the music in her Ford Focus on the drive up, pumping us up for our run and workout ahead. We started with 2 mile runs that soon turned into 3, then 5 miles long. We expanded from just the tracks to adding in some road miles, creating new routes every night. We brought up our bikes and would leave them at the entrance point, adding onto our runs with a slow and steady pedal after. We always ended our runs in the same place, setting an imaginary finish line where we would pick up the pace and sprint to, finishing our runs strong. She would always win. We would take cool down walks, where we would talk and ask each other questions. Discuss our life goals and current romances, books we were reading, and songs we were singing. It was in these walks and runs that Beth taught me lyrics to Springsteen songs and how to run in just my sports bra. How to pick bouquets of wildflowers and find four leaf clovers from along the tracks edge. It was a golden aged summer; one where I blossomed from an innocent and timid girl into a brave and bold young woman. Almost like that “Strawberry Wine” song, how Deanna Carter sang of her loss of innocence in her grandfather’s strawberry fields.  Although for me, it was the railroad tracks.

Not only was it my coming-of-age summer, but it was also the summer that Beth and I formed our soul sister connection. By her taking a chance on me, it allowed our love for one another to deepen. Beth served as my mentor, teaching me her simplistic and unorthodox ways. Allowing me to always think out of the box and explore the unexplored if I felt the need to. We named different parts of the tracks, according to what they reminded us of. Avenue of the Elms, Birch tree run, the Water Works, where the waterfall we named Big Katherine ran only after heavy rainstorms. We began to become familiar with the tracks, getting to know them like the back of our own hands. We were there every night, and they became our secret place, like our own version of Terabithia. We found a grove of white birch trees where one day, toward the end of the summer we took sharp rocks and carved our initials into the bark. BKG and MVG. We marked our territory, letting all other travelers know that these were indeed our railroad tracks.

            Summers such as these followed for a handful of years to come.  Summer became my favorite time of year, where I felt most like myself and where Beth and I became in sync once again. After Beth moved away and I graduated high school, our nights up on the railroad tracks began to dwindle, and sad to say slowly came to an end. One summer my engraved birch tree was struck by lightning and came crashing down. My grandfather cut the rest of the tree down for firewood. I tried to reengrave my initials into a nearby tree, but it wasn’t the same. I took this as a metaphor for our summers on the tracks that were no more. Life happened suddenly, like it always does, and if we got up to the tracks once a year together that was an accomplishment. There is still something so holy about the tracks that never seems to fade. How natural it was for us to always have a place there. How it was on those black pebbles, that we always came back to ourselves and our sisterly union. Filling each other in with information and important life decisions; where I chose to go to college and why Americorps didn’t work out for her. Engagements, trips to India, college breakups. The tracks served as our communication line; hearing and holding onto our deepest secrets and fears, along with our passions and dreams. The tracks knew it all, almost like they knew us better than we sometimes knew ourselves.

Years later and the railroad tracks are still there. Although different now. With Gramma and Grampa both passing, it is at times hard to be up there in those woods, on those tracks, knowing they are not there to see and visit with after. They would still want us to be up there, running and frolicking through their woods. Every time I am home, my heart yearns to be up on the tracks. Summer isn’t summer to me unless I visit them. It’s almost like a calling. A ritual. A home with no boundaries. Every time I am on the tracks, it feels the same. There is this faint remembrance of the younger version of Beth and I, now mixed with the older version of who we are. How we have grown so much in wisdom, yet at our core, we are only the same young woman who began running together so long ago. Laughing and jumping over the pink salamanders that would come out after summer rainstorms. Singing Springsteen songs so loud that Gramma and Grampa could hear us miles away. Dreaming big dreams about what we were going to do one day, about the things we are doing today. How the tracks knew all along our capabilities, how they made us grow into something even we could never imagine. How today it all seems to make sense. How all along the tracks made us fall in love with life and each other that much more. Maybe someday we’ll get back up there together. But how content I am today, knowing that they are the reason for why we are who we are.

Every time I pass a sign for a garage sale I think of my father. Back when I was young, my father would be on the lookout for garage sale weekends. Usually falling around holidays like Memorial Day, Father’s Day, or the fourth of July. My father would keep a keen eye on what towns were holding them and when. If our busy soccer or my track schedule allowed it, we would hit the road and head to the sales. Sometimes we knew what we were looking for and other times it was pure luck of the draw. Most of the time it was whatever caught our eye.

The brass bed my father bought me for $40.00, that was pure coincidence. How every time I drive by that house, I still think of my father talking down the price to the man who was selling it. The man listened, agreed, and that’s how I ended up with the bed I slept in for all my teenage years. I loved that bed. I can still remember the sound of the brass against the wall when I climbed in and out of it, the piece of garage sale silk that I threaded through the headboard bars. Our collection of garage sale treasures ranged from little to large. The art that still hangs from my walls, the mirrors, the bottles that line the hop house windowsills, the chairs that hang from the floorboards. The old hats I would collect, the silk gloves, the tiny purses, and of course the records. I was always on the lookout for records. At a time when record players and records were not yet cool again, everybody was trying to get rid of theirs, and that’s how I acquired mine. Anything from Fleetwood Mac, to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones to Jefferson Airplane. $0.50 a piece, 4 for a $1.00, never did I spend over a couple of bucks for records that now go for $30 or more. I was in my shopping heaven. Why pay full price when you could have a reused copy for much less. That has always been, and still is my buyer mentality.

            It’s easy to say that my father taught me well. He taught me how to bargain, how to never pass a sale without checking it out first. Always with the moto in the back of our heads of “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” It was true. Every word of it. I decorated my room with our dollar finds and he adorned his hop house, our garage turned antique shop. We were the perfect garage sale pair. I helped him get the good deals and he spotted the things I missed. When we pulled in the driveway with a car full of “stuff” my mother would look at us all confused, not always understanding how fulfilled and overly satisfied we were with our exciting finds. My father would lay all his new goods out on the lawn, under the maple trees, to inspect and analyze each one. If I missed a sale with him, he would always wait and leave it out for me to see. Now when he adds new antiques to the bar, or rearranges them differently in the hop house, he is always first to show me when I come home. Taking me on a tour, pointing out what’s new, or asking me if I remember where this or that came from. It’s a ritual of ours, fawning over what we truly love.

            My favorite sale, which wasn’t even a sale at, but more like a festival of sales, was Bouckville. Bouckville was read about and celebrated in magazines like Country Living and raved about on TV shows like American Pickers. Bouckville was a national yard sale on steroids, stretching for miles down Route 20 in upstate New York. Luckily for us, Bouckville was only an hour or so away and every summer we carved out Bouckville weekend to make sure we could always attend. There were themed tents, bargain bins, all of the good stuff we would find at garage sales quadrupled. Bouckville only had the best of the best. It had to in order to live up to its high standards. Fur coats, guitars with broken strings, more records, oriental rugs, more glass bottles, tools, tables, cabinets, milk crates that I would use for storage totes in college, more art that I would hang from my walls, ornate wooden frames, more purses, more hats, a step stool I would use as my nightstand table. Bouckville for us was like Christmas. Our favorite part of summer where it was just the two of us, blaring Springteen on the way there and all the way home. For lunch, always going to the same food tent, the one that served us pulled pork sandwiches and ½ ears of corn. Our visits to Bouckville were pure magic, always leaving us with the yearning to go back next year. The last time I attended Bouckville with my father was 10 years ago. Those days feel so ancient to me now. If there’s one place I wish I still went to today it would be Bouckville. I wonder if he feels the same way.

            It’s interesting to think of how traditions form and end. How garage sales were such a big and exciting part of my life years ago, and now I can’t even remember the last one I went to. It’s more than the garage sales though, it’s this love my father instilled in me for all things old. Antiques. Unique treasures. We weren’t per se looking for things to fulfill a need, it was more like those things found us and made a home in our hearts, filling the nooks of our past lives. My father allowed me to find my own style, letting me explore the old and so much of our ancient ways, ways of living that no one wanted to live and be a part of anymore. We were the ones who wanted to hold on to it. Embrace the old, in our new ways. By adorning barns and bedrooms with the one-of-a-kind artifacts we found. Old souls for life, you could say.

            To this day, my bedroom beams with an array of things. My walls covered with frames of old paintings, collaged with pictures of when I was young, pink records, cowgirl hats, a map of the West Indies, inspirational quotes, gold covered mirrors, rave fans, prayer flags, concert posters. So much of who my father showed me to be and live like stays with me and is who I am today. This girl made up of not one, but many things. Not just one style, one hobby, one love, but a little bit of all of it. My style is no style, but all styles put together.  Mixed into one, just like my father’s. How we have come to share our love for this dying art, that we ever so strongly want to keep alive. How the old to us always looks like the brand new. How to us, it just feels natural.

I have a distinct memory of baking chocolate chip cookies with my mother.

She would bring out this old, folding step ladder to the edge of the kitchen counter.

It was brown and she still has it today.

I would sit on the duct tape tattered seat and watch my mother bake.

She had a Pfaltzgraff baking bowl and a wooden spoon.

She had a recipe from our old neighbor up the road, Beatrice, and all the ingredients strewn about the counter.

The eggs, the honey, the flour.

Cups and tablespoons and teaspoons all strung together on a plastic chain.

Sitting there at the counter I would watch her, precisely taking note of the ingredients she would add one by one. Mentally checking off each one in her head.

The sticks of butter she would melt.

The water she would boil to dissolve the baking soda.

The honey she would substitute for sugar.

My favorite part was when she added the vanilla.

Her homemade vanilla.

A bottle of cheap vodka that she would add sticks of vanilla beans to.

How she would turn the cap off and hold the bottle up to her nose, taking in the most wonderful scent of vanilla. Of warm spring days when she would have all the kitchen windows open. After she smelled it, she would hold the bottle to my nose and say, “Smell.”

Always smiling, always instilling this sense of magic around the pouring of the vanilla.

What motherhood looked like in its purest form.

After the batter was rolled into round balls and placed on the baking sheets, we would tap the mounds down with a metal spoon.  

We placed the full sheets into the oven and set the timer on the microwave.  

Together, my mother and I would lick the bowl.

Taking turns of one lick after another. Leaving a few chocolate chips on the counter to add to our bites of batter.

This is still one of my favorite tastes. How each spoonful would simply melt in my mouth.

My mother’s chocolate chip cookies.

Our sweet creation.

Every time I bake, I am taken back to this moment.

This memory of my mother and I, together in her kitchen.

How she would drape a kitchen towel over her shoulder and use it to wipe her hands on.

She never used an apron and neither do I.

Just one of the ways I am like my mother.

How I have come to embody her habits and ways.

How my face and eyes have molded into hers.

How I have become a mere replica of this woman who leads my way.

How the scent of vanilla can feel like her arms around me,

Whispering to me, “Smell,”

Smell this moment all up.

And never let it go.

Now Bruce Springsteen is a very important part of my story.

He and I go way back.

But if it wasn’t for my father or my sister, I’m not sure what my relationship with Springsteen and his music would be like. If I would have one at all.

The connection to an artist or musician come differently to everyone.

Some people find the beat, others never learn how.

The fact that the first song I ever remember the chords too, was a Springsteen song, should have given me some indication of the musical journey he would soon take me on.

As a young girl, I remember watching my father wash the dishes at night, as I play at my little yellow picnic table in the dining room, and in the background, there would be Bruce.

Tougher than the Rest, Tunnel of Love, Hungry Heart.

All those familiar, fan favorites and national anthems, came alive after dinner as my father cleaned up the kitchen, and I was close by to pay attention to the words that came through the speakers.

I credit my father for allowing me to find the beat at such a young age.

Tapping my feet to the bass, acknowledging when it’s time to dance fast, or when it’s time to take it slow.

As a child, you remember everything you hear, and for me it was the sounds of the E Street Band.

After my father introduced me to Bruce, when maybe he didn’t realize he was doing it, my sister, Bethany, was the one who really took me under her wing and opened up the world of Bruce to me.

Bethany was more like a mentor to me than a sister, and we connected at just the right time in my life. Where everything she was telling and showing me was soaked up in my brain. Absorbed like a sponge.

I was the easel, and she was the paint.

Bethany was the one who would teach me the lyrics to Bruce songs after our runs on summer nights, up on the railroad tracks. Singing the words to me, then having me repeat them to her in chorus.

The Promised Land, Reason to Believe, This Hard Land.

I was only 13 years old, when my Dad took me to my first Springsteen concert.

My first concert ever in fact. What a lucky girl I was.

Bethany and I were playing cards up in the lawn section of the venue, when a man with the band, came up to us with two free, front stage concert tickets.

We thought it was nonsense at first and Bethany laughed, when the man kept persisting, we soon realized how real he was.

He handed us the tickets and we stared at each other for a moment, before jumping up and down in disbelief. Dad came back to find us with his beer and saw the tickets. I will always remember how humble he was in letting us have the tickets. He was the ultimate Bruce fan, and I was a little teenager, who still had so much to learn. But by allowing us to go front stage, changed the musical course of my life.

It only takes one concert to baptize someone into a new way of seeing and feeling. And this was the concert that did that to me.

Beth and I ran down the steps of the auditorium, arriving at the floor section and kept on running. All the way down to the front of the stage. Our hands and fingers soon resting on the floor where Bruce Springsteen would soon prance around and play.

That show, although close to 15 years ago now, is one still so fresh in my mind.

Pay me my Money Down, Shenandoah, O Mary Don’t You Weep.

On “Jacob’s Ladder” when Beth and I were pretending to climb a ladder, Bruce looked over at us and pointed, smiling at us, as he sang “all my brother’s and sister’s…”

He knew we were sisters, and he could realize the spell we were under, cast only by him.

From that concert forward, I was hooked.

Years went by, and my connection to Bruce only grew stronger.

This time I was teaching myself.

With my antique record player, and Dad’s old records, I taught myself Bruce’s early albums.

The Wild, the Innocent, the E Street Shuffle, Greetings from Asbury Park, and Born to Run.

It was in these lyrics, those horns and funky jams, that I came to learn who Bruce used to be and the way in which he evolved as an artist.

I studied his lines and searched for underlying themes.

It was throughout my late high school years to early college, that Bruce and I formed an even tighter bond.

One whereas I moved away from home, Bruce was the only constant that made me feel like I was in the same place. His voice, the sound of the drums, the scratch of his guitar strings.

All those familiar sounds took me right back to that little, yellow picnic table in our dining room, with my father washing the dishes behind the sink.

Now it was at the concert I attended when I was a Freshman in college, that we had floor tickets.

Bethany picked me up, hurrying me out of my dorm room, saying we didn’t have time to waste.

We had to be the first ones at the door, because we were going to try to get to as close to the stage as possible. We wanted to ride the rail.

Once we had our wrist bands and were through the gates, we bee lined it to stage right. As close to the stage as possible, maybe with only one row of people in front of us.

If you know my sister and I, you know that we could easily be picked out of a crowd.

She was a tall, blonde beauty, and I was her twin, only seven years younger.

People remembered us, and I know that Bruce did too.

It was nearing the end of the show, and as Bruce came out onto the platform during the encore, serenading us in a solo, he reached down and forcefully put his guitar pick into my hand. Not any of the others who were waving up at him, but mine, my hand.

I almost didn’t realize what was happening as it was happening.

But when I backed away from the stage and looked in my hand, there was Bruce Springsteen’s guitar pick. My Dad, Beth and I looked at it together and started hysterically cheering, almost crying.

Bruce was known for having a pocket full of guitar picks to hand to enthused fans in his crowd, and I was grateful enough to get just one.

To this day, I still believe Bruce knew who he was giving that pick to. He remembered Beth and I from that first show years ago, and as faithful fans, this was how he repaid us.

Now fast forward to 10 years later. Bruce is touring once again. He is making a stop in Detroit, and of course I have to go.

Now usually, I have at least Beth or my Dad to go with, but this time was a little different.

I had only myself, and that was all I needed.

I dressed in my ratty old blue jeans, white tank, jean vest, and tied my Grandfather’s red bandana around my forehead, imitating Bruce’s album cover from Born in the USA.

I was feeling it, feeling myself, and feeling the magic that was steaming from seeing another Bruce show.

I bought a nose bleed ticket for over my spending limit and made my way downtown for the night.

The lights went down and the music came on, and once again I was immersed in Bruce.

When I heard Bruce’s voice, it was almost like I was hearing my own father talk to me.

Or if my father could sing, this is what his voice would sound like.

The songs Bruce played, would be the exact words and themes my father taught to us growing up.

Odd to say, but I almost came to think of Bruce Springsteen as a father figure.

How one man could give me the same feeling of home and family, astonished me to every regard.

I was overcome with emotion as Bruce sang Backstreets, Wrecking Ball, She’s the One, Born to Run. All songs that I was born and raised on.

As I danced like no one was watching, I didn’t care who was sitting around me or if I was the only one standing, I danced because my body and soul told me too. Because Bruce and the music made me.

Because I had been waiting for Bruce’s music after 10 years and finally it was right before me.

Surrounding me, serenading me.

Taking me on an inward journey of the past 30 years of my life.

What a transformation I had made as a woman, with one thing always remaining the same.

Bruce.

That night there was no pick, no front row (although I did dance my way to as close as I could to the stage), but there was sweat and tears and the thundering roar of a crowd that I had never heard more clearly.

There was heart and there was soul. There was family.

There was my childhood and my future, all in one night, in just a few hours.

What a journey Bruce took me on once again, and how I can only pray there will be more.

How thankful I was to grab my ticket and my suitcase and hop on the train, to the land of hope and dreams.

I am not your average girl.

I was born and raised in the Valley.

Not just any valley, Cherry Valley.

Not the valley like you’re probably thinking of out West, somewhere deep in the Hollywood Hills.

I’m talking about my valley on the East Coast, in a small town in upstate New York.

No, not the city, but a town, a village, a home.

Cherry Valley.

Hundreds of years in the making, a ravaged and war-torn place.

Economically declined, but it’s still breathing.

A long, slow beating of generations.

Cut out in between two veins of the earth.

Cherry Valley.

I was born and raised a girl in the Valley.

Mallory of the Valley.

With its ridgeline tattooed against my arm.

Orion’s belt, the three sisters, inked across my wrist.

The crescent moon I was born under protected by my heart.

My roots run deep.

I am called to come home often, but have chosen to move away.

That was my choice and I stand by and affirm that decision.

Regardless of where I am now, I will always be a Valley girl.

For life.

That is my calling and true North.

The stomping grounds of my kingdom.

The tales and times to follow are stories of the life I had there.

My upbringing, my youth, the freedom of my innocence.

The land that was mine to conquer.

The hills, fields, and streams.

How my bones were made strong from the many miles I journeyed over my homeland.

How my flesh became one with the winter.

These are the stories of how I became a girl of the Valley.

How I still am one.

How one day I shall reclaim my place there.

Salvage and secure what is truly mine.

Be buried in the soil and shed to the stones.

These are the words and promises of the legacy I will leave there.

Born a Valley girl, die a Valley girl.

This is the creation of the becoming of me.

In a place that will never die, nor fade away in the history of what is yet to come.

This is my story, raw like the land it grew upon.

Solid and whole like the crops I harvested.

If I try not to get lost in the wind,

I will always be torn to come home.

Puerto Rico it seemed was a city of old; the bricks, the buildings, even the beaches.

            The ancient stone fort on the hill, stuck somewhere far back in time.

            Even the flag on the tattered stick that marked our spot on the beach.

            Even the potholed covered streets, even the sand looked a little sun burnt.

Old San Juan was a city full of cats, pythons, fireworks, and mojitos.

Graffiti, pineapples, mofongos, color.

Rainbows, pink houses, and waves touching graves.

Sushi, ceviche, cruises, and shells.

Champagne bottles in brown paper bags.

Little black dresses and old high heels.

Bikinis year round.

Sketchy allies, yet so hard to get high.

Puerto Rico was a whirlwind.

No ID required.

No excuse to leave. No thought of wanting to.

It must have been the cornrows that made me look intimidating or like I was letting go of it all so easily.

When in truth, a piece of me felt like I belonged there.

Tossed out in the waves, hiding somewhere in that pot of gold.

Waiting patiently to be crowned Queen of the Caribbean.

I will accept my reign any day now.

There are certain things you’ll always remember, about her.

Like how her voice sounded when she sang Amazing Grace,

Or how she tucked her jeans into her socks when she was working in the garden.

There are certain things you’ll never forget.

The taste of her apple sauce, the newspaper riddles she would send you in the mail at college.

The way she called you Songbird and talked to you in the bathroom as you got ready for work at the Tryon on summer nights.

The way she hung her bathing suit to dry.

Her hand towels by the stove, her clothes on the line.

Resting on the floor when watching the soaps and whiskey sours when solving puzzles.

Cardinals, hummingbirds, chickens, fawns, and snakes.

Peanut m&m’s, coconut balls, pizza from the Quickway on Fridays.

Plastic pink curlers, the smell of onions, old nail files.

Cheese on the counter, pine scented candles, the telephone in the hallway with all our numbers written on an old piece of cardboard.

There are certain things you’ll always remember about him.

Like how his laugh echoed through the garden in the early mornings.

How his voice belched louder than all the other spectators at your games.

How he only wanted the best from you that sometimes it came out the wrong way.

The picture of President Bush on the counter, pocket knives, and turkey calls.

A recycled peanut butter jar full of coins, tooth picks, bandanas used for hankeys.

An old watch that never seemed to work.

There are certain things you’ll never forget.

That one terrifying drive up North, the smell of bacon on Christmas morning, wood smoke spilling from the chimney.

4^th of July parties, clams in the cooker, his stars and stripes swimming trunk.

Hunting flannels, neon orange hats, garden boots and a hatch full of old socks.

There are certain things you’ll remember about both of them.

How the smell of falling leaves mixed with wood smoke can take you right back to sitting on the red carpet by the fire. That cast iron screen in front, standing up straight, guarding us, protecting us from the intense heat. The wood pile always stacked. The fire always going. The house always warm.

Swimming pools and swimming. Floaties, noodles, thermometers that read the wrong temperature.

Deer, holidays, hunting, camouflage, bells, tea kettles, sewing machines, radios.

Lazy susan’s, tractors, potatoes, church pews, crosses, dentures.

There are certain things you’ll never forget.

Dancing under the moon, raspberry bushes, tomato stakes.

Rolls of pennies, bibles, photo albums, records.

The Grand Ole Opry, Loretta Lynn, Aruba, Agway.

I will never forget the one morning when all three of us were in the garden.

I was in the raspberry patch and Grampa was in the beans.

The sun was rising, there was mist in the air, dampness mixed with the summer heat.

Gramma grabbed a quart basket and came walking toward me in the berries.

I was probably singing a song.

That’s why they called me songbird,

I always sang and they would always listen.

Always letting me sing my song. Never did they try to quiet me.

It was the perfect balance, a perfect summer harmony.

When the idea of heaven often comes to my mind I am taken back to this moment.

That place of pure sunlight and beauty and joy, that was made possible because of them.

In my mind they are already there;

In the berries, in the garden waiting for me.

Waiting to hear my song.

Growing up on a farm, we never had pets.  The farm dogs stayed at the farm, and our one cat barely came in the house or asked for attention.  My mother said we were never home enough to care for pets, and I agreed.  Needless to say, I never had a deep connection to, memory of, or had to let go of a pet.  I knew that if I did ever have a pet someday it would be a dog.  A big, old, beautiful dog.  Maybe it was from the books I read, or movies I saw, but something about a noble friend, like a dog, just seemed like the most wonderful thing to me.  Every perfect family needed a dog. Every person was made complete by a dog’s company.

And then there was Rez.

Years later, in my mid to late twenties, after I had lived in Michigan for a few years and broke it off with my ex-boyfriend, I met Johnny.  Johnny had just came back from two years of traveling the world and walked into my life one day while I was working at the gym.  From the moment I laid eyes on him I knew he was my soulmate.  You might not believe me, but I knew. God knew.  The whole world knew we were meant to be together from that moment on. And we were.

The first night I went to his house for dinner, I was greeted by not Johnny, but his dog.

Rez. 

This handsome and thick furred creature sniffed me out as I walked into the house, and I instantly fell in love.  If you could imagine the most well-behaved dog it was Rez.  He didn’t bark, he wasn’t crazy or wild or jumping all over you.  He was almost more human, than animal. 

Johnny found Rez on an Indian Reservation, years before, and bought him from the Indians for $100.  It was believed Rez was part wolf.  If you saw him you would have thought the same thing.  The way he drank his water, the way he ran, fought, howled with sirens as they rang, all showed proof that Rez was more than just a dog.  He held the spirit of a wolf.  Like Balto you could say.  A few months ago, Johnny had a DNA test done on Rez and it came back with no trace of wolf, but to this day I still call him the wolf dog.  Rez the wolf dog. 

So here I was.  Beginning this powerful relationship with this man, and his dog.  The wolf dog.  We did everything together.  Hike, swim, garden, eat, sleep, love, read, write, drive, cry.  Everything.  Anything you could image us doing, Rez was with us.  It was as if we had become our own tribe.  A family.  Some of the best moments of my life will always be with Rez.  Camping in the Upper Peninsula.  Walking the back fields of Cherry Valley.  Swimming in Lake St. Clair.  Cuddling on the couch.  He outlived most humans if you ask me.

When Johnny left on trips, Rez stayed with me and he taught me how to be patient, how to be a parent. How to act like one, think like one, be like one.  He would run with me and make me feel like I was a warrior.  When we would walk with him, all dogs looked up to him, like he was the Alpha Male, because he was one.  Any dog fight that broke out, Rez would win.  Rez had that power.  He was invincible.  Undefeated.

I always wondered how Rez would die. How it would happen.  What it would look like.  I knew that from the time I met him, I would witness his death.  That I would see his decline, I just never thought it would be so sudden or so soon.  There were signs. Signs of weakness, old age, decreased appetite.  But nothing crucial or alarming as if to say death was near. 

It was a normal day.  We had gone to the gym and my racquetball game was getting better.  The rain began that night when I got home and that’s when Johnny told me something was wrong with Rez.  He lay there on his bed motionless, lifeless almost.  I have heard stories of people saying dogs want to be by themselves when they die, but because Rez couldn’t move his legs, he was forced to be inside, with us.  We didn’t think it was anything too serious to be honest.  We argued about what show to watch on Netflix, tried to eat some pasta for dinner, and tried to get him to eat and drink as well.  Nothing was working.  And as I put away the laundry that night, I slowly began to cry.  Almost like God was trying to tell me something.  Warn me of what was to come.

It was his breathing that I noticed.  His fight to take consistent breaths. When I began to look up end of life symptoms and saw congestive heart failure on the list, that’s when Johnny decided to take him to the emergency vet. The image of Rez in the back seat of my car, clinging to his life, was the last image I will have of him being alive.

20 minutes later I got the call from Johnny saying Rez had died even before he got to the vet. I will never forget the sound of his voice, the sobbing of his cry. And for a few speechless moments we wept together over the phone.

We buried him in Johnny’s parent’s backyard.  Digging up the rain-soaked mud close to midnight on that Thursday night. The moon hung half full and I knew that somewhere Rez was howling at it. We stomped the earth around him, packing him into the ground, securing him in heaven forever. Closing out a chapter of our life with this amazing creature and beginning the next one without him.  Without this wolf dog that taught us how to love each other and the world a little bit more. A little bit better.

For days, weeks, months, even sometimes still to this day, I still hear Rez pawing on the glass sliding door to be let out. I still instinctively go to let him in. I still sometimes feel him there laying at the foot of our bed and his hair is still found in Johnny’s truck or in some corners of the house. I still see him running towards the lake and wading in its water. I still think back to when I was a little girl, envisioning this dog I would someday have, and I thank God every day for making it be Rez.

It’s funny how it almost felt like the end of the world.

The way it felt to be on an open road, with the windows rolled down,

Hot sun on your skin,

Sand caught between your toes.

The way it felt to drive all the way to the bottom of the country and then turn around and drive it all the way back to the top.

It felt like a lifetime went by.

Along with the things you did, the people you saw.

Sometimes you have to use your own eyes to see what is really happening out there.

Take it all in for yourself.

The news can’t tell you how big a city feels or how crowded the beaches seem.

You must go see for yourself.

On the outside everything looks fine, but somewhere under the surface, where is this problem everyone keeps talking about?

Where are the headlines we are reading?

Where are the numbers? The stats? The data?

I made a resolution to myself, back down in Miami on a pink dance floor, to keep searching.

To keep looking further,

For the truths that are hidden out there.

You want to learn something, go teach yourself.

You think sharks bite, go swim with them.

Does Antarctica really exist, look further than a map.

Loosing friends over what side of the line you’re on, been there.

Kicked out of their lives like stones, now we’re talking.

It’s time I start waking up.

It’s time you do too.

What are we going to do about our differences, how can we start to make amends?

I was raised to believe I could be anything I wanted to be when I grow up.

I’m still trying to figure out what that is.

I’m still trying to see what my future holds,

What the future holds.

It could be nothing, it could be everything.

I’m prepared for either.

I’m prepared for the end of the world at any moment in time.

I will not be blindsided to that possibility.

I won’t stop laughing and I won’t stop kissing my boyfriend at the gym in the racquetball room when everyone is watching, because maybe that will be the last time.  

I won’t stop writing and I won’t stop cleaning the house because it makes me feel good.

I’m only human,

A tiny sliver in this whole equation of the world.

A creature of habit who loves having a place in it.  

I’m going to start making some changes here, because changes are already being made.

I know you can feel them too.

You would be lying if you said you haven’t.

It’s not a bad thing either, it’s actually a very, very good thing.

It’s the real thing.

I’ve never felt more in tune with myself,

In line with the moon phases,

In accord with the rip tides,

Honed into the secrets of our present,

The mistakes of our past,

Than I do right now.

And that takes time my friend.

Sweet little time.

An awakening that might not come to us all.

When really, all you have to do is

Open your eyes.

Do what you were born to do, feel the urge to do.

Open the door and go outside.

The answers are waiting.

Nobody can’t tell you something you have already seen.

Seeing is believing in my book.

Only trouble is, my book isn’t yours.

On this earth, we like to write our own stories.

So why does it matter if anyone reads mine?

Why does it matter if anyone listens?

I have a dream that we all wake up from this dream

And continue the journey to find out what is

Real

And good

And true.

Before it becomes too late.

Make the end your very beginning.

Hold on tight and don’t let go.

It is going to be a bumpy ride.

But I’d rather be on this wagon

Than off.

We were like the modern-day Little Women.

Without the petty coats, pastries, ball gowns and carriages.

We had booty pants, yoga mats, tattoos and degrees. 

We had hundreds of acres of land to roam and a big white house that looked like a villa.

We excelled in every subject, were first chair in band, held starting positions in any sport.  

Our mother French braided our hair at night and tamed us into beautiful women.

Our father taught us history and how to tie hop strings. 

They raised us on a farm and made us into strong, independent beings.

We played Memory as children to help increase our own.

We played multiplication card games around the table after dinner.  Spoons for fun.  Jersey Pitch and Sequence when we became older.

We put on plays, skits and karaoke acts, that our father recorded on an old video tape recorder. 

On rainy days we might pull the videos out and watch them from time to time.

We threw footballs in the yard, swung from homemade tire swings, and passed a soccer ball across the road on the soccer field our father mowed for us. 

We put flowers in our hair for any wedding and danced in our bare feet at every reception.

We laid out on the back lawn in our sports bras and tanned in the valley sunlight.

We were sisters.  Not per say best friends, but we kept our lives in the loop. 

In the weekly group text, in our sporadic, random emails.

We weren’t neighbors, we lived out of state, we were years apart.

One had a family, one was getting divorced, one seemed to never want to settle.

Yet somehow, whenever we came home,

Whenever we came together again,

It felt as if we grew backwards.  

Like we were once again the little women our mother told us we would be.

Like how we wanted to change the world all in the same way.   

All in unison.

A shared success,

A written account,

 of how we truly became

Women.

I’m not gonna lie and tell you it has been easy. 

Being 27 that is.  

The whole year actually. 

Its been pretty hard, pretty painful, 

Pretty eye opening. 

For the people who don’t know you just yet. 

Really know you that is. 

It’s been sad, 

 Powerful, 

 Moving, 

Its been quitting your job and letting go of the process. 

Its been following your compass;   

All the way up North or that Mexican type of south. 

Its been here and back to New York there. 

Its been ignored- 

By her, by him, by the people you still have framed on your wall. 

To the ones who helped shape you and want nothing to do with it. 

Its been not having the answers when you do good deeds. 

Not having thank you’s.   

Not having the privilege to feel the way I want to feel.  

To see things how I want to see them. 

Its been not having the right answers to my own questions. 

Not having even the wrong. 

Not having the riddle to solve this game. 

This roll me around on the floor type of fight. 

This not look at me in the halls type of gossip. 

This end of the world type of saga. 

Maybe it is the end? 

Maybe it’s on its way.  Maybe it’s already here? 

When I think about it, 

This rotation around the earth, was perhaps a good one. 

Great. 

Grand even. 

It simply smelled different. 

Left a different taste in my mouth when I swallowed than the year before, and the year before that. 

All the years ago. 

This past year, something felt blossoming. 

Beginning. 

Becoming. 

Almost like the look of being lost in Tulum waves or flipping through pages of your writing again. 

How the appearance of depth can be an accomplishment. 

Like being sober but feeling drunk. 

This year might have been the one actually. 

The turning point. 

The one that changed it all. 

Started it all. 

The truest of end-alls. 

The one that summed you up 

To a tee. 

That was 27 to me.  

It doesn’t take long to forget about it.  The want, the need, the urge, the taste. The beer, the liqueur, the wine, the seltzers. The alcohol. All of it.

It’s hard at first.  To remind yourself you can’t have it.  To not reach for the wine glass.  To not have some with dinner.  Or when you get ready to go out. It’s hard to get yourself tired, to try to fall asleep at night.   

The first week is the hardest and then it gets easier.  Then it gets to the point where you don’t think about it as much.  Normality falls back into place.  You think this is what it’s like to not drink on the weekends or at bonfires or best friend’s birthday parties.  This is what it’s like to be the sober one out.  This is what it was like before you ever started drinking.  And this is okay.  This can be normal too.

It is reassuring to know I don’t need it.  That if alcohol were to go away, I wouldn’t mind.  I wouldn’t care.  I would be fine and it was only a few months ago I wasn’t so sure.

It is good to know that I’ll be fine.  With or without it.

That’s the thing about sobriety, once you get sober you start to realize all the things you do have and forget the things you don’t.  You start to fit back into your skin, laugh at the little silly things, lip sync in the mirror, dance for no reason at all.  You write more, you remember more; birthdays, anniversaries, to Facebook message your niece back.  You care more about being on time. 

To be sober.  To be complete with yourself and solely who you are.  There is no way out other than in. 

Only the strong will go there and stay. Sometimes they will stay forever.  Never looking back.  Never even considering it.  

Everyone at least should try.  Try to be sober for some amount of time.  It’s almost like a test.  See if you would pass yourself.  Try to give yourself an honest grade.

I have doubts tonight on whether or not I should have a glass of wine.  I could.  My 30 days of “Nothing November” complete.  It has now been 33 days since I have had a sip of alcohol.  I could make it 34.  I could make it 387 days if I wanted to.  But I don’t.  I take the wine bottle off the shelf.  The one I bought at Aldi’s the other day.  The one that was priced a little higher than the others.  A Malbec.  From Argentina.  My uncle taught me about Malbec’s and soon they became my favorite.  I take the opener and slowly tear back the black seal.  Piercing the cork with the sharp tip of the opener, cranking the screw down, all the way through the cork.  I draw the handles down on each side of the opener and lift up, squeezing the cork up through the glass.  Pop.  That sound, that sensation, of opening a wine bottle.  Red especially.   The cork is out, the glass is poured.  Half full.  Maybe a little less.  A blood red liquid dying the glass.  I lift it up to my lips, open wide, and let the wine trickle down my throat.  I swallow.  That taste, that momentum of drinking a sip of wine.  I set the glass down.  The deed is done.  The seal is broken.  If I want more, I can take more. 

If I don’t, I can go back to being sober.  

It never hurts as much as we think it will. 

And the sunset tomorrow will look just as beautiful as it did tonight.  Maybe a little bit more.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Don’t forget to dance.

            In front of the mirror or on the living room floor.

Don’t forget to read before bed every night and to hot tub more when the weather turns cold. 

Forget your bottoms sometimes; he loves that.

Remind yourself that Jane Austin had a slow start and ended up alone.

            Although she never lost her pen.

Don’t forget about Detroit and the rivers and the vulnerable planet.

Remember you want to save them all someday.

Remember the mountains and how they make you feel powerful. 

Don’t forget how to hike and to always look for the moon on the horizon.

Don’t forget about yoga and when you drink yogi tea to save the little quotes on the tea bags.

Remember you are still young.

You don’t know everything yet.

You still haven’t been to Mexico.

You have a long way to go girl. 

But don’t forget you have also come a long way. 

Remember when you ran businesses, sailed around the Keys, and lived out of your best friend’s truck.

Remember when you only had $60 left to your name and you made it into thousands.

Don’t forget your roots are in the country, but you love your life in the city.

Remember your definition of success is different than theirs and this is okay.

            Maybe it’s not about the matching patterns or renovations or big screen TVs.

            Maybe it has nothing to do with fast cars or fancy shoes.

Maybe it’s simply about the way the leaves sound under your running shoes, or the way your heart races when you begin to apply to Grad School. 

Maybe it’s about spending weeks up North with your sister and making it home for Christmas candy weekend at your grandmother’s house. 

That if he can make you laugh every day and dance with you in the kitchen while dinner is cooking on the stove,

            And you can wake up with a smile, pray only with faith, and at the end of the day write about it,

Then my darling, you’ve done it all.

Mexico can wait until next month.

Dear Self,

I’m glad you did it. 

I’m glad you left when you did. 

I’m glad you didn’t stick around. 

I’m glad you moved out, even when that house was more yours than his.

I’m glad you left the cats, even when they were there for you and he wasn’t.

I’m glad you took everything and left the couch.   

I’m glad you got a new address.

I’m glad you got a new phone number.

I’m glad none of your old numbers saved and you couldn’t cry to your girlfriends about what to do.

I’m glad you knew your own answer.  All by your lonesome.

I’m glad you pushed through.  Even when you didn’t want to. 

Even when you bounced from couch to couch and couldn’t sleep for weeks.

I’m glad you kept smiling when people walked past you at work and had no idea what was going on inside your head.  Inside your life. 

I’m glad you didn’t let them down. 

I’m glad you continued to smile. 

• 

---

Dear Self,

I’m proud of you. 

I’m proud of you for packing yourself up and getting yourself out. 

I’m proud of you for not crying.

For not feeling sad.  For not regretting anything. 

Even if that means you are viewed as a slut or a whore or a cheater in people’s eyes.

Even your own family’s.

I’m proud of you for pushing past the labels, the judgements, the rumors.  

For letting go of what no longer serves you.  Who no longer serves you. 

I’m proud of you for feeling relieved-

Like you aren’t trying to hide from something anymore.

Like a weight has been lifted off your chest. 

I’m proud of you for waking up in a new apartment. 

For hanging your art on its bare walls, for sitting down at your desk and picking up where you left off. 

I’m proud of you for not moving yourself away, but opening yourself back up.

---

Dear Self,

I’m happy you are here and not there. 

There would have never worked out and here is where you always wanted to be.

I’m happy you didn’t run, but walked to the finish line. 

You are always running.  Away from things mostly.

But this time you walked to where you wanted to go. 

You took it all in.  You processed.  You decided. 

Now here you are. 

On the other side of it all. 

The place you wrote about in all of your poems and essays and stories of where you would be some day. 

That place where you are now.

I’m happy you are here. I have no intention of letting you go.

I’m holding your hand all the way to the end.  

Through all of your other chapters.  All of your phases.

So that if you ever question your life again, you’ll be glad you did it.

Whatever that is. 

You’ll be glad and nothing more. 

Dear Sister,

            I’m writing to say I am sorry for not calling you on your birthday.  I was at the gym until 8:30pm again, but that’s never an excuse.  You come first.  You always have.  I’m writing to say I am sorry for writing a text saying I will call you later, and then I never do.  In the morning, I see the pink heart you text me back and remember someone telling me once a text with no words is never good.  So, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry, sister for not calling you on your birthday.   I know in a year it won’t matter and we won’t remember, but today it is on my mind.  I wish you could hear my voice on your birthday say Happy Birthday.  Because sometimes that is the best gift;  a familiar voice. 

Dear Sister,

            I know what I want to get you for your birthday this year, but I’m having trouble getting it on the plane.  Should I tell you about it anyway?  My neighbor made it and it looks like something that would hang well in your house.  When I saw it, it had your feet walking all over it. 

Dear Sister,

             Sometimes I get scared that I’m not going to be a writer.  That I’ll never go back to school.  That I’ll never find the time one day to sit down and start applying, start researching, start looking for that school of my dreams.  Maybe I’ve lost that student in me?  Maybe she can’t come back.  Maybe she doesn’t want to?  I subscribed to The Sun again and there longs in me a desire to have my words printed across the pages, so I think the writer is still there.  Somewhere.  Sometimes she just doesn’t want to come out.  Writing this is helping me realize I really do love to write.  I keep drawing angel or love cards indicating that I have a decision to make.  I think the decision is if I am going to take my writing seriously.  I think this year I will, but didn’t I say that last year too.  Help me stay accountable, sister.  Maybe we should write that book we’ve always talked about? 

Dear Sister,

            How do you get up so early? Every week it is something I want to get better at, and every week I continue to wake up at the same time.  I don’t quite know how you do it! Teach me your ways and tricks of the trade. 

Dear Sister,

            When did you decide you wanted to get married?  I don’t know if I ever will, though I have been thinking about it, so I guess that’s a good sign.  But honest to God, I can’t picture the end of my life with anyone else but you.  I see you and I see me.  That’s it.  One day I would like to live with you.  One day we will grow into old ladies in a little green house on a hill.  We will read poems by Mary Oliver and plant seeds from our Grandmother’s garden.  We will write by the fire and make jam in mason jars like our mother used too.  We will laugh and we will cry.  We will look through the photo albums of our youth and smile.  Didn’t I write once, we will die on the same day?  That’s only because I know we will. 

Dear Sister,

            I erased the word Independence you wrote on my wall with chalk last year.  I feel guilty.  Every time I see that word, I think of you and the little town we drove through named Independence.  Although it is erased, I feel more liberated this year than I ever thought I could be last year.  You engraved its meaning in me.  You let it take over my soul. 

Dear Sister,

            Sometimes I want to run away with you.  Or I want to rent a car and just drive.  Buy a ticket and just fly.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.  I want to dream away with you. Go back to that summer in Keene Valley, when we frolicked along the river and took pictures in black and white. When we hiked all day and drank red wine in clear glasses and swung on the same set of swings after our dinners out.  I want to go back to that time don’t you?  I want to go back to the days where I still had mountains left to climb.  To living only 2 hours away from you.  To walking to the end of your driveway at Osgood Pond and hitch hiking back to college.  I want to go back to the days when it all started.  To the tracks, to the windows of your car rolled down, to singing loud, to waiting in line for peanut butter ice cream sundaes, to Pirates of the Caribbean, to scratches up and down our arms from the raspberry bushes.  I want to go back to summer. 

Dear Sister,

Sometimes I wonder if this is all worth it? The distance.  The only seeing you a few times a year.   If I love you so much, why don’t I live closer?  If you can give my life such a great spark and flair, why aren’t I surrounding my life with you?   It’s something I think about from time to time.  It’s something that keeps me up at night and makes me sleep longer in the morning. 

Dear Sister,

            I really like it here.  I like having options.  I like being close to the city and I like not being far from farm land and the lakes that surround me.  I like having neighbors and I like not driving far for pizza.  I love my job and I love my house and the little family I have made here.  I love the community I have grown into over the course of one year.  Sometimes I feel bad that I am far from my roots or that I am growing out of them.  I feel bad that I am the last to know things and that if I had to get home in a hurry it would still take me awhile.  I feel bad that I can’t watch them grow up or our grandparents grow old.  I feel bad that I am the only one that left, when there was nothing wrong with our home and our family to begin with.  In my mind, they are the most beautiful and perfect pieces of my world.

Dear Sister,

            I just want to say thank you.  Thank you for being the force that led me into my being.  Without you I would have never become a writer.  I would have never started to run.  I would have never moved to Florida, Michigan, or lived in India for a stint of time.  Without you I would have never learned how to grow into something I could never see myself becoming.  Like a goose, you taught me how to spread my wings and fly.  Thank you for making me come alive. 

Dear Sister,

            You know why I feel so connected to the geese?  Because no matter where they go, no matter how far away they fly, they always know when it is time to come home.  Because when I hear them flying overhead, I know where my home is at heart.  I know where I came from and where one day I will return.  When I see a flock of geese flying in a V, I see you and every memory we have made together flash before my eyes.  I see summer, the West, open roads, mountains, water, lakes, sunsets, moons, wine, dirt, mud, berries, vines, birch trees, feathers, stones, tigers eyes, clovers, quilts, rainbows, rose petals, high heels, brown eyes, books.  I see our book.  The one we will write together and tell our story and share our splendor with the world. 

Dear Sister,

            When would you like to start it?

P.S.

My Dear Sister, I love you more than the wisp of the west wind and the honking of geese.  I love you more than all the miles of all the mountains we have climbed and all the sips of red wine we have took.  I love you more than any man I’ve ever loved and all the love I’ve ever made.  I love you more than any God or Goddess there is, because if I could choose, I would only want to worship you. 

When you have nothing to write about; write.

It doesn’t matter about what.
It doesn’t matter how short, how long, or how boring the topic.
It just matters that you are writing.

Writing can be hard to do these days.
Especially when you have a full-time job and like to work out for a few hours after each day.
Especially when you like to clean and are picky about where you put things.
Especially when you love people and like to hang out with them on occasion, or sometimes every other week day and most weekends.
Especially when all you want to do at the end of the day is watch Shameless with your boyfriend and cuddle up in his arms until you fall asleep.
Writing can be hard when you are still trying to figure out what you are proud of, what the events in your life mean, what the past few years have made of you.
Writing can be hard when you don’t have a theme;
When you have had nothing to write about for weeks, maybe months on end.
The truth is, you do have things to write about, you just don’t want to.
You have not taken the time to even start.

It’s easy to keep going once you start.
But first, you have to start to get to the “keep going” part.
That’s the only hard part.
So try to begin with “I remember…” or “It was humid, the day I graduated college wearing a pink sari with not a clue of where I was going to be in one year….”
Begin with “I fell in love with him at the start of summer…”
Begin with reading your old journals, with skimming over your messy thoughts of the men you were seeing after college, and how scared you felt of not knowing where your life was going to go.
Begin with anything.  Something.  Words.
Yes, begin with words.

If you are scared that you have not written anything in a while, or not posted to your blog in a few months that you paid a couple hundred dollars for, don’t be.
Get over that fear.
Get over the “cant’s” and focus on the “can’s”.
You can write.
You should write.
If you are brave enough to start, you will.

One day it will happen.  Sometime soon.
One day you will want to write.
One day you will go to the playground of the school you once taught at and swing on the tire swing. You will spin around in circles and understand why the kids loved this so much. You will feel young and try to be more grateful for the little things. Like the way your stomach knots up when you are spinning sideways and the way the sky looks right before sunset. You will want to write about your youth and the youth that remains in you.
One Wednesday you will go to an LA Fitness for the first time and not find 3 lb dumbbells to run with on the Treadmill. You will feel crazy and out of place, and wonder why it is such a big deal that you can’t find them, but really where are the 3 lb dumbbells? You will feel like writing about your placement and privilege in the world.
One day you will see an old friend from college and reminisce about people you haven’t seen in years, and it will make you feel important and old, but mostly sad for those days that ended so long ago. You’ll want to write about the importance of friendship and all the people’s names you have written down in your address book.
One morning you will miss him. You will roll over to wrap your arm around him and realize he is not there. You will come home later to a dark and empty house and the cats will be confused. You will let yourself in and not see his muddy boots by the door. You’ll want to write about love. How crazy it makes you and how special it is to have; how when he comes home the next day your heart will feel full again. When in doubt, write about love.
One night you will see a young couple kneel down and worship Tash Sultana at the Fillmore Theater in Detroit. You will know there is a God for all people, and sometimes she can be found in sound. You’ll want to write about the impact of live music and how when you walk out of every concert you feel a little bit more connected to heaven than you did before you walked in.
One afternoon, you will drink an Ommegang beer and feel beautiful, and wonder how just a hoppy beer can make you feel like that. You’ll want to write about alcohol and what it  means in your life.  It’s like a weird blessing in a bottle.
One night, your thumbs will go numb when your best friend decides it’s a great idea to go swinging in the snow. You would be all for this in the summer, but you never thought about swinging in the winter, in the snow. Kicking your feet in the falling snowflakes and watching your breath breathe out of you in wispy waves, will make you realize this is the way all humans should swing. You wish you had thought of this idea first. You will write about this when you get home later.

And without even noticing,
You started.
You started writing again.

Every time it is the same.
I start packing a few days before I am set to leave. I bring out my faded purple L.L.Bean backpack I have had since 7th grade. It smells stale and there are numerous stains from nail polishes that have exploded from traveling around India and south Florida. The backpack is covered in patches. There is a patch of becoming a 6er, a 46er, of the Outcoming Club from St. Lawrence University, of Glacier National Park, and of course a purple peace sign. I used to have more patches, but I have lost many over time; the pins I use to hold them to the gortex fabric catching on plane headboards and snapping from too many cross-country road trips. This is the backpack that brings me home. The one I pack full with my laptop, chargers, speakers, journals, magazines, books, and spirit animal cards. The one I never check at the airport. The one that always stays on my back.

I then pull out a little red carry-on, that acts as my “free” carry-on bag. I bought it in India to fly home all the Christmas presents for my family and friends and now I use it to carry the small load of clothes I take with me when I travel. I try to never check a bag. When you travel alone, less is better. Plus, you save money; which I rarely ever have. I never pack pajamas, especially if I’m going home. My mother has a pair of plaid pajama pants and a fleece top waiting for me on the rocking chair in my room upon arrival. I stuff the little bag full; with my running shoes and workout outfits, a dress or two, a few pieces of jewelry, and my pink hiking fleece. I tug and tear at the zipper to make the little bag close. Standing in line at the airport gate, I wait for the flight attendant to announce, “Due to the limited amount of space on the aircraft, we are now accepting carry-on bags you can pick up at the return of your flight.” That’s when I run up to the front desk, grab a pink ticket, tie it around my red bag, and hand it away to the attendant. Now I am down to one bag, my purple backpack. When you travel alone, less is better, nobody can watch your luggage when you go to the bathroom. You have to carry it all yourself.

Every time it feels the same.
The plane begins to lose elevation, the engines slow down, the flight attendant proclaims over the speaker, “We are now about to begin our descent into Albany, New York. Arrival time will approximately be in 15 minutes.” My heart begins to beat faster with excitement of who will be picking me up. It is usually my sister, Bethany, but sometimes my mother and father join her. If I have a window seat, I open the shutter to look down upon the lush fields of central New York. I can begin to see the baby peaks of the Adirondack mountains and the Mohawk river winding its way between corn fields and farm houses. This is my homeland. The land where my home is. I hold my breath as the plane wheels hit the Albany pavement. The ground of the Empire state.

Bethany pulls the red van up to the curb, honking the horn twice, with a Bruce Springsteen song blaring. I open the side door and throw my bags in the back. I hop down beside her in the van and give her a strong hug. This scene in my head replays throughout the years. I could be coming from the Keys, from India, from France, or Hawaii. But every time I sit down in the passenger seat, it is like no time has passed between us at all. We exchange a few words, quickly explain how we are, swap some stories, and then we get right into it. Turning the radio knob as far as it can go and joining each other in unison for a verse of a Bruce Springsteen song:  “Well, me and my sister from Germantown, yeah, we did ride, and we made our beds, sir, from the rock on the mountain side, we’ve been blowing around from town to town looking for a place to land, where the sun could break through the clouds and fall like a circle, like a circle of fire down on this hard land…”

Every time it looks the same.
No matter what end of the road we are coming from. Once we turn onto Mill Road, the curves of the payment and the way the tree branches hang over the blacktop feel the same. They cast the same shadows they have been for years. You notice the mossy wooden fence posts first, sticking out by the edge of the driveway. As we pull in, the elegant white house emerges from behind the giant Oak tree. Then the tiny smoke house, then the red hop house, and then the rolling hills of Cherry Valley creating the backdrop of our back-deck view. It is as if God created this estate. Placing my mother’s garden perfecting at the edge of it, the massive bonfire pit stuck out to the side, swings dangling from the limbs of our maple trees, tiger lilies popping up along all sides of the barn, four rows of hops growing viciously tall up the lines of coil my father put up individually by hand. Welcome home I whisper to myself.

I did not grow up in a city, or suburb, or highly populated town. Evening rush hour was caused by cows crossing the road, from one pasture to the other. When somebody new from out of town was moving in, the whole village knew about it. The whole 800 of us. I was born in the country. Raised on dairy farm land. Where the smell of cow manure is common and there is no sense of washing your car with all the dirt roads you have to drive over. I was raised in the open. My playground was hundreds of acres of land, and corn fields were sustainable crops not scenes from a horror movie. I grew up in a fairy tale. If you could see what I woke up to every morning as a child you may not believe it. You may now understand why I am the way I am. The sound of robins chirping from the nest by my bedroom window starting at 4:30 am, dew dripping and shimmering from the alfalfa fields, an old full moon slipping behind the horizon line. I grew up in beauty, in freedom, in light. I grew up with space and the opportunity to fill it up with my nothing more than, but my dreams.

Every time it smells the same.
As I open the red front door and enter into the breezeway, it smells of Cortland apples that my mother keeps in a wicker basket at fall time, though the scent of fresh apples lingers in the air all year. As I open the second door, I am met with the smell of burning candles from the night before and fresh cotton. My mother always keeps a clean house, it never smells bad, despite the tractor wagons full of manure that pass daily. Shoes are scattered around the front door and brightly colored jackets are hung from hooks lining the wall. My shoes come off, my jacket hung up, my bags thrown to the ground. The first thing I do is walk. I walk around my house in a circle. I walk through the living room, I walk through the dinning room, I walk through the kitchen. I notice what is new; what new pictures my mother has put into frames or collaged the refrigerator with. I notice what new antiques my father has refinished and decorated a new corner of the house with. I notice what new Melaleuca soap my mother has by the sink in the bathroom.

After my walk about the downstairs, I then make my way upstairs, running my hand along the smooth brown banister. I peak in the guest room, I stop by my father’s office, I look to see what quilt my mother has adorned her bed with this time. I save my room for last. It looks different now than it used too. Years ago, in its golden era, my room was fashioned with old mirrors, Victorian frames, peacock feathers, and elegant hats of all colors. My friends used to say it was like walking into a museum. After I leave for college my parents keep my room mostly the same. It wasn’t until I graduate four years later and am moving into my first house that my room began to change. The mirrors slowly begin to come down. The hats I pack up into the trunk that used to lie at the edge of my bed. Old picture collages of high school friends are put away. Walking into my room now, there is not one piece of evidence that this room was once mine. The walls have been repainted an eggshell white, covering all the nail holes and parts of wall that have been peeled away by tape. The bed is new, along with the night stand and rocking chair that sits in the corner. The only thing that is the same is a massive white shelf I pulled out of the barn years ago. My father nailed it up and upon it I placed picture frames of all the important people in my life. One picture still remains. The one of my mother and me.

Coming home to her is the hardest. In the end, I never want to leave. I fall back in the rhythm of slow evenings swinging under the maple trees, walking barefoot through her garden, running my hands along the lavender. I lay down beside her every night, before she goes to bed, her face turned towards mine, our hands holding the other. It doesn’t matter how old I am, or how tired she might be, every night we end the day together. As I go to hug her, her lavender powder paralyzes me. I have laughed, I have cried, I have smiled into her shoulder a thousand times, never wanting to pull away. Never wanting to have to leave the next day. Sometimes I wish she would never let me go. Sometimes I wish she would hold me and protect me forever. She is my mother, my dream maker, the prism in my skies. Coming home to her is the hardest. In the end, I am the one who has to leave. I won’t wash my clothes for weeks after a visit, to keep the feeling of her hug around me. To keep her scent in my soul. Her love on my sleeve.

The saying goes, “Wherever you feel loved, you are home.” If that is the case, you have hundreds of homes, stretching from the Florida Keys to the Adirondacks of New York. From the city limits of Boston to Big Sky country. There is only one place, one dot on the map, that you keep coming back to. That you keep coming home to. 356 Mill Road, Cherry Valley, New York. Where the red front door always opens you into a house full of love.  Full of mason jars of hand picked flowers, shelves of homemade jam, copies of National Geographic stacked on the chair in the corner.  Where at times, you feel as if you are aging backwards. Where the hops grow high and the sunflowers sing you into a smile. Where taking a walk on an old tractor lane can erase any doubt you may have about life and the unforeseen future. Where the hop house looks its best at night and bonfires still sizzle out smoke in the morning. This is home. Your home. The place where your dreaming lives and breathes and tells you to keep going. Keep working, keep striving, keep growing. Deep down, you know it. You see the truth staring at you in your face, that this, this, is your future. That one day after all of your travels, after all of your romping around, and exploring and learning, you will come back here. You will make this place home again.

I am sitting in the passenger seat of my father’s jeep, the windows rolled down, and a Bruce Springsteen song comes on over his Sirius radio (of course it does, we are listening to “The Boss” Sirius radio station). I let my hand glide gently in the summer breeze, twisting to the harmonies of the song. My father turns slowly onto our road, as the crescendo of the song grows. This is my favorite part of coming home. The road. The blacktop path that twists and turns me to the white house at the end of it. The unchanging route that leads me home. The song climaxes as we inch our way closer to the house, my hand traces the outline of the low climbing Cherry Valley hills that pop up over the cattails and cornstalks. The cotton candy clouds pierce the afternoon sky and tears dot my eyes as I look across the landscape of my youth. My soul lies out there, in those hills and fields and tiny creeks that bubble through them. My heart is hollowed into the white birch trees and my voice can be heard singing in the raspberry patches. This is my home. The backdrop of my past and the illustration of my future. We near the house, and an applause from the crowd breaks out through the song. We are ushered into the driveway with cheers and claps, swelling us with the acknowledgement that we made it home. As the car comes to a standstill, my father and I look at each other; not with sadness that this is the last day before I have to leave, but with the anticipation that this is where I am coming back to the next time I leave again. The next time I come home.

At a tea house somewhere in Nepal
They asked her,
“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”

Her response was not here.
It was there.
Over somewhere else.
Somewhere far away,
somewhere in a different place.
A different heart space.
A changed mind set.
Am I there yet?
She saw it there.
Over where?
There.

She saw the sunshine coming in, the Nag Champa burning,
the Himalayan salt sticking to the counter, tea bags littering the floor.
She saw the books she was going to read, the wine bottles she would drink,
the seeds to be planted, the stems in the sink.
The leftover glitter, the yoga mats rolled,
the stones, the shells, the Indian bells.

She saw the first drafts, the rejections, the essays in literary magazines.

The pictures in old frames of the places she dreamed,
the post cards, the quotes, the long dresses she wore,
that moldy old scoby, the black jeans she tore.

The records she listened to when she was young, running shoes by the door, cat hair on the rug.
Crystals on the shelf, prayer flags blowing in the breeze.
Lighters and candles and butterfly wings.
Silver moon necklaces and Tiger’s eye rings.
She only saw maps of her favorite things.

 

It wasn’t with her and it wasn’t with him.
It wasn’t about waiting for love to begin.
It was in her mother, three stars and the shore,
The mountains ripped open to make her heart soar.
She saw the cards in a circle, waiting to be pulled.
She saw the soul in her body, waiting to be filled.

She saw it all,
And it all saw her.
And in the wind it whispered,
“Don’t forget about me.”
And she whispered back softly, “Now,                                                                           Now I can see.”

 

Back in the day, when my mother and I used to have mall dates, we would sneak into Sephora, and she would paint my nails. Each fingernail she would paint a different color. I skimmed the aisles, picking from oceans blues to fairy tale pinks. At least two finger nails would be glitter. All glitter. Shimmering like scales on a mermaid’s tale. The glitter nail polish lasted the longest. Always the most durable, staring at me, when all the other colors had chipped and faded away, almost like it was trying to tell me something.

I began wearing it in college. My freshman year. I would smear it around my eyes or on my shoulders if I was wearing a tank top. My boyfriend would go to class with specks of it around his forehead, from kissing or sleeping with me the night before. Classmates would ask him if he had been out to a strip club. “Not exactly,” He would say smiling.

Soon it became my trade mark. Where there was glitter there was Mallory. Wherever I went I left a glitter trail. Bottles of glitter piled up on my dresser.

India was when it changed. My world became dipped in glitter and hung from the clothes line, drying in the sparkle drenched light. Everything was vibrant there. Everything felt more alive. Colors had meaning and glitter a whole new definition. In India, it came in the form of powder. My friend Kayce, bought a set of 10 vials filed with rainbow colored glitter. The set came with tiny metal insets that you would dip in the powder and then decorate your skin with. I decorated around our eyes with Henna inspired patterns, creating masks made of Indian sunset colors. You feel more beautiful wearing glitter. Like nothing in the world can touch you; you can’t miss home or the smell of weed with a hint of glitter on your body. That’s one lesson India taught me.

I felt a shift returning home from India. My world was not only shining, it was now glowing. From my toes to the top hairs on my head. I began to meet people. Girls, just like me, who were dousing their faces and bodies in glitter. I met them in bathrooms, in bars, in my college library. I met my future roommate, Gabrielle, the girl I would move into my first house after college with, all around the concept of glitter. Only she took glitter to the next level and it required super glue.

The day I get married, the right side of my face is painted in glitter. It shines in the May sunlight, off the slow flowing river, like tiny quartz crystals sprouting from my cheek bones. Gabrielle, carries around a tackle box full of Vaseline, superglue, bottles of glitter, and bags of tiny plastic stars, hearts and other happy shapes. She spreads out a blanket on the sandy shore, pulls out her props, and begins applying her magic. She glitters me and my soon to be wife. She glitters our bridesmaids, spirit parents, guys, girls, and strangers who are passing by the river access point. The sand begins to sparkle and it almost blinds you if you look at it for too long. The wedding feels unreal, unnatural almost. Like we grew out of ourselves and rose to a higher spiritual level. I marry Elizabeth, standing on the ledge of my favorite river. We hold bouquets of daffodils tied together with glossy string and wear crowns braided of grapevine and gold wire around our heads. We stand barefoot before each other and slip the Antique store rings onto our shaky fingers. I can still feel the way the glitter caked into my skin that day. If I could have I would have left it on forever. In the crease of my left eye, Gabrielle glued a pink heart to my face. Even after we jump naked into the river, even after the glitter slowly peels away, the heart stays stuck. Serving as a reminder, that love never dies. The glitter residue leaves ripples of shimmers and shines in the warm current, floating somewhere toward our future. I haven’t seen my wife in almost three years. Life can do that to you. But every time I wear glitter I see her in my reflection.

I move into a yellow house a few weeks after college, overlooking one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the Adirondack Park of New York. I live with Gabrielle and Ivy, another one of my glitter queens. This time we go all out. At our house warming party, Gabrielle sets up her tackle box on the floor of our room. This time the colors are deep blues and purples, the aura of life. Ivy and I are transformed into glitter goddesses. We parade through our new house with royalty, marching through the un-mowed fields outside under the June blue moon. We howl at it. We dance in our boots, pounding our feet into the soil, shaking the earth below us. We look back at the glowing house and it reminds me of a ball of glitter. It shines and shakes to the booming music from within. You never forget what your first home on your own looks like. And I will never forget that image. Walking back inside, through the glass sliding door, bombs of glitter going off in every room. Our wood floors became permanently stained with glitter. No matter how much I swept them that summer, the glitter stayed stuck to the floor boards. We didn’t mind one bit.

My spirit father wakes me up one morning saying he has a present for me. He hands me a clear plastic container full of big and small bottles of glitter. The container has the word Glitter written on a purple piece of foam in black sharpie. He bought it from a garage sale and knew I had to have it. I still have it actually, and from state to state, I have carried it with me. It has officially become my glitter box.

 

For my mother’s retirement party, I carry around a bottle of silver glitter. In the tent, as the DJ plays and the women dance, I flutter around and swipe glitter onto the faces of all the giddy guests. My aunts, my cousins, my grandmother, my old teachers from school, my mother’s girlfriends, my sisters, my six-year-old niece, Jossalynn. She almost does not let me glitter her. “It won’t hurt Joss, it’s just glitter,” I say as I shake the bottle and a shower of glitter falls into my hand. She hesitantly gives in as I swipe the sides of her face gently, “There now you have magical powers.” She looks up at me, “Really?” Her eyes are popping, but almost doubtful. “You can be anything you want with a little bit of glitter,” I whisper in her ear. She grabs my hand and we spin around the dance floor, becoming magical angels in the summer heat.

In Florida, the glitter is silver and pink and the colors that make up clouds in heaven. The glitter is light and fluffy. It has to be due to the humidity. It hangs in the air like your dreams. At the bakery I work at, we have shakers of edible glitter that we sprinkle onto cupcakes and wedding cakes. After decorating the yummy treats, my hands would hold the access specks of sparkles. I rub my hands together, washing them in glitter, and then run them across the sides of my face, like I am applying war paint. You don’t know how many times customers told me I have glitter on my face. Not to mention they loved it.

In all the cards, letters and packages I send home to my family, or to my girl and guy friends, in states near and far, I sprinkle glitter. Before sealing the envelope, I pour a river of glitter into the parcel of mail. The glitter jiggles like sand as I set the mail on the post office counter. The teller asks me, “What’s that sound?” I tell her “It’s the sound of glitter.”

I wear glitter even on my days off from the bakery. Whenever I am feeling happy, or the sun is out, or when I just want to feel a little bit more magical. After swims in the ocean, the glitter collects in the creases of my blonde streaked hair and it stays there for a few days. Even my hair begins to change into the shade of glitter.

I find the most glittery and glamorous festival of them all while living in Florida. Fantasy Fest. It is held the last 10 days of October, always ending on Halloween, and it raises the total population of Key West by over half of what it usually is. People parade around topless, with intricate body paint designs serving as clothing or costumes one would never think of. Glitter is littered through every square inch of Duval Street and confetti is thrown from the balconies of buildings that line the more than mile long street. I dress up as a glitter fairy. I wear black fishnet tights, a lacy corset, a pink fluffy tutu, and black feathery wings. I dip my fingers in all different shades of pink glitter and swirl them onto and around my eyes. My face is one fire with glitter. Somebody asks me where I got my makeup done. It’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten regarding glitter. If all else fails, at least I could become a glitter makeup artist.

I receive a small, spherical-like package in the mail, while at home in New York. It does not say who it is from, it is only addressed to me. I am talking to my father in the kitchen as I go to unwrap the tape holding the parcel together. I pop off the top and out explodes a storm of glitter. Silver and white and gold glitter. All over the counter top, all over the floor, all over the pile of mail. I look at my father and we burst out laughing. “You and your glitter,” He says to me as he goes to grab a broom. After all the times I’ve glitter bombed people, somebody finally glittered bombed me. I found out it was Heather.

A friend tells me he hates glitter. Why? I retaliate. And don’t even start with the environmental reasons and bullshit. We find something sparkly to complain about and believe that by ridding our world of it, it will somehow fix all of our problems and make this world a better place. A less shiny and pretty place, I’d say. I send him an envelope full of glitter and hope he doesn’t have a vacuum.

At the Montessori school I work at in Michigan, all the little girls wear shirts painted with glitter. The shirts read glittery messages such as “She leaves a little sparkle wherever she goes,” “I share my sparkle with the world,” “Born with glitter in my veins,” “Glitter, Sparkle, Shine,” “My favorite color is sparkle”. After Trolls came out, glitter became the popular new trend, especially for young girls. To me this all felt old. Glitter had been my fad for the past eight years and now it seemed to be the movement of our upcoming generation. I can’t complain. Glitter is meant to be shared. And by the looks of it, it was spreading fast.

I meet a man who goes by the name of Glitter, actually he was given the nick name at a music festival, and years later it stuck. We douse our faces in this magical potion and go out dancing in Detroit nightclubs, the green light picking up our hints of glitter and making our faces shine like sunshine over the dark floor. I’ve never felt more like a shining star.

The logo of the gym I begin working at is written in black and silver glitter. My boss is obsessed with this stuff, like myself. The new front desk has hints of sparkle in the quartz, the redone bathroom walls hold glitter in the glass tiles, the floor that will soon be epoxied, she has requested to have glitter manually mixed into the gooey liquid. I’m living in a fairytale. If you manifest what you desire long enough it might actually come true.

Wear it. Before you go out, on a sunny day off when no one will see you but yourself, if you’re going through a break up and it’s the only thing that keeps you smiling. Smear it. Start from the edges of your eyes and slide it out to the crease of your hairline. This will be your symbol. Your warrior face. Wear it proudly. Parade it about. Through the ups and the downs, the shitty days, the snowstorms, the hurricanes, the loves that you lost and the one you can’t quite have. Wear it. When you’re happy, when you’re sad. When your tears wash it down your face, or the wind and the ocean wipe it away. Wear it. Because not only do you want to shine every day of your life, you want to sparkle. You want to glitter and glow like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do. Because baby, on the day that you die, it will be raining glitter and the whole world is going to wear it for you.

There is a wooden rocking chair in her living room that I sit in every time I go to visit. I rock myself to the sound of her stories, drifting in and out of family updates and who married who this time. She promises the rocking chair will be mine someday. In my mind someday is a long ways away.

I get the text on a Sunday morning. The same morning, I go to bed at 5:30 am and wake up with a killing head ache. I do not quite believe it at first. Maybe I’m not reading it right? Your grandma is in the hospital with the flu. What does that even mean? I had the flu a few months ago and almost died, or felt like I was dying. If an 87-year-old woman has the flu…I didn’t want to know the answer. I roll over and try to go back to sleep. As you might guess, I don’t. Turns out she has influenza.

She was born and raised in Jersey. If you are from there, you leave off the New when you talk about it. She and her sister were Tony Twins, but not many people know what they are anymore. She met my grandfather on a blind date and married him. He loved the mountains and places like Alaska and she loved the shore and places where she could hear it. Their 66th wedding anniversary was a few weeks ago. It amazes me they can still remember the weather that day.

We are born on the same day and somehow that makes us special. More special than the connection we already had. When and if I have children someday, I know I am going to have twins. Just like her. Identical. Nobody else in the family has yet.

She is beautiful. She is vain. She is pristine. She wears lipstick to the hospital and makeup in the mornings. When I look at old pictures of her she reminds me of a classic Hollywood Actress. She is gorgeous and graceful; a Julia Robert’s smile and white hair the color of clouds. A star carved out of the Jersey Shore and sand between her always painted toes.

 

She tells me the same story. Over and over again. Of how she cried the day my mother and father tell her they are having another baby. After seven years of the last one. My grandmother was getting another grandchild. Her last granddaughter. I will be given her middle name, Viola, and a V will divide our first and last names forever. I love the look of it when I write out my initials.

She hates my nose ring. She calls my mother in protest after she sees the silver ring in my nose. The tattoo on my wrist, she detests more once she notices it. She still doesn’t know about my second tattoo, but not many people do. She prefers my hair long, rather than short, and every time she sees me now she comments on its length. Even in the hospital, when my hair is twisted in a braid she realizes it has grown a considerable amount since the last time I saw her.

I think that is what got to me the most. That I couldn’t remember the last time we spoke. The last time I visited. We are usually good about talking. She’ll call me one week and I’ll call her the next. Our conversations don’t have to be long, but they are meaningful and I can at least hear her voice and wage how she is doing. We can at least say “I love you” and bask in the joy of our upcoming birthday. February is always our favorite month.

I am reading Tuck Everlasting to my fourth grade class during lunch. It is the part where Tuck is explaining to Winnie how life is like a wheel; always changing, always turning. How dying is a part of living. A few tears fall and I pray the wise guys in the back row don’t see. She can’t die yet. I haven’t seen her. I haven’t been there to hold her hand. All I want is to say thank you. Thank you for always calling, for always checking in, for making me feel like a little princess all my life. All I want is to say good bye.

She used to keep out a bowl, on the kitchen counter, of these pastel colored mints that would melt in your mouth. Do you remember? Sometimes restaurants put them on top of your check book. I used to eat them like candy. She stopped buying them a few years back and I never knew why. She used to keep a pack of Lifesavors in her purse. The red ones were my favorite. She used to take walks with an umbrella to whack any stray dogs that came her way. She used to make rerun for every family event. The pink dish made of cottage cheese, mandarin oranges, and mini marshmallows. Believe it or not, it was good. She used to tan at the beach, delicately paint hollow goose eggs, and watch Pretty Woman. I think I still have her VHS copy.

I come home to say goodbye. My sister buys me a ticket because she knows I need to. I need to say a few more things; look at her a few more times. Hold her hand and kiss her forehead. I need to put our relationship to rest. Have it end in peace, or else I might hate myself if I don’t. The only thing is, when I come home, she wakes up. She sits up. She opens her eyes and talks. It’s like nothing ever happened at all. It’s a miracle, all the nurses say. “I think she was waiting for you,” my mother tells me. I think she is stronger than we all think.

I was born in a blizzard. On a Tuesday at 9:12 pm. She was at a church meeting up in town when she got the call. She cries when she hears the news and what my parents name me. Mallory Viola Garretson. In her eyes, I was an angel who came out of the snow. My mother her favorite daughter-in-law from that day on, for giving her the gift she never asked for, but always secretly wanted.

“Is Mallory behaving?” She asks my cousin, after the tube has been taken out of her throat and she is awake and talking again. She keeps asking this question. “Is she being good? Is she behaving?” I often ask myself that same question. Am I behaving? Am I being the best person I can be? I go to see her in the hospital every day when I come home. I pray for her health every night. I like to think I am behaving. Wouldn’t you say?

Our favorite color is purple. They put a purple bow in my hair when I was born. I’m not sure why her favorite color is purple? We are just purple people. It’s the color of violets, of spring, of royalty. In a past life she must have been a Queen and I, a princess. Like the story of Anastasia. A music box she would wind to drift me off to sleep.

Scrambled eggs, rye toast, 3 slices of bacon. Hot chocolate with whipped cream. She got me my first job as a dishwasher at the Breakfast House we would go to every Sunday. It is closed now, but she still goes out to breakfast once a week. She calls my grandfather from the hospital to tell him to take my sister and me out to breakfast. She doesn’t remember this. I order what she’s been ordering for me for years; minus the bacon. I don’t eat meat anymore.

I often wonder what she thinks about all alone, in her hospital chair. If she is even thinking at all. Maybe she is remembering? Remembering all her great grandchildren’s birthdays, all her sibling’s anniversaries, all the states her nieces and nephews live in. She doesn’t forget. It’s amazing really. If you were to ask her what I wore to my high school graduation she would know the answer. A long purple dress. A crown of flowers in my hair.

The day after her 88th birthday, and my 25th, she calls me. My mother holds the phone up to her ear and lets her talk into it. She is crying. Wondering where I went. She forgets about me visiting every day and telling her that I have to fly back to Michigan on our birthday. She doesn’t know that I cry as my plane takes off, as I leave again, wondering if this will be the last time I see her. She doesn’t know that while I am dancing the night before, a piece of my heart pounds harder and I can feel my blood flow thicker. Like pieces of her are mixing with mine. On the night of our birthday I feel a spark, a connection, that leads me to her. It’s stronger this time. Maybe I had to be 25 years old to feel it? Maybe she had to be 88? Maybe we needed something to scare us into this feeling that we might not always have the other. Maybe we needed to learn that there are threads of us that live within the other and those are what keep us alive. Threads of purple and snowflakes and mints that melt in your mouth. Threads of February and scrambled eggs and the number 23. Threads of her, threads of me. Sew them together and look what you got.

I have this image of my grandmother dying and it is not in a hospital room. It is in the corner chair of her house, the one perched right beside my favorite rocking chair. I have this image she will end there. In the morning, after drinking her coffee, then taking a nap she won’t wake up from. That’s how she is going to die someday. Snowflakes will be slightly falling outside, but they will look more like ripples. From behind the mountainous clouds the sun will shine through saying “It is nice to see you again.” Her feet will leave a trail through the sand, heading straight toward the ocean,  the sound of its waves will sing her home.

 

When he rolls over and wraps his arms around my nakedness during the early hours of morning.

When he takes out my compost without me asking.

When we are stuck in our apartment during a late July tropical storm and the prompt is to draw the other person. When he draws a picture of me where my head is made of mountains and the ocean is my body. It is the most beautiful way I have seen myself. Almost like he knew who I was before I did. A shooting star he makes my soul.

When he sends flowers to my work for our first Valentine’s Day and I finally realize what it feels like to have flowers delivered to you at work. It feels like falling in love all over again.

His long black robe. His Batman onesie. That black button-down shirt, when it’s unbuttoned two buttons. Better yet, no clothes at all.

His man bun. His hair. After he washes it, after it dries, and the color is a deep brown reminding me of the hair of a horse I once rode. I love pulling his hair back in my hands, petting it down around his face. When my grandmother calls one day and asks, “When is your boyfriend going to cut his hair?” I say back, “I hope never.”

When he learns origami, and leaves the new designs on my desk when he finishes them.

When he leaves me a note or texts me back to the hundreds, maybe thousands, that I wrote or sent to him without ever receiving an answer. It doesn’t matter. I will always remember that one. Whether it be that picture he once drew or that poem he once wrote. It is those few that will stand out compared to my many. I try to be more selective with what I say.

When we are sitting at a bar in Key West and he is talking to the man sitting beside us and he goes to introduce me as the girl who has traveled the world. It shows he is proud of me. That I can be me without him. Some men never get past that.

When he scrapes and shovels the snow off my car. When he salts the porch steps. When he takes down the Christmas tree but forgets the garland.

He is one of the smartest people I know and has nothing to show for it. No degree. No passport. Nothing. If you hear him talk about the state of the world or the stock market or the theories of Nikola Tesla or the proper measurements of how to construct a house you will know he is more than your average Joe. You will know he is just slight of a genius.

When I come home after a sail to a candle lit dinner of tofu wraps and red wine. Ice cream in the freezer, sex on the side.

When he talks to the cats in his cat voice. When he chases them around the house and slips on his slippers. When they sleep by his feet in his arm chair, paws on the back of the other.

When he turns on all the Christmas lights before I get home. When he lights my candles and burns the incense before I get a chance.

When he holds me in a long hug, in the middle of the living room, after I get home from work. When the stress falls off my shoulders and his hands rest wrapped around my hips. If I could pick what every hug should feel like it would feel something like this.

How he can eat pizza with ranch for every meal if he had too. A full glass of milk to wash it all down.

When he swears the answer to 11×11 is 122 and I know it is 121 and we bet on it and he looks it up on his phone and we can’t stop laughing because we both know I am right. For once the genius is wrong.

The smell of his sweat. It smells like wood. It shows he has been working hard. It shows he can work with his hands. I love men who can work with their hands. It is a dying art.

When he squeezes the tooth paste to the top of the tube when it is getting low.

When I see mums at the grocery store and can’t buy them because I don’t have enough money. When he pulls them out of his truck when I’m not looking and puts them on the porch steps. He says thank you for being so amazing. Thank you for being his Wonder Woman.

When he helps me with all of my wardrobe malfunctions. When he zips me, ties me, laces me up. It makes me want to take it all back off.

How his body feels against mine in the ocean. How I can climb up his shoulders, wrap my legs around his waist, and he carries me through the water. He is my legs, my movement, my wave. I bought a pool membership about a month ago so I could feel him in that way again.

The tattoo he regrets on the right side of his chest. I love tracing its outline with my fingers.

When I stand him up two different times. When I ignore his calls and don’t respond to his texts. When he still insists we go out, grab a few beers, go to the beach. When he picks me up after work, swim trunks on, and a cooler full of Coronas. When he takes me to the beach, our beach, the one we will have our first kiss on. The one where he will ask about me, and let me do the talking, and ask me about my travels and the things I like to write about. The beach where the sunset will light the sky with puffy clouds and make the day feel more like dawn than dusk. And as we wade out into the water, asking if we believed in heaven, we didn’t have to answer. We were already there.

Emerging from our apartment after three days of rain, to find the most glorious ice pink sunset. We run to the dock, in our nightgown and boxers, our hands held in union. We dance to the sound of the waves hitting shore, the calmer waters ready to come.

January.
The month of snow storms and below freezing temperatures. The month of snow shoeing and Sunday Football. The month of staying in and sunny afternoons. The month of baking cookies without baking soda and giving the cats a bath. The month of Bruce Springsteen songs and family birthdays. My sister and father’s both. Bethany, January 15th and my father, January 25th.
January reminds me of them. The sound of harmonicas and the beginning of longer, lighter days. I was at a loss of what to listen to the other night, nothing seemed to fit what I was wanting to hear. Except him.
I had not listened to him in a long time. I go through phases, just like seasons go through the year. Like the moon waxes and wanes. He came to me in a dream and said listen, it is time.
The yellow walls of my Michigan home needed to hear what his voice sounded like.
What his guitar strings felt like when they were strummed just the right way.

Bruce. Springsteen. My sisters and I were raised on his records and have continued to listen to him to this day. How could we not? Our father was born in New Jersey, and when his family moved to upstate New York, he brought Bruce with him. Growing up and throughout my high school years, I listened to him on end. My father gave me his old record player and gave me the freedom to introduce myself to Bruce’s early work; becoming familiar with live shows and who was who in the E Street Band. Every other year we would buy his new CD and learn the whole album through while cleaning up in the bathroom at night. We always had a working CD player in the bathroom. I loved that about our house.
Bruce is home to me. Our house has a powder-covered old record smell to it and reminds me of his music. When I walk through the red doors of our Cherry Valley house, I can hear a Bruce song playing in the background. Even if one isn’t.
I know I will hear one soon.

Last Christmas, Beth asked our family to write down our top 10, all-time, favorite Bruce songs. She told us to write the reason for why we chose that song and the story behind it for us. I was living in Florida at the time, a new environment for listening to Bruce in, and I pushed the assignment further and further away. I had not listened to Bruce since moving to the Keys and was scared I had forgotten all of his great masterpieces. And then one day I sat down at my computer desk and started brainstorming, started pulling back the cobwebs of my mind that hid the magic of his music. Bruce never leaves me, no matter how long I go for without listening to him. I soon began to write down songs that came back to me in a solid wave. That in some way impacted my life and made it better. Songs that made me understand the impact music can have upon you.
Once you realize the magic, you are under the spell. Forever.

The package arrived at my apartment doorstep a few days before Christmas. Sitting by our purple themed Christmas tree I cut the package open, pulling out five CDs. One for my father, one for my mother, one for Celia, one for Bethany, and one for me. Each CD had a different colored case and a different title.
This Train, Crossing Paths, Sunny Snowstorm, 356, Run You Little Wild Heart.

Under the CDs was a folder collaged with pictures of me, my father, the ocean, greeting cards I had sent to Beth all cut up and angled to fit on the folder. It was the album cover of my life. In the pockets of the folder were the lists of all of our songs. The stories behind them and a collection of the music we loved so much.
It was one of the most sincere and beautiful Christmas presents I had ever received. My first Christmas away from home and I couldn’t help but feel more connected to my family through the sound of one man’s voice.
I cried when I played my cd; I cried when I played all of them. In the soft twinkling glow of Christmas lights, I danced as the magic took me over.
And for a second I believed I was dancing in our upstairs bathroom, and that any moment my father would be knocking on the door, letting me know my bath time was up.

Run, You Little Wild Heart

1.) “Ain’t Got You” Tunnel of Love, 1987
Reminds me of Beth; she loved this song, knew all the lyrics. Reminds me of listening to the Tunnel of Love album in the bathroom on nights after Varsity Soccer practice, and that no matter what you have or don’t have, all you need is love. Forget the diamonds. All I want is you.
2.) “Easy Money” Wrecking Ball, 2012
You know you are in the right place at the right time when one Thursday afternoon in the fall semester at St. Lawrence, when you are stressing over trying to finish a midterm paper, all of a sudden, this song comes blaring from one of the dorm rooms close by. I could have cried to hear something that familiar. Best song to get ready to by far; when you are itching to wear high heels and get out on the town. Drink a glass of red wine while you listen. It always goes down smooth.
3.) “Girls in Their Summer Clothes” Magic, 2007
I am twirling, spinning, wearing a yellow tutu, flowers thrown throughout my hair, glitter around my eyes, long blonde strands of hair fall down my back. I am an angel, a fairy, a dream. This song is a dream I once had on a summer’s night. I think I’m still dreaming it.
4.) “I’m Goin’ Down” Born in the U.S.A., 1985
There’s just something about this song that I like. It always raises my spirit, despite its downward message. Oddly enough it makes my heart soar. My spirit fly. Thanks Bruce.
5.) “Incident on 57th Street” The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, 1973
5th song on my favorite Bruce album, might as well make it the 5th song on my own. The piano intro can make my heart stop beating, my lungs stop breathing, bring tears to my eyes. Any song that can make me cry is one of my favorites. This is one of the few.
6.) “She’s the One” (Live at Hammersmith, Odeon London, 1975)
If I was born in 1959 I would have been at this show. I would have been the one dancing in the front row, the woman who whistles and screams out over all the others. I would have followed the band backstage; drink some beers, smoke with Clarence, jump on the couches, get Stevie to sign my arm. I would have been that one; the one they sing about in this song.

7.) “The Price You Pay” The River, 1980
Dark nights, my image of the West, a river, youth, mystery; it is all there. Beth driving away, leaving after another summer of being home; a little girl standing alone, looking for the Promised Land. Some of my favorite Bruce lyrics. All of them would make a great story.
8.) “Tougher than the Rest” Tunnel of Love, 1988
My first memory of a Bruce song. I can still remember dancing with my father to it in the dinning room after he finished the dishes one night. That was way back when I thought it was Bruce Springspring. That was a long time ago, the beginning of it all; when the magic was being made. In my mind nobody can be tougher than him…my father that is.
9.) “All I’m Thinking About” Devils and Dust, 2005
When all I could think about was when I would start thinking about somebody worth thinking about this much. True love; where was it? Would I find it? Reminds me of making chocolate chip cookies on winter days in my mother’s kitchen. I once played this song on repeat for hours. It never gets old. It keeps me thinking.
10.) “Land of Hope and Dreams” Wrecking Ball, 2012
Bring your ticket and your suitcase, thunders rolling down this track. You don’t know where you’re going now, but you know you won’t be back. The theory of my life. We are all gypsies, hobos, sinners, travelers. We are all looking for that train to catch. I still am.
11.) “My City of Ruins” The Rising, 2002
If I were to have a song that describes my religion, this is it. With these hands we rise up, so come on rise up, rise up, rise up…

Bonus Tracks
12.) “Thundercrack” Tracks, 1998
One hell of a long song; it runs a little over 9 minutes. The first time I heard it I never wanted it to end. I dance to the whole thing every time, never giving out; there’s always a little more left to you than you think. Ever wonder why the bathroom floor would shake Mom? It is this song’s fault.
13.) “New York City Serenade” The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, 1973
The perfect ending. The song I would always end on, leave to, play the night before I left home to go anywhere again. France, college, Hawaii, India, Lake Placid, Florida, Michigan, bed. My favorite song of all time. I couldn’t quite tell you why. It’s the way it makes me feel; safe, found, full, loved. Play it at my funeral. As the whole congregation is walking out. Don’t forget.

It is when I get to ride to church in my father’s 1972 yellow Chevy van and he asks me what CD I want to listen to. I know he means Bruce. It is when Beth and I are driving cross country and the only thing that sounds good in Indiana is Bruce. When I’m at a brewery in Detroit and a Bruce song comes on and I’m the only girl in the tap room singing. When somebody asks me if I like Bruce and I say I love him. I’ve been to four of his concerts, two were front row, one he put a pick in my hand. It’s like I know the guy and he knows me. When just the look of his name in a magazine can make me feel better; feel a little closer to my father and Beth and home. When you know that the day he dies, a piece of you will die too. But I know he is going to live forever. Because he is magic and magic never dies. It only comes a little more alive.

 

Dear 2017,

Where do I begin? Can I first say thank you? Thank you for getting me here. For letting me stand in the snow, half a foot deep, in boots that have cracks in the soles, and tights not thick enough for 4-degree weather to ring in the new year. It feels good to be this cold. For my face to be frozen, for my lips to be chapped, for my fingers to be numb. Thank you. Thank you for making kisses from Kevin warm me up and glasses of champagne tickle my tummy. Thank you for making the reflection of fireworks in a field full of snow wake me up to new possibilities. To a new sense of awe. To a new sense of worth.

It was an amazing year. But you know what, this year is going to be better. Because this year is going to be different. This year I’m really going to try. I’m really going to live. This year I’m going to get a job I love, that pays me well, that I don’t question why I’m going to every day. This year I’m going to run faster. I’m going to be stronger. I’m going to learn how to do a perfect headstand. This year I’m going to love more. My family. My kitty cats. My friends. Most importantly, myself. This year I’m going to love it the fuck up.

This year I’m going to meditate. On the future. On the here. On the now. This year I’m going to think about where I want to go next year. Where I want to live. What I want to do. What I want to grow. This year I’m going to have a garden. I’m going to grow my own carrots. I’m going to plant my own sunflowers. This year I’m going to get my hands dirty. This year I’m going to let go. Of control. Of holding on too tight. This year I’m going to let somebody else do the dishes. Take out the trash. Make the bed.

This year I’m going to dance. I’m going to dance like the whole world is watching and I’m going to laugh. This year I’m going act my age. Or maybe a few years younger or maybe a few years older. This year I’m going to take naps. I’m going to dream big dreams while I do it. This year I’m going to relearn Hindi. I’m going to have a rock climbing party for my birthday and finally use that purple harness my ex-boyfriend gave me for my birthday years ago. This year I’m going to learn to ski. I’m going to pay all my bills on time. I’m going to get renters insurance. This year I’m going to make my own kombucha. This year I’m going to grow my hair past my boobs.

This year I’m going to learn how to make eggs. I’m going to bake something new once a week. I’m going to look at my phone less. I’m going to call my sisters more. This year I’m going to dust off my records and play a different one every day. This year I’m going to wear more yellow. I’m going to look at every stranger I pass and smile. This year I’m going to make more snow angels. I’m going to take more bubble baths. I’m going to read more poetry.

This year I’m going to pick up my pen. This year I’m going to write. I’m going to slam my words against the page. I’m going to tell stories. I’m going to sing them at the top of my lungs. I’m going to submit to magazines. And journals and reviews. I’m going to get rejected. I’m going to keep trying. I’m going to keep writing. More and more. This year I’m going to get published. I’m going to read my name printed under a list of writers. This year I’m going to get my break. This year my book will have a birthday.

2017, it has been a great year. But I’m sorry to say, 2018 is going to be better. It’s going to be brighter. It’s going to be happier, healthier, higher. It’s going to be tough, it’s going to be real, it’s going to be scary, it’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be new. And I like the look of that.
2017, I love you more than all the memories and states and sunsets you’ve given me.
But forgive me when I say, 2018 is going to kick your ass.
Because this year a hurricane is coming.  Brace yourself.  xoxoxoxox

I had a dream last night of the ocean.
I was riding on a long, skinny boat and the waves crashed up and over the tall sides like liquid lightning.
I could see manatees swimming beneath the water’s surface and sea weed swaying in the movement.
I was wearing a pink bikini, ready to jump off and swim far below into the dark blue unknown.
I miss the ocean.

I miss a lot of things. It happens what can I say? This feeling of doubt comes over me; this uncertainty with what I’m doing with my life and that it is not as great as it was the year before or the year before that and so on.
Maybe I moved to the wrong place? Maybe I quit the wrong job? Maybe I am in love with the wrong person?

I miss what I had before and it haunts me. Like a bad dream.
Then I wake up, look around, remember where I am and realize this is where I am supposed to be. This is what I am supposed to love. This is what I am supposed to miss in the future.
Next year to be exact.

***

I miss the days when I still believed in Santa Claus. When I felt so overcome with excitement the night before Christmas and waiting on the stairs the next morning with my sisters to go open our stockings. I miss the half-eaten cookies and knobbed carrots. Ever since my cousin spoiled it for me, saying Santa Claus isn’t real, I feel a little less magical. I still believe a red twinkle in the sky on Christmas Eve is Rudolph.

I miss picking raspberries with my grandmother. I miss singing old hymnals with her and talking about what we love most about summertime. She can’t walk very well now. It breaks my heart every time I am in those bushes without her. I bet she hates knowing I am singing down there all by myself.

I miss having summers off. I miss working three jobs in a day and still having the energy to dance at parties in Cooperstown corn fields. I miss smoking in my old used cars. I miss licking the whipped cream off of our Stewart’s make-your-own sundaes. I miss watching the sunsets over Route 20 and carving our initials in the old railroad bridge.

I miss snow days. I miss putting a spoon under my pillow. I miss doing the snow dance. I miss the early morning calls saying there will be no school tomorrow. Just like the call I got last night.

I miss his shower. I miss how it was always the first thing we did when I came over. I miss the taste of our cold PBR’s in the hot steam and how he always used conditioner on his long golden locks. We always shared the same towel and ate a meal made of venison after.

 

I miss college. I miss being able to drink until drunk on a Tuesday night and still wake up and go to class the next day. Or give a presentation or take an exam or write a 10-page paper. On a Wednesday or a Thursday or a Sunday. Or any day. We drank on any day and still did it again the next day. I feel weak only drinking two times a week now. Or should I feel like an adult. Mature? Grown up? I can’t tell if I love it or hate it.

I miss Cherry Valley. I miss the view of our rolling hills out back. I miss Top of the Valley. I miss Canton. I miss Lampson Falls. I miss running on Miner Street. I miss Jambles. I miss Paris. I miss walking through the vineyards of France. I miss Honolulu. I miss the sunsets off the beach. I miss India. I miss Jaipur. I miss Shimla. I miss Varanasi. I miss the shore of the Ganga. I miss Paul Smiths. I miss Saranac Lake. I miss Lake Placid. I miss the peak of Whiteface Mountain right out my bedroom window. I miss the openness of Ohio. I miss Indiana. I miss Idaho. I miss the mountainous passes of Colorado highways. I miss the roar of the Pacific Ocean. I miss the middle of Pennsylvania. I miss the quietness of Charlottesville. I miss the taste of beer in Asheville. I miss the haunted Savannah, Georgia. I miss the humidity of Miami. I miss the saltiness of the Keys. I miss the panhandle of Florida. The cornfields of Alabama. The slowness of Tennessee. The mystery of Michigan.

I miss dancing. By the stage, behind the stage, on the stage. I miss the spilled beer and the heat of a concert hall. I miss the way my thighs feel the next day after a night of dancing.
I now have shower parties with myself where I blare the music and dance in front of the mirror. It’s not quite the same, but it’s nice. My thighs don’t hurt quite as bad.

I miss writing personal essays for my creative writing classes. I miss the topics, the way I would write my heading, reading my essays out loud in the back of the library. I miss writing for a grade. Now I write for myself, and for you. I’m not so sure how I would grade myself?

I miss India. I miss how it smelt of burning incense and rotting garbage. I miss how old it felt, how impossible it seemed to have something so beautiful, yet so ancient, still be standing. I miss my dirt stained feet and bucket showers. I miss not being able to swallow the water when I brushed my teeth. I miss when life challenges you to try new things, to not be able to do what you have been used to doing for so long. I miss how strong I became. How fearless.

I miss sweating. In saunas, in the Florida heat, in the Delhi streets. Sweating it all out makes me feel lighter. I have to run for quite a while now to feel like that in this Michigan winter.

I miss being single. I miss not knowing who I will fall in love with next, who I will show my body to, who I will learn all about, who I will wake up beside. I miss the mystery, the butterflies, the giddiness of holding hands. I miss the fire.

 

I miss the time before texting. Before Instagram. Before all my friends moved away, got engaged, started having babies, and living separate lives. I miss simplicity. The art of the unknown; of not knowing what everybody is up to, is doing, has done. I tried to turn off my phone the other day. That didn’t go so well.

I miss waitressing. I miss having change in my pocket at all times. I miss having extra money for the movies or ice cream or thrift shopping. I miss scribbling down orders and talking to my tables about life goals and becoming a writer. I miss telling them they may be in one of my stories someday.

I miss short hair. I miss getting it cut whenever I feel like becoming someone new. I miss how my short strands would stick out from under winter hats or how sometimes I looked like a pixie fairy. I miss not having to comb it. I seriously thought about cutting it last week, and then again yesterday, and probably again tomorrow. I have been growing it out for four years now. It doesn’t look any longer to me than when I began.

I miss mountains. Being in them, on them, near them. Being on top of them. I feel the freest when I am climbing mountains and I always question why I am not living by them? I suppose I am looking to see what else can make me feel free. There is a lot, I am sure, but nothing like mountains. I try to sound happy whenever my sister talks about her hiking trip of the day.

I miss living near home. I miss hearing the news, the updates, the announcements within our family circle. I miss being included. I miss being the first one to know. About Luke’s bottom tooth, or Jossy’s first words, or Gramma’s hospital visit again. I just wish I had a crystal ball so I wouldn’t miss all the things I am missing.

I miss my grandparents. I miss Jossalynn. I miss Luke. I miss my sisters. I miss my family. I miss stopping in at Aunt Jodi’s after a run.  I miss Martin.  I miss Florence.  I miss Meg and Lexie. I miss Alexandra. I miss Gabs. I miss the Green Goddess Girls. I miss Zane. I miss Ivy and Seb. I miss Heather and Sage and the Kate’s and all the tanned conchs. I miss Jake Hunt. I miss Ryan’s Mom. I miss Kevin’s cousin. I miss my wife. I miss Anna and Carlie and April and Colin and Hanna and Emlyn and Kayce and Jackie. I miss the old man I would always see at the gym. I miss Natalia. I miss Carol and Cathy. I miss Schue and his old dog. I miss Tom’s hair. I miss Sam’s car. I miss Kevin not wearing shirts all the time. I miss Laurie’s calzones. I miss Natasha’s Frye boots. I miss Alyssa’s clothes. I miss Al Gal. I miss Katelynn, both of them. I miss snuggling with my mother and hugs from my father. They never get old.

I miss being tan all year long. I miss wearing only a bikini to clean my apartment. A bikini top and jean shorts to the grocery store. It was one of the things I loved about Florida. The dark beige color of my skin and the feeling of being sun kissed even on Christmas day.

I miss her. She was my best friend. Is my best friend if she still wants to be? I miss how we would laugh at the same time and dance the same way. I miss how we would snuggle on futons and watch Beaches pretending we were the characters. Maybe we are? CC and Hillary go for a few years without talking. Maybe this is that time for us? This too shall pass. We are stronger than that, I do believe.

I miss the West. I miss that road trip my sister, mom, and I went on from California to New York. I miss stopping in New Mexico and having a picnic in a parking area. I miss the feeling of driving East and never wanting to stop.

 

I miss running into the flocks of geese. I miss the idea of flying away with them. Of leaving the ground and flapping somewhere south. I miss the predicted image of what it would look like. The world from above, without a plane or a parachute, between me and the earth. I miss the excitement of what it would feel like. Of taking off, of flying, of falling. I miss the mystery. In a past life I was a goose and I remember the image. I remember flying into the golden sunset. And some days, some dreams, I am still there. My wings strong against the wind, eyes straight on the horizon, my future behold.

I arrive at the top alone. My breathing is fast and a circle of sweat has formed in the middle of my salmon colored kurta. I follow the cracked concrete trail around the temple and arrive at the backside of the mountain. There is a line of sari dressed Hindus snaking out of the collapsing temple and I avoid their chaos for a moment. I come into open space, like I do and have done on every mountain I have climbed. I look out below onto the warm Indian landscape, spotting empty patches of dirt and scanning the lush green bushels of trees. I imagine what my family is doing right now, in preparation for this day in November when we all gather at one long table to give thanks.
To celebrate our Thanksgiving.
This is the first year I will not be there. The first in 21 years.
Before leaving for India, I remember a friend of the family told me it is those holidays you spend away that are the ones you remember the most. The ones that are the most monumental, where you do things differently, practice new traditions, and feel the love for your family even more. I could not tell if I believed her advice yet or not. Standing alone, on the top of a mountain in India, made me think of my family all the more. In the open space I missed what I could not have, while not loving what I did.
“Mal!” I hear the yell of my name from behind me. It is Max, one of the three boys in my study abroad program. He comes running over, a face full of sweat, grabs my hand and pulls me away from the mountaintop ledge. “Let’s be the first ones to see the temple.”
“Sounds good to me!” My thoughts are taken away from Aunt Kim’s mashed potatoes and red glass dinnerware and quickly turned to the mysterious temple, straight on ahead of me.

For the remainder of the day, my mind is in India. Max and I explore the temple. The rest of our class arrives on top and we take a group picture on the temple’s steps. Our Indian director, Yogesh, makes a face that can still make me laugh by looking at that picture today. Our group of students is joyful and free. I feel like I am forgetting to do something all day as I am not rushing to help my aunt set the table, or get myself ready for our annual fancy dinner. Instead I am covered in desert sweat, racing down a mountain, swerving in and out of ancient caves in Bodh Gaya, India. I don’t think I would ever come close to having a Thanksgiving like this again. My heart felt like it was on fire.

My class and I evenly decide that we are going to have and make our own Thanksgiving dinner. The holiday would have been overlooked in India, but as it is many of our first Thanksgiving’s away from home, we want to do something special.
We want to make it ourselves.
In Varanasi, one month ago, we make a list of who will be making what and who is responsible for butchering the chickens. As there are no turkeys in India, chickens were the next best meat option. We designate that duty to the three boys in our program.
Alexandra, who has been my roommate for the majority of the trip and now a permanent best friend, and myself sign up to make the mashed potatoes. Although I don’t actually remember mashing the potatoes. I remember something about apples and raisins, and mixing them together in this tiny little kitchen located on the side of our rooftop terrace. I remember having to tell our hostel’s cook that he did not need to cook for us that night, that we would be doing the cooking instead. I remember him laughing, shaking his head in disbelief.
How hard could it be?
It was just Thanksgiving dinner. In India. Where the butter does not come in sticks, where eggs do not come in cartons, and where milk is rarely drunk because of Hindu’s devotion to cows.
Cooking a Thanksgiving dinner would not be nearly as hard in the United States where you have everything you need either in your kitchen cupboards or in a nearby grocery store. Whereas here, in India, in Bodh Gaya, there were no grocery stores, no recipes, no measuring cups. We instead utilize our resources. Bartering as much as we can from the roadside stand down the street, where the old male vendors make eyes at us as they chew on their tobacco wads. We take guesses on how much ¼ of a cup is, 1 tablespoon, 1 teaspoon. We substitute ghee for butter. We take turns in the kitchen as it is only large enough to fit two people. We make a schedule for the oven as it is only large enough to bake two dishes at a time. The boys buy, kill, defeather, and cook two chickens over a firepit on the rooftop. We make do. We stress. We worry that it is all not going to get done in time.
But miraculously it does.

The girls get ready in my room. We play Christmas music from my laptop, blaring Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” numerous times. We help each other tie our newly purchased and silk woven saris. Some are navy blue, one is a bright orange, mine is an orchid pink. We assist each other in perfectly placing our red bindhis in the center of our forehead. Somehow, somebody has a bottle of vodka that we pass around, taking swigs between tying and curling and placing and perfecting. The shots are sharp and go down smooth.
We all become giddy. Instantly forgetting the stress of the day, our dreadful and looming final papers, our last two weeks in India, and of course the thought of not being home with our families. The past three months have been unifying. Making us grow in ways we never thought we could and see in ways we never knew where there. Thinking back to this time in my life always makes me wish I was still there. There in that room, getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner. Dancing to Christmas music in a pink and gold sari, with a vodka buzz, surrounded by some of the most beautiful women I will ever know.
Anna asks, “What time is dinner?” as we continue to hurry and finish getting ready.
“Six!” April answers back.
“What time is it now?” Asks Anna again.
“A quarter after six,” Alexandra giggles as she glances down at her watch.
“What!” Chloe yells. “You mean it already started?!” The room becomes silent as we look at each other with wide open mouths. A wave of laughter simultaneously erupts as we stampede out of my room. We run up the steep cases of stairs, holding up our saris to keep us from falling, to eventually arrive at the flat rooftop.
“We’ve only been waiting for you,” Sam says as he turns around from the table that is pristinely set, where he, Max, and John, and our professors are patiently awaiting our arrival.
“Now we can let the wild rumpus begin!” yells Max as we all take our seats and make the table full.
After we become settled and situated we begin the dinner we made for ourselves.
The Thanksgiving dinner we made in India.

I can’t remember what we talked about at dinner or how long it lasted or the taste of all the dishes we ate. But I do remember laughing so hard my smile hurt the next day. I remember bouncing from one end of the table to the other, trying to soak up a little bit of every friend filled up with joy. I remember talking to Natalia, our professor, and her telling me how stunning I looked in my sari. I remember the empty bottles of beer we drank, and tugging on chicken bones, and exchanging our secret Santa presents. I remember the scarf Sam gave me, and the mints and gum he wrapped hidden inside. I remember the toy chameleon I gave to Kerry, Natalia’s husband, as his secret Santa present. A chameleon was the animal he chose the night we all did our spirit animal cards along the Eastern shore, on the sands, of the Ganga River. Nobody at the table was not laughing when he opened it. I remember the fire we had later that night, after we had all changed out of our dress suits and saris and into our lounge pants and pajamas. I remember dancing to “Tu Meri,” this Indian dance song from the popular movie Bang Bang! we were all obsessed with and Yogesh loved.
I remember it all and yet I wish I remembered more.
Whether I die tomorrow or in fifty years, I have already decided this Thanksgiving is my favorite one of them all.

My alarm goes off at 3:30 am the next morning. I push the snooze button and five minutes later it goes off again. I don’t want to wake up, the vodka and partial food comma keep pushing me back to sleep. But finally, by 3:45 am, after three snoozes I pull myself out of bed. I don’t bother with putting my contacts in and I stumble up to the rooftop alone. I sit down at the end of our long dinner table and I begin to dial a familiar number.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Happy Thanksgiving!!! We have been waiting for you!” Aunt Kim shouts merrily into the phone. “Oh I love and miss you sweetie. Here let me pass you around to everybody!” The phone is passed to my grandma, my grandpa, my Mom and Dad, my sisters, their husbands, my niece, my nephew, my cousins, Uncle Lyle, Aunt Colleen and Uncle Bobby. I lose it quickly. It might have been when my grandma says “I wish I was with you,” that the tears begin to fall. I remember not barely being able to say anything at all, as I did not want to give away the fact that I was crying all by myself, alone on a rooftop, almost a million of miles away. I quietly try to hold back my whimpers, as sounds of my family’s thanksgiving invade my ears. The laughter of the little ones, the background noise of the television, the clattering of plates. I can almost smell the Hawaiian rolls on the table and the taste of a glass of red wine my aunt would have poured me. The phone returns back to my mother. She asks about my day and I quickly try to explain to her all that happened.
“I miss you so much. It just doesn’t feel the same without you,” She says; there might be a little tearful whimper in her voice.
“It wasn’t the same without you either. All of you,” I sniffle and cough on my tears.
“Did you have a good day at least?” She asks.
“The best,” I say as I wipe the tears from my eyes and finish up the phone call. I hit the end button and place my phone on the table.
I squint up at the tiny stars in the Indian sky, letting my tears continue to fall, thanking all of the gods and goddesses up there for the most beautiful Thanksgiving I could have ever had.
It was all that and a little bit more.

My L.L. Bean boots sludge through the mud soaked and leave scattered ground. The slushy trail leads me through tangled and gnarled up trees and this euphoric-like forest where you might just see a fairy. My body feels lighter just walking towards something new.

I needed to get out of the house, out of town, out of my head for a while, so I headed to the woods. I found this nature trail running one day a couple of months ago and it has become my favorite running trail as of yet in Michigan.
Today, I decide to leave my running shoes behind and walk the trail. Taking my time, stopping when I want to, inspecting the moss growing up tall oak trees, and taking pictures of the golden red leaves still hanging from some maple branches. At last I stop by a sandy shore along the river and allow my mind to pause and find perspective. I count the leaves by my boots and draw my fingers through the sand. It is a slightly cloudy and grey day.
I’m not going to lie it was a pretty rough week.
It rained every day, the sun barely came out, and due to the overcast clouds at night I was never able to see the almost full moon.
My new Michigan car insurance came through and turned out to be about double the cost of my New York insurance. It scared me to know that the only income I have is from my not paid enough job as an Assistant Teacher at a Montessori children’s school, and that that would not be nearly enough to pay for all of the insurance. It gets worse.
My new Michigan driver’s license picture looks like I stepped out of hell.
I am driving a rental car with no working lights on the dashboard, while my Mazda is in the shop getting some body work done.
The cat threw up a few times again. In numerous places this time.
I ran out of candles in the house and don’t know if I will have enough money to buy any more this weekend. Candles help keep my fire burning. Get it?
Oh…and I can’t forget that I got slapped in the face by a five-year-old boy in school the other day. That was the first time I ever got slapped in the face.  And it hurt. Bad.

I was cracking. The tension of life was pulling me in all directions and I didn’t know where to go next. What to do first. How this even all happened in the first place? When did becoming an adult become so hard? I take pride in growing up, in figuring out the challenges of life on my own, with the side advise of my parents and older friends. But this past week, I was done.
A part of me just wanted to pack it all away and travel back a few years. To the days when I had no car insurance payments or cats to worry about or candles to run out of.
A part of me just wanted it all to end.
As I cried into my boyfriend’s arms one night I realized how pathetic I must look.
A college educated, employed and yoga teaching American woman in the prime of her 20’s, complaining about her lack of money and shitty driver’s license picture. The tears felt fake as they fell.
That’s when I remembered my Thankfuls.

“Thankfuls” was an essay I wrote my senior year in college. It was published in The Laurentian, St. Lawrence’s art and literary magazine and I was asked to read it at the issue’s publication party. It is the one writing piece I am proud of. Not that I am not proud of them all, but this is the only essay that after years of not reading I would still not change a sentence.
It’s the essay that could hold true for the rest of my life.
The essay about all of my Thankfuls. All of the beautiful things that make up me. That make me grateful to be living and breathing in this fresh and never dull world.
The essay that defines me; breaks me down into 11 categories and puts me all back together again, forming the better and best person I want to be.
The one and only me.

Thankfuls

1. Swinging in the hop house, bad puppy, The Berenstean Bears, sewing kits, socks, Children’s Tylenol, chocolate chip cookies made with honey, a broken left front tooth, vegetable gardens, a 1972 yellow Chevy van, Rafi in the tub, my slinky.

2. My house was built around the time of the Civil War. It is white and square and called an Italianate in architectural house lingo. There is a second stairway in the back that was made for slave use only. Now we use it as a pantry. The ghost’s name is Flint. He lives in my closet.

3. It was when my foot started to feel like it could not twist straight. Like it was coiled up in a knot. When I ran on the road my footsteps felt sloppy and heavy like a cold bucket of water. It was when my foot got caught. When my foot hurt so bad I thought I could pee. It was when I thought I would die if I could not run again that I knew running was that important. That running was my form of the Buddha. My own made up religion. My rose of the day whenever we exchanged them at dinner. I figured as long as I had ankles I could put all of my pressure on those instead. You do not need feet to run. You need grounding.

4. In 1953, 66% of women became housewives straight out of college. I don’t even know how to cook a chicken. Can I say I’m a vegetarian?

5. I did not know who I was yelling to when I yelled to the wrong person across the basketball court in fifth grade. A few weeks later I wore my first pair of glasses. Now, one-a-day Daily contacts with a -4.0 prescription give me a clear and colorful world. One that I would not be having without them. Of all his daughter’s, I was the one to get my father’s eyes. They are a deep, deer eye brown. The color though comes from my mother.

6. I am thankful for the sun that rises every day, even if we can’t quite see it. I am thankful for the moon when it becomes full. For the rivers and the rope swing that I always hesitate in letting go of. For the mountains and the peaks that carry me upward to new heights. I am thankful for the wind that tells me to run harder. For the berry bushes that leave scratches on my arms, the mud that crawls under my fingernails, the smell of smoke from the last ashes of fire. I am thankful for the rain. It sounds like clapping hands.

7. I pray to a God who has my voice. Whose body is made up of words.

8. Six months ago I found out I was going to India. A few days ago, when I went to open my Hindi Beginner’s Guide Book, it hit me that I actually was. I guess all I needed to do was look at my plane ticket. It says I leave the 23rd of August. I will be 21 and a half years old to the day. I do not think I will have a better half birthday. No, I am not accepting gifts. This is more than enough.

9. I remember when I wanted to be just like her. When I did everything she did. Including mimic her hair style, her dressing habits, her luck of finding four leaf clovers along the road, running in only a sports bra, discovering the magic of mountains. I still want to be just like her. Only now I think I am. I don’t even have to try. We are twins born seven years apart. I think we will die on the same day.

10. Disposable cameras, skinny dipping, dawn of the buffalo, the smell of old records, using Christmas lights at any time of the year, picking wildflowers from the cemetery, jean overalls, swing sets, red wine after hiking, a bed that works, a body not broken, seven books of poetry on the shelf.

11. There is a picture of me in first grade wearing a pair of Looney Tune overalls and holding a wooden no. 2 pencil. I am writing. Writing words, ideas, and sentences. I think this was the day I decided I wanted to become a writer when I grow up. When I knew all I wanted to do was write lots of words, ideas, and sentences.  15 years later I am.

 

I walk out of the woods a little different.
A little more relieved and a lot more thankful. To this day it still surprises me how a walk in the woods can make me feel rejuvenated and ready to tackle any hardship that lies in my tracks.
Walking along the still and silent river to my car, I feel stronger. A little bit more grown up. Or at least I am trying to. Sometimes it’s hard to grow up when we I don’t know where to go or what to do. After my walk today, I have come to accept that it is okay though. That at 24 years old, I don’t need to know all the answers or how to solve all my questions. That if an outrageously expensive car insurance bill and stressful day at work is all I am worrying about, then I think I will be okay. That things like this happen and it is our job to work through them, not around them.

That is the glory of life. That is how we learn. How we become more whole individuals.
I lift the handle of my loaner Buick door and it screeches slowly open. I sit down in the old stained seat and twist the key into start. The car revs itself alive and as I go to flip the switch to turn on the headlights I notice the bright dashboard. After a week of the dashboard lights being out and having to turn on the overhead light to check my speed every now and again at night, there was now light behind the gaged numbers.
I laugh out loud at this silly and simple happenstance, and think this is just another thing I have to be thankful for.

 

P.S.  The pictures used in this blog post I am sad to say were taken by my phone camera, not a disposable camera.  Let me remind you though, I am still super thankful for disposable cameras  and had to make my boyfriend go out and buy me one last week because I just finished one and had no money to buy another.  That’s love baby…for the cameras and the cause=))

I have this green mason jar in my kitchen that is called the Happy Jar. One of my girlfriends in college had one; a jar in which you write down your most happy or favorite memories on post-it notes, fold them up, and place them in a jar. On New Year’s Eve you open the notes and read through your various memories of the past year. I began to make a happy jar in the Florida Keys when my boyfriend, Kevin, and I started living together. And today, a crisp day in early September, just feels like a good day to choose a memory from the jar. It is the night of our housewarming party in Michigan. It feels appropriate to pick a memory from our last house, to understand it is time to create more memories in a new one. I pull out a folded piece of paper, open and smooth out its crinkled edges on the kitchen counter. The date in the top right corner reads, April 8th, 2017. The note reads,

Being out on the skiff with Matt, finding $100, and going to Kiki’s for dinner with my boys.

Of all the memories to choose, I choose the one that hits home the most. That takes me right back to that place, to the islands that became my home. Tonight, was the night that a majority of them would be destroyed, devastated, and ruined.
The night Hurricane Irma would hit their shores.
We would be toasting and ringing in a new house, as our old one would be filled with five feet of water.
All the more reason to celebrate. I wish it was easier to feel that way.

It all starts with Matt Finn.  Matt, the man I mention in my happy note and the name that fills up my happy jar with so many beautiful memories.
If it was not for Matt I wouldn’t have met Kevin. I wouldn’t have learned how to snorkel, semi-Scuba dive, and balance my beer bottle on the roof of a house boat while speeding through the Atlantic Ocean. I wouldn’t have learned what freedom was in a new and foreign landscape. And I don’t think I would have stayed around long enough to realize it if it wasn’t for Matt.
He showed me a different side to Island life. Up until meeting him, I was constrained to merely the islands and the bridges connecting them. “The whole point of living on an island is to get out on the water around it,” I remember him telling me. To get off the coral rock, to have a boat, to sail or skiff away, to find a spot of ocean where no land or man is visible as far as the eye can see.
The whole point is to find freedom. How it tastes salty and feels like leather skin dried out from the sun, crunchy hair, and beer stained breath. Jelly fish stings and barracuda bites. Tan lines and sand between your toes.
The Keys aren’t about the Keys at all. They are about everything that lies around and under them.

I meet Matt out to dinner one night. Savannah, the girlfriend I ran away to Florida with, and I drive down to the lower Keys to try out a new restaurant I hear about on the radio, Kiki’s Sandbar. We eat and sip our drinks at a high-top table next to the bar. Two men sit at the high-top table to the left of us. I can’t help but stare at the younger man with long, past his shoulder’s, sun streaked brown hair. I’m a sucker for men with long hair and this one has it. Matt, the older handsome man, notices my wandering eye, and as he passes our table, he whispers in my ear, “Come have a drink with us out on the dock”. Done. We do.
The rest plays out just the way Matt planned. “I saw two beautiful people and thought why shouldn’t they meet? Or better yet be together?” Defends Matt in the reason why he introduces Kevin to me that night.
I start dating Kevin a few weeks later. A few weeks after that the three of us begin taking sunset cruises, speeding out one of Matt’s three boats to catch the last glimpse of sunlight, have a few strong beers, and take warm salty dips after the sun dips down beneath the aqua horizon.
Two months after that Matt invites us out boat camping.

Before living in the Keys, I could count on my fingers the number of times I had been on a boat. After living there, I would have hundreds of hands full. For one, I worked part time as a first mate on a 36-foot-long sail boat, allowing me to get out on the water every night. But when Matt was in town, especially when work for him was slow (he owns his own mangrove cutting company), Kevin and I would get a call or a text saying, let’s get off this rock. The night before we are first invited to go boat camping with Matt feels like Christmas eve. We have our bags packed, the boos stashed, and a set of warm clothes for a cool night out on the breezy water. I have a new disposable camera devoted to the trip and Kevin insists we take playing cards. We go to bed early. Matt always likes to leave on time, and being the young and carefree kids we are, Kevin and I are usually late and Matt doesn’t like that. But this time we are going to be on time. Because we are going boat camping tomorrow and neither of us have been boat camping before.
The excitement of the unknown sings us to sleep.

It feels like you are standing in the middle of heaven. Whatever that iconic vision of heaven looks like; the one painted on ancient palace ceilings or cut out in cathedral stained glass windows.
Like wherever you look, you can’t look far enough back to see where you started from.
You are in this sphere of water, air, and white whimsical clouds. There are no people. No land. No sounds, except for the motion of waves.
I have been back country camping before and experienced a similar feeling of solitude and seclusion, only this time it is different. This time there is no rock to catch you when you fall or ground to set up your tent and sleep upon.
All you have is water and the light reflecting off it. All you have is the blue of the ocean. The place of this blue feels like a dream you once had as a little girl napping at your grandmother’s house after playing dolls one afternoon. This blue feels like the 1950’s. As you sit on top of the house boat roof your mind begins to slip away and you think about all the shades of blue you have ever seen.

Underwater blue, morning blue, sunset blue, horizon blue, nearing an island blue.
Full moon blue, no moon blue, cold blue, windy blue, frozen blue.
Humid blue, hot blue, hazy blue, storm blue, drunken blue, buzzed blue, blue blue.
Every day it is changing.
Every day it feels a different way. Like today it is saying “Welcome Home,” this is something better than you could have ever imagined.
This just may be heaven, or paradise, or simply a sky of blue.
You don’t know yet.
You haven’t lived long enough, but you are getting there.
As you look away, out onto the ageless waves, there is a blue that smiles back saying,
“You will travel here some day” and learn the color of blue is forever.

Our boat camping weekend is full of sipping beers between snorkeling dips, Kevin catching a fairly large Nurse Shark, and playing games of rummy on the boat’s roof while Matt fries up slices of zucchini and filets of whatever fish he spear gunned that day. We attempt to camp on a small island, where we make a fire and I pitch my tent. Within an hour we are forced to pack up and sleep out on the water because of the infestation of mosquitos and their unrelenting bites. I am sad to take my tent down, folding up the stakes and unsure of the next time I’ll be able to use it. Camping is such a Northern activity. You have your campground sites, RV hookups and bathroom stations within walking distance, nearby lakes, playgrounds, and hiking trails for your leisure. But what we were doing was not typical camping. I’m not sure how many people can say they have boat camped before. Where you have stayed on a boat for over 24 hours and when you walk on land again you have the opposite effect of sea sickness; you have land sickness, where your body feels queasy by the level ground beneath you and not the waves of the ocean. 
Boat camping: where you go to bed in the middle of the ocean, just as the crescent moon is rising up over the Eastern Horizon and it is one of the most beautiful images you have ever seen. Your favorite shape of the moon is a crescent. You have one tattooed by your heart.
Boat camping: when you wake up on top of a boat, the light and heat of the sun forcing you to roll over and see if your boyfriend is still by your side. Your hand moves away his blonde streaked hair and as you gaze down at his still sleeping face, Matt pops his head up over the front rim of the boat and captures a disposable picture of you two. It is one of your favorite pictures. It makes you remember the feeling of waking up that morning to pure oceanic freedom. No other boats are around and all land is so very far away. That picture reminds you of falling in love; with Kevin, with Matt, with the beauty underneath it all. Underneath the ocean, the water, the level of earth you have always lived upon. This time you went deeper; you grew a little more into the great unknown of below. Extending yourself and your view of this beautiful world making you love it more.
Every time you look at this picture, you wish to be on that roof top again. With a fresh day of snorkeling ahead of you, an open ocean calling out jump on in.
Sometimes I can still smell the salt on my skin.
I still have some of my bikini tan lines to remind me that this was not all a dream.

On the night before Hurricane Irma hits the Keys, I call Matt. I’m folding laundry and have been on edge all day. A piece of me feels like it is there; in my old apartment, packing franticly, driving out of the Keys with a herd of cars, praying this place will still be here after the ungodlike storm hits. Matt drives all three boats out of the Keys, transporting them to his other house along the west coast of Florida. He drives the houseboat there and I am thankful it will be safe. I ask Matt if he’s scared and he says no. “It’s just another hurricane that I’ll bunker down through and it’s gonna be one hell of a mess to clean up,” he yawns just thinking about it.
In a television interview with the Miami Herald weeks later, Matt says, “at least now I have a better view with some of my palm trees down.” He is always looking at the positive and that is what I love most about him. No matter what the situation, whether it is a hurricane tearing through his house or mosquitos tearing him up. There is always a second option, maybe even a better one than the first. He keeps smiling with his native prayer beads hanging low around his neck.

When I think of the Keys I don’t think about the roads connecting each one, or my favorite bars, or palm trees, or beachy shores, or the 7-mile bridge. I think of water and the feeling of being out on it or in it. Of swimming through its warm waves and down under its surface to a whole new world I would have never know about unless Matt took me there.
Unless he unlocked the secret to the Keys.
The secret of how they survive no matter what high scale hurricane hits them. It’s not what your tourist eye can see that gives the Keys their magic; it’s the opposite.
It’s what you can’t see. Unless you’re out in the middle of the ocean, sitting on top of a boat, questioning why you should ever head back to shore. Because out here, this is where you belong.
Lost in the clouds and the blueness of sky.
Where you can’t escape the sun and you learn how love has a new degree.
Something you could never feel before.

Swim deep enough and you will find it.

I believe we can have multiple mothers.  Fathers.  Sisters.  Best friends.
We have our blood mothers and siblings of course, those best friends that are with us from the very beginning and then the ones we meet decades down the road.
But we can also have spirit mothers, soul sisters, and soul mates we may never see again.
These people who live inside of us without any relation at all and have pieces of themselves engraved in our bones. Memories of their morals shine out of our veins, making us more whole and complete individuals.
Making us our best selves.

I have a spirit mother and her name is Susan.
Now don’t get me wrong. I will only have one birth mother. One real mother. The one who created me, raised me, and sends me money in the mail when I’m well bottom broke. She is the love of my life and I don’t want her to ever overlook that. She is my rock and joy.
But then there is Susan.
I met her in college through my best friend, Savannah. She was always talking about Susan and how similar I was to her. She feared me meeting Susan because she knew we would fall in love instantly. And she was right. We did. Even more than we could have imagined.
Somehow, I knew she was going to change my life even before she did.

She carries around pop rocks in her purse and has a whole shelf devoted to baking supplies in her pantry. She adds butterscotch schnapps to box brownie mixes and makes the best mimosas I have ever tasted, adding fresh fruit and Bacardi Coconut Rum for flavor.
She is the most positive person I know. There has not been one time on the phone when she does not sound somewhat happy or upbeat. Despite all that goes wrong, from her mother’s kitchen flooding to her home phone mysteriously dying, she never blinks an eye. She carries on, she beats her drum, she holds her head high and laughs about it in the end.
If there is someone I want to live like it is her. She and her husband, William, built their house on Saratoga Lake in New York 12 years ago. Ever since then, they have created an earth friendly empire that puts anyone under a magical spell any time he or she visits.
The kitchen walls are orange, there is a massage table upstairs, Congo drums in the corner, a cd or record playing no matter what time of the day it is. In Susan’s bathroom, she has a bulletin board full of old concert tickets, Fleetwood Mac albums, Stevie Nick’s signature, nostalgic pictures of her and William oceanside before I knew them. Books line their nightstands and they make their own kombucha in the basement. A compost, Susan started in the backyard. Kokopellis dot their guest room walls.

I want a house just like this. A life I should say. One of simplicity, love, and joy.
Susan never had any children, but she is one of the best mother’s in my mind.
She will take care of anyone. She is the Mother Teresa of my world, the Gandhi of my heart.
She is my mother, or perhaps in a past life she was. In this life, she is my guide to greater peace and wholeness as a person. She helps me to become my best self.
She shows me how in the way she lives and in what she does for others, along with herself. There has to be a balance in how much you give to the world. You must also know when to give back accordingly to yourself. Susan has shown me that.

When I bring up in conversation my “spirit mother,” which happens quite often, people stop and slightly raise an eyebrow, before I begin to explain myself and the definition of what a spirit mother means. We all have them. Even you I bet. Spirit Mothers.
For some, it may be that mother you never had. For others, that woman who picked you up from parties on late summer nights when you couldn’t drive home and feared calling your real mother. For others, it might be that teacher who made you fall in love with history, the boss who gave you a job, the bartender who taught you how to drink, the host mother in France who gave you your first sex talk, or the old lady who lived down the road who used to write poetry and made you want to write more of it. They are everywhere. All around us.
Spirits. Guides. Mothers.
Susan is mine.
When your car window is smashed and your favorite new purse is stolen in downtown Detroit, she tells you to tell your mother. Tell her everything.
When it’s your first day of working at an Elementary school, she tells you to wear something colorful and bright. The kids will remember you more.
Always have snacks ready, a six pack of beer in the fridge, brownie mix on hand when you need something sweet. Running low on cash? Go to that concert anyway and dance your worries away. Sending out a birthday package? Collage the box with old magazine clippings and don’t forget the Birthday Oreos.
When somebody tells you what they need or want for Christmas, write it down, make a gift list, even if it’s only July. When Christmas comes and you give them that one thing they mentioned months ago and maybe forgot about themselves, they will be forever grateful.
Eat well. Never stop learning. Laugh because life is funny. Love like it is your job.
Because really it is.  The most important one.

It is my last weekend in New York before I leave for Michigan. I plan a quick visit to Susan’s house before I have to meet and pick up my boyfriend from the airport later that night. His flight becomes delayed, my visit quickly turns into a long overnight, and now the flight won’t arrive until 10pm the next day. The day of my layover at her house, just so happens to be Family Day in Susan’s neighborhood.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go? I won’t know anybody and I don’t want you to worry about me,” I say as Susan quickly cuts up a pan of brownies and shakes powdered sugar over them on a pink tray.
“Of course you are going! You are my family. You’re my spirit daughter and that’s exactly how I am going to introduce you to everyone,” She says giggling. We laugh together, knowing that we may sound a little crazy when we reference each other as our “spirit” mother or daughter.
We walk to the event together; a full-blown party armed with dunking machines and water slides for children, homemade sangria and beer on tap for adults, tents full of food, and a live band for dancing under the moon later on in the evening. It is the perfect day. I meet neighbors, relatives, and family members that I have only ever heard about, but never been able to put a face with for years. Now I feel like I have known them forever.
Susan and I are invited out on a friend’s boat on Saratoga Lake and we quickly take up the offer. I am the youngest and she’s the oldest woman on the boat; I like how we pull everything together, bookending moments just like this one.
The boat speeds around the lake, stopping now and then to anchor, and allowing us to cool off in the wavy waters. We stop at one end of the lake, a shallow sandy section where the entire boat party slips in for a dip. With our drinks in hand, we pass a volley ball between the group, the sun sinking closer to the horizon behind us. My body is warm of sangria and laughter.
A feeling of peace enters my soul. Susan always tells me, we should always feel like we are in the right place at the right time. Otherwise, we aren’t actually there at all. If we hold intention to where we are, we are fully present.
And I am fully present here, in the waters of my spirit mother and her family. I grab Susan’s hand, and look her in the eyes, whispering, thank you for everything, without having to say a word.
Her spirit hears me and sings I love you back.

I stand there frozen. My feet glued to the rock beneath me. I look out over the still pond, to the ascending mountain range beyond. The sky is blue with white cotton ball clouds, it is one of those days where you never want to go back inside. One of the last hot days of summer. Looking around, taking it all in, nothing seems to be wrong in the world. Besides for the fact that I can’t make myself jump.
I stand there tazed. My legs pumping, my hands shaking. I look down at the daunting water ten feet below and my stomach drops. I could puke any moment. If I was in the middle of the pond, looking up to the rock, it probably wouldn’t appear as nerve wrecking. But standing from the top, it feels like I am on a New York city sky scrapper, dangling off the rooftops edge.
I can’t do it. I don’t care if I jump or not. Do you care? Will it make me a better person if I do? I don’t think so.
It’s only jumping off a rock into a pond.
How much can that mean?
How hard can it be?
Why can’t I make myself do it?

For being a fairly adventurous person, from scaling high peaked mountains to open-faced rock walls, to moving without a plan and starting over in new states I know nothing about, when it comes to jumping off of something I can’t do it to save my life. I run in below freezing temperatures and in the blazing Florida heat, drive on ice slickened roads and talk to strangers. I don’t mind needles or the dentist or ingrown toenails I have to pull off myself. I’m not nervous around sharks or bears or jelly fish. Heights and plane rides, the alleys of India to the streets of Detroit. No problem at all.
But jumping is a different story.
My body shuts down and I can’t move.
I am shot with a dose of numbness.
I am brave. At least I think I am.
But when I can’t jump off of something it makes me feel weak; estranged from myself and uncomfortable with the limits of my own body and what it can usually be pushed to do.
Jumping is one thing it can’t do. Or am I just telling myself that?

It all comes down to the jumping bridge.
I picture it as a high bridge, all alone against the crystal Florida sky, that not too many people know about. As I walk towards it for the first time, I can hear people cheering and children screaming before I see it. I realize then it will not just be, my boyfriend Kevin and I there, alone, jumping off the bridge at our preferred pace. Instead we will have a crowd full of families waiting in line behind us, clapping us on, taking our picture from the top. We arrive at an old highway bridge that is crowded with lines of people on both sides. Coolers full of cheap bear and picnic baskets full of salty snacks dot the sides of the bridge. Towels hang over the bridge’s wall and one person brings a speaker that I would hate to get wet to supply some dubstep background music. The bridge stands over a thin canal that leads to the ocean, about thirty feet wide. Depending on what way the current is flowing determines the side of the bridge most people jump from. Today the current is flowing to the ocean, from the left to right hand side of the bridge; a line snakes along the left side.
“Let’s get in line,” Kevin says to me.
“Don’t you maybe want to wait a while, or go swim first?” I say, a little hesitant and now doubting my urge to jump. I haven’t even looked down yet.
“Well the whole point of jumping is to get in the water, so let’s just jump first. I’m sweating.” Kevin begins to walk towards the end of the line. I watch as teenage girls hold each other’s hands and jump in together, as middle-aged men do backflips off the bridge’s edge, and children no older than five straighten their tiny bodies into pencils and hop off the high wall. I am amazed at how fast they leap from the edge. On top of the three-foot-high wall, is about a 20-foot drop to the water below. I have never jumped from something this high before.
Deep down I know I will not jump today. Sometimes you just know.
But of course, I’m not going to tell my fairly new boyfriend, who I am trying to impress that.
“Okay, let’s do it,” I say strongly. I hated lying, but I hate jumping more.

I don’t jump from the jumping bridge that day or the next time Kevin and I go. Or the next time after that when I promise the third time will be the charm. Or the next time after that when we decide to float down the canal with two tubes tied together and a cooler of Mike’s Hards. Or the next time after that on the day I finish my first marathon and want nothing more than to jump into a body of water. The jumping bridge is the closest place and my body is on fire from 26 miles of Florida roadside heat, but I still can’t do it.
I never can make myself jump.
Not once.
It’s not that I don’t understand why. It is all mental. I am the one holding myself down on the bridge, not letting go of the wall, not allowing myself to fall. It’s not that I’m afraid of hitting the water or of what it feels like to fall, it’s that I simply can’t make myself jump. My legs don’t let me, my body says no. My mind goes haywire in thinking what the hell is wrong with me for not being able to do this, and it just ends with me standing on a bridge and not jumping off.
Always walking back to my car with another failed attempt under my belt.

I stand there frozen. My feet glued to the rock beneath me. Ivy freely swims in the pond below and all I want to do is join her. I can do this. I want to do this. Just do it Mal. Jump.
Natasha comes and stands beside me. She takes my hand.
“We can jump together,” She says.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if I still can’t do it?” I say shaking nervously.
“You will. Just look out. Don’t look down and don’t think about it. You can do this,” Natasha calmly says. “Whenever you are ready.”
I squeeze her hand. I boil up inside with fear and nausea. I don’t want to let her down or prove her wrong. This woman I have come to love and respect and has come to love and respect me, I don’t want to show her my one weakness.
I step to the edge of the rock and she follows my lead. I can’t feel my body as I look straight out. I don’t look down, I look up, and the clouds dissolve before me as we fall to meet the dark water. We crash into it, our hands still interlaced, and we finally free ourselves and make our way to the surface. Out of the water, Natasha looks at me and smiles, Ivy swims towards us and we form a triangle.
Laughter erupts between the three of us. Nobody says “Good Job” or “You did it,” because nobody has to. I float away on my back, gazing up at the cotton ball clouds, the rock we jumped from jutting up in the corner of my vision. It seems like nothing at all. A small amount of height compared to the overwhelming anxiety I felt before jumping in.
How quickly your perception can change when your perception has been changed.
How different something can look when you are standing below it than on top.
How one moment you are fearful and the next moment you are free.

There will always be cans and there will always be can’ts.
Hold on to both and acknowledge them. Write them down and work at them every day.
Know they can be changed just as quickly as they were formed and that nothing in this world is permanent.
If I was at the jumping bridge today perhaps I would jump.
Tomorrow, not even a chance.

So, jump when you can.  With all of your might.

It won’t hurt.   I promise.

I like to think I am a professional Mover.
If moving could be my second job I would be rich by now.

Since the age of 18 I have not lived in the same place for more than a year.
I have moved from dorm to dorm, state to state, and country to country.
From Gaines to 62 Park Street to the new dorm at St. Lawrence University.
From the United States to India.
From New Delhi to Jaipur to Mussoorie to Shimla.
From Canton to Saranac Lake to Lake Placid.
From Lake Placid to Miami to Marathon.
From Marathon to Novi to Mount Clemens.
From New York to Florida to Michigan.
I have lived through numerous zip codes and multiple area codes.
I’ve changed my address more times than my mother can keep up.
I remember them all though. Keeping a list in the back of my address book.

It all starts with college. This iconic image of moving out of my childhood room with stuffed totes of pictures and frivolous decorations and army bags full of clothes. My mother’s van is packed to the brim the day I leave for college. It is a straight downpour of August rain. I remember making multiple wet trips in and out of my dorm with my father, my mother staying dry inside, making my bed and trying to organize my out of control and messy life. This is the first and last time my parents will ever help me move. I think the rain really got to them.

Through college I move myself in and out of four different dorm rooms. I haul my life, up and down two to three flights of stairs, in and out of rain storms and below freezing temperatures.
I always think I overpack, but once I’m settled and moved in I’m thankful for all that I bring. Including that dirty Jenga game or pair of ice skates I considered leaving behind. While unpacking, after everything is unloaded from my car, I open a beer and drink it slow as I set up yet another room, making it a little different from the one I had before.

The fall semester of my senior year of college I move to and study abroad in India. Opposed to a car full of my belongings, I can only take my sister’s REI camping pack and my L.L. Bean school backpack. These two backpacks contain what I will need for four months. I go a little insane in the days before I leave, thinking I’m not taking enough. What if I need another jacket? What if that pair of sandals break? Will six pairs of underwear be enough? Should I pack a thong? Returning home, to a bedroom full of things I never once used while in India, I feel overwhelmed. I declutter my room and fill bags of clothes to donate to the Salvation Army.

I lied. My parents do help me move out of my last college dorm room. The one I did not pack up enough of by myself before Graduation. Even when I had a full week to pack but was too busy getting married and partying every night to even think about it. After the commencement and a nauseas hangover, my father tries to help me pack up my mess of a room. Girlfriends I will never see again, and the love of my life who is moving to Australia, try to have heartfelt goodbyes with me, but I am too busy trying to finish packing within the hour time limit my father gives me because he has to work tomorrow morning. After nearly being pushed out of my last and favorite dorm room, I cry the entire three hours home. Never getting a chance to properly say goodbye to the room. I still have dreams about it.

A week after Graduation I move up to the Adirondacks of New York. First, I move into a beautiful yellow house with four close friends in Saranac Lake. We throw raging parties, tan naked on the back deck, and my bedroom window has a clear view of Whiteface Mountain. Half way through the summer our water goes bad and we can’t wash our hands or take showers anymore due to the toxic stench. I partly move in with my boyfriend in town and after our three-month lease is up, I reserve a U-Haul to help move me and my girlfriends out. My childhood friend, Ivy, and I move in to this little brown house of the bartender we work with in Lake Placid. I take the bigger room with five tall windows. The first time it snows I feel like I’m in a snow globe. Ivy and I move out in December, a few days before Christmas, and decide we are heading to Florida. We needed to get away.

Ivy knows where she is going to live in Florida. I, on the other hand have no idea. My best friend, Savannah, and I load up the back of her Ford Ranger with camping gear and living materials to get us by until we find a place to live. If we find one that is. We road trip from New York to Florida, stopping and staying with friends in each state with pass through. After camping along a beach in Miami for a few days at a music festival, we decide to keep driving down to the Keys. On the night of my 23rd birthday, at a bar I receive free shots from, the bartender mentions a studio apartment for rent near where she lives. Within days we move in and sleep on an air mattress for two months. Savannah moves out three months later and my new boyfriend moves in two months after that. We buy used, cheap furniture and an old white television from the 90’s. The apartment borders an RV park and one crazy neighbor who yells at us for watching Red Box movies too loud. The landlord is crazy. She never gives us our security deposit back due to forgetting to clean the fan blades when we leave. If only I could tell the future tenants what they are getting into.

My boyfriend and I tightly pack the bed of his Dodge Ram, throwing a blue tarp over the back and ratchet strapping our Florida belongings down. The cat rides with him and my car is enclosed with laundry baskets of clothes, boxes of books, and easy to access beach supplies for the multiple beaches we will stop at on our drive North. We take a two-week long vacation, staying with long lost relatives in the back woods of Georgia or at cheap hotels where we can be as rowdy as we want. We eventually make it to Michigan with no apartment or house lined up. His sister allows us to stay her until we figure things out. At this point I am sick of moving and not having my own space or house. I drive to New York to reclaim the other half of my life and return to the bedroom I had since childhood. I spend the summer at my parent’s house and realize I haven’t lived at home this long since I was in high school. I feel like I grew down a few years.

There is an art to moving. A flow.
The more places you live, the more places you know, the more places you know how to move to next.
Each time you learn something different. Like not to move in winter or when you don’t have a place to move to, preferably. Each time you emerge a little bit older, a little bit wiser and more knowledgeable on the practice of moving.
So that by the next time you move, it will be the easiest move of them all.
You keep telling yourself that anyway.

After four months of being displaced and technically homeless, I finally have an address again.
A few days ago, in the pouring August rain, my boyfriend and I move into an old yellow house.
It has a clawfoot tub, oak floors, and a back deck that overlooks a large backyard and two red sheds. It has a Michigan basement that smells of mothballs and gives you the heebie-jeebies every time you go down to do your laundry
It is my dream house. The one I imagined having as a child and drew pictures of in preschool. The house that has a tiny room upstairs with a large closet where you can hang all of the clothes that have followed you around for the past six years.
The room you can hang pink prayer flags from, burn lavender incense in, and litter the walls with all the pictures of the places you’ve been and people you love.
The room you can put a desk in.
The desk you will write this from.
75 Gallup Street, Mount Clemens, Michigan, 48043.
Write me, find me, stop by for a visit.

I think it’s time I stay in one place for a while.

After I read the text message I knew she had something to tell me.

“Just seeing what you’re up to! Can I call you tomorrow?” It read.

This was coming from Sage and I don’t think I ever talked to Sage on the phone before. We exchanged texts; wishing each other “Happy weekends” or sending back and forth pictures of pretty flowers and Yogi tea bag quotes. But never, not once, had she texted me to ask if she could call me. I could have sworn she was going to call to say she was pregnant. We all knew she wanted to settle down and start a family and I told her she better call me to let me know when that day came.
Maybe it had come? I quickly texted her back, making a phone date for the next night, thinking hard of what I might buy for her baby shower gift.
Little did I know that the call had nothing to do with a new little baby.
The next night she would tell me her and her husband were moving out of the Keys, back to Melbourne, Florida where they were born and raised, to settle down and one day soon perhaps, start a family.
She had wanted to leave the Keys for a while now, and I was surprised to find that only two months after I left and moved away, she would be moving away too.

All I could think about was the bakery.
This place full of cupcakes and love and sprinkles and ice cream and pinks and blues and glitter and girls. This magical place that brought us together and I could not imagine her not being a part of.
She gave the bakery its grace and goodness.
She gave it her everything. Sweat, stress, long days and years of hard work.
Her shoes would never be able to be filled. It’s hard to replace a perfect person.

After I made the decision to stay and make a life in the Keys (after my long and adventurous road trip south, which is a whole different story for a whole different blog post) I searched every local paper in Marathon, Florida looking for a job. I knew I could be a waitress easily, but skimming over one paper I found an advertisement looking for morning bakers at a bakery in town. Sold. Baking couldn’t be that hard, right?
I drove down the road, found the pink lettered sign reading Sweet Savannah’s, and walked into this tiny yet adorable bakery turned ice cream shop at night. I asked the girl behind the counter for an application and within minutes I was hired by my two new bosses who were both named Kate. I started training that Sunday, 8 am sharp, with Sage. I had never met a Sage before.
I liked the name already.

She is the type of person who wears oversized, Katharine Hepburn sunglasses while making cookie dough. “It’s too keep the flour from getting in my eyes,” she says softly, as she turns and gives me a wide smile as I snap her picture.
She is the type of girl who drives a black pickup truck even though her favorite color is pink and she acts as if she should be driving a yellow convertible buggy with dreamcatchers painted on the side.
She has tiny wrists and boney hands, but can lift bags of sugar and boxes of chocolate chips like it is nothing at all.
Never does she seem stressed, or appear to be in a rush. Never does she burn the cookies or praise herself for baking loads of key lime pies or hundreds of cupcakes at lightning speed.
She is a baking goddess. Even if a baker was never what she wanted to be, she became one and perfected the art. She makes the job look easy and flawless.
I never did figure out her equation, though I like to think I came close.

We were friends long before we met.
She reminds me of a cousin I have who worships her long brown hair.
I remind her of one of her high school friends named Beth who likes to run a lot.
After that first day of training, we mold together fast.
For lunch, we share Asian salad kits, splitting the contents into 2 plastic Ziploc containers. She always finished first and we never knew where she packs it all away.
We are both workout fanatics; understanding the effects of how a good workout can make you feel like a new person. We exchange ab routines, lunge techniques, and the best running routes in town. She teaches me how to do a squat the correct way.
We love lacey bralettes; our smaller boob size catering to non-wire bras much easier than the other girls at work. We love having an excuse to get dressed up. We love the process of picking out the perfect outfit or dress, then the shoes, then the jewelry. Then the makeup, and matching bag, along with nail color and lip stick shade. I began joining her when she would get pedicures after work and it became my new favorite way to spend $40.
She made me fall in love with being a girl again. She taught me how to embrace and flaunt my womanhood. She got married when she was only 20 years old and has been a wife and homemaker for six full years. I am one-year younger and still cannot fathom the thought of roasting a chicken, let alone being engaged or married to anyone. She amazes me with her wisdom and maturity, while at times making me doubt my own.
Despite our differences, she still wrote in a letter to me that I am one of her best friends.
I think my love grew double for her that day.

Living on an island is challenging because you can only drive so far and grow so much. At first it is fresh and exciting, as any new place is, but after a few months of learning the territory and trying out all the restaurants and one movie theater within the 13-mile radius it all becomes familiar. Fast.
She had lived in the Keys for a good five years when I first met her and I could see it in her eyes. She always hinted that she and her husband Daniel would move back to Melbourne, that this was not the place where she permanently wanted to live.
After 15 months, I made the decision to move out of the Keys and I secretly wanted to pack her up and make her a gypsy with me.

The night she tells me on the phone she is leaving the Keys, I am in some way relieved.
I can already hear it in her voice and imagine this new light in her eyes.
Her time had finally come for change and the beginning of something new.
I am taken back to this one image of her truck packed full of boxes and appliances when we were moving out of the old bakery into the new one. I now try to picture her pick up full of her own household items, bags of clothes, and all the tiny and beautiful pieces of her life.
As stationary and stable as her life appeared to me, I knew she was meant to move on.
I knew there was a bird in her soul singing out for a new life.
For the coming of a new era and the dawning of a new day that was breaking now.

We both have a love for mountains and the wildness of out west. The cold of Colorado and the pretty pink flowers on certain cacti.
When it comes time for us to die I think our souls will meet in the dry desert dust, blown together over the turquoise oceans and deep red canyons.
I think our birds will fly side by side, singing the song they learned so long ago.
The song they have been singing all along.
The one that made them leave.

Here’s to you Sweet Sage, to the prospect of a new journey and the making of a new life.
To the singing of a new song.
May we meet again someday and reflect on the time that brought us together.
And made me realize you are one of the best friends I will always have.

It was August 10th and snowing.

I hadn’t seen snow in well over a year, let alone be in it. But here I was, snaking along the Beartooth Highway near the state line of Montana, driving in a hail-like snowstorm.
We turn into a pull off and quickly run out into the elements. I feel like a child who has just seen snow for the first time as I stick out my tongue and try to catch the clean, white flakes. The tiny crystals look like magic and smell like winter is near. What a lie.

A week ago, I was lying on a sandy beach in the middle of the Florida Keys.
Today I am in Montana, catching snowflakes on the tip of my tongue, remembering what it is I love so much about the cold and how it makes me feel wild.
I hadn’t felt this wild in a long time.

I had always wanted to go to Montana. The name of it sounds intoxicating as it rolls off your tongue easily. Montana. A state full of mountains, big sky, and vast land.
When I was trying to decide on where I wanted to go for my summer vacation, the word Montana crossed my mind. My best friend from high school, Zane, goes to college at Montana State University in Bozeman and had been begging me to come out and visit her for years. I had not seen her since the winter of 2014 and our patience was dwindling on when we would see one another again.
It was perfect.
She was finishing up her summer internship in Washington state and I had a vacation to somewhere set aside for 10 days.
It was decided; I would go to Montana.
I booked a few flights, pulled a few strings and packed only the essentials to avoid a checked bag fee. I would later realize I did not pack enough warm clothes, but yet again I was living in Florida and didn’t have many.
I was off. I met Zane, around midnight, at the Pasco, Washington airport and the journey evolved from there.

The first day of this westward adventure we spend in Washington. It is Zane’s last day of work and I am left to sleep in and play catch up with my jet lag. Zane’s parents live in Richland, the heart of the Tri-Cities area located in the southeast corner of the state. Zane’s mom and I visit Goose Ridge winery, sipping away at the delicious local wine. I become a giddy tourist quickly, skipping and smiling through the lanes of the vineyard. Later, after my wine buzz has dissolved, Zane and I load up the kayaks and head to the Yakima river. The river is still like the mud we bottom out in. We decide to hop out and go swimming. We have homemade risotto and brownies for dinner. The sunset from their balcony is dyed a bright red.

The next morning, we pack Zane’s Honda Pilot and begin our trek to Montana. I buy coffee at a gas station along Route 90 East and notice a few bugs floating along the rim of my cup. I think I still drink it. We listen to Awolnation, describing our boyfriends in detail and talking about our cats. We pass through Idaho, speeding up and over the mountain passes, and around the sublime city of Coeur d’Alene. We meet David, Zane’s boyfriend, in Missoula where we have local beers and Pad Thai for lunch. We park and stash Zane’s car at a Walmart outside of the city and cram into David’s Jeep Liberty. We listen to reggae music and cruise three hours north, heading straight towards Glacier National Park. We camp at the southwestern end of the park, near Hungry Horse Reservoir. I don’t sleep at all in the tent they let me borrow. I’m afraid a Grizzly bear might smell my Chapstick and tear me to shreds.

We spend a total of three days at Glacier. We cruise up Going to the Sun road every day with Zane taking amazing pictures and hopping out now and then to capture that perfect image. We hike a 10.4 mile loop up Siyeh pass and truly understand why Glacier is known as the “Crown of the Continent”. We pass Sexton Glacier and can feel the coldness before we see it. We travel to Two Medicine Lake on the east side of the park, where we see a triple rainbow. We camp at different camp sites every night. One night we camp along a clear lake, one night near the woods, one night we have a fire. I begin sleeping with them the second night and finally calm down about the grizzlies. We swim in a nearby lake to wash off our dirt and sweat every day. One night, as Zane and I are wading into the cold water a thin crescent moon rises over the southern mountain range. It fits my definition of a perfect moon. I close my eyes and make a wish.

After soaking up all that we can of Glacier, we drive back to Missoula where Zane and I hop into her Pilot and follow David due east. We pass through the heart of Big Sky country where the mountains are one long continuous chain. They never stop rolling. We eventually arrive at Zane and David’s yellow apartment in downtown Bozeman where we unpack, take showers, and play with Tevia, their black and white cat. We eat out every day, hitting their favorite breakfast nooks, Indian cuisine, and the restaurant where Zane used to hostess. We take day trips to nearby swimming holes and rivers. David jumps off a 30-foot cliff and I can’t bring myself to look over the edge. We hike Sacagawea Peak, the highest mountain in the Bridger Range that borders Bozeman. We see mountain goats at the top and I collect remnants of their white fur. We swim in Fairy Lake located near the trailhead and float on our backs, watching as the growing moon creeps up and over the barren peak. One day we decide to float down the Madison river. We gather a group of people, take two cars to park at the input and output locations, blow up our tubes and designate the largest one to be our beer cooler. We attempt to make a sail out of our tent fly and fail horribly. We laugh so hard I never think we will stop. I easily learn to navigate the streets in town and take early morning runs up Pete’s Hill and around the college campus. Bozeman feels like a home I never had, but someday will. Without a doubt.

In my last string of days, we drive south towards Wyoming. We take a steep cruise up the Beartooth Highway, pausing at the top of the pass to take in the 360-degree view of the West settlers dreamed about. We soon pass into Yellowstone National Park and I see wild bison (buffalo) for the first time. We stop at the boiling river, where the current is strong and the water sometimes scorching, to take a quick soak. That night we head to Red Lodge, Montana, where my best friend from college, Alyssa, is working on Aspen Ridge Ranch for the summer. Alyssa leads us through the horse barns and pastures; she invites us to stay the night in her Lincoln Logged cabin. We get dolled up like we used to in college and head out for margaritas and Mexican in town. When we come back, Zane and David head to bed, but after a beer or two, Alyssa says, “Let’s go outside.”

We pull on our boots and head out into the night. The once thin crescent moon is thicker now, casting a golden glow onto the open pastures. Alyssa opens a gate and walks into the field full of horses. I hesitate, not sure if I should follow.
“Aren’t you coming?” She asks as she begins to close the gate. I hurry in and stay behind her, uncertain if my sudden movements will cause a stampede of unbroken horses.
“It’s okay,” she says, “They won’t hurt you. See,” She runs up to every horse, combing back his or her mane and whispering you’re a good boy in every other one’s ear. She is a natural; every horse worships her and follows her lead.
“Okay stay right there, right where you’re standing,” She says as she begins to run ahead of me.
“Wait why?” I yell up to her, wanting to follow.
“You’ll see,” She becomes engulfed in the darkness and I lose sight of her. Here I am, alone, standing in the middle of a pasture of horses. They are like stars littering the field and their eyes twinkle between blinks. All is silent and I turn to find the rising moon, understanding that at this moment there is no other place I would rather be than here. Suddenly the ground begins to move beneath my boots. There becomes a rumble in the earth and it begins to move towards me. The noise growing, the breaths, the stomping, the hooves, a herd of horses running towards me at full speed. I don’t know if I am scared or ecstatic as the horses make their way around me, their tails whipping against my bare legs and a cloud of dirt forming across the field. I smile and hold my head back in laughter, like I am about to howl at the moon. Alyssa runs by and grabs my hand, joining me in the chase. We gallop together, side by side, trying to catch up, following the rage.

I lose a piece of my heart that night.
The part that ran away with those horses into the moonlight of a Western sky.
The part that will forever be, forever wild.

There is a part of my mind, way in the back, on the right side.
It’s a little dusty and cobwebby; old, and I can’t always see it very well.
But it’s happy; made up of bicycle wheels, fishing nets, Barbie doll dresses, bagels and peanut butter, crayfish claws and clay. It’s made up of the time when I still had a set of brown bunk beds in the corner of my room and she would sleep on the bottom bunk, every Friday night. Sometimes Saturday too.
There is a part of my mind that holds my childhood and she makes up most of it.
Tiffany.
Even her name sounds like 20 years ago, when we would perform skits and dance along to our favorite songs at family events. When we would make driftwood forts along creek beds or between the crevices of mossy rocks.
When we would pretend to be the adults we are today.
It’s hard to imagine the thought of wanting to be older then, when sometimes all I want to be these days is young again.
Tiffany. She is turning 26 years old today.
And all I can think about is every hot, summer day in August, just like this one, when we would celebrate another year closer to adulthood.
I do believe she has finally made it.

The house smells of Bloodhounds. Probably because one lives here, along with one Bluetick Coonhound.
The walls are a dark navy blue and framed pictures of her and her boyfriend at different racing events line the walls. The living room is cozy and made up of two couches pushed together in the shape of an L, towels and blankets hang over the cushions to collect hound hair.
The kitchen is clean and tidy. Pictures I have sent her from my disposable camera are taped to the fridge and it makes me feel grateful to know she still thinks of me. A coffee machine sits on the edge of the kitchen counter, ready to go for tomorrow morning, with 2 Christmas mugs beside it. Their bedroom is at the other end of the house. A king-sized bed, where I can envision them snuggled up every night, takes up most of the maroon colored room. They use the spare bedroom as their closet space and the bathroom is simple with no windows.
This is her house.
The place she lives, sleeps, cooks, cleans and can make all her own if she wants to.
It is the first time I had seen her house since being back in New York. For years I tried to imagine it and now finally I can picture her here. Decorating at Christmas, her favorite season, and watching Nascar races on Sunday.
She says she doesn’t care for the Interstate that runs not even half a mile from where the house stands, but you can barely hear the rush of speeding cars.
“You have a house Tiff. Don’t you remember the days when we used to play house? Now you have one,” I lean down to pet the old Bloodhound, “and two dogs to go along with it.”
We laugh, as my hand becomes smeared with dog slobber.

I love how humble she is.
She will never admit she owns a growing and successful business, or the fact that she is a natural beautician. She pampers and makes others look beautiful for a living. Rarely is she the one relaxing in the chair receiving a pedicure.
She still has the best toenails in town though.
For her 18th birthday, I remember deciding to give her a makeover and photoshoot. I wanted her to feel like a spoiled princess on this magical day that only comes once a year.
Instead of buying and wrapping up a present, I turned my room into a part serenity day spa, part Hollywood dressing room.
My bed was piled high with only my chicest items of clothing, my dresser was taken over with eye shadows, glitter, mascara, and eyeliners of every color. I turned on the curling iron and had the hair spray handy. The royal soundtrack of Marie Antoinette blared in the background. I rounded up every essential prop I could find like my old guitar, a pink parasol, vintage suitcases, pearl necklaces, feathered hats, and a variety of shoes and high heels.
I bought a disposable camera to use only on her; to take pictures of the extravagant outfits she would wear and parade around in.
I remember closing her eyes and leading her into her very own dress-up room; a world most little girls have dreamt about.
“Sit down and let me do all the work,” I tell her as I grab for the comb and let the magic begin.

This birthday tradition lasts for only a few years. I soon leave for college and date a boy whose birthday falls the day after hers and for two summers I take off to New Hampshire to spend it with him. And then I move away and then as every person should, Tiffany falls in love.
Tiffany and Fred started dating three years ago.
They met while out snowmobiling one Saturday night.
She always said winter was her season, despite being born in August. I think someday she’ll have her wedding on Christmas eve, under a full moon and a heavy blanket of snow.
She has always wanted to get married and have a family.
Playing house as little girls, she was always the one with at least four children, a loyal husband and a yard full of pets.
I was always the one with the second marriage, adopted set of twins, and one long-haired cat.
It’s amazing how at such a young age you begin to become the person you grow up to be.
How your childhood predicts your adulthood in some way or another.
How the house she has today is the one she imagined so long again.
And her fairy tale ending is not far from coming true.

***

Happy Birthday to that piece of my mind.
To that corner of my memory, to the star of my childhood.
May you always glisten and glow, sparkle and shine, love and keep laughing, like the model you were in those photoshoots and the woman you are today.
May you never stop living your dream.

I could not tell if I was stepping on earth or tree branches. Maybe it was both? The ground looked like pine branches and the branches looked like ground. They blended together forming one color of nature. One blur of where I was breaking through to step next. There was no end. No way out of this pine needle massacre. Blood stained my shins and cuts sliced through my arms from the raw wilderness. My sister and I lost trail and I was quickly beginning to lose hope. We were bushwhacking.
Bushwhacking to the top of the last mountain I needed to climb in order to become a 46er.

This had all started years ago. I was only 16 years old when Bethany, my older sister, took me up my first high peak in the Adirondacks of Northern New York. There is a total of 46 high peaks above 4,ooo feet, and the first one I climbed just had to be one of the hardest. It was ruthless. A straight upward climb, twisting along waterfalls and a rocky trail. Giant was the name of this mountain and its name held true. I was thankful to make it back to the car in one piece. I thought, I have 45 more hikes like this to accomplish before I become a 46er?
Doubtful. Very doubtful.
In the summers and visits to follow, hiking became a regular ritual for Bethany and I. As much as I dreaded the size and strain of the mountain, I began to look forward to our trail talk. This was our time to explain, ask questions, catch up on what we had missed in each other’s lives. I have had some of the best conversations with Bethany while hiking a mountain.

On Giant Mountain, we both wore bikini tops. Bethany went barefoot. It was my first high peak and the summit was encased in a white cloud. We sang Bruce Springsteen songs on the descent.
On Mt. Marcy, we wore skirts in honor of our Great Aunt Katherine who passed away a week later due to Pancreatic cancer. We took a picture of our muddy shoes at Marcy Dam. That dam no longer stands.
On Whiteface and Ester, I talked about how going home felt different to me now that I was in college. Home was not home anymore.
On Algonquin, I lost a winter hat my mother knit for me due to the fierce summit winds. We talked about what hiking meant to us. I said it meant Freedom.
On Big Slide, it poured. We had to down hike in order to find a place to cross a raging river. We talked about what we were going to eat for dinner that night. I think we had rice and beans.
On Skylight and Grey, we talked about how old we were when we first got our period. We talked about religion and when the last time we cried was.
On Seymour, the rule was whoever fell first had to buy beer that night. Neither of us fell. I still bought a 6-pack of something.
On Santinoni, our toes froze. We thought about going ahead and hiking over to Panther and Couchsachraga, but we came down and went to our favorite thrift store instead.
On Allen, I cried talking about a dream I had the night before about our grandmother. I continued to cry when I talked about how our grandfather didn’t think I was doing anything purposeful with my life. And I cried again when we talked about the last time we were truly scared. We talked about fear and how men can be assholes. Sometimes.
On Marshall, my 46th peak, we began to plot out an idea for a children’s book. We started to make up characters, storylines, and scenarios, when suddenly we became so intertwined in this made- up world we lost trail. It was when we were discussing the color of feathers my character would have that we took a wrong turn and kept going.
Hiking straight up; completely the wrong way.

“Hello,”
“Hellooooo,”
“Hello is there anyone out there?”
“Is there anyone on Marshall…”
Nobody was climbing Marshall that day except for us.
Nobody could hear our screams and nobody could point us in the direction of my last high peak.
After a half hour of bushwhacking and the disappointment of a false summit, Bethany decided if we couldn’t find the Marshall summit in an hour we had to turn around. She used the compass that hung around her neck as a guide and reference point. She knew where we were, but she didn’t know where the trail was. She told me to look for dark mud or any sign of a trail.
I could barely look five feet ahead of me; the thought of mud or the trail being anywhere near us seemed impossible. But it gave me something to focus on besides our dire situation, so I looked for mud.

There was a fire beginning to burn inside of me.
At any moment, I believed one whack of a tree branch would put me in tears, would turn me into a scorching flame of anger. But the tears never came.
Mountains had taught me to never give up, to persevere, even when I wanted to give up and begin climbing down. Even when I wanted to scream out, I can’t do this! I don’t want to climb anymore! Who cares about the view?
Mountains symbolize life. The ups and downs, the highs and lows, the soft trail and fierce bushwhack of this thing we call life. This scary and precious journey that you sometimes have to press on through to reach your desired summit.

At first, I did not hear her when she yelled out “Trail!”
“Mal, trail! I found the trail! This way! Mal! I found it!”
I ran to her voice, ripping through the branches and over the fallen down trees, to finally find an open area of mud. A well-worn trail.
The sight of footprints told us we belonged here. We had finally found our way. Bethany hugged me when I emerged from the woods, she grabbed my shoulders and pulled me in.
“Go get your peak sister. You are the one who needs to find it now.”

I started down the trail skipping, practically running, to my last peak.
Looking back now, I would do it all over again if I wanted to.
Life feels the most alive when you are tested to live it.  When you are lost in the mountains, climbing your last high peak, and the sight of mud never looked so beautiful.
And kissing the Mt. Marshall summit sign means something so much more than joining a club of 46ers.

Every idea originates somewhere.
You could be running a marathon. Riding an elephant through India. Dreaming on a train.
And then, out of nowhere, the most brilliant idea comes to you.
Like glitter raining from the sky.
It appears. You see it. You think about it. You fall in love with it.
You now can either take that idea and run or let it run away from you.

This idea, the one I had last week, I’m going to run with.
Who knows where it might take me, or us, or them…
But I’m in love with the unknown, so why not go somewhere new?
Try out an idea because we can.

For me this idea came when I was sprawled out on my bedroom floor, tearing through one of my photo albums.
I turned the page and there it was, this picture staring at me.

I am the girl on the left. No not Hanna, the girl with the long blonde hair looking over her shoulder. The other girl to the left. The one who is dancing. The one smiling.
The girl with her arms bent in the air, right high healed foot off the ground, wearing a short sparkly black dress and a crown of baby breathe in her hair.
That’s me.

This picture was taken during one of the most influential times in my life.
It was my last semester at St. Lawrence University, a charming liberal arts school in Northern New York. Graduation was 2 months away and I had everything I’d ever wanted within my grasp. A group of beautiful friends, a senior thesis project I was proud of, a future plan of living with hippies and working as a waitress for the summer, and the dream of living a life worth writing about.

I was all set. I was blissfully happy.
Can’t you see it?
Can’t you see that smile.
Every time I look at this picture I just want to start smiling like that.

Perhaps that’s how this idea started; with me smiling, over this picture.
While flipping through my high stack of photo albums, for some reason this one picture could bring joyful tears to my eyes.
Something began to happen to all of my other pictures after I saw this one. I started to look at them differently.
I looked at them as if I did not know these pictures belonged to me, as if I was not the girl in them.

Because these could be the pictures of anyone. Of you, of her, of all of us.
They made me feel proud of my life; of the life I was living.
As I turned the page of each photo album, I began pulling out photos; the ones that hung on the wall of my first apartment, the ones that followed me to Florida, the ones I glued in my journal when I went to India. Soon a pile assembled on the floor of all my favorite pictures.

The Pictures of my Life.

I was overwhelmed. What was I going to do with all of these pictures now that they were out of their albums? As I tried to scoop them up in my arms, I realized they no longer deserved to be hidden and kept in an album on a dusty shelf.
They deserved to be seen, to be written about.
I knew right then I would write the stories these pictures told.
I would bring the people to life and give the image a name.
Give the pictures a lesson, a moral, a theme.
Give them justice.
Give them peace.

That is what this blog is about. It is about starting something based on what we have.
I have these pictures and I have my writing, so why not do something with them?
Better yet together.
Pictures of Life is to be a creation of yours and mine.
If you see a picture you like, or that erupts in you a similar emotion or a memory from long ago, I encourage you to write about it. Leave a comment. Post a picture. Find a common theme and work with it, see where your mind takes you.
I have never had a blog before, and this too will be a learning experience for me. If you have any recommendations or ideas, please feel free to leave them.

So here begins a new idea.
A beautiful blog.
I will post a different picture and story every week and I would love for your support and constructive criticism to follow along.
Because why not?
Why not take this idea and run with it?  Spread the word, spread the message, spread the love.

Thank you to so many of you for making up the pictures of my life.
This idea could not have come to me without you.

 

 

 

 

At 24 years old, I have a full shelf of photo albums.

Photo albums.

It is a phrase not many of us millennials use these days, because not too many of us have them. You probably have seen glimpses of your baby book or flipped through the wedding album of your parents once or twice. My grandparents have full closets of photo albums and I am proud to say I have at least 13.

The idea to start a photo album, began at the end of my Freshman year of college. It was the last week of school, and while out shopping at the Rite Aid in town I thought it would be fun to buy a disposable camera.
So I did.
For one week, I carelessly took pictures of raging parties, my college dorm room, my boyfriend drinking out of a 40-ounce beer bottle, an early summer sunset. The camera passed out of my hands to those of others, and after 27 pictures were taken the wind-up wheel clicked to a stop and I was ready to buy another.

Ever since then I continue to buy and use disposable cameras.
I faithfully keep one in my purse.
I love the mystery of them.
I love not being able to see a picture I took until weeks, sometimes months, later.
Not many things take time anymore, but this is one thing I still have to wait for.

Once a camera has been finished I take it to the closest Walgreens, where it is then sent away for further development. This process can take one to two weeks, depending on how far the film has to travel in order to be developed.

I love the excitement.
During those two weeks, I try to remember what pictures I had taken and imagine what pictures will be developed.
When the day of delivery comes, or the number for Walgreens calls my cell phone and a young girl says “Your pictures are ready,” there is no greater feeling.
The day my pictures come in is the best day of that week by far.
I quickly drive home, plop down on my bed and carefully pull out the fresh stack of glossy 4x6s.
Looking through the new pictures is like putting the puzzle of my life together.
One piece is one picture.
They quickly add up, forming this work of art called,

Me.