Tow Truck

I was going to tell you about the phenomenal mess my life is but then I thought better of it.

I want to tell you about my best friend.

So, you know that time in second or third or fourth grade when everyone had friends but every girl needed a best friend? Maybe you don’t because maybe your childhood wasn’t filled with Buzzfeed-flavored nostalgia, complete with trapper keepers and Lisa Frank stickers and Nickelodeon, but for some of us, we understood that having a best friend was a necessity. It was a line on an elementary school resume, a way of proving to future friends that you had it together because you had a best friend. Allow me into your social circle because I have the ultimate reference. That’s how best friends worked when we were kids- you had sleepovers, you giggled, you watched movies together and passed notes and were, officially, best friends.

My best friend from back home moved into town in the third grade from Minnesota. I’m not a mega-social person and I wasn’t a socially-savvy kid, so bringing up memories that specifically involve people is like dredging the lake for sunken buoys, but it’s OK because as soon as I’m home, she remembers something and tells the story like there should have been movie cameras following us around. We sound epic or at the very least more interesting than I’m sure we actually were. There was always orange juice for me in the fridge at her house and I feel like I knew the inside of her pantry just as well as she did. There was a fort to explore (there's a new road there now) and when we grew up, music to play and hours of things to talk about. And whenever I’m back visiting her, it’s like no time has passed. I can sit and listen and laugh more than I have in years, I feel like, and it’s the most perfect thing.

I live a life of cliches and tired old acts, so of course the two of us went to different colleges in different states and developed our own lives, with our own new best friends. Of course we would- we’re independent women who spend plenty of time dreaming, and honestly, even high school took a toll on us, between separated by band and theater and going to different churches with different youth groups. When you’ve done the Millennial Shuffle*, you know that everything in life is malleable, including friendships. It’s not all Dawson’s Creek or Boy Meets World. Mr. Feeny isn’t going to move to college with you and your friends aren’t going to drop out and/or transfer to be near you. That’s a pipe dream.

So when I come back home from my job in a different part of the state and we talk about bands we like or shows we watch or things we’ve done and find that we’re still so much in sync, it makes me miss what we could have been. I have other friends, great friends, friends that I could start whole new blogs about, but sometimes I think that I could have lived in a house in Charleston, roadtripped with the windows down listening to Zeppelin and Cake, waited tables at the country club, and laid out every night for a semester watching the stars down in Chile. I mean, I’m happy with who I am and I can’t discredit the wonderful and lovely things that I’ve done, but I know that there’s a corner of my soul that could have been happy doing something else.

And then there’s nights like tonight where we went to a bar and had a couple of beers, listening to my best friend and her mom tell stories, while a second best friend listened and laughed and swapped anecdotes about teaching languages. We played songs on the jukebox and smiled at the people who walked in and mentioned things that her fiance would notice in a loud voice so he’d come over from behind the bar and spend a few minutes with us. Then, on my way out of her apartment complex, in true classy fashion, I misjudged the turn on the hill and ended up needing a tow truck. But my best friend, she’s been trained to never let them see you sweat, and so we assessed the damage, found a guy to come out and help us, and spent the intermediate half hour watching a British sitcom and laughing at the narratives behind the decorations in her temporary home. When the tow would only take cash and I had none, she never even batted an eye. My car got unstuck, I now have a list of new pop culture to bring into my life, and despite having a substantial problem, I feel so much better than I did before. All in all, it wasn’t a bad night.

So I’m going to hold on to that as I go on about my days. There’s a glorious freedom in knowing that life could have gone completely different and it wouldn’t have turned out that bad at all.




*The Millennial Shuffle is a complex dance staged for the children of families privileged enough to be thinking of higher education for their children, a dance full of angst and an over-abundance of encouragement and unfulfilled promises. The steps are as follows:
Step 1: Get good grades. 
Step 2: Do a sport. 
Step 3: Pick four extra curriculars. 
Step 5: Become a leader in at least one of the organizations you’re involved in. 
Step 5.5: Exhaust any and all energy overachieving at the high school level. 
Step 6: Apply to college. 
Step 7: Graduate by some miracle. 
Step 8: Find a job. Or, more reasonably, don’t. 
Repeat Steps 6-8 until the music runs out.

Dispossess

So what drives me crazy- well, really, what bothers me in life- is that when you stereotype someone, that stereotype becomes their identity to you. And a stereotype, you know, is something very shallow. I mean, think of the stereotypes that you know of, not necessarily ones that you hold, but ones that you know about. Are they in-depth analyses of the historical culture and general life experience of any given type of being? Does it allow for details specific to anyone’s life story? No, of course not. It's a stereotype. Stereotypes are a societal shorthand, and a sloppy one at that. So when you stereotype someone, when you make that often-insulting assumption that you can blame this characteristic or that on a person’s gender, race, religion, or country of origin, you’re limiting your knowledge of this person to a small number of choice adjectives or nouns that the stereotype allows.

I don’t say all that because it’s new information or because I want to point fingers or anything like that. We all stereotype. It must be useful because we use it all the time, and you know, people associate different stereotypes with different types of people for a reason. I say this because I am more often than not frozen into inaction because I’m afraid of being stereotyped. I’m afraid of being judged without any chance to defend myself.

We process a good plenty of information in any given day, more now than ever before. We’re bombarded by story after story, image after image, video after video, and with all that information to process, we need a shorthand, and the shorthand we pick tends to define us to other people. Oh, this story is from Fox News. This one is from CNN. This is from a left-leaning blogger. This is from a young mother. This picture was posted by a teenager. This one’s from someone I know from back home. This movie was made by a producer that I respect. This one was made by some Hollywood exec I don't recognize. This came off of Pintrest. This was posted by somebody I follow on Twitter. I can almost color the things I read and see and absorb based on their sources and my opinions of them. Nothing good can come from Nazareth.

I know that I do this. I see it the things I choose to read, the links I choose to ignore, the information that I accept with a smile, the claims I secretly roll my eyes at, the news story I post to facebook, the one I don't. And if I know that I do it, I have to assume that other people do it. But not just to some faceless person on the other side of the internet. I have to assume that people do that to me, out in the physical world.

How do I escape that? How do I run away from the people who want to rob me of my depth? How do I dispossess them of their impression that I’m another millennial who can’t put down her phone, or just another one of those awkward sci-fi fans, or the Christian girl from a small town, or the hometown girl who went away to one of those liberal schools and changed? Because, you know, I am those things and some of those stereotypes hold true.

But, no. You’re not allowed to limit me to your idea of what I should be. You don’t live in my body or think with my mind. You can’t tell me that I can’t be just as good as, if not better than, my male counterparts because I’m a woman and you can’t dismiss me as a feminist because I don’t sit quietly in a corner when women’s issues come to the forefront. You can’t just label me based on my politics, because you don’t know what I feel or why I feel it or the push I experience every day to make a positive difference in the face of such negativity. You don’t know You don’t know why Buffy resonates with me or why The Empire Strikes back will always be my favorite movie or why I will never say no to watching Moulin Rouge- despite your best guesses, you will fall short of analyzing the complexity that is me. And so will I in analyzing the complexity that is you.

The thing is, though, the infuriating thing, is that you’ll try anyway. I’ll try anyway. And then we’ll miss each other’s points and pigeonhole each other and in general misunderstand our needs and wants and desires and hopes so profoundly that it’ll be a wonder, an absolute wonder, that we’re able to accomplish anything together, unless it’s the fulfillment of a need or a want that we share.

So that’s why I haven’t gone to Moral Monday. That’s why I haven’t written anything substantial (that, and the fact that I’m uncomfortable writing about work). That’s why I stop conversations mid-stride or I leave arguments unfinished and stories unshared. I don’t want to do anything outside the norm because you will judge me and label me and do such a complete job of removing the depth of my personality and existence that I’ll wonder why I ever thought there was anything more to me in the first place.

I have the luxury of that kind of angst and I exalt in it. I let it paralyze me and hold me down with its insinuations, because as long as I have it to blame, I don’t really have to try. I don’t really have to attempt to move forward. It’s even better than not having to justify my actions to others- I don’t have to justify my actions to myself. I can stand at the bottom of the brick wall of Fear of Judgment and shrug my shoulders and say, “This far was I meant to go and no farther.” I can walk away, safe in the conviction that I tried and I was stopped.

That conviction is wrong. It’s time to dispossess myself of impressions of me.

So here’s to tearing down the wall. Here’s to understanding that fixing problems with my body and my mind doesn't make me a health nut or a nut job. Here’s to embracing the tightrope walk of holding onto my opinions and conclusions while lending an honest ear to yours. Here’s to holding a sign because I believe in certain unacceptabilities. Here’s to learning and thinking and above all doing with reasonable abandon. I've always been one to stop at walls, but I think it’s time for a change. 

Youthful Manifesto

When I grow up, I want a two-story house with a porch and porch swing. I want hanging flower pots and a garden. I want to grow tomatoes and peppers and lemon balm and squash and okra and Indian corn and I want to plan hours out of my days and weeks to work in the garden. I want my kids to pick tomatoes off the plants, to learn what to look for when looking at growing things, to know how to use what the seeds and the sun and the rain and the earth give us. I want them to have to move the potted plants inside when it threatens to frost and to understand that to grow something, you have to take care of it. I want them to know how to cultivate good things.

When I grow up, I want to have a piano in my house. I want to play it and I want my kids, if they want to, to have the opportunity to play it too. I want there to be music playing while we live in the house and I want to sing along. I want to hum while I clean the kitchen or do laundry and I want to take my Saturday mornings to listen to the radio and reset the house after the week that’s gone by. I want my kids to have chores, because I think responsibility is taught by taking care of the things you own.  I want to have four Sunday dresses and one dress for parties, three pairs of good jeans and one pair of work jeans, ten sets of work clothes and ten sets of leisure clothes, and five pairs of shoes, because I want to enjoy my abundance but not over-use it.

When I grow up, I want a good car that’ll last me twelve years. I want to buy it nearly new and I want to take care of it. I want a notebook where I'll keep the inspection notices, the repair receipts, and a chart of the oil changes and the miles on the tires. I want to keep paper towels in the car, because spills shouldn’t be left to sit on the metal and plastic and upholstery. I want to clean out my car every sleepy Sunday afternoon, my one act of personal reorganization on the Sabbath. I want to teach my sons how to change the tires and I want to let my husband teach my daughters about the engine and all the parts of the car hidden away under the hood, because I think it’s important that my children know that intelligence about any subject is not limited by gender.

When I grow up, I want to be part of a church. I want to cook casseroles for church lunches and caringly serve on committees. I want to be in a Bible study that teaches me new things and I want to have a close group of people to hold me accountable, who I can pray for and who pray for me and my family. I want to sing and move and clap and smile during worship because I’ve never sung nor said a truer word than “O may Thy house be my abode, And all my work be praise.  There would I find a settled rest, While others go and come; No more a stranger, nor a guest, But like a child at home,” and I want my kids to see that. I want them to be rooted in hymns and scripture and tradition but I want them to find their own idea of God in the corners of sanctuaries and the ceilings of bedrooms and the halls of the places they go to learn. I want them to listen to sermons from the pulpit and from the forests and from friends. I want them to hear about the grandeur of God and I want them to be amazed by the size of the mountains, the unseeable breadth of the ocean, the unfathomable distance to the Moon and to the stars so that they have a context in which to place that grandeur. I want them to know about Jesus and to be moved by the Spirit and to join the church in their own right because I want them to see the Church the way I want them see themselves- loved, saved, protected, redeemed imperfection striving to share that same love with the world around them. I want them to understand the meaning of the word blessed and I want them to know that simply by the nature of the land on which we stand, we embody that word.

When I grow up, I want to serve my community. I want to go to PTA meetings and town council meetings and football games and baseball games and festivals and performances. I want to encourage businesses to endeavor to make better people out of the people who work for them now and the people who may work for them in the future. I want to speak out for teachers and schools and education. I want to hold elected officials accountable. I want to learn about the problems facing my neighborhood, my community, my state, and my nation, and I want to take proactive steps to bring those problems to a halt. I want to use the abundance that has been give to me to help others who have fallen or who were born into less to stand up and pull themselves out of those places, because I have seen the problems that we the people wash over and I know that there is something better out there for all of us if we begin to solve those problems. I want to watch in awe as we begin to think of ourselves as citizens not of a nation but of a planet together, because I think that we can and I think that we must, in order to preserve this wonder of a place that has been given to us.

When I grow up, I want to plan my time. I want to wake up with a purpose, eat three meals in a day, and read myself to sleep. I want half an hour in the mornings to be with myself and my God because I know the ways I need to be fed. I want to see my husband in the mornings and in the evenings and at night and I want us to have a night alone each week or as often as we can afford it, because I never want to sleep beside a stranger. He may not forever be the man I married, but he will always be the man I know and love. I want our family to do things together as much as we can and to talk to each other even more. I want to sit through recitals and plays and games and meets and performances and competitions and presentations because I’ve seen the way mothers beam when they watch their kids and I am jealous of the kind of quiet pride that admirable mothers have. But through all of this, I want to take time for myself, to be centered, to write or to read or to practice or to exercise or to learn, because I know that I should only do as much today as will allow me to do the same tomorrow and because I want to teach my kids self-care along with self-sacrifice.

And while I’m growing up, I want to travel. I want to live somewhere new to me, with new words for familiar objects, new ways of thinking about familiar ideas, and new accents to learn and decipher. I want to see the other coast of this grand nation, and visit the places around us. I want to take someone back with me to Vienna and Venice and Barcelona and Paris and Rome. I want to go to the cathedral in Dunblane again and see if it kept its sway over me and I want to stand in St. Peter’s Basilica again, long enough to decide how I feel about it. I want to visit a peaceful Jerusalem and Cairo and Baghdad and Tehran. I want to be convinced to take a trip to Tokyo or Seoul or Beijing. I want to stand in places where history has been made and places where history is in the making. I want to think on trains and planes and come back with stories to tell and moments to store up in my heart.

Because I know that I’ll come back. I know that my state has a hold on me and that I can’t be long away from the cardinals and the dogwoods and the pine trees. I know that I will continue to bleed that lighter shade of blue and God help my husband if he can’t understand that. I know that every summer night that I miss watching the fireflies rival the stars is a night for which I’ll mourn. I know I’ll regret being away from the mountains in the fall and the spring, when the leaves turn the world into new colors. I know I’ll long for crisp nights and clear skies, for the miracle of occasional snow powdering cold sidewalks and needed rain bouncing on green leaves, and for the summertime wall of heat and abundant sunshine. This is home. It will always be home. No matter how amazing the other places are or seem, this is where I want to build my life. Here are the people and here is the place I want to love. This is the state that I want to see follow our motto. These are the people that I want to see cared for, brought out of our difficulties, educated, understood, and loved. This is the land I want to see preserved and molded and pushed forward and never lost. Here, in this place, are the problems I want to solve and the goodness I want to celebrate.

Part of me wants never to grow up, to forever enjoy the nostalgia of imagining the future. Part of me wants to grow up this minute, to immediately have that love and create that world and curate that reality. But all of me knows that even now, while I’m waiting to start down the road that’ll take me to the person that I’ll be, I can shape who I am. I don’t have to wait to start taking care of myself. I can pick up discipline and know that discipline, like waking up on time or planning the time to read, to learn something new, to walk, or to write, doesn't mean giving up my freedom- it means freeing myself from the burdensome parts of me that stop me from doing everything I want to do. It means working to be healthy while good health is easy to have because I have seen the abundant liberty inherent in good health. It means working to learn and to educate while I still have the time and the mind for it because I have seen the value of understanding the facts of our complex world. It means learning and being sure of myself, of my needs and wants, and being able to articulate those ideas, those needs and wants, because that will help one day when I embark on that frightening endeavor of sharing my heart and mind with someone else. It means having peace in my heart and an unshakable understanding that even though I have all these wants and plans and values, my path will be guided by a different hand with a greater glory in mind and that that greater glory will serve the world better than my tiny dreams and hopes and goals.

Today, I function in a world of groaning maturity. Tomorrow, I’ll live in a world of understanding quasi-adulthood.

To be, rather than to seem.