You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2009.
More and more, I find myself seduced by the idea of more time. That time lasts longer than the sixty measly seconds to the minute; that the hour between here and there can be stretched to contain this ambitious list of desired outcomes. Once dependably punctual, I’m horrified to be consistently five, ten minutes late, cursing each traffic light as the clock ticks ever-onwards: since when does the day slip past so fast?
I hate that I’ve been so absent from this space (Hi, September, where did you go?). The thing is, my life has just been deliciously full. Weekends away and weddings. Introductions, first meetings, and favorable impressions; coveted approval, knowing smiles, and promises spanning the gap from today to always (though no, I’m not engaged). Hotel beds and crashing waves; Virginia, from top to bottom.
Material, it’s fair to say, I have plenty. Like the time I drove up and back to New York, eleven hours straight one Sunday night, because the PhD and I had a slight misunderstanding about the departure time of his train (and we were a bit carried away saying goodbye besides). I slid back into my parking space at exactly 3.59am, exuberant from a trip that worked out beautifully, in the end. So long as you overlook the zombie I was at work on account of my massive sleep-debt which, I’m sorry to say, is only mounting.
Or my parents’ visit, over Constitution Day (which apparently is a big deal?); the minibreak we took, the history we learned, and the absolutely over-the-top, “I’m a princess”-style measures the PhD took to ensure that my birthday week was adequately celebrated there in his absence. A fifth birthday card sent overnight express with red roses to the room, specifically, and a call-in to the restaurant where we ate Friday so that “happy birthday, magda!” was written on the menu, we were met with champagne on the table, and all the waitstaff took particular care of us. (If this was not real love, this could be scary behavior. But it is, and it isn’t, and I felt so loved).
Then, how they adored the PhD when we met up at the weekend and how, in the course of a big Greek dinner, mom just casually assumed that he was staying with me—and how she didn’t seem at all bothered by it. (Who are you, and where is my mother? Lies I had prepared to tell you! Big lies about how he was staying with his sister! Seriously. We had it all planned out. We’d wake early, plant him outside, and make it all seem real—that sounds insane, but these are my parents. They are puritans. My sisters and I are, as a result, insanely skilled in tactical deception). It’s totally in mom’s arsenal to be all obnoxious and ask him directly where he’ll be staying, probably right after he’s said something about how much he loves me. (Thanks mom. Love you, too). That she just talked as if she knew he’d be with me totally registered as “DOES NOT COMPUTE.” Dad called in the morning, and asked whether “we” were awake; then asked for the PhD’s coffee request. “We’re headed to Starbucks,” he said. “We’ll bring yours by.” Welcome to adulthood, magda? You’ve finally made a choice we’re prepared to call sound and responsible? Is this the point here?
These and about a billion others are the stories rattling around in the drawers of my memory, waiting patiently to come out into the world of words. I think of them often; on the train, during my increasingly hectic days at work, in the car as I shuttle from here to there, I draft them out in my head. But then when I get home and have the time, I’d so much rather sleep. Or clean up last night’s dishes. Or talk to the PhD, or an old friend; send an e-mail, or write a real letter.
I’m sitting here at the table now, looking out at the night sky and trying to figure out where this all is going. I want to be writing about another amazing series of days, and another wedding we’re just back from; how being there only made me love him more, and how putting him on the train tonight nearly broke me.
The wedding was gorgeous; an intimate affair against the backdrop of sand and sky (a seacoast wedding … so romantic). We took a walk along the shore during the reception, the PhD and I did; absolutely amazing. Great conversation, great kisses, great feeling of sinking into the sand, holding such a strong and steady hand. Weddings do things to people. Like, say, the couple having actual, literal, pounding sex on the boardwalk. At someone’s wedding! Seriously!? Call me old-fashioned, but oh my. We snuck silently away, snickering to ourselves.
I could write it all out, these stories, weave together a narrative of my thoughts, and our experiences, and the details that made it all so lovely. I want to. I just don’t know where the time is anymore.
It could be that my life is just too full, that I have too many competing interests. Priorities shift, and as much as I want to write here like I used to, I have other things trumping the triage.
That’s part of it. A bigger part, I think, is that this space just isn’t what it used to be … and really, that’s a very good thing. I started this all when I was in a very different place in my life. I was sad, and fractured; I was confused, and very, very alone. I was in a new city, in a relationship that was going nowhere (though I didn’t see that at the time). I had no real, true, everyday-level friends. I needed somewhere to feel; I needed somewhere to be more than just a passing face on a train, a casual glance before bed.
I’m not in that place anymore. I have grown in a million ways, all for the very best, and magda, frankly, just isn’t who she used to be.
It tears me up a little bit, because I’ve come to really love and cherish this space, and the people I’ve met here. I’m not ready to give all of this up, but it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the landscape has changed. I don’t have the crises I used to. I have more real-world outlets now. I’m in a relationship that I don’t really want to share, or analyze, or turn out onto the pages of the internet for a vent or a laugh. I’m content.
I’m a writer and I’ll always have words for the world, and I hope to keep using this space to realize that; all this to say, though, that it may be more sporadic, more distanced from this point. I’m not on hiatus, and I’m not shutting down. I just think that maybe, maybe I want to be more like that couple on the beach. Have a life that’s private and outrageous and full of mad adventures and bold risks in the shadows; then, on the dance floor, be fashionable, have fun, and fit in, leaving no more than the hint of a few stray hairs.
By far the best birthday present I ever received was my Molly doll. It was the summer I discovered the American Girl books in the library, and I devoured their entire shelf; for hours, I’d sit out in the grass, finding myself in other worlds entirely.
I feel like I knew about the dolls, but I definitely didn’t ask for one; they were expensive, and honestly, I don’t think it even occurred to me to want one. Of all the books, though, Molly’s were my favorite; I checked them all out at least twice. My mom, every tricky, totally noticed.
She came the day I turned eight, the mystery in the big box amongst the standard birthday fare of markers and clothes and books. It was magical. She came to life; she was my imagination made tangible. She had a room in my room, and outfits all her own; when mom would make me a dress, Molly got one to match. She came to church, and to grandma’s. She was everywhere.
Soon thereafter, my sisters, in turn, received Samantha and Kirsten, and we had positive worlds set up for those girls. Occasionally I still get letters addressed to Mrs. McIntire; ever-formal, that’s how we’d refer to each other when dolls were afoot.
Tomorrow I turn 28. Which means Molly is … 20. Twenty! That can’t be right! Gosh and golly, olly molly, you’re making me feel ancient. And next year I’m totally buying you a beer.
Though I can’t really say why, I’ve been wearing my high school class ring more and more often. It sat dormant in my jewelry box for years, really, until I pulled it back out, over the summer sometime. It’s yellow gold, which I don’t much wear anymore; it’s really quite pretty, though, in a very non-class-ringish way. It’s all symbols and signs, very old-school Catholic.
I don’t think back much to high school, if I’m honest. I’m friends still with exactly one girl from that time; we’re close, but not all-the-world-and-everything close. I’ll invite her to my wedding no doubt, but she won’t be in it. Like that.
I have some hilarious memories from high school, but most of what I had then I’d just as soon forget. Some of it was that I just wasn’t grown up, wasn’t myself yet. I think I was more awkward than most people; I was incredibly sheltered, hopelessly naïve, and ardently disinterested in all of those high school things one’s meant to take up.
In New York last weekend, we were looking through some of the PhD’s high school photos. Beach weeks and beer; old flames and total unbridled adolescence. I don’t really have anything comparable. For me, high school was homework and frizzy hair, conspicuously un-flared khakis (with a line pressed neatly down the leg). It was all I knew, but it still embarrasses me. It embarrasses me how little I really was.
My family is amazing and tight and well-structured, but in some ways this is the price I’ve paid for it. I played dolls with my sisters through ninth grade. I made it to college unable to recognize the scent of pot. I was a quintessential “good girl,” but not because I was all high and mighty: rather, because I really didn’t know any better.
Such a shielded youth can be envious, but it can also be humiliating. It’s a tough balance between protecting kids and letting them fit in. In a world that’s broken, the straight and narrow is often the loneliest, most desolate road. It’s worked out just fine for me and I have no complaints … I’m just glad things were different for my sisters.
They, for instance, had at least some grounding in pop-culture. In one of my French classes, sophomore year, we—as a quiz—had to describe a pre-selected photo to the class such that they could recognize it from a pool of options pinned up on the board.
“It’s a man,” I said, in French that likely was top of the class. “He’s wearing jeans and a grey sweater.” Several, sadly, met this description. “What does he do?” a classmate asked. I was stumped. Do? “He’s a model?” I said, more a question than anything. “He’s attractive, and, ummm, he’s dressed like it’s maybe a casual Saturday morning?” I was out.
What I should have said: “He’s an actor. He’s married to Jennifer Aniston. He’s in that movie Seven.”
I would have said these things if I’d had ANY idea they were true. For all I knew, those Brad Pitt eyes were looking at me from a Sears catalogue clipping. It was absolutely humiliating, and I still remember the ridicule in even my teacher’s voice. That was one in a loooong list of high school popularity gaffes, from musicians to movies and positively everything a normal 16-year-old should know. (Anyone ever play that game where you have a name stuck on your back and have to guess who it is? ALWAYS the last one standing on that one. Hated it).
I was sharing snippets of this epic series in uncool last night in a small group; as an ice-breaker, we were telling embarrassing stories.
Someone pulled me aside afterwards, though, and challenged me for being real enough. “That’s it? That’s your embarrassing moment?” she said, really critically. She, I suppose, wanted me to have illuminated something searing and very sinful (of which, oh yes, I do have plenty); something that, as she put it, “would let the others know that this is a safe space for sharing.” Maybe. Maybe.
Perhaps I didn’t express it right, or she may have just had no basis on which to relate—but that story, those moments, really affected me growing up. They were more lastingly embarrassing than a lot of the faux pas I’ve made, the errors I’ve aided. (And I challenged her right back—this was an icebreaker. It was light. It was “an embarrassing moment,” not “bare the depths of your blackest humiliation.” There’s a time and place for that, and last night was NOT IT).
It’s surprising me how much that trivial French class story is affecting me today, though. I woke up this morning like it was 10 years ago, feeling that shroud of inadequacy all over again: I remembered so clearly feeling positively ignorant at life. Of course it wasn’t a huge deal, but those are the kinds of experiences, the emotional outlayings and scarings, that shape people. Everyone has them, though they manifest differently; that sheltered and girlish naiveté I carried well into college was mine.
I look at the paper this morning and recognize Jon Gosselin, Elijah Wood, and Kim Kardashian, without even reading the captions. I send back my regrets to my 10 year reunion not because those feelings still linger—I’m pleased with the ways I’ve changed—but because that’s a world that I never really called mine. It also doesn’t help that it’s in Seattle, on a weekend I’m not in town; I’ll be back as it is once already in October, at Thanksgiving, and for Christmas. Another trip? Eh, not feeling it. I’d go if I was home, or if it was closer. But really, right now? Those people I knew then are as foreign as Brad Pitt to me. And that’s okay.
