no more when

As a kid, we would sit at the dinner table as a family. Every night. Our dad would get up for something from the fridge, and my sister and I would whine, “Could you bring over the milk please?”

“What, are your legs broke?” Dad would reply.

“Yes.” Neither of us ever broke a bone growing up (save my arm, but I was so little it doesn’t count). It must have been the milk.

Sounds like tough love, but he always brought it over. He’d hold the bulging gallon over our glasses, “Say when.” “That’s enough!” we’d screech, but he’d keep pouring until we said, “When!!! When!”

The childhood memories are sweet, but I’m done saying “when.” I’ve spent too many of my twenty-two years saying when.

I walk around acting like I’m much older than I am, sweeping into routines, settling into Seattle like it’s where I’ll live out my days. You know what? I have shit that I want to do in my life, and if I’m going to act old, I better get the experience to back it up.

This is what I decided while washing the dishes. I was cleaning up after having people over last night, ladies from church. While I enjoy their company; in groups, I don’t feel close to anyone, making me mostly feel awkward, even as a host. Then why do I do it? Why do I insist on having groups over instead of inviting individuals? There’s a popular list going around on those silly “feed” sites that says “30 things you should stop doing to yourself” or something like that. I perused through it during my morning browse of Facebook while my eyes adjusted to being awake (disgusting, I know). Anyway, one of the items really stood out to me, and it was “stop spending time with the wrong people”. I realized that I do that a lot. I put myself into situations where I am uncomfortable and then consequently whine about it.

I’ve been in such a whirl lately. You know, the usual—who am I, what am I doing here, what does my life mean—kind of thoughts. I’ve finally settled in. I know I keep saying it, but I mean it this time. I feel totally settled into my “new” apartment now that my lease is 1/6 of the way over. I’m so content with my surroundings—I love my place, my furniture, my dog, my city. My my my. I know that life is more than things, but it seems like what we do as careers all drive for the success of things, so what can we do but embrace them?

I’m taking part in this project sort deal. It’s called 100 Happy Days. Every day, I take a photo of something that makes me happy that day, with the goal of slowing down and appreciating life. It didn’t take long for me to notice that many of my images were things—flowers, a new table, the like. So I decided to move my focus away from things. Just this afternoon, I realized that now my photos are essentially just my dog. I love my dog. Very much. But there are more relationships in this world to be had than just with my four-legged furball.

Also while washing the dishes (they’re still waiting to be finished; I just had to stop and write), I was planning all of these words in my head, really getting myself going on this big encouraging shpeal about how I was going to move to Paris with my dog, and everything would be great. No more whens.

I began listing out the whens that I’ve held onto so far:

·      when I pay off my student loans…

·      when I have a car again…

·      when I have more work experience..

·      when I get my Master’s degree…

·      when I get poems published….

·      when I meet a man…

The list keeps going. I started thinking about how I would phrase my France dream without the ‘when’s. I have a pair of friends currently in France for their two-week honeymoon—isn’t that a romantic idea? But it’s not enough for me. I tell myself that I shouldn’t plan out my “live in France for a year” dream because there are so many “if”s: what if I love my career too much? what if I can’t save enough for it? what if I get into grad school? (and the big if…) what if I meet a man? I’ve decided that were I to let a man get in the way of my dreams, I would be cheating myself—this is why I am in Seattle after all—I’m living my own life; I’m not getting caught up in relationships in my new life (not to say I don’t want a boyfriend, I do, but I’m not ready to get married, which to me is pretty much the point of dating, therefore, I don’t—this opinion changes on a daily basis).

Sure dreams change, but you can’t wait for change. I know that I need to try things. I’ve always been one to set my mind on things, make them happen, and I’ve (painfully) learned that if I don’t like it, I can move on to new dreams. Who says you can’t have it all? Seriously. What are those people hoping for? I just want a simple life—simply adventurous, simply joyous, simply free.

Now that I’ve said all that, got my self-pep talk back on, I can confidently tell you, that while washing the dishes, building up my dreams, I suddenly gasped and the exhale was instant tears and that embarrassing loud sob that only comes out when we know we are really alone (aside from the dog who tilts her head and looks on with concern wondering what beast has taken over her friend). But that alone sob—that’s why I was sobbing—I am alone. Alone. No one holds my hand or kisses me goodnight. How did I reach this in my pep talk? (I do prefer to travel alone.) I reached the ultimate “when” of my past: when Derek _________.

Take your pick:

·      when Derek gets better

·      when Derek can walk

·      when Derek graduates college

·      when Derek isn’t doing as well

·      when Derek can’t going out any more

·      when Derek dies

None of my five-year plans included the last one until the summer I was in Italy, and he was so sick, and he died a month after I got home. Of course I hadn’t expected it so soon—five-year plan here. It took me a while to come to terms with that—I had planned a part of my life to start after he was gone. That sounds sick, jaded, disturbed, but I’ve always believed myself to be realist. However, in my realism, I didn’t account for the fact that Derek’s death would entirely shake me to hollow bones and redirect the entire course of any plan I thought I had. I guess that’s the karma there—you think you have plans? No, no, dear.

So this is how I got to be a twenty-two year old single woman sobbing in the kitchen with a plate in my hand. I was beginning to plan out the next ‘when’, and it finally hit me that you can’t base life around the unexpected, like death. Isn’t the whole point to keep going until you stop? If I wait around for everyone else’s lives to stop, I will realize that I never let mine begin. People I love will go away many times in my life, that is certain, but that doesn’t change dreams, only temporary plans.

I love my family. I love my friends. I love all of the people in my life (just maybe not in groups). I know this; they know this (I hope). But I don’t think they know that me wanting to go do my thing does not mean that I don’t want to spend time with them. Maybe this is just my “coming of age” realization (a little delayed), but somehow I’m getting older, and pieces are coming together (and then apart again, or sometimes shuffled) of really, what is happiness to me?

So no more ‘when’s. No more ‘if’s. I’m just going to do it. I have a dream in my mind, and I’m going to aspire toward it until it happens. I know that the plans won’t be the same from day one, but the end goal is until I try it.

“What, are your legs broke?” No, and even if they were, couldn’t stop me; Derek couldn’t walk, and he pushed full-force ahead. Carpe fucking diem. Besides, my desires are now bigger than a glass of milk.

home&hope

I’ve lost all sense of home. I’ve come to the realization that I find “home” in being able to control my life.

My family in Pennsylvania is entirely well and unwell at the same time, and there’s not a thing I can do from 3,000 miles away.

Not only can I not afford a plane ticket, but I apparently can’t afford to move to a new apartment. But I also cannot afford not to move, as our rent is about to skyrocket.

I’ve been diving through possibilities, and my hope has skyrocketed and plummeted about fifteen times just this week. Endless craigslist searching, phone calls, apartment visits. I cannot bring myself to pinch pennies for a 400 sq. ft. apartment. It’s just not worth it. Maybe I won’t be okay living alone, but I like to think that I would if I had just a little bit of space. I thought space was something people needed from each other—really, space is just something we need to feel comfort.

Growing up, Derek, Katlin, and I were obsessed with a computer game called the SIMS—a simulated life. We would build houses for these charaters that we created. We’d decorate with wallpaper and furniture, and then let them live out their lives in record time. They’d get jobs and sleep and talk in jibber-jabber. Building their homes was always my favorite part, but we could never make a complete home with the allotted beginning budget. We had to use a cheat to get more money to build what they needed (and then some). And when their houses were too small, they’d stand in the room with thought bubbles over their heads exclaiming “X#?!Y*%^” as they pulled at their heads and shook their fists in the air. A caption would appear saying “Your Sim is feeling cramped. She is unhappy because she doesn’t have enough space.”

I need space. I currently have to navigate around our couch to enter my matress on the floor from the top or bottom. There is no space. I sleep on a mattress on the floor. Our walls are coated with books—my nearest solace, yet my enemy because they take up even the illusion of space. And yet, I can’t bring myself to pick up a single one lately.

Sure, I shouldn’t complain. I’m twenty-two and have a load of opportunity unfolding. I have a mattress at least, even if it is on the floor. This is how twenty-two-year-olds are supposed to live. But I’ve never lived up to my age. I don’t know. I still make friends with thirty-somethings yet am continually the youngest—at work, at church, in my family.

I like to see it as progress—I’m doing something. I’m out here testing the waters. If life would have happened like it was supposed to, I’d really be in my last semester of college. Instead, I’m just a confused person searching for years that I cannot have.

I don’t want to be older. I don’t want to wish my life away. I just want to not have to hide my age. I want to not have to live like how people expect twenty-two-year-olds to live. I want a bed. I want space.

I think it’s the country coming out of me. I dream of water views just to feel like I’m not surrounded by steel. I dream of open lofts with natural light (a rarity here anyways, especially this time of year). When Pickle & I go for walks, we pass people in groves, always paired off. We watch groups party in their apartments or stumble across sidewalks with bottles in their hands and cigarettes between their fingers, laughing and talking about the next football game.

I don’t want to be them. I just don’t want to be this. I wantwantwant. Gross.

No one ever said anything would be easy. Ever. That’s so vague & cliché, but I’m learning it’s more true than I thought. Can I really be a city girl? I think I’m only pretending. I miss my car. I miss the road. I miss not caring if I had a bed or a couch. I’ve taken it all for granted.

I want to be grateful, but it’s hard when I realize that at 567 words (and counting) this blog post already has more words than I’ll ever see in square footage for the next few years.

I don’t want to settle, but I want to settle in. I don’t want to move every year, but the housing market here can’t keep up with itself, causing costs to rise and space to decrease, and there are so many people living on the streets, yet I can’t bring myself to settle for less. This is what I was afraid of when I moved to this city—I am becoming one of them, but something within me is fighting it. I’m glad for the fight, even though it hurts—I don’t want to be disappointed in my good fortune.

So how do I trust that this will all work out? That I won’t be one of those homeless street-sleepers in 30 days time? How do I care for a dog and myself and offer more than prayers for my blood back East? How do I care for the street-sleepers and do something more than just whine about my fortunate yet unsatisfying life?

I think about that a lot with Christianity. We are called to so much: to let go of things of this world and care for people. To love our brothers and give to them. But we are selfish; I am selfish. I want a nice home, a place to feel at home. I want to take care of myself first. Christianity just seems so extreme, and I think we are all failing because if we did it right, the way Jesus says to, we’d all be living on the street helping others along instead of freaking out about square footage and being simultaneaously in and out of the city.

So there is an internal battle going on. I’m not sure who’s winning. Frankly, I can’t bring myself to route for either side.

Tomorrow begins yet another day of endless searching. The apartment of my dreams, which I was set to view at 1:00 was rented out tonight at 8. I’m running out of options. I’m running out of steam, but I’ve never been one to settle. If I were, I wouldn’t be in Seattle; I wouldn’t be a college graduate; I wouldn’t be a seeking Christian; I wouldn’t be twenty-two, living on my own, and praying for the next road to be “right”.

I can’t decide if this experience is humbling, frustrating, or simply revealing my true selfishness. Probably the latter two. The thought of packing up my worldly possessoins again for my third move across town in a year and a half makes my stomach churn. The thought of home creates an unsettling tension between tall trees and tall buildings.

I need people. I’m a people-person, I admit. Yet I cannot bring myself to do this roommate thing again. I’ve been spoiled my whole life by fields, my own room, and a spacious home that my father built. People don’t live like that here—things are provided, not worked for. People seem entitled, not earning to deserve. Finding the old ways feels impossible, but it’s all I long for. Don’t give me your fancy brand-new buildings with a high price tag. Accept me as a transplant who knows what it’s like to hammer a nail into wood and feel accomplished, who is willing to put in the hours to gain the reward of creation, not a paycheck, who cares to the point of insanity, even if there is no resolve, who will not choose to become the typical Seattlelite. I’m a Seattlelite now for sure—I’ve got all the signs of it: a dog, urban life, working for a Redmond-born company—but I’m still a small “town” girl with a heart longing to earn what I get and aspiring to deserve it before I expect it. I realize that at twenty-two, with little life accomplishment, I currently deserve very little.

Maybe this all sounds pretentious. I’m not sure. All I know is that I believe in hard work, manual labor, and the fruits of living off the land, even if those aren’t entirely my way of life at present. Isn’t that how the American Dream got started to begin with? Freedom, independence, hope.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. –Hebrews 11:1

Don’t squash my hope again, Seattle. Hope is strong and keeps coming back. I’ve got a lot of hope—in God, for my family, for the future, for happiness.

hockey.sticks.

I’ve been delving into the 665 new songs on my iPod by putting the “Recently Added” playlist on shuffle.

A song called “Hockey Skates” came on. I started imagining that I could learn it and play it at the next rooftop shindig. The line, “I am tired of playing defense, & I don’t even have hockey skates…” caught my ear. I thought that if I were a real musician with stage presence who could talk and play and offer funny ramblings as interludes, I would say something like, “That’s a lie because I do have skates, but they’re just roller blades that I got for $5 at a flea market in California…”

Then I started thinking I left my hockey stick in Pennsylvania. Where is it? In the basement? In the barn? I’ve never actually played hockey. My dad made the hockey stick for me out of the sheets of tight-layered wood that he picked up from the dumpster at an old job. He’d bring home truckloads of it, and we used it to make anything and everything, including a hockey stick and the floor my tortoise’s mansion.

With two daughters, a hockey stick seems like an unlikely thing for a father to make. But we had bunnies that we kept in little habitats at the bottom of the hill. Their homemade plywood & chicken wire cages sat between the barn and the old school bus that we used as a storage shed. The barn had a cement patio in front of it about 7x10 square feet that would freeze over in winter’s ice.

My sister and I would trek down the hill with a bucket of hot water that we would pour over the bunny’s water bowls that had frozen solid. We’d then find the best sticks from the edge of the woods. We’d take the frozen water blocks and use them as pucks and hit the ice block across our tiny cement arena. It wasn’t hard to get a goal, but in a one-on-one, the small play space suited our ‘teams’ well.

We’d play until our noses ran so fast we couldn’t keep up or until the ice blocks were so bulked in snow that they wouldn’t move or until the ice blocks were nothing but a few chips or until the dark swallowed our surroundings and left us there under the barn light. I had to anticipate when Katlin would start running—she would always beat me up the hill, sometimes holding the door shut behind her when she made it inside, so that I was in the cold dark alone, just long enough for me to cry or start hollering up at the living room window for our parents so she would let me in.

We’d hang our snow clothes or wet clothes and boots in front of the wood burner, and heat two of the race began: up the stairs out of the basement. Only she couldn’t hold that door shut, with our parents right there, so she would just slam it behind her.

We were a funny pair: her the good older sister, doing anything to get away from me, the whiny little.

So all of this, just from the line of a song.

We’ve since grown much, and for the most part, reconciled. I bought the skates while visiting her. We were out for our first rare chance at sister time since she married last November.

Now that the cold is making its way into Seattle and Katlin is back in Pennsylvania, well, winter is just different. The dark is different. Seattle hardly even sees snow, if at all. The bus is now gone from our yard, and both tom-boyish daughters are gone from the house. The bunnies are gone too—we let them go into the wild after eight years of up and down the hill to feed them.

My mom is home for the next few weeks, staying off her feet after surgery. My aunt lives just up the road (as does most of my mother’s family), but she has been going over every morning and helping Mom around the house and caring for her.

Growing up, I thought my sister and I would fight forever, that we’d always be rivals. In college, I thought we’d always be best friends. Now, I don’t know what we are: we’re both just getting by and loving and hating each other from afar and trying to figure out where we land on this big spinning sphere. For now, I’m West, and she’s East, but I like to think that someday, we’ll be able to see each other’s homes through the naked trees in winter, and we’ll take care of each other and drink tea and play cards and laugh about being kids who played hockey with ice blocks and sticks. 

church: a tradition

The people I knew growing up believed in god because they just did – he just was. He was Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Praise him all creatures here below, heavenly hosts, the works. We said the Lord’s Prayer every week, sometimes even the Apostles’ Creed. The focus was god. When we prayed, we prayed to god. The trinity, particularly Jesus was peripheral. Jesus seemed to be just another apostle instead of the Christ.

But there was compassion and truth and a sense of belonging because everything was so rooted in the tradition of “thisiswhatchurchislike” that how was I to know any different?

As much as I claim to dislike that church, it still has a hold on me. The people who sat in the pews each week (and in the same seats) were genuine and old-fashioned in that they clasped their hands, bowed their heads, and went home and made dinner after the service. I remember sitting on the left side of the sanctuary, four rows from the back.

The wooden pews had a long stretch of mustard yellow cushion along the seat, and the ends were the best because they had the attendance booklet. More doodle paper in addition to the never-used offering envelopes and prayer sheets in the pockets of the pew ahead.

I used to stare at the stained glass windows and trace the frame patterns with my eyes. I would think about the colors and the texture. I did the same with the Christmas tree that stood up front, letting my eyes swirl along the unexplained trinity symbols and counting the marbles of lights. During Silent Night each Christmas Eve, I stood in the dark and stared only at my candle, the wax dripping down the sides, sometimes slipping through the paper try cracks and sticking to my fingers in a pinch of heat.

Sometimes I looked at the banners. The crown of thorns, the wine glass, the broken bread. The Good Shepherd and one sheep. The colored themes for different times of year: whites and purples.

I remember the warmth of summer, and the breeze coming up through the open doors behind the pulpit. I remember walking down to be acolyte, my favorite task. I loved the balance of holding the flame just right. I loved putting out the wick at the end of the brass rod. But my favorite was tipping the little bell over the flames, extinguishing them for the week and then, quickly, going back up the aisle to take off the heavy robe and go home for lunch.

It never took long. We’d hardly have our skirts and tights off before Katlin and I would be fighting.

“What did you just learn in church? Didn’t they just talk about love?” Mom said the same thing every time we fought, even if the sermon was about Cain and Abel. “Don’t you learn anything from church?”

Sure, sure. We learned the histories of the Bible. Creation, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Moses and the Israelites, Noah and the ark, the Covenant, the Commandments. By the time we made it through those, it was time for the holidays. We did the usual Christmas story and Easter, and by the time it was all over, it was time to start at Creation again. I don’t remember learning much about the New Testament, certainly not ever Revelation, but maybe some Matthew. Psalms. Lots of Psalms. Lots of read and response in droning tones like chanting monks.  

I am thankful to have that back-knowledge. I really am. It has helped me a lot in preparing for the New Testament. Preparing for and recognizing a need for Jesus. But at the same time, I didn’t learn until last year that micro-evolution and the Old Earth theories are widely accepted by the Church as a whole.

The discipline of getting up and going to church was more important than I realized. Now, I find myself needing to go. I love my church and my church family so much that it is an absolute joy to go, even when I do not feel sure in my faith. This Sunday, I will be out-of-town, and I feel like I am going to be missing out on that community of worshipping and praying and learning together.

Tonight at membership class, I felt for a moment like I was back at Poke Run. Everyone was seated quietly. The lesson was more read than taught or enthusiastically spoken. The calm took me back to the pews and the candles. Only instead of grape juice, we have Starbucks, and instead of stained glass, we have skyscrapers, and instead of focusing on rules and history, we focus on Jesus and redemption and life.

We talked about mission, about the calling to share the gospel to others. Well, I am no where near ready for that, and like all other things regarding Christianity, it scares me. I am afraid of all of it. But this in particular frightens me because evangelism has always been such a loaded word, and I’ve always just wanted to say, “Let others believe what they want to believe. Why should I push my viewpoint on them?” But I am starting to learn that it is not about forcing others into the same religion but rather loving others into the same community.

And now it seems just a little more clearer that maybe that was what the church I grew up in was trying to do after all. We were a sort of family, and I was a prodigal daughter.