lost in new york

every time i ride the subway i get lost. i keep finding new and different ways to get lost. i exit the wrong way, end up on a street i didn't mean to, start walking in the wrong direction. i enter through the wrong entrance and have to turn around and walk out. i try to take a train that isn't running and have to go the opposite direction to pick up a train that i can take. it's exhausting to be wrong, to be confused, to be overwhelmed.

this is what i signed up for, after all. i needed to get out of the comfort of my own skin., of a place i knew like the back of my hand. i needed to shake up my perspective and do something new. i knew it was going to be different and i knew it was going to be hard. knowing it and living it are two different things, though. i keep telling myself, one day i will get this. one day i will know which exit to take, i will know where i am when i get outside, i will know where to stand and what is going on and watch knowingly as new people try to figure out the train. but what if that never happens?

as i rode the train from my apartment to gowanus last night to go to a reading by all of these people that i follow on the internet but have never seen in real life, i realized that maybe the point of new york isn't to get to a point where you know what you are doing. there's so much to do here and so much to see that maybe the point is to always be a little lost. if you're not a little lost, you aren't doing anything new. if if you aren't doing anything new, then maybe you no longer need new york?

how you live your life

it's impossible to describe how you live your life after terrorists set off bombs in your city. you avoid saying the words "terrorist" and "bombs" because they still scare you. you wake up every morning crying because your alarm is set to npr. you don't change your alarm because you don't know how to feel other than sad.

you work from home because terrorists set off bombs four blocks from your office. you leave the tv on the news all day, even though it upsets you with it's content and reporting. you have multiple tabs open on your computer to different twitter feeds, constantly hitting refresh, refresh, refresh. you hope that someone will say something to make anything make sense. you need to know every story of heroism, death, injury. you need to feel connected to your people, your city. you contemplate never leaving boston ever again. you need to refresh.

you go to jamaica plain for lunch because you have never been there and always wanted to go. you sit by a pond and eat a sandwich, watching teenagers, adults, eight-year olds walk around the path. you want to hug every single one of them. you wonder what you would tell a child. you wonder how to explain that there is no way that anyone could have stopped this. you can't cry anymore. you watch a bad movie instead.

you wake up crying because terrorists set off bombs on the street you walk to and from work on. you take the train to work, passing national guardsmen and a blacked out copley station. you are thankful for sunglasses. you have meetings and want to scream that none of it matters because people have died. you look across the table and see red, bleary eyes and realize you are not alone. you refuse to respond to people from out of town who try to talk to you about things other than your city and its people.

you go for a walk at lunch. you stop at the makeshift memorial that has formed two blocks from your office and watch a monk pray. you see a tv news man push a girl trying to deliver flowers out of the way so he can get a good shot of the monk. you leave. you buy three hydrangeas from the three of you for the three of them. you elbow reporters out of the way to drop them off. at night, you see your friends because you can't be alone. when you are alone, you watch only the news and then none of the news. you can only fall asleep with murder, she wrote on in the background.

you wake up in the middle of the night and forget that terrorists set off bombs in your city. you remember. you cry.

you walk to work, thinking it will feel less weird. you get to the street you normally walk down and make a left at the metal gates covered with flowers. cops stand in groups of two, three, four, shoulder to shoulder in front of the local businesses. "there's nothing wrong," they say. "we're just here to make you feel safe." military police walk toward you, always in groups of two. you see more cops than you do non-cops. in the eight blocks, you pass eight metal barriers guarded by cops, decorated with flowers, signs, and teddy bears. you pass four armored trucks. you realize how easy it would be to dissolve into a police state. you take a right and see a middle aged woman ask another, wearing a marathon jacket, if she can hug her. the survivor agrees. they embrace.

you pass the same memorial you left flowers at the day before. it's less crowded and you walk toward it. someone has replaced the chinese flag with an american flag. there are more flowers. people have started taping notes of love to the cement. you are thankful for sunglasses.

you watch the news conference releasing the pictures of the suspects, the pictures of the guys that look like your brothers or your friends. you hear the words "armed and dangerous." you feel the words "armed and dangerous." you don't want to get on a crowded train to go home. you don't want to go home. you want to do anything. you leave work. you go to dinner with your friends. you wonder why anyone would want to blow up a marathon. you think about hats. black. and white.

it's impossible to describe how you live your life after terrorists set off bombs in your city because you are not living your life. you are living your new version of life.

missed stop

i missed my stop on the train today. i was on my way home from work on the tuesday after a three day weekend and the day before i leave for vacation, also known as a Busy Day. i was texting two friends separately about the same conversation i had with a third friend, a conversation that just so happened to be about one of the friends being texted. there was a lot on my mind and nothing on my mind. 

i looked up as the doors were closing, expecting to see the stop before mine, and instead i saw the roof of the little hut where people stand to wait for the train, clearly announcing we were at brookline village. immediately, i saw a version of me jump up, scream "this is my stop!" and run toward the door. i'd seen any number of people do the same exact thing. 

two nights ago, i was at getting on the train at boylston. the doors shut and all of a sudden a woman was banging on the doors yelling, "my daughter! open the doors! my daughter!" in her haste, she turned her head and was yelling toward the back of the train, not the front. other passengers yelled, too, and the doors open. she got off the train and scolded her four year old, who had gotten of the train without her permission. 

there were two possible options for me if i jumped up and ran to the door. i could make it, sneak off the train, and be home in three minutes. i could also miss my chance and have to ride for two minutes to the next stop with people who had seen me act like a complete crazy person. i stayed put. 

i got off the train at the next stop. i'd seen it from afar any number of times when my friends were giving me rides home, but i'd never walked to or from it before. the light drizzle that had started on my walk from the office to the train was beginning to pick up. i looked across the tracks where i could wait for another train to come and take me back the one stop, and looked up the hill in the direction i was pretty sure was home. might as well give it a try, i though, and started up the hill.

it turned out to be very easy to get home. i walked up the hill, took a left, walked half a block, took a right, and was at the end of my street i usually ignore. instead of passing apartment buildings and city shops, i passed three story houses as wide as they were tall. Many were duplexes, some had porches that wrapped around the side, one had a bench in front with a wicker back, lit up with christmas lights.

in one house, light flowed from a window in a back room. i looked in on a family sitting down to eat dinner together. i wondered how long they had lived there, if there were children who grew up in this house who still came home to it during the holidays, what it would have been like if i grew up there. i wondered if they knew that people walked by their house, looking in on them, dreaming about all the things that could possibly be. 

it took me five minutes to walk that way instead of three.

tarot

my friend shannon read my tarot cards last night. what that really means is i shuffled a deck of cards, she dealt them, and then she read what a book said that they meant while i took notes. we were doing a yearly reading, so there was a card for every month, a card to sum up the year, and then we did a clarification card at the end. i wrote the month, the card, and what i took to be the most important point from the two paragraphs of fortune she read. 

we created this story for my year. up through august, things were going to be rough. i was going to have a hard time, go through some things, and have some hard decisions to make. then, life would start to become clearer, i would start to travel more, and by the end of the year, be starting something new. i was pretty sad at first, hearing that i was going to go through turmoil and confusion, through hard times that were going to last through most of the year.

as i continued to write, though, and my year started to turn around, i began to wonder if the point of the tarot reading is not what the reader tells you but what you write down. i went into 2013 with a distinct plan on what i wanted to do with my life, without thinking about what it meat to execute that plan, what it means to go through each day of this year reeling, waiting, dreaming, crying. the tarot made me look that plan in the face. it made me understand that at the end of this year, the most i can hope for is hope for 2014. 

but knowing all of that, it's still okay. i have this feeling sometimes. it's like i'm high above and see where i am in the context of my life. i can vividly see everywhere i've been. i can make out what is directly in front of me. beyond that, there is a vast openness. i keep my head down, pushing forward, not knowing where i'll end up, but knowing that it'll be exactly where i need to be. 

tattoo

For the past few months, I've been thinking about getting a tattoo. It started pretty innocently. At work, we started joking about getting tattoos to celebrate a co-worker's 30th birthday. I have never wanted a tattoo, even though makes me the minority in my own family. My mom went to get a circle of roses around her ankle to celebrate her 50th birthday. She said she always wanted one, but worried she would regret it. At 50, she realized she was old enough to make a smart decision. My brother got his first of many tattoos soon after his 18th birthday. It's a piece of black art on his upper back.

"What does it mean?" I asked him when he first came home with it.
"Nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing? You just got a tattoo you are going to have forever that doesn't mean anything?"
"Yeah, so?"

I thought maybe when I got older, went to college, I would understand. But I never did. My dad thought tattoos were gross, my former boyfriend didn't think they were pretty, and I just couldn't imagine why I would want to purposely sit for an hour and feel pain.

As we sat around talking about tattoos at work, I started to wonder what I would get even thought I knew I would never actually get anything. I thought about potential placements and what would look good there, but more importantly, what I could get that would really mean something to me.

A few weeks later, I discovered the Pen & Ink blog, which relates the stories behind people's tattoos. One of the first posts was from a man who had a rabbit on his back. He explained, "I got this tattoo because I suspected one day I would think it would be stupid."

That's when I got it. Getting a tattoo wouldn't be about what I actually got placed on my skin, I would be about the fact that I did it. It would be a constant reminder that there was a time in my life when I chose to go through something painful because I knew I would be more beautiful afterwards. And how could I ever regret that?

work

These bumper stickers that say Every Mother is a Working Mother are bullshit. Propaganda of the affluent. And an insult to actual working moms with jobs."
-- A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore

When Obama supporter Hilary Rosen claimed that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life, she ignited a firestorm of criticism. It started with Ann Romney saying that raising five sons was hard work, moved to Rosen apologizing for what she said, and ended with President Obama saying Rosen said the wrong thing. What she said was politically incorrect, but it was not incorrect. The problem here, is the definition of work. For Romney, work is something that is hard but rewarding. For working mothers, work is something you need to survive. 


The work Ann Romney did for her kids was the same work my mother did for me and my brother when we were growing up. It was the same work that every attentive mother does. My mom took us to and from school, made our lunches, came to every sporting event or band competition. She was there for us when we needed help with our homework, she fed us every meal, and took us shopping for new clothes and school supplies at the beginning of each year. All of those things are hard, and draining, and she did them because it was what was best for us.


My mother also had to do more, though. She had to go to her job every single day because she needed to earn money for us to live. She didn't do this because she wanted us to have a nicer house, or a fancy car, or the trendiest clothes. She did it because she needed us to have a house, a car, any clothes. She worked because had to.


I go to my job every day because if I didn't, I wouldn't have any money to pay rent or buy food. There is no other option. At night or on the weekend, I choose to do chores that are not that fun. I wash my clothes, wash my dishes, clean my bathroom, go to the gym. I do these things because it is for the best, even though it is also hard and draining. 


When my mom chose to have kids, just like Ann Romney, she made the decision that she wanted the reward of having kids even though it meant having to do a lot of things that are hard. The selfless decision that women make to have children in the first place is something to be admired, but let's not kid ourselves. The choice to have children, with everything it entails, is not the same as the need to survive. 

red sox

As I left my apartment this morning to go out to run some errands, I grabbed at hat to wear. I don't wear hats too often but when I do, I usually default to my Red Sox hat. It occurred to me as I was walking around that perhaps I should have chosen a different hat. It was only a week after the Sox completed the greatest regular season collapse in baseball history and days after they forced out Terry Francona, the manager who made the Red Sox blowing a lead be something unexpected. It was no time to be showing pride in my team.

I got the hat in 2003, the first year I lived in Boston. It was after the season had ended, after the Aaron Boone home run crushed my soul, after I had been a fan for all of my 18 years with no championship season to show for it. The Red Sox were my team, though, and I wanted the hat. The mood after that season was different than today--not from the team, the manager was still fired, but from the fans. The way the season ended was horrible and probably worse than what happened this year. We didn't know anything different, though. We mocked ourselves for thinking that they could actually win the World Series. We bonded together, like we did every year, over the misery of defeat.

This year's Red Sox collapse reminded me of what being a Red Sox fan before 2004 meant. It didn't mean winning championships, or even winning games. It meant having Don Orsillo's giggle waft throughout our house all summer long. It meant listening to my Dad talk about wins and losses and trades and rules. It meant, win or loose, going to a game felt like Christmas morning. It meant seeing Red Sox fans in other areas of the country and high fiving them.  The Red Sox wove themselves into our lives and became a family member.

After this season ended, I was pissed off off at them, disappointed in them, concerned about their future, and questioning my loyalty to them. I still loved them, though, so I wore the hat.