Reasons Why I'm Going

To learn to teach.

To live near the desert

To live near the ocean.

To escape the crush of scheduling, for which I take full responsibility.

To ask God how to stop being so angry.

To produce nothing, be known for nothing, be right about nothing, defend nothing.

To confront my loneliness, and befriend it.

To be out of the country during the 2016 presidential election.

To know Muslims.

... and there are many more reasons, some I haven't even allowed myself to think of. It seems to me that no one lives without an agenda. I just want to have a good one.

Your Good Gifts. You're Good Gifts.

Sometimes gifts come at exactly the right time, and make the deepest impression. I usually don't choose the right gifts to bring to parties, and sometimes I give up. I can think of two weddings where I just FORGOT to bring a gift. But I don't want to do without gifts. I need them, and so do you. In celebration of gifts, here's a list of some of the most important ones I've received.

I listened to the Pocahontas soundtrack, and discovered that I loved to sing. Who thought that would be a good gift? An aunt and uncle I haven't seen in 20 years.

I take up this notebook, and realize it, too, was a gift to me. I am so grateful for it. Blank sheets for my pulsing heart to glide along; blue lines to bring its rhythm true. Slow alignment.

An argyle t-shirt dress I wore with tights for two years. I had very few growth spurts. And as ugly as the garment sounds, I can assure you it was totally in style mid-nineties.

A down comforter I slept on before I even reached home.

My current cell phone.

Yesterday's pancakes.

A pair of heart-shaped earrings.

Spontaneously plugging my tire, filling it with air, and telling me it would be alright.

A plastic to-go mug filled with hot coffee when I left your house for a long drive home. I still use that mug.

After moving into the apartment, with far less help that I needed (read, just my mom - her moving help was one of those gifts that you can never repay), the two of you bounded up the stairs with smoothies for my mom and me.

When we were in Vegas over my birthday, you gave me a card with a cat on the front. I'm bound to say no more in public, but I still laugh when I see it on my dresser.

You gave me your bed when you moved out, and it is far superior to my old one.

You, grandma, trusted me with a responsibility recently. It was so small, setting up something decorative. I could have forgotten about it. I have only since realized that you entrusted me with a piece of your happiness.

You took me seriously when I sounded crazy, more than once, and became indignant for my sake.

You gave me some headbands I use all the time.

You trusted me with a secret. I have kept it.

You gave me frankincense, my favorite scent in all the world. Always available to me now.

This list... it's killing me. It's hard to tell where it ends. It doesn't end. I meant to focus this on the material gifts you've given me, friends, acquaintances, strangers! But I cannot separate them from the immaterial that have been so dear to me. Thank you.

8 minutes 30 seconds

I'm listening to a song worth writing to.

I've listened to this song so many times. I just today saw a video of the band playing it. They are such as I, mere mortals. Though the only decipherable thing we have in common besides our humanity is the fact that we occasionally can be found wearing t-shirts.

If you listen to "The Only Moment We Were Alone," you'll see that everything that happens before 8 minutes 30 seconds is good. You get lost thinking about everyone you've ever met, even imagining that high school and your worst fights had meaning. Yeah, it's a good song until 8 minutes 30 seconds.

Then, at 8 minutes 30 seconds, you realize you've been waiting for this. This is the purpose of the song. When the rifts swell into a wall, a roar, wave after wave of built tension finally breaking on land from on high. The absence of vocals makes me believe the tidal wave crashed on an uninhabited shore. Yet I am there.

I wonder if I'll be 80 when I hit my 8 minutes 30 seconds.

Who Teaches Us Not to Cry?

When we were at Grandma and Grandpa's house, there was to be no crying.  I was a highly sensitive child (now I am a highly sensitive adult), and cried when I felt insecure or angry, which was much of the time.

When I was four or five, we went on a family vacation together to the beach: my mom, brother, grandparents. We stayed in their camper. For reasons I don't remember, I was crying one night. Grandma towered over me and said in an almost-growl, "Now stop crying!"

You, reader, understand how, as a human, this approach is bound to backfire, and instead of quieting and assuring the child's soul, it will only ruffle it further. My mother was wisely unwilling to get in the way of my grandmother. Later, though, I asked my mother what had happened. Why had my grandmother told me not to cry when I was feeling upset? And why had she, my mom, not rescued me?

My mom's response was a brief history: my grandmother had told her own children all their lives not to cry. This had wounded my mother, who is also quite sensitive, but she had learned to bear the pain more quietly, or at least not in the presence of my grandmother. From my grandmother, I later learned that her mother had always told her own children not to cry. "And she never said, 'I love you,' your Great Grandmother Mae," explained Mom, "You just had to know it." And so my grandmother had also lived her life, not saying, "I love you." You just had to know it somehow.

-----

I visited my grandmother today. A few minutes into our visit, I said, "I have news to tell you." Her face lightened. I know she was expecting me to tell her that I had found a wonderful boyfriend, that I thought he was the one, and that we'd be getting married in six months, would she be free on October the 10th to play "Here Comes the Bride"?

Instead, I told her the actual news, "I'm going back into teaching this year. I'm moving to Morocco at the end of this July, and I'm staying there for two years."

She stared for just a moment, her face fallen, "I could just cry right now."

But she didn't cry right then.

We talked about Morocco for a little while. Then we spent all afternoon avoiding the subjects of the heart. She is often somewhat belligerent about my opinions and annoyed when I make jokes. And it was all completely worse because I knew she was despondent over my pending departure in July, though she didn't say so. It wears on a person not to speak out their fears and hopes. I felt totally spent when 2 o'clock came.

I began to gather my things, make my way to the door. She hugged me, and with tears in her eyes she held me close to her, "I know you have to go [to Morocco], and I won't stand in your way. But I love you."

-----

When we're born, our very first thing to do is to cry. It means we're alive.

Serial for Breakfast

I sometimes ask friends if they are fans of the "Serial" podcast. It's a risk, let me tell you, because I usually end up saying it like this, "Do you listen to 'Serial'?" And of course, if they don't know the show, they're hearing, "Do you listen to cereal?" So far no one has inadvertently confessed to listening to the breakfast food, but to the uninitiated conversation partner, it can make for a tense 30 seconds in which I try to explain that, no, in fact, I understand that breakfast cereal doesn't talk. You know?

If you know, then...

Can I just talk a little about my perception of Bowe Bergdahl right now?

He breaks my heart. He's the trapped idealist. He wants to protect people. And the military had (has?) this idea of counter insurgency that can sometimes come close to peacemaking. And how great would it be if we were making peace? So great! But what could possibly go wrong is that if you're using soldiers as peacemakers, the soldiers aren't being soldiers, and they may resent you for it. The soldiers are ill-trained and ill-suited to the job of humanitarian. They are trained to follow orders, not be adaptable. They are trained to kill a person, not to smile politely on the street, not to hand out watercolors to children. Mixed messages.

So, I'm listening to Bergdahl pose intense questions that eventually move him to action. (Arguably the dumbest action, desertion, but whatever.) At one point, he asks how a person could lead a platoon when he appeared to be more concerned about the army's equipment than the lives of his soldiers. Bergdahl was shocked that a soldier's life was not prioritized over equipment. (It's a calculation... it costs between half a million and $1 million to get a soldier to Afghanistan. It costs roughly that to buy a counter-IED vehicle.)

He is trying to learn the language and customs of the people, trying to win them over in small ways, as a thinking person might who is attempting to be counter-insurgent the way he understands it, which comes off as someone trying to be creatively likable.

I'm just thinking about how this guy trained with the wrong people. Join the Peace Corps, dude. Better yet, stop trying to find the ones to blame and kill; leave that to those in your platoon who could. You, Bergdahl, you become a creative peacemaker. You learn history, territory, hierarchy of the new place, and explain their fears to us, explain our fears to them. Help nations decide on a best course of action. Even after listening to the last episode on this, I wonder what he'll become.

Groundhog Mother

Groundhog mother
I'm sorry about your baby
I'm ashamed and sorry
You fled at the sound of the engine;
I remember my relief.
But your baby was stuck in a crevice above the wheel well.

Minutes later, a thud under my tire, and a baby animal
striping a parking space and dying.

I'm so sorry.

I think it is best that you remain afraid of me and all my kind.
We - I - won't slow down. I'm not even sure I could, now, if I wished to.

You are a soft-bellied earth citizen - I am a war machine.
I will tell you your son died doing his service.
But I know it is because I would only make myself bigger, better, bigger, better, endlessly marching on.

You will do well to stay simple,
digging holes, not speaking the language of death - knowing by heart the language of suffering.
I am the war machine.

Best Texts of the Week, January 2016

Week of January 29
K.L.: Pizza and beer and movies?

Week of January 22
Me: Good morning, mom! Thanks for getting me vaccinated. :)
Mom: You are welcome.

Week of January 15
A.S.: Ok, ladies today's goal is fewer tears and less sadness. We won't say no tears and no sadness because that's unrealistic. Just fewer and less. Deal?

Week of January 8
B.R.: Ok, on my way with 2 pieces of leftover shoo fly.

Week of January 1
Jacob: Random question: Where in Lancaster is a great place to get tacos? I feel like this is a thing you'd have an opinion on.