the echo that did not die away

Loving this:

There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. ... All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeads, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all. 

...Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you... Your place in heaven will seem made for you and you alone, because you were made for it - made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

-C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain

i would miss this all so much

A few months ago, I traveled to Minneapolis for a writing conference. This wasn't so much a destination as a stop on my way to somewhere else, namely, becoming a better writer. The day I landed, April was acting more like February, keeping the sun hidden with a think layer of clouds and blowing cold wind to stir up the leaves and trash along the sidewalks. From the airport I took the light rail downtown, and dug my winter coat out of my suitcase to put over top my denim jacket while I waited for it to come. After the light rail, I crossed the street and took the bus a few miles to my hostel. Bare tree branches hadn't yet sprouted their new leaves, and the hostel had an old, creepy feeling (made even more so by the quirky characters who worked there). I looked at my room and one of my first thoughts was, I hope there are no mice in here.

The first day, it rained so hard that my boots and pants were soaked through by the time I walked the mile to the convention center from my hostel, and my coffee had turned cold and stale along the way. Later that day, it snowed. There wasn't much good food to eat or anything interesting to see, and though I liked my conference, I was eager to leave Minneapolis behind.

The next morning, I went for a run. Running a city forges a special relationship between you and it - you feel its roads, see more of it up close, get some of its wind in your hair. I stood by the Mississippi and took photos of the sky and bridge. Later that day, the sun came out. After the conference was over for the day, I walked in the sun's warming glow with some new books in my hand and full of new words and ideas. After dinner, I went to a coffee shop. And I think that's when it happened that I fell in love with Minneapolis.

It was familiar, in its brick and gritty city and white and black and trees and sky. And it was decidedly not Los Angeles, the city which has been my home for nearly 11 years but against which I still like to rail, an adopted daughter who still stands on the edges of her new home. The coffee shops were open late, people weren't trying to make statements, there were old brick churches and skyways and so many things inside instead of out. I liked that it was new and that I didn't have to learn to love it in the long-term kind of way one has to settle into home.

I suppose I have a bit of a wandering heart. On the flight home, I considered what it would be like to move to Minneapolis and have coffee not just one Sunday but every Sunday at that coffee shop I visited and to run along the Mississippi and buy a heavier winter coat. This was still on my mind when I arrived at Union Station from the bus that drove me there from LAX, ready to catch the light rail to Pasadena. I rolled my suitcase behind me and looked up to the cloudless sky that seems so big here. The sun painted the sky pink as it left for the day, and jasmine flirted with the early evening air that was cool, not cold. And I remembered, this is why it's good to call LA my home. I would miss this all so much.

books as friends, and a city that gives you space

If books were my friends (which, um, they are), I'd probably categorize them the same way I do my friends. I hope that doesn't sound overly utilitarian, but let's face it: hopefully we love our friends as wholly as we're able, but we often appreciate them for those one or two unique and complex qualities that sets them apart from others we know. It's what appeals to us in them, what draws us in. For example, I have this friend at work who is endlessly bubbly and enthusiastic and loves frappuccinos (with lots of whipped cream, of course), and she also has this incredibly smart, analytic take on things. I especially love to be around her when I want dessert, need a pep talk, or feel like my brain is failing me. And because of her, I just bought a girlie dress that I wouldn't say is "me," but that I love.

The same with books. I'm not looking to each book I read to bring the same kind of experience. I guess this is pretty obvious, especially when it comes to choosing different genres. But even when I read, say, two different books of narrative nonfiction, the author's voice and spin and language and images all work together to create a unique feel. What I'm getting at is that, reading Meghan Daum's newest book of essays, The Unspeakable, made me feel like I was with a friend (and actually reminded me of one of my closest friends). Daum's book is interesting, and heartfelt but not overly emotional. She said a lot of things that question the way I usually think about the world around me, which got me thinking. And I didn't always agree with her, but I trusted her enough to keep going along with her.

I came to this book and author through an essay published in The New Yorker a few months back, which is also part of this collection. It's called Difference Maker, and in it, she writes about her desire to remain childless. As she digs through her experiences and relationships to help the reader understand her path to this decision, she remains balanced (not sentimental at all, a leaning that the subject could lend itself to pretty easily) and yet uncovers what she called the Central Sadness (what a universal name!) in her marriage during one season of recognizing what remaining childless might mean for her and her husband. When I first read this essay back in the fall, I sat on my couch for a while afterward, thinking about it - about her process and how I could relate to that Central Sadness she described, and also about how she was able to achieve what she did with her writing.

One of my favorite essays in Daum's new collection is about Los Angeles, called Invisible City. If you're a reader of this blog, you probably know that I have my issues with LA (the traffic! the incessant sun! the fake green! and the metaphor that is!). Daum doesn't so much rant about LA* as see it with clear eyes and describe what she sees. Her premise is that, even though LA is a place where people come to be seen (or known - like, become famous), it's also a place where you can be invisible. She writes:

Now I just think that LA is a place that's hard to see close up. You can't capture it from the street. It's an aerial-view kind of city, best photographed from a helicopter or hillside. There are people everywhere, but they are hidden in their cars or houses, or they are tiny specks hiking on canyon trails, their dogs even tinier specks beside them, the wildlife crouched in the sagebrush unnoticed. LA is a place that will leave you alone if you need it to. It will let you cry in your car. It will give you your space. (emphasis mine, because exactly.)

It might be weird of me to say, but Daum's essay made me a little more sympathetic toward LA. As if I never thought that some of its flaws weren't its intentional doing, but rather just a result of how people have people the place. That is one of the best qualities that a friend can have, isn't it - to help others see more clearly, and as a result, find it in themselves to forgive. To act with grace toward the world around them.

*Ok but she does rant just a little bit, with such fresh imagery: "The surreal effects of watching these [obvious LA] cliches play out before you in real life and in real time can make your head spin. They can make you feel like the one live person in an animated children's show."

things you should do the morning after a failed first date (even though you won't want to)

Run instead of sleeping longer
Wash your hair
Resist the bagel; eat something that came from the ground
Say something nice about him to your friends
Avoid the temptation to generalize every bad quality to every man you know
Put on lipstick
Wear something you look nice in (even if it's not comfortable)
Agree to dwell on it only for a specified period of time
Recall something you laughed together about
Laugh about it sooner than you feel ready to
Don't take anything too personally
Make your bed
Get to work on time
Be glad for the sunshine
Welcome hope

touch of gold

On Mother's Day, I dug through my boxes of photos to find one of my mom and me. I was looking for one in particular, but I never found it. In it, I am 17 years old, wearing an oversized flannel shirt and a big smile on my face. My arm is wrapped around my mom, whose smile looks happy if a little forced for the photo. My hair is pulled back and gold-ish in color from the home dye kit I asked my mom to apply to my hair, and she which she did, but only after bemoaning my decision to dye my hair. The subtext is her wish that I remain cautious and conservative in my appearance. Don't stand out too much.

I wanted to find this particular photo to post to social media on Mother's Day because my senior year of high school is what I remember as one of my favorite times with my mother. My sisters were out of the house and my best friend was on another continent. Without them, I felt lost and lonely. At the same time, I was applying to colleges and beginning to imagine life on my own - outside of my parents' home, my high school persona, my stale childhood. I felt eager to connect in light of this imminent emancipation (it was finally clear that I wouldn't be stuck here forever). Asking my mother to dye my hair is, perhaps, the perfect expression of what I experienced that year. I was asking my mom to keep loving me as my mother even while asking her to let me go.

A mother fixing her daughter's hair is one of the most intimate acts of love and service between a mother and daughter, I think. I remember so many warm summer nights of having my mom braid my wet hair before I went to bed so that, when I woke, it would wave along the creases of the braid. I sat on the floor in front of where she sat on the couch, and she would untangle the wet knots with a brush or comb. My head jerked back with each tug, and tears stung my eyes. Sometimes I hated the way it hurt, but I always loved her for doing it. It was a way in which I needed my mom, and a way in which I knew she loved me.

Part of me was glad I didn't find the photo to post on Mother's Day. I was thinking how I would caption it and felt conflicted, because while I love my mother, the warmth in that photo doesn't capture our complex relationship. Maybe that's why I love it. It doesn't hint at another time during my senior year when, after a youth leadership meeting for my church, I drove home feeling so overwhelmed and so lonely that I couldn't stop crying. It was everything: my best friend exploring life outside of our friendship on another continent, my trying to act like I didn't care about my GPA and class rank when, in fact, holding onto those two numbers felt like the only way I could be seen by my classmates, my feeling like the whole world was moving on too fast and I was being asked to move faster to keep up, when all I wanted to do was be held. I came home crying and my mom found me sitting on the edge of my bed, sobbing. She sat down next to me. It is rare to feel so broken that the truest thing comes out of your mouth, but that is what happened then. I asked her to hold me, and put my head on her shoulder. Touch was rare and awkward in our family, and so she made only the slightest moves to comfort me. I kept on crying, unable to explain why.

I know now that my mom didn't know what to do, and I think I get it. But I faulted her for a long time for not wrapping her arms around me and smoothing my hair or wiping my tears. I faulted her for not knowing how to hold me when I needed it. I still celebrate her love on Mother's Day, and I still love that picture. I realize that though she didn't always know how to hold me, or how to let me go, she really did the best she could. I will always remember that she dyed my hair, even against her own best judgement.

on not quitting

When I started middle school, I decided I would join sports teams. To me, this was the way to make friends and be considered cool, though I really just wanted to gain that persona by association. I wasn't actually all that interested in being friends with most of the girls on the teams (most of them were intense and intimidating). And I wasn't all that interested in the sports themselves, either. I'd barely played team sports before. The drills made me feel self-conscious, I usually froze when it came time to make a play during a scrimmage or game (overthinking, of course), and while the point of most of those games - field hockey, basketball, lacrosse - was to aggressively go after that ball and put it in some kind of net, most of the time I just didn't care that much where the ball went.

Fall was field hockey, so that was the first sport I tried out. It didn't take long for me to realize I wasn't having fun. Controlling a heavy white ball with a long stick isn't all that easy, especially when the grass gets in the way and you have to run while doing it (and in a skirt! I thought that part would be fun, but it wasn't). I don't know if it was my lack of skill or my size or both, but early on I was tapped to try out goalie. This is pretty much torture for a seventh grade girl for a few reasons, the top two being: (1) no 13-year-old wants to look even bigger than she already is (all that equipment!); and (2) no 13-year-old wants to have the pressure of saving or sinking the team by moving her body to somehow, in any way possible, block the ball (that she doesn't care all that much about anyway). I wasn't playing sports to stick out, I was playing to fit in.

I started to dread practice. My stomach hurt for the last two periods of class every day, and I would try to figure out whether practice would be easy or hard based on how we'd practice recently or how soon a game was coming up. I moved into self-protective mode and just tried to get through the whole ordeal. One day, I stood on the sidelines and suited up in goalie gear while the rest of the team prepped for a scrimmage game. Down the hill, the cheerleading squad practiced their cheers. I looked on at their practice and the fun they were having, carefree. Then, I realized my coach had been calling me onto the field. I turned away from the cheerleaders and hobbled onto the field in my gear, stick in hand. I just wanted the whole thing to be over.

So you might see where this is going. Soon, I told my mom that I wanted to quit. But she wouldn't let me. I remember standing in the kitchen with her one night after practice, shoving bread in the toaster to eat with my dinner. Outside, the evening was dark, and the windows reflected ourselves to us. I demanded a reason to not quit, and her reply was that she wanted me to learn to stick with something. At the time, this seemed like the most ridiculous reason to me. And in the years to come, I wondered why she didn't trust me to know myself.

Here is where I'm really going: when I think about writing, I sometimes feel like that girl standing on the hill in goalie gear, gazing with longing toward where the cheerleaders are practicing. My stomach is in knots, I know I won't be able to block the ball, or write anything that makes sense, and I want to be on the other side where I might have fun and be popular. The metaphor breaks down somewhere, because I really didn't like field hockey, while writing gets me kinda wired, in a good way, when I get really into it. I wonder how my mom

became so convinced that persistence was valuable to learn - was it more than a general lesson she knew to be good, or was there a story, a desire, lying underneath it for her, too?

old has moved in and i didn't even know it

The day after I turned 35, I flew to San Francisco to meet my sister and her family for a weekend of fun. It all felt very carefree. I wore skinny gray jeans and nude flats. I took only my cross-body bag and a small rolling carry-on. Getting to the airport was a short walk, a metro-ride, then a bus to LAX, during which I read poetry and ate chocolate. The Virgin America terminal played pop music and was peopled mostly by young professionals in nice clothing, probably heading home after a day in LA for business. In San Francisco, I hopped on the air tram to the Bart and watched the late evening sun set over the low, brown northern California hills. I walked from the Bart station to my hotel in the Financial district, walking slow to take in the lights and warm air, needing only my denim jacket to keep me warm enough.

Somewhere in the journey, I had the though, Isn't this great? Young and uninhibited, free to whatever I want, my only burden for the weekend something I can easily just wheel from behind.

But then it hit me. I am not young.

Something about my situation, my un-attached-ness, maybe my clothes and accessories, too, and the book in my hand and my indulgence in chocolate and my company, made me feel young. And yet, I have gray hair. Weight is settling around my hips and butt (I mean, it always has, but this is something new). You don't have to look as close to see wrinkles or skin spots. Soon, if not already, I will be the not-so-young person (the old person?) taking public transportation either because she can't afford her own car or taxi to the airport, or because she is liberal and slightly hippie-ish and believes public transportation for the environment's sake. I will not be wearing nude flats but instead shoes that look a little clunky and better support my aching, blistered feet.

It's not that the thought of growing old has ever really bothered me. It's just that, in a lot of ways, I don't feel old. Or, maybe it's that the feeling of old has crept up on me, silently moved into my body over a number of days and months - leaving its toothbrush one night, making space in my underwear drawer a week later, like a live-in paramour afraid to have the conversation with me. Now, it's around all the time, and I never got to have a say in whether I wanted that kind of relationship.

Do I ask him to leave? Put his belongings in a box? Too late for all of that.