Confessions from the new New Frontier

One week from today, my parents will appear on the curb outside my Brooklyn apartment. We will load up the artifacts of my adult life and drive back to Portland. My stuff will sit in the garage for a few days while I sort and organize and consider. Several weeks later, it will be back in the garage, as I get ready to settle in Boston. In between will be a summer in limbo.

It seems significant that this year is the 10th anniversary of my high school graduation, since that means it is also the 10th anniversary of that long, weird summer between high school and college. And tonight, I feel very aware that my eighteen year-old self lives inside of me.

At eighteen, I unfortunately had bangs and had tampered with my hair color such that pictures reveal it was kind of yellow. My clothes were sort of deliberately unfashionable. I was prone to viewing any conflict or transition as an identity crisis, and certainly saw myself as a tortured soul. A lot of the time, though, I was quite cheerful. I found that people laughed easily around me, which I liked from the time I was very young. My greatest comforts were in writing, pleasing adults, and expanding my encyclopedic knowledge of the two most important four-piece bands ever: the Beatles and U2.

That summer, I remember walking around Portland, passing by high school haunts like Bagel Works, Java Joe’s and One City Center. I sat in Monument Square and watched people and seagulls go about their business, somewhat disbelieving that the city—my city—would go on without me. I specifically remember being astonished that the Portland Public School system was done with me, that I had completed everything it had to offer, everything it was supposed to offer. At home, I know I bickered with my mother a lot, a lot more than ever before or since. Now I suspect it was because neither of us wanted me held back, but neither of us really wanted me to go, either.

I recognize that girl, and I confess that a few of the small hurts she carried I have not completely put down. At the risk of being writerly: She is me, but I am not her. Not only her, anyway.

I also recognize that this summer will have some things in common with the summer of ’98. I was an ill fit for high school, but, to paraphrase Orwell, I can’t say that I was altogether unhappy. Now, the most important reason I am moving is because I am an ill fit for New York, though that doesn’t mean it will be easy to drive away from that curb and wait for the unknown. As in high school, I made the most lasting friend with under a year to go. Again, I am forced to deal with the reality that a school system can, and must, function without me. Again, I feel like I’ve been unlucky in love, but part of being me is an openness and optimism that that XY set won’t always disappoint. I’m grateful for that hope, even if I can’t explain it.

One thing I know will be different is my relationship with my mother. We have the same bond we have always had, but it has already been tested. We have already come out the other side. She ceases to really care about the status of my laundry (I hope) and I cease to expect her to tell me I can’t wear ripped jeans or have to be home by midnight.

Basically, I have the rare chance to do something again, as an adult. I will spend the summer waiting, and then it will be time to pack up the car and head for another new life, again in Massachusetts. But I can’t swear I won’t sit in Monument Square a little first. And, quite possibly, brood over seagulls.

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Older people (my beloved grandmother, for example) are often fond of saying that any day spent on the right side of the grass (that is, over it instead of under it) is a good day. At 27 going on 28, I’m not so conscious of the Fates cutting my thread, but as a middle school teacher, I’m constantly reminded of my own version: any day spent on the right side of seventh grade (that is having it in your past rather than your present or future) is a good day.

In the brutal heat a couple weeks ago, the principal of my decidedly unair-conditioned school was forced to amend the usual no drinks in class policy and allow students to have water bottles. It is much cooler now, but the water is one more thing to ask for, another concern to be addressed, so they are still on a Death Valley-level hydration regimen. Just the idea that they can have water apparently engenders a bottomless thirst.

So, this morning then, I was not surprised to see a water bottle on nearly every desk. Except one. Karen had pushed hers so far away from her that it was balancing on the crack between her desk and the next one. If she moved it any further, it would technically be on someone else’s desk, and five years of teaching is long enough to know that that would be a scene. “Miiiiissss! I can’t do my work…Karen put something in my area!” Not good.

“Karen,” I asked gently, “what’s up with your water bottle?” One doesn’t expect water drinking to be a hot button issue, so I was surprised when she turned crimson and wouldn’t even look up.

“I know what happened!” a neighboring student said with more glee than was sympathetic, strictly speaking.

“And?” I queried, tilting my head to listen.

“Miss, one of the boys, he rubbed it on his, you know, the male part.” She blushed and added quickly, “You know what I mean, miss.”

Indeed, I did.

Confident that I understood, the glee returned and Yuleisy pressed on. “And she’s been drinking out of it! That’s like giving a blow job!”

Well, in the real world, no, it isn’t. But in the real world, people don’t go to third base with water bottles, either. Seventh grade is its own jungle, and teaching is a bit like going on a safari (except much, much less of a vacation). It’s interesting to observe the animals in their natural habitat, but it’s comforting to know you can get back in the Jeep (isn’t that the official vehicle of safariing?) and go home.

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OK. So long-shot becomes inevitable and inevitable becomes impossible. Hillary Clinton’s historic moment came and went, or hasn’t happened yet. I would betray my bias if I admitted that I am rolling my eyes a bit today as I think about all the smug Obama people, their BAs still warm from the printer, with their cargo shorts and clipboards. So I won’t, and it’s beside the point anyway. The point is that we are not the party of tired old men. No matter who our favorites have been (mine was actually Richardson—what a long time a year is!), we can all be proud of what we have shown to a watching world.

I’m still not sure which side I’m on in the good-for-democracy argument that has been all over this particularly close, particularly contentious (by contemporary standards, anyway) Clinton/Obama contest. The high voter turnout that has characterized the season is a good symptom. It indicates energy, initiative, and, most importantly, a belief that things can change, can get better if people will it to be so. Those things are enemies of cynicism, and cynicism is the enemy of a functioning democracy. If people won’t say what they want, be it because they don’t know, or don’t think it’s possible, or don’t care if they get it or not, it’s hard for the government to deliver. I’m not sure that we have said, conclusively, what it is we want, but we’ve at least pledged that we will. That, as Democrats, we care about figuring it out. In that pledge, the organism of democracy stirs, breathes, and lives.

This all sounds pretty high-minded, and it is, but I have a confession to make. My hesitation in the good-for-democracy argument is basically because what is good for democracy is not necessarily good for Democrats, electorally speaking. Of course I want the democratic process to thrive, but I want it to do so in a way that will deliver a Democrat to the White House. At the bottom of it all, I’m a partisan. I would be able to express purer ideas perhaps, and more original ones definitely, if I weren’t. But I am, and partisanship, in my case, means that I believe that we are all basically better off when a Democrat—any Democrat, nearly—is elected, and that how much better off we are is roughly proportional to the scope of the office he or she (!) assumes.

I have forfeited my right, and thankfully, my obligation, to have any specific ideas about the strategy involved in getting someone elected. After having a fairly marginal role in a single campaign, I left professional politics for the armchair. I had the heart for it, but not the stomach. So I’ll speak from the former.

We are the party of the educated middle class, but we are also the party of new arrivals, of people trapped in the closing walls of generational poverty, of laborers and single parents and people who always get their own seat on the subway because they smell. Not every single one of these people will vote in November, but if we say that our party is big enough to hold the weak, the radical, and the marginalized, we have to mean it. Some things are too important.

So, to the Obama people: Congratulations on a fair and square win. Have a drink and toast yourselves and your hero. But just one. The smugness and the pumping fists are just annoying to people like me, and absolutely alienating to people like the ones in the paragraph above. You can afford to annoy people like me who will vote Democrat no matter what, but you can’t afford to alienate people who have nowhere to turn. And furthermore, you shouldn’t want to. In short, less audacity, more hope, please.

To the Clinton people: I have loved the idea of shaking up good-ole-boy Washington as much as anyone. You are still as much a part of this historical moment as you were yesterday, before Obama got his magic number. You still get credit for half of it. It’s time now, though, for the stiff upper lip. You, too, should have a drink and toast what could have been. But, for you too, just one. If you are going to say that Clinton’s campaign has been about the “other” Democrats, you have have to mean it. Because they still need a president.

To my party: Among the things that makes us the party of the angels is that we perseverate on an ideal of fairness. It is also part of our difficulty in getting our people to Washington. It’s tempting for us all to continue to squabble and gloat and lament about who is on the top of the ticket and why and how and by how many votes and by which bylaws. But if we do, we risk losing sight of the enormous historical possibility which has been offered to us. In the end, it’s us or the tired old men. Which will it be?

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