Confessions from the new New Frontier

One of my New Year’s Resolutions (the only one I thought I really meant) was to post something at least once a week. It’s February somehow, so that means that I’ve already not lived up to my own expectations  at least four times. But…instead of the usual throwing up of the hands and declarations of loserhood, I’d rather make the first post of the year a list of things I’ve actually forgiven myself for–one for each week of 2012 in which I didn’t post anything.

1. I forgive myself for constantly exasperating those around me with my relentless existential crises about where I’m going to live. Feeling foreign in New York and feeling like a New Yorker everywhere else is part of who I and and I don’t really have any intention of living any other way. It’s a state of angst I have chosen and chosen again and again. It’s a problem I count on having and I don’t want it solved.

2. I forgive myself for the likelihood that I will continue talking about getting a PhD in English but am pretty unlikely actually to do it. The fact that I could have a life as an academic seems to be way more important to me than being an academic, and I’ve pinpointed at least two reasons why. The first is not particularly noble: my career as a Master’s student in English was glory in miniature and I don’t want it messed with. The second reason, which is still mostly about me but isn’t 100% vain, is the fact that I have chosen to teach public school in the inner city, among a bevy of other options, has always been an important part of my narrative. The sum of these reasons feels like this: Sure, I could get into a competitive PhD program, but I had my fun as a grad student already, and it’s time to set my brain (not to mention my heart) back to the important work of social justice. That’s legit, right?

3. I forgive myself that REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” fills me with so much stupid hope that it’s criminal. If I’m alone when I hear it, I belt it out as best I can while my throat constricts with emotion. I will never mention this again.

4. I forgive myself that, sure, I’m interested in seeing new places and learning new things, but I don’t really have that much wanderlust when you come right down to it. At my age, education level, and class bracket, you really aren’t shit if you don’t feel a manic compulsion to trek off to every continent. How can you show face(book) if you don’t have pictures of yourself in European bistros, in front of the Great Pyramids, in a wooden boat in Thailand, and working on a farm somewhere Spanish-speaking? It’s not that I don’t think that experiencing other places has value, it’s that I think many of my peers miss that you can experience the different at home, too, if you are willing to pay attention, and that that has value, too. Feelings of foreignness that you have while traveling are easy to contain in photos and cocktail party-ready stories, but the way you understand yourself relative to the place you call home (wherever in the world that may be) is closer to who you really are, and, personal ads and college alumni magazines aside, that is what I want to talk about.

Thanks for your indulgence, gentle reader. The next post will be a real reboot.  :) E

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I tend to think that these minor, dare I say manufactured, holidays–Valentine’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Days–are pretty arbitrary. Did I send my mom flowers this weekend? Of course I did, and I’m glad that there is a reminder on the calendar that I should do something like that. Mother’s Day could be any weekend, though, so it might as well be this weekend.

But, arbitrary or no, I am really, really, especially missing my grandmother today. Maybe it’s that Mother’s Day season makes other people talk about their grandmothers and me realize that I don’t have any. It’s a kind of loneliness in the abstract, but lonely nonetheless.

I know that grief is supposed to be all about the person who is lost, but I think that, if we’re honest, our emotions are basically about ourselves. In losing my grandmother this November, I lost someone who adored and accepted me unconditionally. She was not well-educated, and I know she didn’t understand why I do a lot of things that I do (more school?) and that my priorities were always a mystery to her (why aren’t you buying a house in Maine like your cousins?), but she loved me. And something more. She liked me, too. My stories, of my students, of cities I’ve lived in, of things I’ve seen and done, have been all the more special and alive because I know how much they delighted her.

She was a person who said she liked things and people and ideas to be the way they had always been. She liked a meat and potatoes diet, and ideologically, she was Greatest Generation to the bone. But she was fundamentally not judgmental, and she trusted me. She would say that she didn’t like exotic anything, but when she heard me rustling around in the kitchen, preparing one of my one-of-a-kind specialties with a lot of ingredients, she never balked, even when I was making a curry, which she normally would have claimed was too spicy. Invariably, she would say something like, “Well, this is nice for something different.” I know I’m a pretty good cook, but that is still the praise that means the most. To see an 80-something year-old woman who thinks she only likes beans and hotdogs ask for a second helping of my mulligatawny soup is a kind of subtle satisfaction that I will never forget.

But the way she trusted me at the table is maybe a symbol for everything else. She really listened to me when I talked. She wasn’t necessarily inclined to support something like gay marriage, or to see why we should give amnesty to illegal immigrants, but where I stood on subjects like that had a lot of weight. I would sit on the loveseat with my legs tucked under me and explain why I see the world the way I do, and she would sit in her recliner and listen and say, “Well, that’s true, too.” And, in the end, her kindness and basic love for and interest in people always won out. Being kind wasn’t a political thing to her at all, it was an instinct.

It certainly wasn’t all a matter of me teaching her things. I learned countless things from her. That if you tie a bow what seems like upside down, it won’t come out crooked. That you should always tip the bartender. That it’s easier to peel a banana from the end opposite the stem and it’s easier to get to the tail meat of a lobster if you crack the shell lengthwise first. That I should hold out for the right guy. That you should know how to iron, even if you never do. That it isn’t possible to have nothing in common with your family because being family is everything. I’m better, and my life is richer, because I know these things.

So…thank you, Grammie. Happy Mother’s Day.

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My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about a week and a half ago. It was a total surprise and my family have been reeling a bit as the reality has set in. An ultrasound confirmed our fears: that the cancer was aggressive and had spread throughout her abdominal cavity, but that the doctor wouldn’t be able to answer our most serious questions until after a massive, invasive surgery.

Well, that surgery was today. In pre-op, she was absolutely amazing. She had the whole team of doctors and nurses laughing. I have never seen anyone so brave. She was in the OR for almost 7 hours while a team of surgeons removed something like 40 tumors (one the size of a coconut), did a full hysterectomy, and took out her appendix, spleen, and a portion of her colon. When the gynecologic oncologist met Dad and I in the waiting room afterward, he was almost grinning and called her post-surgery condition “optimal.”

Now, in this new world of cancer, good news is all relative. In this case, news can be good while Mom is still not cancer-free. Here, “optimal” means that the docto met his goal of removing every tumor with a diameter of 1 cm or larger. He feels confident that the smaller ones will respond to chemo. In this world, good news means it’s still a long, scary haul.

When the doctor left, Dad and I collapsed into tears. We were grateful, relieved, and exhausted. And I know we were thinking the same thing: Thank God I don’t have to figure out how to live without my best friend.

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