What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me?

“I know you don’t realize it now, but background becomes very important in a relationship. It could really come between you.”
I shrugged off the advice. What did my mother know anyway? She’d lived in Rochester her whole life, married a man from Rochester, raised kids in Rochester. All in an era when it was expected for women to really make something of herself; create an equal partnership with someone from their class, their upbringing, their morals and values. I grew up knowing I’d marry someone just like she did. My husband’s parents and my parents would be great friends. Our moms would meet for coffee in our hometown. Our dads would go golfing.

And then I met TC. And he broke every expectation I had for a partner. Certain things became important that I never knew I needed. He turned into my best friend. The best advice giver. My protector. My clown. My head-over-heels love affair. He grew up in the antithesis of my household. His parents were both addicts in different ways. His mom would fall asleep on the couch in the afternoon when he was 3 and 4 years old, and leave him to make dinner for himself. His dad would drink too much and hit his mother. His mother disappeared for a few years, and then came back. All this was happening while I sat at a clean kitchen table in suburbia and was made to drink my milk before homework and an early bedtime.

Yesterday I met his mother. He loves her. Of course he does. But I can not help but listen to her talk and judge her based on the stories that I know. “When TC was little, he got scarlet fever. And when I took him to the emergency room, they said, ‘Why did you wait so long to bring him in?! Why didn’t you bring him in at the first signs?!’ As if I would wait to bring my sick son to the emergency room!” But I knew that she probably had. I hated her for it. I smiled at all of her stories, her non stop stories, and acted interested when she went on and on about horror movies. She pestered the waitress for Coors Lite. No Coors? Michelob Ultra. And make sure it’s VERY cold! Is this cold? Did you pull it from the bottom?

Suddenly I pictured myself years from now. At a small, dirty house in Colorado with this woman at Christmas time. Heavy drinking. Smiling along with her stories. “You seen the Exorcist? I own it.” My holidays. My holidays that are usually so bright and cheerful and involve omelets and stockings and my mother apologizing for always giving me something corny like a Yo Yo because, “I just can’t help it.” These things are important to me. How can I give this up?

I know you don’t realize it now, but background becomes very important in a relationship. I haven’t talked to him about it. I don’t know that I will. Somewhere along the line, background became important. I just can’t force myself to look at it yet.

Celebrate Me Home

I love Christmas. As I emerged from the subway station at Steinway Street in Astoria last night, I heard the tinny sounds of old holiday standards crackling out of speakers attached to the lampposts; the tiny white lights were twinkling on snowflake-shaped decorations; the Salvation Army bell ringer clanged away begging for donations. It’s Christmas time in the city. It should’ve been so perfect.

But I had to go “home” to the apartment I have barely lived in for the past 2 months; the apartment I never really felt at home in anyway. And then I spent the night in an apartment that I have been sleeping in for two months but am not really fully welcomed into. “She can’t be here seven nights a week,” the roommate said. So I keep my things in one place. I sleep in another. I visit my parents in their temporary extended-stay living suite upstate while they deal with their transitional time, too. Every single Christmas decoration I own is in a storage facility in Rochester, in boxes piled 20 feet high, where they can’t be accessed until Spring. I have nowhere to decorate, or anything to decorate with. I don’t have a place where I can cuddle into at night in my flannel Christmas pajamas and wake up at in the morning to stumble out into the living room and sip hot chocolate and watch Rudolph. His place is not my place. My place is not my place. Their place is not my place. And for the last five years all I’ve been aching for is a home.

I’ll wake up Christmas morning this year in a hotel in Rochester. Our first year without a family home in Rochester, I cried at the thought of waking up in a hotel on Christmas and so my parents rented a house. But as the years have passed, and the reality of the situation becomes as familiar as a limp, I have tucked that sadness away until it turned into a tiny pit in the depths of my chest. And it hurts the most this time of year.

Caught Between a Rock and a Soft Place

The Comic: brutally honest. Blatantly affectionate. He's been telling me who he is since day 1. Like it or leave it. But I like it. It hasn't always been easy. We both try and explain ourselves all the time. "I hate being told what to do," he says. And I counter with, "I'm not changing who I am for you." Neither is asking what the other is contesting. But we're both afraid that if we don't say it, we won't get it. He could be the passionate love of my life. Or he could split my heart open and crush the pieces.

The Hometown Boy: I hadn't heard from him since I was 19 years old. We had drinks on Tuesday and it was perfect. We can go on for twenty minutes, talking in pure sarcasm, and then talk about gay marriage in the most serious tones. "I think someday people will look back on the gay marriage issue like we look at segregation," he said. I was shocked. I use that line all the time.

HB has started texting me. I thought maybe there was an off chance he asked me to drinks as friends. But today he promised to bring me back cookies from our hometown grocery store the next time he's there. I guess we're not friends.

TC is intense as ever. He's all "baby" and "I miss you" and about to move into my neighborhood. He could be someone important to me. But how will I know with the "perfect on paper" HB hanging out in my periphery?

The Heart Wants

"So, I'm calling because I'd like to move back home the last week in June. And I need to know if you're okay with this so I can start putting things in motion."

A pause. A long pause. There is never a pause in conversation with my mother.

"Well, yeah, you know we're always here for you! But... what will you do if you can't find a job?"

"I'll have saved up enough money as a cushion and then I'll move to Seattle at the end of August."

"Without a job? Without health care?"

I felt my confidence deflating, slowly, slowly. My chest tightened. My eyes threatened tears.

"I have to do something!" I proclaimed, my voice wavering only slightly. "I can not stay in this job, I can not stay in this apartment, I can not stay in this city. I have to do something!"

I feel so helpless. I feel trapped in technicalities like money and health care when my entire heart and soul is telling me to go.

"I don't think it's that crazy!" I exclaimed, trying desperately to pull her to my side. It's not crazy, you're not crazy, this is not crazy. Maybe it is crazy. Maybe I will get to Seattle and have a break down and think to myself, My GOD, what did I do?!

Or I will stay in this dirty, overpriced apartment, in my dead end, brainless job, in this cruel and soulless city, and I will break down in a different way.

It shouldn't be so hard but it's the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

She's Got a Way

When I was 18, I hated her. She was comfortable and familiar, and I got used to her but in the way that you get used to a limp. I wanted to leave her so badly, and when I finally got a break at college, I couldn’t wait to come screaming back. “Remember me?! I’ve changed. I’ve outgrown you.”

I’m twenty-five now, and I miss her. I remember her familiar curves, her radiating warmth and her distancing cold. I don’t want to go back to her. But my heart breaks when we’re forced apart.

On Tuesday morning, I sat at my parents’ breakfast table, far away from my childhood home, but not so far that her hold on me wasn’t achingly apparent. My mom packed up her bag for the day and I spooned cereal between my quivering lips. I started to cry. "I feel like I'm in third grade again," I whimpered. "Don't make me go to school, mom, I want to stay home."

I know that there are great things waiting for me out there. I am destined to be successful, as a chef, as a writer, as an eater, as an editor, or maybe as something I haven’t even considered yet. But part of me wants to slink back home to the predictability and comfort of friends who have known me since I was ten years old and love me whether I am an exacerbated version of myself, or not myself at all. Part of me wants to buy a car and move into a cheap apartment in the middle of streets I could traverse with my eyes closed. I want to sink down into the cushion of home.

I used to tell myself that there was another home out there for me. I’d learn to love a different city with different people, and I’d create a better life of my own, instead of claiming one that had already been created for me.

I’m not sure why I want her back. All I know is that I do.

Unexpected

"Hey!"
"Hey ... what?"

We were walking down the concourse, holding hands, bright pink duffel over my shoulder.

"Nothing. It's silly."
"No, tell me."

...

It had been a long day in transit.

I had missed my connection in Denver, which meant four hours to kill in an airport that should be cooler than it is. I wouldn't be home until 10:00 with work bright and early the next morning. So I began to scheme.

If I stayed at A's place, I could grab a quick bite. Sleep in. Walk to work. He could pick me up from the airport. Carry the gigantic suitcase I brought back as a favor for the high school best friend. We could spend time together after a long six days apart.

A few book chapters and a couple of white lies later (the family is immigrant-y after all), it was settled. I texted him when I got on the plane, telling him to be early. It would be the first time someone else - not my mom or brother - would be waiting for me.

I was restless the entire flight. When the power went out at the gate in DC and my fellow passengers had to use their cell phones to search the overhead bins for their luggage, I cursed Frontier Airlines for my last row seat. The last to exit the plane, I speedwalked through the terminal, and there, just past security, I could make him out. Wavy brown hair, white undershirt, jeans. I almost skipped before falling into his arms.

...

I made my eyes big and laughed: "I think we're falling in love!"
He shook his head and laughed, too.
"I don't think you're silly."

We continued to walk, and then he stopped and kissed me.

That night, after we had made love, he turned to me.

"You know that thing you said at the airport ...? I agree ... I think you just caught me off-guard. Usually people say things like that at moments like these, but you're not cliche like that."
I smiled.
"I guess not."

Packing

T-shirts. Jeans. Pajamas. Dressy tops. Socks. Dresses. Skirts. Jackets. Purses. The piles grow higher as I sort through everything. The bags are open on the floor, empty, waiting for my life to be filled into them. These tights have seen their last days, I decide, adding them to the pile of "to-gos" on the floor. Those shoes have served me well too, but unfortunately they too must go.

I find the corners of my mouth drooping silently. I fold up shirts and socks.
I find my eyes getting heavy. I place a pair of jeans on top.
I find myself sitting there staring. I handle a soft dress delicately.
I shake my head. These bags have got to be packed.

My photographs come out of their frames and into a notebook for safekeeping. The cards that lined my shelf in the living room get tucked away as well.

I make a list: pick up dress, buy macarons and chocolate and cheese, mail my box of things that won't fit, buy a book for the plane.

I sit on the sofa then, suddenly tired.

I pad over to the desk where D is studying for his exam. I kiss his shoulder. I shake my head when he looks up. I wish this hug would never end.

My bright orange living room smiles at me reassuringly. You'll be back, it seems to say. But not to live - at least not soon, I cry back. And silence.

I don't have any music as I pack. I find it makes me too sad. The happy upbeat tunes seem out of place and the melancholy ones feed into my mood too much. Me and my thoughts, then, folding, placing, stuffing, closing.

My bags are almost filled. And yet somehow my life seems to be flitting around, evading my reaching hands, refusing to be packed away just yet. Come on, I say. We've got places to go. We'll do brilliant things and have some fun. It's been a good ride, I think to myself. I just wish it didn't have to end just yet. I know exciting things await, but. Some part of me, it's here to stay.

Missing the mark

I've tried writing this blog post about three times already. Every time, words have failed me; or I them. At times I am too bitter, at times too whiney, at times it just seems like a rant. At times I am too chipper, I turn something impactful into a quick joke with a turn of a phrase, I gloss over the parts that I think will make me sound bitter. And I struggle to strike that balance between reality, emotion, and the perspective that time creates. It isn't just for a blog post. I've tried to write about it before, just to clear my mind, just to take that experience, that weight, that package out of my heart and unwrap it onto paper or a screen. But maybe it hasn't been long enough. Maybe it's one of those things that makes a chapter in a memoir, sixty years after the fact. Maybe it's because I didn't write about it at the time itself. Too much distance? Too little distance? Who knows. What I do know is that if I try to write about the experience I cannot even think of a title. "Moving" or "Middle School and High School" or "The Immigrant Experience" or "New Kid on the Block" or "The Wonder Years." See, even now I resort to gimmicky references to bygone pop culture to push under the rug something I still don't understand myself but that has been such a large part of my still-short life story, and one that has been so impactful as well.

Friends have asked:
- Was it difficult for you, to move to a new place, a different country, at that age?
And I give my much practiced and much perfected answer with just hints of hestitation thrown in here and there at exactly the right moment to give the effect of a spur of the moment spontaneous response:
- Yea sure, I mean, I don't know. It's difficult at first, ya know, you're leaving all of your friends and stuff. And I went to an all girls' school! Imagine being thrown into a middle school with boys! Even girls who'd been in co-ed school all along didn't know what to do with that! But I mean, you know, you make friends, you learn the culture, you find your niche, and suddenly it's like you're a part of it. So yea, it's kind of tough, but it teaches you a lot about adapting to a new environment, ya know? And then you're fine.

Every time I say it a little part of me mocks myself. Didn't I cringe when my parents would say "Oh kids adjust so quickly"? Didn't I want to scream "No! They don't! It's as tough as raw leather!"?

But isn't this the answer that works the best? Do I really want to go into how I didn't know what "Billabong" was? Do I really want to talk about how I stopped wearing skirts because all the other girls shaved their legs? Do I really want to explain the embarassment of having a guy ask you out in awkward twelve-year-old fashion and not knowing how to respond because a) I was twelve and b) about 90% of my interactions with the human species were of the female variety and c) why were people thinking about dating, hadn't I been more interested in barbies until last week? Do I want to go into an explanation of how much effort it took to be able to look into the mirror and see a friend, and not someone to hide? The answer is a resounding no. And so I fall back on my practiced pauses, the little smirk here, and sympathetic sigh there.

And there you are. That response, just like this blog post, misses the mark. Somehow I can't get to the story. The real story. The unshaven legs and the unfashionable clothes story. The smelling like Indian food and not having perpetually shiny bouncy smooth hair story. The tears in the dark and the comfort in books story. The resentment and the anger story. The not thinking dating was normal in middle school story. The realization and the adaptation story. The first awkward friendship and the friendship with myself story. The growing up story.

Perhaps it takes more growing up to write about growing up. Perhaps it isn't just my story, but the story of every girl who ever went to middle school and high school. For now the practiced little speech stands me in good stead. For now maybe it suffices to be able to think back and not cringe, to be comfortable in my own skin.

RSVP

In one year everything in my life changed. In 2004 I was an optimistic dancer/singer/actress with an all-star swimmer boyfriend who went home every once in awhile to Rochester, NY and slept in the same room I spent my entire nineteen years in. By 2005 I was a hurt, embittered English major with plans to be a writer who ached when she saw swimmers and went “home” to a cold empty house an hour north of the city in a hard bed no one had ever slept in. I was changed. And I left a little piece of me in Rochester, dancing and singing and acting with the swimmer.

Every year since then I have had to face a decision. This year is no different. An invitation to a “reunion.” I stare at the RSVP list and I see E.’s face smiling back at me, pressed up against his new girlfriend. I don’t feel jealous. I don’t compare myself to her (okay, I’m more attractive… I’m still human). But when I think about going back to the city I grew up in that is no longer my own, seeing people I used to dance and sing and act with who still ask if I’m performing, and making plastic-smiled pleasantries with E., who just 2 months ago told me I’d “never” hear from him again, I get sick. My insides begin to churn and I have to make a choice.

Nineteen years turned me into someone and one single year turned me into another person completely. E. doesn’t know this new girl, and neither does anyone else who watched me on stage in high school. Sometimes even I don’t know this new girl. She is like a mythical character, part optimistic shining star part hardened, blackened city girl. And when City Girl walks into the bar and greets all of those familiar faces, she feels a little lost and out of place.

“Are you attending?” Yes.
Or no.

Secrets to Happy

I've been having a rough time lately. I'm torn between a happy, safe life in a small town with old friends and stability, and a fast-paced life of passion and turmoil and lofty dreams that'll carry me somewhere unfamiliar. But after going to a friend's wedding last weekend, I do feel optimistic about love. And then I found this:

Pancakes for breakfast are the secret to a happy marriage. (Pancakes for breakfast are the secret to a happy anything actually.)

And I felt even better.

Across the seven seas

I give the rickshaw-wallah directions with confidence. "Turn left." "A right after that building." I count out the change.
I bargain with the fruit seller. "That's too expensive. Every other day a papaya is ten rupees, how come today it's fifteen? Nothing doing. Here's your ten, and I'm taking that papaya."
I walk down the street nonchalantly.
I speak the language.
I have the same hair, the same skin, the same eyes, the same height.
This is home.

Is it at this corner? "Turn..." No. Next one. Next one. "Turn left." Was that correct? Yes. There's that building. Okay.
My heart flutters in my throat as I ask him the price. He has never seen me before, he knows I am new. I summon up brash arrogance. I swagger my way through buying a papaya. Did I under-pay? No. Okay. Okay.
I keep my pace quick and efficient. I feel their eyes on me. I am afraid of tripping on this road without a sidewalk. Rickshaws and two-wheelers hurtle past me. Too slow and I'll look like a tourist. Too fast and I'll look like a scampering rabbit.
I don't know the slang. I feel my accent as I utter the syllables. I keep the conversation at surface level; my vocabulary doesn't go that far.
I dress differently without knowing it. Even in a traditional salwar-khameez I look out of place. I walk differently. My jeans are too tight, my shirts are too long. My umbrella has polka dots on it.
This is home




...?