Tag Archives: work

Library Girl

Posted on by under Time & Place

The first job I ever had was in a library. I was seventeen, bored, and in need of cash so I put away books for a whole year. The library was small with one large main room with computers in the center, a children’s nook and video shelves to one side, and fiction stacks and study carrels to the other side. There was a dark little room off to one side with biographies and Sci-Fi and probably every single book L. Ron Hubbard had ever published—no small amount of wall space for that collection.

I spent a lot of time shelving in that little back room—Howard Stern’s Private Parts, Fran Drescher’s Enter Whining, Piers Anthony’s omnibuses, and at least three times a day, multiple copies of Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth. It was the nineties and people were gobbling up books written by stars and adapted for the big screen or television by the same stars. It’s funny to think that these books have likely been carted out many times over the past ten years with fifty cent stickers on them at library book sales.books-1617327_1280 (1)

In that back room, I was accosted by a man wearing what could only be described as a strap-on. It was plumed and colorful—almost a holiday outfit, if you could outfit that particular zone. He told me he was taking a survey of people’s reactions. At first I didn’t know what he was referring to. He was obliged to gesture at his varicolored nether regions. I laughed because I thought it was funny and shelved two Battlefield Earth’s. He disappeared. I told a librarian about the encounter, and she let me know that that was not OK. It was not OK at all. An interview with the police after my shift rounded out my education on how not OK it was to be flashed.

In graduate school I worked in a research archive. I catalogued children’s books in an enormous cement basement with motor-powered movable stacks. I was often the only person there for hours at a time. Patrons stayed safely behind glass doors upstairs in full view of the archivists. There was no way anyone who did not have business there could cause a commotion. The librarians and archivists stayed in their offices, oblivious to the public; what mattered was the materials, not people. Patrons came in to look at Charles Olson’s personal papers, or eighteenth century chapbooks. There had to be a specific reason to hang out there. I determined that I would never work in any other kind of library.

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Seven years later I found myself without a steady job, living in a new location, but with seven or eight applications submitted to libraries in the area. “This time it’ll be different,” I said to myself. “I love libraries. Always have.”

Of course I love them. I have only worked in libraries for a total of three years, but I have spent time in libraries my whole life. After months of applying, I received an invitation to work as a substitute library associate on the weekends. I found myself wheeling around the wooden cart, shelving books, and being schooled in how to alphabetize properly by a well-meaning associate. I was right back in high school. There were no flashers—that might only happen once in a lifetime—but there were many confounding problems of the twenty-first century to negotiate.

One patron asked me to help him write a letter to Donald Trump: “Dear President Trump” it ran, “I suggest you consider Russia as a top tier ally when you take America.” Another patron explained to me that he was allowed to visit the Ukrainian brides website on the library computers. It wasn’t porn. He’d already gotten the OK, alright?

I stayed for three months. It was all I had in me.

* * * * *

IMG_20160831_191540There’s nothing more exciting to me than backpacking in the library, carrying around tiny papers with call numbers written on them, finding the corresponding books in the stacks. Just today I picked up Barry Fell’s Bronze Age America and America B.C. on a whim. Alternative, badly received pre-Columbian history might help me write my book. Who knows? Libraries are pools of glorious random finds.

But there’s one thing I now know. Visiting a library and working in one are two different things. They might as well be two completely different places.

* * * * *

Elena bio YAH

Comfort Food

Posted on by under Food & Place

“We thought maybe you ate too much and couldn’t fit through the door.”

My face blushed red and I turned away from my 5th grade classmates in shame. After being out sick for a couple of days, I had returned to school. A friend walking beside me turned around and yelled with fiery authority, “Shut up!” at the giggly boys who scampered away.

*************

I’d worked all day at a job that was a daily test in humility as I earned a paycheck far below my skill, experience, and Master’s Degree education level. Many of my coworkers at the big-box retailer were in the same situation. I was at the end of a seven day stretch of work days, three of them starting at 4 a.m. My sleep schedule was irregular, I was fighting off a scratchy throat that usually signals that I’m about to be knocked out for 24 hours, and my feet were killing me. The day had been typical – it was spent climbing tall ladders, lifting heavy boxes, and having people 10 years my junior instruct me on how to properly put products on a shelf.  

I was physically exhausted. I was mentally exhausted.

SaladOnce home, I pulled a metal pan out from the cabinet, filled it with water, added quinoa, and set it to boil. From the fridge I pulled an assortment of leafy greens, strawberries, feta, lemon juice and the jar of minced garlic. I grabbed a grapefruit from the counter; walnuts, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and spices from the pantry. From the cabinets I grabbed mixing bowls and cutting boards. I did not really know what I was making, but I needed to chop and simmer and stir. I needed fresh flavors to mix together to enliven my senses.

The lemon juice and vinegar and oil were whisked together with honey and seasonings. I tossed kale and arugula with feta and walnuts and sliced strawberries.  Small segments of juicy pink grapefruit plopped atop the mix of greens.  When the quinoa was done, I spooned in the filling grain and then tossed it all in my home made dressing.

Here was my comfort food. I relaxed into the smooth wooden dining chair I had picked up at a yard sale a few months ago. It’s an old office or library chair – with an extra wide seat and a sturdy frame.  The meal was delicious and full of just what I needed to feel calm and at rest after a crazy, exhausting week.

*************

I’ve always loved cooking and food. As a child I poured over the American Girl cookbook for Kirsten Larson and made a Swedish feast for my family. I remember many mornings with my elbows propped on the table in my grandmother’s farm kitchen watching her cook for hours. I have read cookbooks cover to cover as if they were a novel.

There were many years where I was ashamed to admit my love for those things. I was afraid that it would surely lead into a fat joke of the “of course she does!” variety.

Here’s the thing when you’re fat: you’re not sure if you’re supposed to love food, or hate it. There are the caricatures of fat people and food.  One is the abundantly joyful fatty who drools over the mere description of food. The other is the sad fatty who forces herself to eat salad in public but must certainly binges in private. Most of us are given only these two pictures of what it looks like to be fat in relation to food.

For the longest time, I didn’t know I liked food. I just thought I needed it, the way an addict needs a fix.

I was in college when I realized that I really didn’t like chocolate that much.  I wasn’t just pretending not to like it to try to somehow make myself appear thinner by declining sugar-heavy sweets, I really didn’t like chocolate that much. (Then later I discovered dark chocolate, and yes I like that chocolate!) But, if I am hungry and tired and want something that is going to give me energy and make me feel satiated – I will most likely crave something like my kale, quinoa, and grapefruit creation.  

Yet, there are times when the sweet warmth of an apple crisp is what is desired. And sometimes the celebration of cake and ice cream with the smell of blown-out-candles wafting through the air is just what the occasion ordered. And those are things that fat people can enjoy without shame as well. 

*************

One of my grad-school roommates peeked around the corner into my door and asked with a expectant smile, “I heard tomorrow is Lent. Is there anything that you are giving up that you’d like to pass on? Get out of your cabinet? Sweets? Are you fasting sweets?”

Another roommate called out with a laugh, “I don’t think you will get anything from Nicole. She doesn’t do sweets.  Next time ask her for veggies.”

 

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Nicole bio YAH

Find more of Nicole’s thoughts about life in a fat body at Fat Faith

 

Creeping Myrtle

Posted on by under Reclaiming Place

I’m puttering happily in my yard, hand-picking dead leaves from around newly-sprung bulbs and perennials. Sometimes a new shoot bursting from the earth has, in its green exuberance to reach the sun, pierced a dead leaf: a sword slaying winter. Those are my favorite leaves to gently remove—an affectionate greeting, like tucking a wisp of hair behind a daughter’s ear upon her arrival home from school.

IMG_4155Hello there, fierce beauty. It’s good to see you again.

Late spring is my favorite time to garden. It’s more leisurely and satisfying than early spring, when there is at once so much to do—so many soggy leaves and fallen branches to gather—and so little you can do other than wait for the sun to do its work. And by mid-summer the heat has risen and I’ve lost much of my initiative; all I want to do is sit back and sip iced tea, not face the dull but pressing work of weeding and watering.

But in April and May, nature has begun to give the garden shape. Visits to my yard remind me which returning plants I’ve rooted where, while the gaps between them spark ideas about new plants I might want to try. I’m energized both by what’s there and what’s possible, and the dreaming takes me often to the brick patio where my iced tea and go-to gardening book wait.

13162129724_05e0aa9e05_bAs I sit at the table flipping through the “Annuals” section of my book, the groundcover that borders the patio on two sides seems non-threatening and innocent. It has no plans for the summer, it seems, no big goals or bucket lists. It’s just hanging out, looking green like it should and showing off the pretty little blue flowers that earned it the name “Periwinkle.” For the moment I’m able to forget another name the plant is known by: “Creeping Myrtle.”

So I ignore it. I’m busy deciding how many flats of annuals I can reasonably justify buying to add spots of color to our shady property. I’m also daydreaming about our family’s first al fresco meal of the season, and what I might ask my husband to cook on the grill. Meals on the patio are, to me, the closest city dwellers can get to a family getaway without packing up the car and leaving home.

There’s something about physically separating ourselves from the dirty dishes in the kitchen, the laptops, our separate places behind separate closed doors, that touches on the many meals of my childhood that were cooked and consumed under the shade of tall trees at campground picnic tables, and the playground picnics we spontaneously put together when our girls were little. Meals outside are meals that say, “This is just about us, here and now. Everything else can wait.”

 *   *   *   *   *

If only time and nature knew how to wait.

In my garden, by late June, the Periwinkle has morphed into Creeping Myrtle mode and is well into its insidious advance into my territory. The precious borders of the patio begin to diminish. Gradually, as the vines inch onto the bricks, chairs are inched away by guests. As a result of the shifting chairs, the large rectangular table eventually gets pushed out to make more room.

It’s an imperceptible migration from one week to the next, until, one day, I walk out to the patio with plates and silverware and notice the table seems almost centered on the rectangle of bricks rather than shifted to the south edge, as intended. In fact, that rectangular foundation is looking rather square. I set the plates down and walk over to grab and lift a handful of vines.

They look as if they’re rooted where they lay, but they easily lift up, exposing a surprisingly wide swath of bricks below. I keep lifting the tangled growth, revealing more and more bricks, until finally the roots—in soil, where they belong—are exposed.

Those territory-hungry plants can infringe on a foot of patio in a month, it seems! What they see in bricks is beyond me, but it seems they haven’t put much thought into it. They’re motivated only by a vague sense of world dominance, without any concern for the path they’ll take or what they’ll do when they arrive.

“You can’t turn your head to focus on the flowers for even a couple of weeks without some aggressive vine trying to ruin everything,” I think to myself, heading to the garage for gardening gloves and clippers.

I ruthlessly attack the Creeping Myrtle, extreme in my hacking as I know it’s only a matter of time before nature’s wild, raw inclinations begin again to dominate, erasing subtlety, variation, and any boundaries I’ve decided to draw. It is, of course, worth it—all the battles waged against the encroaching weeds as well as all the coaxing and care of what I find beautiful. In the end, it’s all about the table we set and sit down around, to claim what is ours.

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Kristin bio YAH

No Check, Please

Posted on by under Money & Place

I was getting ready to leave home when I got the text from my editor:

Dish will either be bacon-wrapped filet of ribeye or Parmesan encrusted halibut over Maine lobster orzo. SCORE…! I smiled, my mind already wandering to the seafood, and hoping they chose the halibut—perhaps my favorite fish. I threw my purse over my shoulder and left the house, preparing myself for the 50 minute drive to a local resort town.

When I arrived, too late for lunch and too early for dinner, the hostess, who seemed to know I was coming, seated me by a window with a spectacular view of the lake. In moments, the bartender brought me a glass of water, asking if he could get me anything else. For a moment, I considered ordering a dirty martini, but I abstained. After all, I was working.

The chef arrived, in full kitchen whites, and shook my hand before taking a seat across from me. He told me they had decided on steak. For a moment, I was disappointed. I’ve never been an avid consumer of large chunks of meat. As a child, I would sit for hours rather than finish a pork chop with even a hint of fat. I didn’t like it when the muscles got stuck between my teeth. But I couldn’t tell this chef that I’d rather not eat a steak. I would eat what they put in front of me. And then, I would write about it.

No Check PleaseWhen my dish arrived, carried wordlessly by a waiter, it was sprinkled with tiny, edible flowers and accompanied by morel mushrooms. “Have you ever had filet of ribeye?” the chef asked. I shook my head, cutting off my first bite. “You remove only the centermost, tender part of the steak, giving a similar impression to a filet mignon.”  This special cut was wrapped in bacon they made in-house. “Underneath the steak is a potato dish I created for a chef event.” He leaned forward. “What do you think?”

I had just slid my first bite into my mouth and was trying to correlate this amazing taste and texture with any other steak I’d ever had. “It’s wonderful,” I said. He smiled and then left me alone to enjoy my oddly timed meal before a tour of the extensive wine cellar.

I ate slowly, realizing that perhaps I liked steak after all, or at least this one. I made a few notes on my yellow pad (the ribeye cuts like room temperature butter and gives in to my teeth without resistance, the potato is crisp on the outside, not too much dairy on the inside, but still creamy) and picked up the menu to collect the details. As I wrote down the price, I paused, just for a moment, mid-bite. This plate of delicious meat, potatoes, and mushrooms would cost $50 for the average diner. Without the martini.

I finished eating and the chef, the young, waistcoat-clad general manager and I descended to the cool wine cellar, luxuriously filled with millions of dollars worth of bottles. The two men played off each other easily, quoting statistics and showing off double magnums of champagne so expensive I couldn’t afford even a sip.  

After I took my leave of the chef and the general manager, with handshakes all around, I took advantage of my extra hour of free resort parking with a walk down by the lake. As I walked, I thought about the people who would be reading the article that I was even now writing in my head. Spokane isn’t lavish. Most in the community are not well-to-do. For many of the people I know, eating out is a luxury, especially for something other than a burger. Restaurant dining is saved for birthdays, anniversaries and the occasional date night. Most of the people reading my article wouldn’t even consider ordering a $50 steak. I would never consider ordering a $50 steak if I was footing the bill.

Although my budget isn’t expansive, I love to try new restaurants as soon as they open, to treat friends to breakfast and lunch, dinner and drinks. Writing about food, from the expensive resort fare, to local diners, is the way I pay these bills (or submit them for reimbursement). My passion has become the means of my provision.

And because I know this is special, something that might be saved for, or noted in the budget, I feel a responsibility to those readers. When I sit down to write a review, I do my best to tell the truth about my experience. All of my visits do not include a chat with the chef. Most of the time, they don’t know I’m coming. I’m short and blonde and young, and I don’t look like a food writer. They treat me just like anyone else. It is, paradoxically, my very normalness that makes me a reliable critic. If I am dazzled by the service, or a particular dish, it’s likely that a reader will be. As I wrote the piece about the steak (which was photographed and put on the magazine cover), I did my best to weigh every word for accuracy. You never know who might be clipping the article and saving up for a special evening. I would hate for them to be disappointed.

cara YAH bio

Bridge Crossing

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

The sky is spitting at me as I start making my way across the Birmingham to the South Side. Others may take offense at such rudeness from above, but I am not overly worried about it. Black clouds are rolling in from the west and it appears that I am on the brink of an odd February rainstorm.

I continue my brisk stride down the fading bike lane. It was only striped in November, but its disappearing lines assume an older age. It reminds me of a relationship that is exciting while new, but gets neglected after an initial flurry of attention. Does anyone build anything to last anymore?

A car zooms past at an unnecessary speed. Thank goodness for these bike lanes…why do people drive like idiots? I realize that I am moving quite fast myself (for walking of course) and that a small sense of indignation has risen into my chest. I may not be in a vehicle, but I still get caught up in the rush of morning traffic. I slow my pace only a little: part of me wants to get caught in the moment and in the storm, though part of me only wishes to get to work and stay dry.

I cautiously traverse the on-ramp and hurdle the barrier guarding the sidewalk. My feet hit the other side and continue their dutiful march towards the office. I breathe a bit easier having a concrete wall between me and the traffic and lose myself in my thoughts.

BirminghamBridgeWhen crossing a bridge, I am most often merely trying to get from point A to point B. When I take a slower mode of transportation (my feet, for example, or by bike), the line between the destinations, the journey, becomes more important and focused.

In contrast, when I cross a bridge with a car or a bus, am I really bridge crossing, or is it my vehicle transporting me from one point to another? Do I hear my feet hitting the pavement below? Do I feel the raindrops and wind stinging my face? Do I really see my surroundings when a window is framing my view, the world passing by in a blur?

The difference between bridge crossing and bridge crossing is in the experience of the moment. Actually, it is a state of mind:

When I am in a hurry to get to work in the morning, even though I am walking, I am not really crossing the bridge: I am just trying to get to work.

At the midway point of the bridge, the spitting turns into a light sprinkle and breaks my reverie. I look over the railing to the river below. The Mon is usually pretty muddy, but I find that this is even more the case today. It had been calmly flowing in the weeks before: Now it seems to have snapped. It has been holding back for a long time and is just now letting go.

It is a hard process: to let go. The waters seem to dig their heels into the bottom of the riverbed in protest and make everything cloudy. I remind myself that it is a cycle that nature – and a human heart – goes through: The water rises and falls in its own time.

The sprinkle is growing steadier as I descend the stairs from the bridge walkway. My mind turns to schedules and coffee and nine-to-five matters. I check my watch: 8:55. I quicken my pace.

I see other people on their way to our huge renovated warehouse of an office building. They come from all directions, pulled somewhat unwillingly towards the same point as if by some unseen magnetic beacon. Most of their faces have the same blank look of Monday.

The rain is really starting to come down now. I alight the stairs towards the employee entrance and seek cover from the rain. I see a flash light up the sky and hear the subsequent crack of thunder. I pause, hoping to at least watch the storm for a little longer, but someone is behind me, so I enter the building.

I remember so vividly these ten minutes of my day, crossing the bridge, while the rest goes by in a forgotten blur…

“Why can’t my whole life be like crossing a bridge?” I ask myself as I punch the elevator button. I breathe deep, step into the elevator and take note of the strength of my still beating heart. I silently pray gratitude as the doors close in front of me.

*   *   *   *   *

TriciaThickBikes“Bridge Crossing” is by Tricia Chicka. Tricia is a multi-media artist, massage therapist, cycling advocate, outdoors enthusiast and theatre lover from the city of bridges: Pittsburgh, PA. When she is not walking across bridges, she is more often than not cycling, bussing, or (begrudgingly) driving over them. She loves the power of words and sometimes pretends to know how to string them together in meaningful ways. You can find other musings posted on The Chicka Blog (www.pachickster.blogspot.com).

The Weight (A Balancing Act)

Posted on by under Alone in Place, Uncategorized

westchester lagoon

I wake up Monday morning, head in a fog and the sky a heavy gray. Maybe I need to pick up the pace on our Lord of the Rings bedtime reading, finish the series and find something lighter to read to the boys: This morning’s gray resembles a specter, a phantom seeping through the windows.

There is light, too. It’s April in Alaska. We wake to light now, but today it’s muted by the undeniable presence of sagging clouds gathered and draped across the Chugach mountains, shrouding them from view. But at 7a.m. in April, the dance between light and dark in Anchorage feels, for my East coast origins and conditioning, properly balanced, stable, “normal.”

“Be grateful,” I growl to no one but me.

Still, I hesitate to rise, to sit up. I rub my hand around my face, press my fingers into my eyes.

I was up till midnight grading papers, a task that segued into restlessly mulling over a number of personal matters while I thrashed around under the covers. At 3 a.m., my seven-year-old, Matt, leapt into bed with me on the heels of a bad dream. Once asleep, he proceeded to kick me through the night – an unintended reminder he was close.

I hear Matt sifting through his Lego drawers in his room across the hall.

Over a swift and admittedly pouty, self-pitying moment, I envy my sister in Virginia, who lives across the street from my parents and can frequently ask them to assist with carpooling or hosting her three daughters.

I also think of my married friends. Envy tag-team parenting for the “bazillionth” time since my boys’ mom and I split in 2011.

“Stop,” I growl. Remember: We’re here. Here and nowhere else. And we’re doing our best.

Aren’t we?

Some days, it’s hard to know.

I swing my legs over the bed.

I’m reminded of a montage scene set to feel-good music in Judd Apatow’s This is Forty, where Paul Rudd adoringly wakes his daughters for school – affectionately tousling one’s hair, canoodling the other, and playfully rubbing his hand around his teenage daughter’s face.

So, I “Power Up” – I motivate, inhale some of whatever so enviably possesses Paul Rudd characters. I breeze into the boys room and cheerily declare a robust, “Good morning! Good morning! Good morning!”

Matt, from his place on the floor, amidst the rubble of his Legos, looks up at me doe-eyed and crestfallen and meekly whimpers, “Pop? Do we have to go to school today?”

He’s still in his pajamas and between his strawberry-blonde bedhead and the spaceship designs stretching across his rail thin limbs, and his childhood-specific pot-belly rounding through his top, I am utterly smitten and vulnerably open to complying with anything he wants.IMG_5937

No! I want to tell him. No, we don’t! No school today! No work! Today we’re building forts in the living room and watching all the Star Wars movies! While eating Pirate’s Booty and ice cream and PB&J! I’ll tell work we took a, a, a Family Care Day, because our “us” is more important than desk work, than paper pushing and Microsoft Outlook; more important than racing you guys to school and then racing to grab you at after care, and then slogging through rush hour traffic and trying to make and eat dinner before 7pm and then bathe and read LOTR at a sane hour so that we can rise rested to start the whole rat race all over again tomorrow!

Instead, I sigh and tell him, “Oh, buddy, I know. I know. I used to want to skip school so many times when I was a boy.” He limply groans and sighs.

Sam’s body shifts under his blankets. Limbs akimbo, he slowly snakes them towards himself and then out again, stretching awake. He blinks a few times and sits up. He rubs his eyes and smiles.

Sam, for all eleven of his years, has possessed the magical ability to welcome each day the way you can imagine the Dalai Lama does. Or Mary Oliver. His waking hours are one long embrace of everything and anything around him, so much so that I’ve often wondered where he really came from, if the stork accidentally brought his mom and me a congenial ambassador or motivational speaker’s child. Never mind getting Sam into commercials or acting, as some have suggested: I often think he’s on the verge of presenting a viral TED talk, or might go solve the world’s problems with Bono.

Today, as with every day, Sam looks around, all smiles and sparkle.

“Good morning,” he sighs, standing.

“It’s dark out there,” he notes peering through his window, “do you think it’s going to rain today?”

“Might,” I reply. “Looks like it.”

Sam stretches once more and bounds to his dresser and pulls out some clothes.

“Wow,” he sighs, “I am so tired.”

Just say the word, I clamor inside. Say it. Say something like, “Can we not do this today, Pop? The weekday runaway train thing we do?”

I stand thoroughly poised to call a sick day, to announce “Fort Building Day.”

He turns and proceeds towards the bathroom.

“Take a load off, Fanny!” he sings.

Ok, wait. No fair. He’s boldly singing the chorus to my favorite pick-me-up song. The one I play on the stereo the way others take a daily vitamin.

“…Take a load off, Fanny!” he continues, running the bathroom faucet, “Annnnnnnnnnddd!…Put the load right on meeee!!!”

I look at Matt.

“Ok, buddy. Time to get dressed.”

mattMatt sighs and groans, pouts. I want to tell him, as Sam’s dutifully reminding me only by the way he embraces a day, something about how we’re in this together, that we can do this, and that every day is somehow always in some way infused with surprising moments of joy, of grace. I want to tell him all that, but he’s seven, and I can’t expect him to agree or understand now.

I pat the top of his head, and he leans his head on my knee. I tell him only, “I know. I know.” Because I do.

There’s a balance to strike somewhere in all of this, adrift as I often feel we are, alone together and striving to keep up with the pace of things in the terrifying, stark, and beautiful spaces we find ourselves. Rather, I imagine, or I hope there is.

I lean one way and then the other, stroking Matt’s hair, wobbly and wavering.

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Pull Yourself Together

Posted on by under Together in Place

It was well into summer when I started to lose my grasp on the splintering pieces. On my lunch break, I would drive to a large parking lot for a big box store and cry until I thought I might throw up, and I couldn’t breathe. Even then, I used a wet wipe to compose my features. “Get it together,” I said to my reflection in the visor mirror. Then I would drive back to work, heavy in the knowledge that things might never change.

I’d always prided myself on my ability to hold it together. “You can’t change your circumstances,” my mother would say, “but you can change your attitude.” My six year old self drank in those words, and didn’t realize that certain circumstances were not okay, no matter my attitude.

So I tried to change my attitude, using all of my tricks. I went to yoga at lunch and bought scented candles for my office. I read books instead of talking with my co-workers. But the days continued to roll over me, crushing my spirit a little more every day. My job was slowly killing me.

It started subtly. On the way to work I wondered what it might be like to drive off the ridge near my house. One small movement of the steering wheel, one gentle push over the edge. Or perhaps I could drive into the median. Nothing serious, just an accident. If I was in the hospital, I couldn’t go to work, right?

I’ll never forget where I was and how it felt. I was in my office, at my desk, the one right next to the window that looked over the parking lot. It was hot in the building, and my fan was on, pointed at my hands, hovering over the keyboard. An image entered my mind unexpectedly. I pictured myself walking into the kitchen and opening the drawer where we kept the knives, selecting one, and plunging it into my chest.

The room began to close in and I began to shake. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t focus. I’m not sure how I made it through the rest of that day and home. I’m even less sure how I made it to the home of my small group leader.

Pull Yourself Together by Cara Strickland | You Are Here All through the evening, as the other members of my group discussed the Bible in that small, cozy home to a single mother and three foster kids, I stayed silent. I was afraid to move or speak, because I knew that I could no longer keep it together. My next move would be the end, I would fall apart. I waited as long as I could.

After group was over and we continued to talk, I raised a timid voice. “Can I ask for prayer?” I said.

I sat on the large ottoman in the center of the room, legs crossed. I wasn’t sure how to begin. How do you fracture the image of togetherness? How do you admit that you want to die, and that you are terrified?

It wasn’t the sort of small group that talked about personal struggle. All the prayer requests around the circle were about other people, and physical health. I wasn’t sure if it was a safe place to fall apart, even as I shattered. But I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

There was silence for a time, after my flood of broken words. I waited for the clatter. Hugging my knees into my chest. But it didn’t come.

“Let’s start with therapy,” one of the women said.

“I can call and get you a doctor’s appointment,” said another.

I’ll have lunch with you tomorrow,” said another voice. “I’ll come get you at work.”

“You can quit your job,” said the single mom with the three foster kids.

In the days and weeks that followed that night, I began therapy, went to the doctor, quit my job, and almost jumped out a window high above downtown Denver. Often, after I stopped working and began to heal, I would stare at the wall, trying to muster the energy to drink the tea after I’d made it.

But I returned often to that tiny house, and that warm living room, even to that large, cushy ottoman. I awoke my memories of that circle of people around me, reminding me that I wasn’t alone, even if I wasn’t together.

Together, Undefined

Posted on by under Together in Place

It was 8 pm on my daughter’s 15th birthday, and I remained a Mama on a Mission, gearing up for the home stretch.

The mission, of course, was making my daughter feel as special and loved as possible—a mission that’s more challenging, I’ve discovered, when your children are teenagers and less likely to buy into the enthusiasm in your voice as you sell them on some random idea: Bowling would be a fun birthday treat! If my daughter had her way we’d be seeing Broadway shows in New York for her birthday, but in reality I had less to work with.

By 8 pm on this particular birthday, we had already completed our typical activities: a mother-daughter outing (which in this case involved a new ear piercing); a birthday dinner at the restaurant of her choice, with the seven people who make up her immediate family (mom, dad, sister, stepmom, half-brother, stepdad, step-sister); and finally dessert and presents back at home. My now-15-year-old already had a big party with friends the night before, so now what?

“Do you want to go anywhere?” I asked.

“No, I just want to be home,” she said, smiling contentedly.

“Should we rent a movie?” I suggested. “Or play a game?” I know very well that games are not her favorite pastime, but I couldn’t help myself. In my family experience, both as a child and an adult, this is what you do when you’re together: You play games. Sitting around a table covered with the pieces of a game is my family’s quintessential definition of togetherness.

“No, I just want to be home and do whatever,” she said, a trace of exasperation edging into her voice. “I’ve had an amazing birthday! Can’t we all just be here but do our own things?”

As an extrovert, I (not for the first time) had to pause and forcibly wrap my head around this less structured version of “Together.” I could see my other daughter re-calibrating as well, as we tried to imagine that the birthday girl’s idea of a fun birthday might not look exactly like our plans for her. After all, we were there to serve! To entertain! To focus all of our time and energies on HER! And she wanted to go up to her room and try out the new guitar pedal she just unwrapped? We had to let that sink in.

“Well…OK. If you’re sure,” I said.

She was, of course, sure.

6647530355_0233217d07_zAs the sounds of reverberating electric guitar and my daughter’s pure voice serenaded us through the ceiling, the rest of us looked at each other in somewhat sheepish agreement: Let’s play a game. In her own way, she was right there with us.

*   *   *   *   *

While I probably wouldn’t choose “alone in my room” as a way to spend my birthday evening, upon a bit more reflection I realized that I know a thing or two about this desire my daughter often has: to be together yet alone.

Since February 2002, after nearly a decade of working in populated office settings, I’ve worked essentially alone, as a writer. When I was in the process of deciding whether to take the leap and start my own business, my biggest fear wasn’t Will I have enough clients? or Will I make enough money? It was this: Will I be able to work alone?

Not only am I social—someone who is energized by being in the mix, having people to go to lunch with, and feeling connected to others who are dealing with the same bosses and projects—but I’m also most creative in collaborative settings. In other words, I worried not just that I would be lonely working by myself, but also that the very skills I was selling might fall flat if there weren’t people around to bounce ideas off of and provide critique.

I decided to take the leap anyway, and was lucky enough to discover that technology was my safety net. It was the growing availability of wireless Internet, in particular, that prevented me from gradually slipping away from myself, sitting day after day at the desk in the corner of my living room. Wireless Internet meant I could take my laptop—all that really comprised my “office”—to my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, where I could be together yet alone.

photo (3)In that coffee shop, I learned it was the mere presence of bodies and voices—being surrounded by activity and the gears of many brains thinking and creating—that I craved more than anything else. In the unnatural silence of my empty home I felt slightly on-edge and easily distractible, but the buzzing white noise of the café allowed me to dive into my work and ride a stream of creative flow for hours.

There’s simply something powerful—at once comforting and freeing—about being autonomous yet in community, whether that community is family or strangers at a café. It’s an experience that carries a certain rightness and balance: In a single moment and place, it acknowledges and respects both our “sameness” as humans and our “difference” as individuals.

Ultimately, both identity and empathy are strengthened through that single form of togetherness. When I think of it that way, I can see what a wonderful gift it was to give my teenage daughter on her birthday—and what a wonderful reminder it was for her to share with me.

*   *   *   *   *

Photo of the game “Carcassonne” by Aslakr. Coffee shop photo by Kristin Tennant.

15 minutes as a corpse

Posted on by under Role & Place

It’s only 1 pm and already the day has been long and full. I can feel myself bracing against it, a response that is, at once, both offensive and defensive—meant to conquer and to protect.

My instinct is to keep pushing against and through the day, but instead I take a cue from my dog. Locating the patch of sun on the living room rug, I lie down flat on my back, in what is known in yoga as shavasana, the corpse pose.

Not only is the term shavasana somewhat new to me, as I’ve just recently committed myself to a yoga practice after a few years of only taking a class here and there, but the entire concept is foreign. Being a good corpse can be tricky for the living—especially, it seems, for me. The idea of being awake but not doing anything, other than holding an awareness of the rise and fall of my abdomen with each breath, does not come naturally.

But I try, nonetheless. The trick is to try without trying too hard, which has a way of defeating the purpose. All I can say is thank goodness for eye pillows. Without one, my eyes would never close, or even cease their darting behind my closed lids. If there was such a thing as a body-sized eye pillow, I would gladly let its gentle weight hold me down.

sunonrugInstead, I wiggle a bit, to introduce my body to the rug—to the idea that, for now, it isn’t responsible for holding me upright.

Next, I release my tongue from the roof of my mouth, where it always seems poised, ready for the next word.

I let my hands grow heavy and limp, imagining them putting roots into the floor rather than tapping over the keyboard, matching a pile of clean socks, or comforting a child.

I notice that my shoulders, always curving into the tension of my work and life, are the last part of me to give in to this crazy thing I’m doing here in the middle of my work day: lying in a patch of sun on the rug, like my dog. I mentally coax each shoulder down toward the rug below, then down and back even further. They have so far to go, so much to relearn.

Finally, I am aware only (mostly) of the sun warming my chest as it rises and falls.

*   *   *   *   *

I am a doer. That sounds like a brag—like I’m touting a true American character asset. In many ways, it is an asset. Being a doer is certainly not something you’d hide in a job interview.

But as one who is always compelled to do the doing, I’m not so sure.

“I’m sensing a very deep-seeded, emotional holding pattern,” my massage therapist said last week, after several sessions of intense work meant to release the muscle mass reaching across my shoulders and up my neck. The massage work, he told me, has accomplished what it should in terms of releasing the individual muscles, but something in my being is refusing to let go.

I left his office feeling discouraged that my massage therapist couldn’t just do something to make me better, but also recognizing the irony of that. I wanted him to do so that I could keep doing—an unsustainable cycle of short-term fixes.

*   *   *   *   *

Doing is satisfying. It makes me feel useful and necessary.

Doing enables me, at the end of the day, to look back at the previous 12-or-so hours and quantify their worth. It makes me feel like I’ve somehow earned that glass of wine with dinner, a TV show before bed, and a good night’s sleep. I need it, after all—tomorrow brings another day of doing.

There is, of course, a cultural construct built around the idea of being busy and productive, but I can mostly let go of that. Busyness isn’t something I feel proud of, a “humble brag” I would share on Facebook. For me, it’s the energy I get from doing that I’m addicted to. I love generating ideas, collaborating with others, and making good things happen. I love seeing where there are holes in the world around me and then figuring out how to fill them, so that places and communities and lives are better.

Being engaged through doing also gives me a satisfying sense ownership, whether in my writing business, my church, or my daughters’ school. And yes, I’m sure there’s a bit of a control-freak factor mixed in there, and probably some fear of failure (who am I kidding?). There’s a good chance that’s part of what my massage therapist was sensing in my body.

Either way, it’s no joke. I need to do something about it. (Ha! There it is again. Do. I can’t help myself.) Although in truth, I’m beginning to realize there’s not much I can do about this, other than learn to be. Earlier this year, as many bloggers I know were choosing their #oneword for 2015, I began to see the name of this very blog, You Are Here, in a new way: not just as a way to think about place, but as a way to think about being—being present where I am.

Maybe my word for 2015 should simply be “Here.” I am here. In this place. In this moment. In this body. I am here whether I’m doing something or, as our culture likes to call it, doing “nothing.”

*   *   *   *   *

In the case of lying corpse-like on my living room floor in the middle of the work day, the “doer me” would love to say I’m doing shavasana. But I’m learning to shift how I think. For now, I’m not doing, I’m simply being.

Gradually, I feel the sun creeping onto my right shoulder, rewarding it for accomplishing its most difficult task: letting go. Turning my face toward the sun, I let the eye pillow slide to the floor, keeping my eyes closed so they can begin adjusting to the light through my lids.

When I finally open my eyes, they take in the slant of sun through the living room window—the sun I have felt and can now see. My eyes observe how the dust in the air and the silver thread of a spider’s web connected to the window’s sill give the sun more dimension. I take one more deep breath before pushing myself up off the rug, and I think, No, I don’t need to dust. Maybe eventually, but for now I will just notice.

To Trying (& Waving Off the Brown Bear)

Posted on by under Role & Place

At 4:00 on a Thursday, I find myself a little ahead of schedule at work. I made it to the end of Day One in our two-day Mental Health First Aid training a few minutes early. By 4:30 I’ve packed my things, and am preparing to zoom across town to grab Matt at his school’s aftercare. At this point, I can maybe barely miss the burst of rush hour traffic. If I do, I’ll grab Matt by 5, zip across town to get Sam at Tae Kwon Do by 5:30, and then get home and maybe – maybe – have dinner on the table by 6:30. I want that single extra half hour, I’m pining for it the way my kids want their “video game time” or “play dates” on the weekends.

“You’re leaving?” one of my co-workers asks as I blow down the corridor.

“See you tomorrow,” I announce, bracing myself for what I know will follow.

“Must be nice,” comes the chime.

“I can’t do this now – ” I plead.

“Some of us have work to do here,” she jokes. I can only growl inside, then lean heavily into the door.

I make good time on the pick-ups, but on arriving home, my oldest, Sam, realizes he’s left something at Tae Kwon Do that he needs for school tomorrow. We drive back. He finds what he forgot. We return home. Oh, well. I tried.

We eat. They bathe. At 10pm, Sam’s still doing his homework. I work a few feet from him, prepping for the following day’s training. Soon, he can’t hold his eyes open anymore. He’s so tired tonight, we do the unheard of and skip reading to each other before bed.

I make it into bed just before midnight. Read from How to Worry Less About Money for maybe three minutes before I can’t hold my own eyes open a moment longer. I check to make sure the alarm is set: 6:45. I roll over, close my eyes. Breathe, I murmur.

All too soon, it seems, we begin again.

 ***

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I urge the next morning, as we blow across the snow-dusted parking lot. I hear myself, my tone, and deflate and sigh. I sound like a crazed third base coach waving the runner home as the ball is hurled towards the infield for the play. Worse, I’ve directed that order to my youngest, Matt, who’s pitifully trying to keep pace with us, his big brother and I, but scampering along the lot while jerking his arm upwards to keep his backpack from sliding off his shoulder.

His big brother has darted ahead of us, but then he pauses and waits a few feet away for us to catch up. In that instant, a spark of tenderness cuts through my exhaustion. One’s waiting for us, the other’s racing to keep up. We’re trying.

Everything in me is invested in that moment after we cross the school’s threshold – after greeting the crossing guard, shaking hands with the principal at the school entrance, smiling to the school receptionist, nodding and bidding “hey” to the random teachers and parents with whom I lock eyes for a fleeting moment, after which time the entire cyclone of our week’s routines comes to a rest with the boys hugging me goodbye at their classroom doors.

Only then, following that hug goodbye, can I rally. We made it, I proclaim to no one but me, We did it! On the last day of our weeks together, the morning where I drop them at school and they then go to their mom’s till I see them next, my heart surges with something more than relief. I don’t know what you call it, but I’m fairly certain those guys that successfully scale Denali or even Everest have nothing on this: We did it! Another successful ascent – er, no –  we survived the week!

In those moments, I get to let go of the splash of nausea that shoots through my insides those last mornings before the handoff to their mom. For a few days, I can release, too, the head-spinning and stone-heavy weariness that I confess at its absolute worst and most draining makes me contemplate the point of it all; occasionally causes me, albeit shamefully, to envy the male brown bear’s “deadbeat dad” status in the wild, who gives mama brown bear her babies and who then just gets to saunter off into the sunset, never to be seen again.  Yellowstone grizzlies

But not so fast today. No rallying yet, it turns out. Today, we step into school and are instantly adrift on a wave of plates, pans, and baskets boasting red and white towels and handkerchiefs. Heart-shaped cookies, cupcakes, and more are stacked on various decorative serving trays. Parents whisk them through the corridors like waiters at fine restaurants – that is, if waiters wore Patagonia and Marmot down coats. Their children carry small bags and baskets stuffed to overflowing with pink, white, and red envelopes.

Outside Matt’s first-grade classroom, I bite my bottom lip. As he removes his coat and boots and hangs them up, I jiggle the change around in my pocket. When he takes his spot in the line of his classmates waiting to shake Ms. J’s hand, Matt’s head turns towards the basket of handmade Valentine cards that the boy in front of him is holding.

I entirely spaced Valentine’s Day. Only in that instant do I vaguely recall an email or two addressing Valentine’s Day festivities at school. I stoop down to Matt, who is still looking at the basket. I place my arm around his shoulder. He seems startled when I do and his face is flushed when he looks at me. I want to say something. But I don’t know what to say, and so I just stroke and then nuzzle his strawberry-blonde hair.

I don’t remember what I finally whisper, and I’m sure he doesn’t either. My head down, avoiding eye contact on my breeze through the corridor, I feel a familiar burn in my core.

There are days, and this is another of them, when I wonder when, how, or if I’ll ever be able to keep apace with the stream. It’s hard not to imagine that if the “Single Dad Moments” I’ve been accumulating in the nearly two years since my divorce were granted the same cultural status or weight as “Senior Moments” among the elderly, my kids might be having The Talk with my extended family right about now – the discussion about how maybe Dad needs to consider an assisted living situation, or a hired aid. Something.

I stare into the steering wheel. I start the car. But we’re trying.

I slide into gear. I have to get to work. I’m due at my other job.

denali ascent

A little like this?