The Seniors

When I was in high school, the seniors were huge. They were tall, yes, but they were also wise and larger than life. I remember them being really something remarkable. After all, when we first arrived in the high school--this being before they built the addition and gave everyone lockers that you could open without using the combination but by using, instead, a well-aimed punch--they had their own section of the school that anyone who was not a senior or a senior's significant other could not go into.

The year my class--the class of '99--arrived in our high school, the senior's lockers were solid. They were probably the same lockers they'd put in when they built the school, which means they were made of actual substantial things like metal and more metal. Whatever the new lockers were, they weren't anything special, and they certainly weren't set off by themselves in a glorious elevated alcove like the seniors' were. My freshman self sighed dreamily every time she passed that alcove and had to look up to see the seniors who seemed so tall and world-weary. They'd seen some shit, you could tell, and they had been rewarded with those lockers and late arrival privileges.

It seemed like the only way to live.

I was thinking about this tonight as I sat in the gymnasium of a rural Maine high school--the one the TLK attended--watching a basketball game The Lady-Killer's brother was playing in. It was a weird experience. I was sitting in the middle of a hundred sixteen year-olds and watching a bunch of varsity high schoolers play ball and all I could keep thinking was, Who the fuck are these people? These are the seniors? They're children! They're babies! They're skinny, sickly-looking little things!

They were nothing like my seniors. I went to a whole bunch of basketball games when I was in high school, especially as a freshman because that was the year we had an exchange student from Australia and, while he was only cute from certain angles, he had a voice like buttah and he could dunk. Back then, basketball games were a spectacle, and those boys were ten feet tall. They also could grow facial hair and had feet so big it looked like they could share shoes with Ronald McDonald. I should know. Once, in gym class one of the senior basketball players stepped on my sneaker during a game of speedball and it left a permanent black mark that could not be scrubbed away no matter what I tried.

This particular boy, whose name was Mike, was probably well over six feet tall, or at least it seemed that way at the time. He was a bit chubby and slow-moving. He was the super tall guy every basketball team employs to loaf around under the basket at all times, in the hopes that he will simply half-raise his arm and tip a basket in. One of my friends was desperately in love with him, and she spent the entirety of our ninth period gym class following him around the floor during speedball or mat ball or whatever ball we were playing that week. This was fine with me because I was in love with the Australian, who was Mike's best friend. While my friend panted after Mike and actually worked up a sweat during gym by looking like she was participating smartly, I spent the period dodging the speedballs the boys flung deliberately at the girls' heads, and I went to my safe place: an elaborately-concocted future where my friend and I married Mike and the Australian, and we lived happily ever after as next-door neighbors.

But at the high school game tonight I couldn't get over it. I really had no idea what I was watching. These boys looked like what I remembered middle school boys looking like. Even the ones who weren't playing but were clearly at the game to hang out and look cool and were thus not exposing their pale-Maine-wainter-chicken-legs to the entire gym looked like babies. And that's when I realized it: These days, the boys look younger than they did when I was in school and the girls look older.

One of the girls sitting behind me, who was draping herself around one of TLK's best friend's shoulders to piss off her ex-boyfriend who was somewhere in the crowd, had makeup that looked like it had been shellacked on by some makeup artist, pre-Golden Globes. Her eyeliner--which I still cannot manage--was impeccable. She didn't have a hair out of place. Her outfit was skin-tight and stolen from the pages of Seventeen.

I hated her. I couldn't help it. I thought nasty, shitty things about her in my head. And then I realized I was insane and made myself smile at her to make it seem that I wasn't some cranky old broad that had accidentally wandered into the student section and would leave shortly, after she'd soiled her diaper and needed to be changed.

After I smiled and turned back around I said this prayer: Dear God, thank you for letting me go to high school in the 90s. Thank you for letting me grow up in a decade where we did not look like that.

I've never been one to look back on my high school years with rage or despair; I've never walked back into the school after graduating and uttered, "Man, this place fucking sucks!" I know now and knew then how lucky I was: I went to a good school. I did not get caught up in anything bad or illicit. I had a sweet, smart group of friends. We were good girls. Yes, there were shitty times and days when I absolutely refused to get out of bed and go to school because high school was hard, but it was not bad. Not bad at all.

I grew up riding out the wave of grunge. I wore my father's jeans and old sweaters to school. We rolled the sleeves of our t-shirts up and permed our hair. We had ratty old flannel shirts ala Angela Chase. We wrote notes and then folded them elaborately. We sat in the bleachers and watched our big, tough seniors dunk basketballs and then, later, watched from the parking lot as they threw their duffle bags into the backseats of their cars and drove home. We waited for our parents to picks us up.

It was a gorgeous life, and looking back on it now, I think it was extremely romantic. It was a real Time. It was a time unlike this one, maybe, because it was the last of something, things were about to change, people were already getting a little kooked off the impending 2000s, and nothing was going to be much the same anymore after that. We felt it. The class below us always argued they were better because they were the class of 2000. They were the first of the century! But this is what we thought of that: So what? That's not something to boast. The first of something can almost always be improved upon; the last of something usually goes out with a bang.

I don't mean to generalize and use the old things were just simpler back then argument. In some ways they were, and some ways they weren't. But I am glad for a lot of the more simpler things: the notes written in study hall and passed between classes instead of the instant gossip grapevine of text messaging; the absence of social networks; the clothes that didn't cling to our body; the boys who looked grown-up and gallant; sleepovers where we had fashion shows and played Girl Talk or Mall Madness.

If anything, I think it was a quieter time, where kids were forced more to hack it out on their own. I spent a lot of alone time in my room, figuring things out about myself. Do kids do that anymore? Do they sit in their room, without looking at a computer, a television, a cell phone, an iPod? Do they have time to sit still and listen and think, This is me, right now. This is me and no one else.

I'm sure some do, but not many and not often. And when I sat amongst those high schoolers or recently-graduated high schoolers at the game, I was filled with a certain kind of panic as I imagined myself in their world, in their school at that moment. What would I love? Who would I love? Who would I be?

But I didn't want to know. I wasn't jealous of them and their slick 2011 lives. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my life, when and where I came from. And, also, as one of the boys on the court broke away with the ball and galloped toward the basket, I was seeing the Australian exchange student, his overly-gelled red hair, his long legs scissoring toward the key. I saw him lift, hover, float in the air above that basket before descending upon it and shoving the ball through the hoop as the entire gymnasium of our high school erupted in screams and everyone--not a single person glancing at a cell phone or iPod--leapt into the air because they knew they had just been the part of something holy.

One More Bit of Happy

If you live in Maine, it is inevitable that you know someone who owns waterfront property. This property could be a camp or a cabin or a cottage. The details don't really matter. What matters is this: It's on the water, and it's beautiful.

Lucky for me, three of the six people in my department own waterfront property and have said to me on numerous occasions, "Hey. Do you want to go up to the cottage for a weekend or something? Just bum around?"

And I got to take advantage of that during my extended birthday week--after all, I am a girl who knows how to seriously milk a birthday--and so Emily (whose birthday is five days after mine) and I packed an insane amount of food and invited some people up, and we spent a few days doing absolutely nothing of importance at one of the prettiest places ever.

Sure, I was a flustered mess when Emily got to my house so we could caravan together, and, sure, this meant I was still making the needs-to-chill frosting for her birthday cake when she arrived, and, sure, this meant I finished it on the fly and packed it into a tapered dish filled with ice so it could start chilling on the way to the pond. Can you sense what's going to happen next? On a particularly wicked corner, the pan the frosting was in dumped and sent a gush of warm chocolate and heavy cream across my car. Then, after I'd cleaned it up best I could, I took another wicked corner--why, why, WHY am I physically unable to not act like a race car driver when it's really important?!--and spilled even more of the frosting.

Still, even that wasn't enough to take my mind away from just how wonderful everything was going to be over our birthday weekend. I mean, look at this:

It was a whole weekend of lovely. (LOVELY!) And--you can see the proof above--there was enough frosting to coat the whole cake. It was a miracle. A birthday miracle. And so was the rest of the weekend.

And now this weekend I'm feeling pangs of jealousy because I'd like to be up there with this stack of essays I've got sitting in front of me. They're the first of the semester, and I'm thinking that maybe (just maybe!) I wouldn't take it so hard that they're rotten because all I'd have to do is walk down to the dock, slip into a kayak, and paddle hard and fast away from all that sad student prose, all the things that make me wonder if I'm good at my job, if I've ever done a single thing to help a student in my entire career.

Oh, how I wish I was in a kayak.

The Exes

Admittedly, I have a weird perspective when it comes to ex-girlfriends. I don't mind them. I don't mind hearing about them, and I don't mind seeing pictures of them.

I got to thinking about this last night, when Amy and I were hunched over the computer, looking at pictures of The Lady-Killer's ex-girlfriends. One of the exes is a girl I kind of know in a roundabout way, and I've always liked her. I've always thought she was pretty and funny and nice. So when Amy said, "Don't you just hate her?" I said, "No! Not at all!"

Amy stared at me, disbelieving.

"I'm serious," I said. "She's a nice girl."

"You are strange," Amy said. "I'd hate her if I were you."

And I know that's the way a lot of girls would feel, but I rarely have that gut reaction. It used to be that I thought my tolerance of ex-girlfriends was a thing unique to my relationship with the Boy From Work because when he told the stories from his past, I thought, Oh my God, that's so cute. I thought, These are the girls who have, in a way, made him who he is today.

I was thankful for that, for them. I was grateful for the ways they shaped the boy I now knew. After all, I didn't have the luxury of knowing him back then, and, even if they were awful, even if they were mean, they must have had even a tiny part of making him who he was now, and--obviously--I liked who that person was.

But today I kept thinking about that, kept thinking about if this was a new thing, if I'd only recently started having benevolent feelings for the exes. But I realized it wasn't anything new, not at all. I liked one of Keith's ex-girlfriends so much that the three of us went out to lunch a few times together, and we even went to her wedding, which--bonus!--had really dynamite food.

The only person whose ex-girlfriends drove me crazy--just the thought of them, just the idea of them--and that was the Wily Republican, but maybe that's to be expected. Everything about my relationship with the WR was like sand slowly falling through my fingers. He was impossible to contain. From the first moment, from our very first kiss, he was slipping away. And anything that reminded me that he was so tenuous--and the girlfriends did exactly that--made me panicked, more panicked than I could explain.

But, beyond him and his passel of exes, I have a tremendous amount of empathy for these girls who share something in common with me. It's not that I want to have them over for a dinner party, it's not that I want to sip cocktails with them or nibble at finger foods, but I do understand a little something about them, and I understand they have played a role in bringing my boy to me, and I guess I can't find anything to hate in that.

Cliff Diving

If I'm completely honest with myself, I'm dangerously close to that cliff all single women will eventually fall off. All my friends are either married (or will be within the year) or shopping for engagement rings. And that in itself isn't bad--I am notorious for loving weddings and wedding planning--but the real problem is I'm still rotten at this whole dating and love business, that I'm still man-less, that I'm a little bit of a mess in these days when everyone else has put themselves together brick by brick by brick and built themselves up out of their own messy pre-settled existence.

And I still suck at love. I mean it. I suck. There is apparently something about my relationships that turns grossly unappealing after a year because that's about how long they last before burning up and out. Seriously. One year. After that, the guys grow tired and drift away--Keith, for example, went off with another girl; the Boy From Work found it difficult to call me every day after we'd been together a year.

I'll be even more honest: I've done myself a disservice in the past by dating or falling for or following around some idiot men, the most notorious, of course, being the Wily Republican, who made me a mess for three years of grad school. And all the good attention in the world--from sweet boys, from the very beautiful New Boy or, later, BFW--couldn't really fix the things the WR had rearranged and tossed into the ugly corners of my heart and brain. Some of those things are going to rattle around in there forever because there's nothing anyone can do to fix them, find them, right them.

There are times when I wake up feeling like I'm always going to be this way, that I'm always going to be defective. And the worst part of this all is I know I'm becoming boring to my friends.

Everyone is on their way to the next stage in their life--they're off to be wives and mothers. They're certain and settled. Some of them are even trying to have babies. It seems like overnight they forgot how things used to be when we were younger, when we didn't understand what we were doing, when we were getting messed up in relationships that we had no business being in. When I tell a story now, a story about my screwed up relationships or the current tactics I'm taking to find a good man so I, too, can start settling down, start moving on to the next stage--because, let's face it; I'm tired, I'm sad, I'm ready to meet a good man who's ready to stick it out--my friends seem bored, half-interested, like they're on the verge of telling me, "Oh, Jess, when are you going to grow up?"

I'm not saying they're being mean. I'm not saying they aren't supportive. I'm not saying they're rolling their eyes in my face and saying, "You're too old for this." I am saying--and maybe no one else has realized it yet--that they're starting to look at me and think, "Jesus. I'm so happy that's not me anymore."

I think we're at the point in our life--not by age, maybe, but by stage, since everyone else is moving on and I'm not--where single girls are scary. They are they Other. They are the Used to Be. They are the God, Do You Remember When?

And let's face it: being single is exhausting. After the BFW informed me, during our attempt to get back together, that he had lost interest in moving up to Maine and had gained interest in making out with some girl from work, I went to bed and slept. A lot. I would wake up in the morning wanting to go directly back to sleep. I was tired all the time from thinking about starting over again. Starting over is awful. It's awkward, it's ridiculous, it's a lot of trial and error, it's facing all your neuroses from square one. Again.

And my friends have had to do this with me often. It seems like I'm always starting over, that I can't quite get anything right. And I'm doing it again, now. Again. Again. Again.

I'm on the edge of the cliff. All my friends are sitting on a porch somewhere, sipping lemonade and talking about wedding dresses and engagement rings and houses, and some of them are talking about what positions they're trying while they're trying to get pregnant, they're talking about what's working and what's not, and there I am, the last one, the only one still hooking my toes over the edge of that cliff and praying I don't fall. I'm now Single Friend, and it's only a matter of time before I start making people seriously uncomfortable.

When I was home last month, we were discussing weddings and wedding planning with the girls who are getting married this year, and, for the sake of comparison, I brought up the cost of the Wily Republican's wedding--which he said was going to be obscene--and at the mention of the Wily Republican one of my friends said, "Oh, not THIS again!"

In that second, I found it hard to breathe. It felt like I was a little girl again, that I was stretched out across the length of my sled, and I was speeding down the hill down my house, unable to get control and then slamming into a tree. I'd never been so scared in my life. The crash had knocked all the air out of me, and no matter what I did I couldn't make my lungs work. That's how I felt when those four words came out of my friend's mouth. Oh, not THIS again! Just the mention of my ex--and not even in an oh woe is me... he broke my heart! kind of way, just a hey, listen to what this idiot is spending on his wedding way--elicited that kind of reaction. Those four words meant, Jesus, I am bored with this. They meant, Oh, get OVER it already.

That was the first time it really hit me. I'm so different from these girls now, and it just about breaks my heart.

If You've Ever Wondered What Goes on in Some Boys' Heads, This One's for You

A post-dinner conversation with my friend Josh, who is currently in love with a girl he met during one of his AmeriCorps summers in Wisconsin:

Josh: I just want this girl to love me, Jess.

Me: Well, it sounds promising. When you told her you got into the France program, she said, Take me to France with you!

Josh: She said other things that weren't that promising.

Me: Like what? Like she thought you two needed to spend time getting to know each other in a way that did not involve witty Facebook messages? That's not bad, Josh.

Josh: She wants me to call her and stuff.

Me: She asked you to call her?

Josh Yeah, a couple times.

Me: Wait. Let me get this straight. She asked you to call her and how did you react?

Josh: I didn't call her.

Me: And why not?

Josh: Because I don't want her thinking I'm going to just, you know, do everything she says.

Me: Oh my God.

Josh: What?

Me: Oh my God. I am going to drive home and punch you.

Josh: Jess! I just don't want to call her! Can I text her? Can I send her a funny text?

Me: Josh, she wants to get to know you better! She wants you to call her so you can start getting to know each other! What is wrong with you? Are you insane?

Josh: I don't want to call.

Me: Why? Seriously, why?

Josh: I don't like my voice.

Me: You have a fine voice.

Josh: I sound like a girl.

Me: Oh you do not.

Josh: I do! I do! Do you want me to tell you how I know I do?

Me: Fine. Tell me.

Josh: Okay. So, I called home once. I left a voice message for my mother. Well, later I got home and saw the machine was blinking so I played it and listened to the messages. On the last message I heard this girl talking, and I had no idea who she was, so I asked my mom who that was talking on the machine and she started laughing at me. She said, That's you!

Me: You don't sound like a girl. I am talking to you right now, and I am telling you you don't sound like a girl.

Josh: I just can't call her. Or maybe I could. You know, if I got hammered.

Me: Bad idea. Don't get super hammered and call her. That's asking for trouble.

Josh: Not super hammered. How about just hammered?

Me: How about one shot for courage?

Josh: How about three shots?

Me: Josh!

Josh: Fine. I'll get out of the apartment, go to the bar, have three drinks, and then I'll call her.

Me: Fine.

Josh: Good. Okay, well I'm going to stand here and obsess about this and throw darts for a couple more hours.

Me: LEAVE YOUR APARTMENT. LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD.

Josh: Fine. Okay. Fine! Thanks. I love you. Goodbye.

Abe Returns to the Mothership

Comfortable on the Fourth, originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs.

Tomorrow afternoon I get on a plane, D.C.-bound.

Tomorrow morning, the other Pink Torpedoes (minus Anne--we'll miss you!) will get in a car with coffees, snacks, and a bust of Abraham Lincoln.

It's the first official PT vacation, and we're going to be spending time touring monuments and museums, gazing at cherry blossoms, and eating Easter candy.

I will also busy myself by being consumed with wishing that The West Wing were still on television and still taping in D.C. so there would be a small chance I might happen upon a crew shooting one of those scenes where Bradley Whitford roughs up some Congressman on a random D.C. street. There would be nothing better. If, for example, I ever got to be this close to Bradley Whitford, I would pass out and die, and Amy, Becky, and Steph would have to take me up by the heels and drag me back to the hotel where they would be forced to revive me with smelling salts and a belt of vodka.

Here's hoping we find them shooting a top secret reunion special among the blossoms. I am not above rushing the set. Not one bit.

It's Times Like These When I Really Wish I Owned Photoshop

The past few weeks have been big weeks for the Pink Torpedoes. There were two big phone calls. There were two big announcements.

Anne is getting married.

Steph is getting married.

Their boys did so well. Anne's engagement happened by a giant tree--and if there's anything Anne likes more than science, it's nature. And trees. Giant trees you hike to admire. Her boy asked her under a giant tree if she'd like to be his wife, and she said she would.

Steph's boy changed into a special shirt before he came out to ask her if she'd like to marry him, and Steph couldn't stop saying, "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God." And then her parents came through the door with balloons. They'd been in on the whole thing.

Those boys did well. And now two more Pink Torpedoes are on their way to getting married, which will bring us to a total of three out of five. Amy and I are bringing up the rear, but she's close, close, close. So if you want to place bets on who'll be the last to go, the safe money is on me.

But I'm okay with that. Especially if it means that I, in my official Wedding Zeal, my official I-Wish-I-Had-a-Wedding-to-Plan effervescence, get to do things like this to test some things out, to see just how beautiful these girls--these girls who've been my friends since we were in elementary school, since we knew who was kissing whom behind the cubby-holes and who was peeing their pants on the circle at snack time--are going to look when they come down whatever type of aisle they're going to set up:

Steph might need to tan her head a bit before she takes her long march, but overall things are looking very, very bright and very, very stunning.

We Really Dodged the Bullet on That One

Today is an anniversary for me. If Keith and I had ever managed to get it together and keep it together, this would've been our tenth year of togetherness.

Here's how that makes me feel:

Old. Nostalgic. Irritated.

The first two are self-explanatory, I think. The irritated sneaks into the equation because right now, right this very second, Keith and I are in the middle of our annual We're Not Talking to Each Other Because One of Us Said Something Stupid or Insensitive About the Other One phase. It happens like clockwork--every year, generally in the winter, generally near the holidays when we've both been driven into the red zone by the more bickering, nasty, or crazy of our relatives.

This year it happened approximately one week after Christmas, at 7:00 PM, as I was driving home from my mother's house. He called on his way home from work. He was stressed. He was tense. He was snippy. He was scared. He is, after all, on his way to being a father and a husband--in which order is anyone's guess. Both events are looming.

In the middle of our conversation, there was a moment where it became evident that Keith sensed he could elbow his way into an argument by pressing a certain line of conversation, and what he wanted more than anything right then was to argue with someone. He wanted to yell. He wanted to be yelled at.

It was clear that he was angry, frustrated, pissy, and that he wanted someone to listen to that edge in his voice, wanted someone to feel everything he was feeling. He was tired of being tired. He was sick of his job. He was afraid of becoming a father. He was overtaxed by his girlfriend's hard pregnancy. He was nervous about the birth.

After he started baiting me, after he tried to drag me into an argument--which was starting to work--I took a deep breath and--very calmly, very slowly--said, "Well, I think you better change the subject in the next three seconds or else I am hanging up this phone because I'm already bored with this conversation."

And he said, "Oh yeah? See ya." And then the phone went dead. We'd been on the phone for a little over three minutes, and each of those had pretty much sucked.

That was the last time I spoke to Keith. Both of us are just about as stubborn as stubborn can get, so I imagine this trend of not speaking could go on pretty long--we once went an entire eight months not speaking after a fight--but I'm not going to let it. It is tradition for me to call him up on the seventh day of February and remind him that once, so many years ago, he was sitting on his mother's couch with me, and he was nervous, he was twitching, he was breathing funny. He told me the last few weeks had been fun, a lot of fun, and that he really liked me and he was wondering if maybe I wanted to make it official, if I wanted to become his girlfriend. And when I said yes, he smiled and exhaled and brought a bouquet of flowers out from behind the couch.

And today I am going to call him up and remind him of that again. I'm going to see how the baby preparation is going, how the wedding preparation is going. I'm going to listen to all the news and gossip I missed out over the last month. I'm going to let everything go back to normal--not because I'm over being angry (I'm not)--but because we're getting old, and exciting things are starting to happen, and he's one of my oldest and best friends and I want to be around when he becomes a father, when he has got some major bragging to do.

So, in celebration of our whole bumpy-ugly-stupidly-charming past, here are pictures of the two of us on the night he executed the greatest caper of all time: The Great Abraham Lincoln Theft of 2006.

If he thinks he's getting the bust of Abe Lincoln for a wedding present, he can just forget it.

We're Just That Chic

Yesterday the Pink Torpedoes--my best high school friends (except for Anne, who is busy being brainy in California)--gathered for dinner and drinks at a restaurant we've been dying to go to for a year. We sat in front of the restaurant's two-story windows and when the waitress asked if we wanted to see the martini menu, we said, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

She smiled at us. "Did you guys just come from seeing Sex and the City?" she asked.

We looked around the table. We were confused. What about us seemed like we'd just come from the Sex and the City movie?

We told the waitress no. Becky and Amy and Steph said they'd just gotten off work. I'd just come from an afternoon of chocolate chip pancake-eating at the diner where the Boy From Work and I used to wait on farmers and their mustached wives.

"Oh," the waitress said. "It's just that you guys are dressed so cute, and now you're here to drink martinis. We had a lot of that kind of thing--girls getting all dressed up and going to see the movie down the street, then coming here for Cosmos--when the movie came out. I figured maybe you were doing the same."

"No," we said, "this is just us."

Most of us had already seen the Sex and the City movie. Amy and I went the last time I was home. In fact--and I am not even remotely ashamed to admit this--I bought advanced tickets so we could attend opening night. And while I did slip into a pair of purple satin pumps, I did not do myself up like most of the other women at the packed movie theater. Many came dressed in gowns and wacky dresses, in stilettos and giant costume jewelry. It was quite the experience. Everyone was so into it. People yelled and gasped and talked at the screen like they were talking to real friends. "Oh no, Carrie!" some of the girls shrieked when she was having another disaster with Big. "What the hell are you WEARING?!" others yelled when Miranda or Carrie strutted onto a street wearing something truly hideous. And during the wretched heartbreaking Big moments, the whole theater was damp with tears. I had never heard so many women sobbing at once. It was the most interesting experience I ever had in a movie theater.

But to be compared to the girls who went all out for a night out on the town with their best television girlfriends didn't really offend us. In fact, we thought it was cute that we were confused for girls who'd glammed up to go see the Sex and the City girls when we were actually just glammed up for the sake of four hours of martinis and giggling about people we went to high school with. We're just that habitually silly, that habitually chic.

Cheeseheads

When I lived in Minnesota, a state--and let's be frank here--that isn't known for awesome vacation potential, very few people clamored to visit me. I was lucky enough to get Amy to visit twice, but that had more to do with her eternal love for me and less to do with her thinking the state would make a swell vacation spot. So, Amy visited and so did my parents, but that was for my thesis reading and, again, not because they thought, Gee, Minnesota in spring is so lovely and not at all still bitter cold!

But now that I live in Maine--a state whose nickname is Vacationland, a state whose slogan is Maine: The Way Life Should Be--people are clamoring to come visit. They want to see the ocean, some lighthouses, some lobster boats. They want to eat seafood until they throw up. They want to find a moose. They want to stare at bakery cases filled with Whoopie Pies. And I'm more than happy to oblige.

This week I'm being visited by everyone's favorite Cheeseheads.

Rachel and Dan have arrived. This pleases me to no end. And for the next few days, we will make ourselves whirling dervishes spinning out toward the coast, toward the salty smell of the ocean, toward the lines of lobster boats slicing their way through waves.

I'll start telling stories from Mexico once they are safely on their way to Connecticut to visit another group of their East Coast friends.

Twelve Really White Girls, One Tan One

All over the country, high school girls are going ga-ga over the idea of prom. At the first hint of spring everything inside them goes all gooey at the thought of crinoline and taffeta, of boys in tuxes and wing-tips, of limos and a DJ who blasts classic slow songs.

I know this because I went ga-ga and gooey myself when I was a senior. That was the year I had the good fortune of having a boyfriend, which meant my fate was much different than the year before. While the rest of our grade was partying it up at our junior prom, my two best friends--Patty and Amy--were sitting with me in my living room. We were busy feeling sorry for ourselves. No boys loved us. We didn't have pretty dresses. No one had even thought to ask us to go to prom with them as friends. We weren't even good enough for the friend-date.

My mother, feeling sorry for us, arrived at home after work with three pints of Ben & Jerry's. She handed them to us, and we padded back into the living room and put in the one thing that was capable of making us happy in that moment: Footloose. While we were knee-deep in Ben & Jerry's (passed around in a circle whenever one of us called Switch!) and Baptist repression, my mother rounded the corner with one more treat: three flutes of champagne. She handed them to us with a look that said, Here you go. You earned them. Oh, we earned them alright. We were positively beautiful in our misery.

But what a difference a year can make. The next year I had Keith, and even though he was a college drop-out by this point (somewhere in between funneling beer and sleeping it off, he'd managed to rack up a 1.98 GPA before being ejected from school as a freshman), I told him he needed to get used to the fact that he was going back to do some high school stuff. He was going to do prom. He was going to do the tux and limo and corsage and awkward fast-dancing. He said sure, sure, he would do it. This amused his mother and sister so much, and they even made the trip out to my house on the night of prom to take pictures and heckle Keith. They thought it was hilarious that he put on a tux and was ready to do his white-boy shuffle on the dance floor next to all his girlfriend's friends, who hated him. And their hatred was serious. Serious enough that it would make the night uncomfortable. Had he and I both known he would eventually win them over--well, eight years later--then maybe the night would've been less stressful for both of us. I was afraid to leave him alone, and he was afraid to be left alone. Still, even though it was stacked with the potential for failure, it didn't turn out to be half bad.

And I started thinking about prom and all of that today as I looked through a CD of pictures my father had recently found and scanned for me. This CD held all kinds of gems. There were pictures of me at all ages, but the ones that really caught my eye were the prom pictures--especially the one that showed our group of friends all crammed together.



There are so many things I'm in love with in that photograph. First, I've got to admire the photographer's complete lack of regard for the composition of the picture. You can totally tell she was already sick of the gig, that she wanted to score a plate of mashed potatoes from the buffet, that she was ready to go to the bar and drown in a large glass of gin. She could have cared less about lining us up in a fashion that made sense. She could have cared less that our bodies spilled out of the glittering streamer background. She could have cared less that she made some of us (including me--a tall girl) kneel in front of some of the shortest girls.

I'm also crazy about how none of us seem to be wearing lipstick (except for Becky, whose older sisters had probably slipped a tube for touch-ups into her purse before she waltzed out the door with the man she would eventually marry). I don't know what came over me with the lipstick. I'm sure I was wearing some at some point. I sure hope I was. Because--and let's not lie--I look sort of dead. And tired. And uncomfortable. My dress is too big on me, too. I look like a girl who doesn't know anything about her body or what suits her best. The color is sort of rubbish on me. Like I need anything to play up how pale I am.

But you know what? None of that matters. I look at that picture and I see the things that are wrong with it, sure, but I also see just how cute we all were. I mean, my God. We look so bright and happy and hopeful. We are sure things are going to go our way. We are sure that our dreams are going to come our way. We are sure we are going to be friends forever. We are ready to start the rest of our lives. We are so, so ready we are almost out of our skins with anticipation.

It makes me want to do it all over again.

What I Did on My Christmas Vacation

Vacation highlights included:

1. A goofy photo shoot at my former place of employment
2. Playing darts with Josh and some townie women at a bar that boasted a pretty impressive wall mural (not to mention a complimentary coffee and gambling room)
3. Watching Anne's boyfriend run on the treadmill during our cosmopolitan-laden Pink Torpedo party
4. Attending my cousin's baby shower (and watching her open a breast pump)
5. Dipping cheesecake, pound cake, brownies, marshmallows, strawberries, and graham crackers into chocolate fondue at The Melting Pot
6. Watching the Boy From Work snuggle his niece at his family's Christmas party
7. Sitting in an ice rink with Amy and watching Rob, the BFW, and the BFW's friends play hockey
8. Brunch at The Roycroft Inn
9. Witnessing Becky's fondling of two avacados
10. Watching my brother grimace when I showed him a certain Christmas gift of mine

A Look Back

Before getting to the New Year's resolutions--most of which occurred to me only after I arrived back in western New York for my Christmas vacation--I felt it was appropriate to take a look back at the last year and how exactly I got from one place to the next. So here it is, a look back at 2007, in the style of DJJ, who did it first this time:


January

Days before the break of 2007 Jess reads that certain Latin cultures believe that wearing red underwear on New Year's Eve helps you secure luck in love in the coming year. Jess wears red underwear to the New Year's Eve party.

Jess gets drunk a lot with her cousins.

Jess considers joining Match.com.

Jess's brother decides to inform her his favorite spot for masturbation is on their mother's couch.


February

Jess goes on a double date with a boy her uncle swears she will just love. The boy, while nice, wears glasses that hang from his neck on that type of string-and-clip-combo favored by old ladies and librarians. After hearing about this date, Diana says, "You need a little wild. He doesn't sound wild."

Jess realizes the only man she is truly ready to be in a relationship with is the Buffalo Sabres' goalie Ryan Miller, even if it means they will breed children with freakishly long heads and vaguely crazy eyes.

Jess's date to the Valentine's Day dinner party she throws is a miniature bust of Abe Lincoln.

Jess faces the possibility that she will never, ever, ever get over the Wily Republican.


March

Jess gets a really badass haircut. She now has bangs. The World's Best Bangs.

Jess goes on Spring Break. Vacation spot of choice? Minnesota. While enjoying the frigid flatness of the Midwest, Jess makes out with a long-haired boy who tells her he is going to write poetry about her. To her knowledge, that poetry was never written.

Jess stalks Ryan Miller. She sits behind him at the taping of a local sports show. She prays he will look at her and instantly fall in love.

Ryan Miller does not notice Jess.


April

Jess realizes she is in love with at least fifteen of her students at the giant state university where she is teaching. They have followed her from English 101 to English 201, and they love her right back. She considers proposing they all move into her father's basement so she can go downstairs and hang out with them whenever she wants.

Jess's grandfather suffers a stroke. She drives from the small country hospital where he was initially admitted to the city hospital that specializes in stroke patient care. She sits up all night with her family and her grandfather. She doesn't feel much of anything, which seems inappropriate for the situation. She realizes she doesn't like herself very much for that.

The Sabres enter the playoffs. There is much rejoicing and foot-stomping and screaming of the phrase, I want to have your babies, Ryan Miller!

Jess's brother gives her helpful hints about what Canadian strip club to go to for Becky's bachelorette party.

Jess realizes that in a month's time, she is going to need to have a summer job. She starts to cry. She cries a lot.


May

Jess starts having nightmares about waitressing. She knows what's coming. She spends too many minutes feeling sorry for herself. I have a master's degree! she thinks. I should NOT have to go back to waitressing! Then she hates herself for being so snobby.

Jess bakes and assembles a giant penis-shaped cake. She carts it to a suite overlooking the cataract in Niagara Falls. She gets drunk and celebrates the fact that Becky is the first Pink Torpedo to be headed down the aisle.

Jess says goodbye to the best bunch of students she's had in a long, long time. She bakes them dozens and dozens and dozens of cookies and cries as she drives out of the parking lot.

Jess also says goodbye to the students she's been teaching as a side-gig at the big community college in town. She has never been happier to be rid of a group of students. The class had started with 25 students, had been whittled down to eight who occasionally attended, and only four of those passed.

Jess fills out an application at a tiny 50's diner in her hometown. A waiter brings her an application and hangs around the counter while she fills in her school and employment history. He keeps asking if she wants anything--food, a pop, a glass of water, anything--but she declines.

Jess sits in the cramped and dirty office of the tiny 50's diner in her hometown and gets hired as a waitress.


June

On her first day of work, Jess is trained in by the same waiter who handed her the application. He is the only waiter at the restaurant. He is bald. He has a long beard. He looks sort of like a man Hollywood producers would cast in a prison-break movie. He would be the vaguely Mexican inmate with murder in his eyes.

On that first day a woman at the restaurant says to Jess, "Are you single?" Jess says she is. The woman asks the vaguely Mexican prison inmate waiter if he is single. He says he is. "Well," the woman says, "you two would be really great together."

The next night Jess is talked into going to Canada to drink with some people from work. The vaguely Mexican prison inmate waiter corners her near a bar bathroom and kisses her. "Is this alright?" he asks. She thinks, Oh, why not? and says yes.

Jess gets an interview at a small college in Maine.

Jess realizes everyone she works with is either a sex addict, a drug addict, or just really, really weird. Jess also realizes she really, really likes these strange people.

Becky walks down the aisle. Jess declares it the best wedding and reception she's ever been to. She gets so drunk she walks back to the hotel shoving leftover wedding cake into her mouth while her best girls from high school trade shoes and giggle, giggle, giggle.


July

Jess makes out with that boy from work all the time. He leaves flowers on her car almost every day. After a particularly bad day at the restaurant--a day where Jess considers quitting because it was just that horrible--the boy later shows up at the bar with two surprises: more flowers and a clean-shaven face. He has a butt chin. Jess thinks it's the cutest chin she's ever seen.

When one of the cooks asks Jess and the boy from work if they are dating, the boy looks at Jess expectantly and Jess--who, up until that moment had been saying, Let's just keep things loose, okay?--says, "Yes." Plain and simple.

Jess gets a second interview with a small college in Maine. She drives ten hours, does the interview, tools around Portland and thinks, Yes, please.

Jess is offered the job in Maine. When she tells the boy from work this, it looks like his heart is actually going to fall out of his chest. She panics about what is going to happen next.

Jess tries to hook her brother up with one of her waitress friends. This waitress has a box full of sex toys and the tendency to show her breasts to anyone with eyes. Jess figures they will be great together. They see each other a few times, but a relationships never gets off the ground.

Jess drives to West Virginia and to attend the wedding of one of her best boys from grad school. For two whole days she is just a drunk girl in a cute dress. It is a nice vacation.


August

Jess drives to Maine with her mother. They apartment-hunt. Due to an unfortunate mix-up in scheduling, they have no hotel room, and the entire state of Maine is flashing NO VACANCY. Jess and her mother sleep in a car for the first time in their lives.

Jess quits her waitressing job.

Jess loads her car with her most important possessions, including that boy from work, and drives to Maine. She and the boy spend a stressful week shopping for furniture and trying to get her apartment ready before school starts.

Jess eats her first whole lobster. She eats it on the coast, right above wave-washed rocks, right under the body of a lighthouse. She is in love.


September

School starts. Jess teaches five classes, all different, all with new textbooks.

Jess turns twenty-six.

Jess drinks a lot of Vernors-and-Absolut Peach. She sits in her new furniture and looks out her window, missing, missing, missing things.

Jess is amused by her students--especially the automotive-types, who are sly, witty boys she is fairly certain she would have been friends with if she'd been enrolled in her own class.


October

Jess's body falls apart. She cannot move her neck. She goes to get a massage and is told she is clogged with toxins. Her massage makes her feel worse.

Jess thinks there's a possibility she might have meningitis.

Jess does not have meningitis.

One of Jess's classes--a half-semester affair--is over, and she can finally breathe easier.

That boy from work arrives for a week. He makes her dinner, takes her apple-picking. He hangs onto her tightly in the middle of the night. He says he loves her. She says she loves him back.


November

Jess can't believe her luck. It's been a lot of work, but her first semester has gone pretty well, and she sort of loves everything and everyone involved.

A particularly bad case of plagiarism challenges those thoughts, but Jess gets over it. Fast.


December

Jess drives home for Christmas break. She sings carols all the way home. She sings them very, very loudly. She looks forward to her first Christmas not made miserable by the Wily Republican. She thinks a lot of her grandmother and how she wishes Christmas could be the way it used to be--special, magic--and she vows that she will do her best to make it so.

Jess's Christmas is pretty special, pretty magical. After all, she receives The Pop-Up Book of Sex as a gift from Diana. It is the gift that keeps of giving.

After the reservations for the Frank Sinatra-soaked New Year's celebration they were going to attend are canceled without warning from the restaurant where they were headed, Jess and her friends go downtown to ring in 2008 at a bar far from the frat boys who are puking into bushes and running down Chippewa without their pants. She counts her blessings for this and the many other beautiful accidents she stumbled her way into over the past year.

What I Did on My Thanksgiving Vacation

The year I went away to grad school in Minnesota, my best New York girls decided to strike up a tradition. They attended their very first World's Largest Disco--a giant disco dance thrown at the convention center in downtown Buffalo. Last year was the first year I was home for the post-Thanksgiving party, and I willingly signed my name to the tradition as well. This year was my friends' third spin (my second) around the dance floor as verifiable disco diavs, but it was impressive for reasons beyond that.

This year we opened up the tradition to more than just the usual group of girls. This year we invited boys.

And let me just say this about the show the boys put on at the disco: it was amazing. Not only did they humor us by showing up, but they continued to humor us by searching out, procuring, and wearing the most hideous 70's outfits known to man. Seeing them dolled up was so completely worth it. And, really, I think they might have outdone us girls. They seemed so much more authentic. They all looked vaguely creepy, sort of like washed-up porn stars who were crossing their fingers and hoping to be invited back to the Playboy mansion.

If you ask me, they more than deserve to be invited back to the Playboy mansion. I'd welcome them into the grotto in a hot, hot second.

The Ways of Grief

This Saturday at 3:00 PM I got a phone call and the news that one of my best girls, one of the members of the Pink Torpedoes, lost her father. After the call, I sat staring out my bedroom window, down onto my front lawn. It had been raining all day, and the golden Maine leaves--leaves more fiery than any I've ever seen--were stark against the wet grass, the wet sidewalk, the wet pavement. Mist was rising from the ground, and the whole world was awash in blue.

Everything felt wrong, so I got up off the bed and started throwing things into a suitcase. I packed too many brown shoes and no black ones. I packed wrinkled sweaters and mismatching underwear. I packed a toothbrush. And then I drove. I drove the nine hours through misting-raining-pouring Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York.

While I drove farther and farther into the night I had to keep myself awake, which meant I had to keep myself interested, involved, perked up. I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about my brother's eventual wedding--which is strange and weird and wrong--and, before I knew it, I'd moved through an entire state and written a speech I want to give at my brother's wedding--a speech that ends with Bad English's "When I See You Smile" swelling in the background. I amazed myself with how sweet and sentimental I was able to be on the Thruway at midnight, but, really, it shouldn't have been such a surprise. I was delaying the inevitable. I was trying not to think about why I was driving home, what it meant, what was going on, and what it reminded me of.

It reminded me of my grandmother's death.

I haven't really talked about my grandmother's death before. She died the month after I moved to Minnesota for graduate school, and her death was a surprise but not a surprise. In those sickeningly hot summer months before my move my grandmother's body slowly started giving out. There was something wrong, and nobody really knew what it was. She was tired all the time, and she often complained of her bones aching. It was a deep ache, she said, one that she could feel in the deepest parts of her. The ache was dull and moist and constant. She thought maybe this is what it was to grow old, that she would never feel right again. But it wasn't growing old, and it wasn't just the way things were going to be from then on. It was cancer, her second time. This time it was cancer in her bones, deep down, all the way down. Her first time had been closer to the surface and had taken one of her breasts. As a little girl, I was confused why my grandmother's lingerie drawer was filled with bras that were generously padded on one side and not the other. But at twenty-one, I was no longer confused about cancer and what it meant. This time I was angry.

When I'm angry and hurt, I don't do so well. I cut myself off. I shut myself down. I become a verifiable brick of a girl. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. I am stone. I am red, red stone, glowing with the heat of my rage.

I didn't handle my grandmother's illness well, and since then I haven't been able to deal with similar things in any way that even remotely resembles "good." What I did was this: I went through the motions. I drove to the Roswell Cancer Institute in downtown Buffalo once a week, and I sat at my grandmother's bedside. I brought her books and stories I'd written. I prattled on about the newest TV shows, what she was missing. I picked up the tiny pencil the hospital gave out--the type handed out at golf outings--and helped her choose what she wanted to eat for the rest of the week. I asked questions like, Do you want the banana cake on Wednesday, Grandma? How about the pork cutlet for Thursday's dinner? Doesn't that sound good?

Never once did I say anything important. I didn't say, This is unfair. I didn't say, You can't go. I didn't say, Please don't leave me. I didn't say, I haven't been very nice lately, and I'm sorry.

I never told my grandmother I was sorry. And I had many, many, many things to be sorry for. These were not good times for my family. We'd recently had what I refer to as The Worst Christmas Ever, after which I adopted the general strategy of ignoring my grandparents' house and thus my grandfather who was, at that time, not a very nice man. Because I was ignoring the place where he lived, I was also ignoring my grandmother, and grandma wasn't happy about this. She kept sending letters begging me to forgive, to forget, to come home, to come see them, to spend some time in her kitchen like I usually did--just sitting at the table, hanging my feet over the edge of the chair and painting my toenails. She wanted to make me a sandwich. She wanted to mix me a cup of Loganberry. She wanted to pick through my nail polish container and comment on all the strange colors--purple, silver, orange, green--but then stroke one of them onto her own toes so she could wiggle those brazen toes in the direction of her friends, tell them it had been her granddaughter's suggestion.

But I didn't do that. I went on being angry and punishing everyone because of it. I hadn't spoken to my grandfather in months and months by the time my grandmother landed in the hospital, which made things uncomfortable when I came for visits. My mood was not improved when I sat slumped in a chair in the corner of the room, watching my grandfather treat my grandmother like she was a princess, a queen, every kind of royalty that ever lived. I thought it was terrible of him to go on like that--to pretend he was something he so clearly was not. For twenty-one years, I'd watched him berate her in public, tell her she was stupid and useless, tell her no, no, no, you won't go here, do that, leave me in this house without dinner on the table. He yelled while she was making food, while she was driving, while she was shopping, while she was telling stories.

After my grandmother died, my mother told me grandma had wanted to leave him years ago, but those things weren't done back then, and she'd stayed for the kids and because that's just what you did. Always. I couldn't stop thinking about that. I couldn't stop wondering what it must have been like for my grandmother to stay with a man who, just for kicks, just because it was fun to watch, made his children move the wood pile from one side of the driveway to the next several times a season, all while he sat inside with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the newspaper in the other, all the while telling his wife the mashed potatoes better not be lumpy like they were the last time. I don't blame my grandfather completely for the man he was--after all, he was raised by a woman who, once when my mother was very little, brought her down to the creek bed with a pillowcase full of squirming kittens. My great grandmother handed the pillowcase to my mother and told her to drown them, and do it quick. My mother couldn't. My mother wouldn't. And so my great grandmother snatched the case from my mother and did it herself. When my mother turned her head so she wouldn't see the little paws breaking the surface of the water, trying so desperately to paddle, paddle, paddle back to the shore, to life, to warm, dry nights in the cow barn, my great grandmother grasped my mother by the chin and turned her head back toward the water, to the drowning kittens, and made her watch until they were all dead.

My grandfather often told stories about how great of a woman his mother was. He loved her, said she was a great lady, a real class-act. And so it was easy, then, to place a little blame on her, to see what she had done to him, what she had made him. But it didn't make me any less angry, any less evil toward him and, just because she got in the way, my grandmother, too.

But it was more than just me being angry at my grandfather for what he'd done and said. That wasn't the only thing I had to be sorry for. I'd also been a real cocky girl for the last year. I was so full of myself--college educated, succeeding, winning scholarships and attention, getting accepted to grad schools in several different states, writing my way out of western New York and away from my family. I waltzed into family gatherings like I was a real big something. I sat around saying witty things and acting like I knew better than everyone. I was not a good daughter, granddaughter, or sister back then. I was floating through that year on a cloud of my own accomplishments.

And so my grandmother spent the last year of her life losing me. She would've gotten me back, of course, if only she'd been around. Eventually, I would've come back down. Eventually, I would've been myself again. But that never happened for us. I never came around the right way until after she'd gone.

My mother called me at 8:30 AM on a Monday morning to tell me my grandmother had died the night before. I didn't quite understand what she was saying--after all, the last thing I'd heard was that my grandmother was being moved that night to a rehabilitation hospital where she could recover from the chemo in peace. She'd made progress. She'd responded well. She was ready to take a step closer to home.

But this is what happened: the paramedics bundled my grandmother in blankets and the wheeled her out to the ambulance that would take her to the next hospital, the one with bright colors and flowers and balloons and cards that spoke of recovery. On the way to that hospital, my grandmother dozed, and then her heart gave out. It was weak and tired and weary from all the chemo--it was, after all, its second time around with cancer and all its treatments and exhaustions. The paramedics tried to revive her, but they couldn't. They couldn't. My grandmother died right there, so close to recovery, to a next chance.

When my mother told me these things, I collapsed in the hallway outside my roommate's bedroom. Megan was there in a second, and she had me in her arms and she was petting my hair and my back and telling me it was going to be okay, but I knew it wasn't. I knew my grandmother had just died, and I'd never get the chance to tell her what I really felt--that I was an awful granddaughter, that I was ungrateful, that I had ruined the last year of her life by being so hateful and spiteful and cold.

I flew home for the funeral. I spent three days in town. I did the wakes and the funeral, but I remember very little of that time. What I do remember exists in scattered, dark places in my head. I remember the casket being closed. I remember making a photo collage of my grandmother's favorite pictures. I remember hearing her older sister weeping in the hallway, her surviving brothers, too. I remember my grandfather pacing and saying, How can she be gone? Why was she taken from me? I remember my best friends coming by, bringing their ow mothers and baked goods. I remember Amy's mother's bar cookies, which were, at the time I ate them in the parking lot of the funeral home, the best things I'd ever tasted.

I remember the funeral. I remember my father standing in the back row. I remember standing next to my cousins and hearing each one of them start to weep--one, two, three, four--until the weeping reached my brother, and he broke down too. All around me there were people sobbing. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. I didn't cry, though. Never once. I stood there like a stone, like a pillar, like a brick that let nothing in and nothing out.

I was the only person who didn't cry at my grandmother's funeral.

And today, that's what bothers me the most. I don't understand why I wouldn't let myself cry. I wanted to--absolutely I did. I fought to keep the tears in. I tipped my chin up and I concentrated. I said, You will not cry, you will not cry, you will not cry until the urge to cry passed. When it came upon me again, I would steel myself and say, No. No, no, no. And I didn't.

These are the things I thought about on the drive back to New York. I hoped and prayed that my friend, my sweet girl, the one who is so terrifically kind and thoughtful and wise, would not do what I did, would not harden to stone while people filed in to pay their respects, press their hands against hers, and whisper, I'm so sorry.

At her father's wake, I didn't do well. I didn't do what I was supposed to. I found it hard--like I always do--to find the right words to say. There's an awful lot of guilt attached to being unable to find the right words to say. I'm a writer, and I feel like it's just something I should be able to do, something I should be good at. I should have a phrase or a sentence or a thought that is just right, that says everything that needs to be said and nothing that doesn't. But I always dry up in those moments. My tongue becomes a dead, awkward thing in my mouth, and I walk away feeling like a failure, like someone who has brought no comfort whatsoever.

But what I know is this: you don't remember what people say. You just don't. Afterward, you will remember only a haze of things, shapes of people and items that were in the same room as you. There was a coffin, of course, and flowers and people. But if pressured to recite what was said to you and by whom, you won't be able to do it. Or maybe that's just me, a stone-girl, the one who can't process and let herself grieve. And I hope above all other things that my friend, one of my oldest, one of the ones who will be around forever, just lets herself breathe, lets herself be, which is one thing I never remembered to do.