Privilege

It was nearing 11 p.m., and I walked into the restroom at work, and she was there, beginning to wash the sinks. On some nights, she and I are the only two people left on the 14th floor at this hour. We never speak.

She is older than I am. Maybe in her early 40s, maybe older, maybe younger. She has frazzled hair, cut into a messy bob, dyed a dark honey blonde color. But it's fading. And her roots are gray and black. She is heavyset, 5'2'' at most, and she has dark, sad eyes. She has deep wrinkles around those eyes. Rough skin. And she wears an ill-fitting, shapeless blue dress -- her uniform -- as she cleans our office at night.

I was wearing heels. Pants. A cashmere sweater. I was thinking about whether I had time to get a manicure before visiting my niece tomorrow and whether I should bring my flat iron to Italy when I went on vacation Friday...

And I felt like a terrible person, watching out of the corner of my eye as she wrung out a rag. I don't know what language she speaks, but she knows little English. We look away from each other a lot. As I edit our Web site, she tries to vacuum around my bag on the floor. I feel torn between picking it up to make it easier for her and feeling like picking it up makes it worse.

"You missed a spot."

See? That made you cringe. I feel like an ass having written it.

But so often I forget exactly how privileged I am in this world, and this woman brings it to the front of my mind, mostly because the look on her face every night, tired, worn out... We work in the same place at the same time, but I have never less "together" in someone's presence. And its particular to her. I wonder what it is that I see in her that makes me feel so... so much like I need to apologize to her for existing.

I have not had an easy life, but compared to most of this planet, I was born into a life of ease. I will likely never be truly hungry. I have a home. I have a good family that loves me that would take me in if I needed them to. I have money to travel to interesting places. I can spend $13 on a cocktail just because it looks delicious. I have an amazing education and have been given and earned extraordinary opportunities... I work in a fancy building. Eat in fancy restaurants. Can spend hundreds on a handbag and it just makes me feel embarrassed. It doesn't change a thing about my life.

Sometimes I dwell on the things that make me grouchy -- I almost wrote "unhappy," but its hard to really claim to be "unhappy," even with my current set of tribulations. And I have the luxury of walking away if the cost begins to outweigh the reward.

I am a fifth-generation American living in a posh neighborhood of New York City in the 21st Century.

I am what my ancestors came here to give their children the chance to become.

I wish we could show them.

There is a photograph of me as an infant. We are on the balcony of my great-great grandmother's apartment, above the family's bar in Manayunk, in Philadelphia. In this photograph: my great-great grandmother Sophia, my great-grandmother Helen, my grandmother Doris, my mother Karen, and me, Jennifer.

Five generations of women. Mother and daughter. From Poland to Philadelphia. From the Old World to the New. A chain of hope and optimism and striving to give your little girl a life without the things you endured.

Sitting in my grandmother's house in Saturday, in between my cousin's wedding and the reception, another photograph was taken.

My sister held her two-week-old daughter, Diana, sitting between my mother and my grandmother. Four generations of my family, smiling as I snapped my camera, looking at an echo of my own life, captured in a moment full of hope. Marriage. Birth. Future. Past. All at once.

And our wee girl, my beloved niece, has also been born into a world of privilege. She sleeps in safe, secure homes. She doesn't go hungry. She has more than enough clothes. When she is awake, around her family, we can't put her down.

We will do whatever we can to teach her, and to teach her cousins, my own children, and the rest of her generation, how to be compassionate and generous and loving. And to strive to be better and to leave things better than they found them. To encourage all that is noble in ourselves and to try and hide the ugly things until they must be confronted. She will someday squirm, forced to deal with who she is and how she fits into the world. And we will try to make that easier.

Until she was born, my thinking on these things centered on myself. On what I could do to feel less guilt over feeling I'd gotten off easy in this world in so many ways... But now I wonder how to make it even easier for someone else. But also question how to make sure she can still see. Can still know that what she has took generations to achieve. And that everyone that came before her built the world as best they could so that she could sleep peacefully at night, well fed on a soft pillow.

Older, yes. Wiser, maybe?

I have a Polaroid photograph of myself, standing in the Ocean City High School library wearing a worn gray acrylic sweater that I found at a thrift store, because I so desperately wanted to fit in with my oh-so-edgy girlfriends at the time that I wore frumpy, $2 thrift store sweaters and listened to Tom Waits because that's where I had tried to fit in.

I have kept this photograph on my book shelf, half-way hidden behind a small box of Japanese incense sticks and a handful of "important' receipts, for perhaps a year. Occasionally I look at it, and I stare at my smile and wonder why I ever thought I wasn't beautiful. Why when I was that girl, I thought I was a just the most awkward, unloveable girl ever born, and should probably just stay that way. And it seemed I was confirmed. One evening at a friend's house, she turned to me and said, "I think we're good enough friends now... They say you used to be such a pretty girl. What happened to you?"

"Uh....."

Exactly. I have a scar on my forehead. Even if an evil zealot threw acid on my face because I tried to go to school (try being a girl in Afghanistan), I would be a minor flicker on the world's list of "people messed up by sh*t that just happened."

The girl in the ill-fitting gray cheap thrift-store sweater is the one who answered that question with a blanched look of panic and a "Uh, I had an accident." And when she pressed for more of an answer, I actually felt myself shut down. I answered through a veil of post-traumatic stress disorder and shame. The double-sided coin of being different, even if it is something that hurt YOU. Not any other way, lest the other way around.

I was so self conscious, I heard those words and felt like I might as well have died. I should have died. Spared everyone and myself the horror of having to look at the lines that marked my darkest, direst days.

And here we fast forward. To a time when I had finally decided that the girl in the picture, the one who was so shy she hid her hands, even though she was the "smartest girl in the whole school" and was going to the Ivy League. Even though she had the lead in the play and was the captain of the tennis team. That girl was so shy, she stood to pose for a photograph in the library and hid her hands in the sleeves of her shirt. To reach for anything would be absurd.

Who grants gifts to broken things?

Apparently time does heal all wounds. Or at least make them bearable. Less sinister. More relational. We learn to take what we can from how things change us. I, for example, have no ability to differentiate between a look from someone who thinks I'm attractive and someone who thinks I'm a spectacle, unless they catch my eyes. Our eyes don't lie. So much else in our faces can though. It's astounding.

I see people stare at me, and I judge whether its because I am different or because I am beautiful depending on my mood. If I feel strong, I get shy under the glances of admirers. If I feel ashamed, I imagine they are horrified at my scars. I am a monster. Wrecked.

When the truth is, who the hell knows what anyone is thinking when they look at you.

He could be grimacing about a fight with his wife. About laundry. About a daughter asking an embarrassing question.

She could be shy about having kissed him too soon. Too wrapped up in pleasing her boss to even actually see the woman she's staring at and scowling towards.

We all assume the reactions of others are rooted in the things we worry about ourselves, and we are seldom right.

I wish I could tell the girl in that picture that someday, the woman she would become would look at her and think she was exquisite, and to reach out and embrace every inch of her life. Thrust those hands out of those sleeves and stand proud.

Because that had always been the right thing to do. The way things should have been.

A shining, beautiful smile gracing a child -- who would one day become a woman who would look back at herself and wish for things to have been different, but know that things happened as they did to make today. And realize the elegance of a revelation that leads to self forgiveness.

And rejoice.

For My Own True Love... Lost at Sea...

The heart makes its own decisions.

Whether it lasts or not, I believe that we know what is right, who we love and what is real. Just because. Whether things are chemistry or inevitable love, we know a kindred spirit when we first say hello. We may doubt and wait for proof, but in the end, we knew.

I knew you and I would adore each other from the moment I saw you...

(I remember so may of those moments -- my "first friend date" with Vanessa, when we went to lunch, dressed nicely because we felt like it mattered that this went well... Kathy at Governor's School, the coolest girl there, in my eyes, who thought the same about me... Riding the bus reading Euripides with Michael... The look in my eyes in that photograph of when I was 2, holding freshly-born Julie in my arms like I had the biggest prize in the whole world. And yes. I did. "Look what I got!" Yes indeed.)

A certain fellow has been on my mind a lot lately, and I confess, I feel like he's the one that got away, even if he was a vanishing jerk... Whatever was there was overwhelming, although it was brief... It should have been of little consequence, and yet... Yet I find he has re-emerged in my mind and the wild beating of my heart in his presence is the standard against which I judge all others...

I had woken up and his forehead was pressed against mine and we were sleeping touching noses... THAT's what I want. Just with someone who stays...

I've been a little bit obsessive with music lately -- listening to the same handful of Decemberists songs over and over and over for like 2 weeks...

One, called "A Record Year for Rainfall" has lines in the chorus: What’s the use of all of this? It’s to remember you in the entire/ Cause I’m watching it slip away...

And it reminds me of my last night with him... when I lied to myself, but I knew.

I knew I wouldn't see him again, even though we'd make love twice again before we had to get up. I lay there, memorizing his face. I wanted to remember it. Every line. Every curve. No one has ever hit me that hard just by existing...

I have no idea how or why these things happen.

So I lay there, on my stomach, wrapped in his arms as he slept, and I learned his face so that I would remember when he was gone, because I knew he wouldn't be back... And later when he left, he kissed me hard. And as he went down the stairs, his eyes never leaving mine, he blew me a kiss... and it just felt like goodbye. I died inside a little. And I pretended I hadn't felt that... seen what I had seen flash in that action... I didn't trust my instincts. Maybe, maybe he didn't mean that.

But twice I knew. Twice I tried to lie to myself in one night... and it came to pass that he did slip into wherever it is he went... Funny. In the day to day, maybe I wouldn't even like that man. But in those hours at night in my bed, the intensity of it blew me away.

I have had awkward nights. I have faked enthusiasm for a kiss. But when that bolt of lightening hits you, you can't pretend it was something else... Too bad it sometimes strikes at the very wrongest, least useful time.

Maybe it's a flaw, but I get attached very quickly to people who touch my soul, and I do not let go easily. Some get through slowly. Some hit like a wrecking ball and I am powerless to resist them -- but would never have wanted to. And unfortunately for me, I still think the best of people even when they've long since turned from honey into poison... Even as I saw. I knew.

I fought a million goodbyes from men not worth the time it took to hear them say it... Because I couldn't believe they were leaving. Thinking the problem was me. Not beautiful or captivating or worth keeping. I let my fear and insecurity cloud that voice that knew right from wrong, yes from no. That fought to cling to things that were oh so bad that I tried to make good, and saw the good in things that should have turned badly.

I knew he would go before he went. And when he did, I tried to deceive myself. Because in those moments, with his eyes closed and his mind deep in sleep, a small smile lingered on his face, cradling me close, and my heart was lost to him. Somewhere in that night though, I lost him.

I'm trying to follow my heart, so to speak, these days. Do what feels right... And I've found the signs look better than when I was emotionally fighting my lot in life. I find myself in a state of watchful waiting, and I wonder what will come to be.

Hopefully, I will learn to trust myself more as it passes.

My Own Stuff White People Like: Cinco de Mayo

Every year on May 5, white people flock to Mexican restaurants and Irish pubs to celebrate what they assume to be Mexico's Independence Day: Cinco de Mayo.

White people love Cinco de Mayo because it combines several of their favorite things: multiculturalism, diversity, nachos, being an expert on other cultures and binge drinking. However, Cinco de Mayo is a potential minefield when it comes to offending white people, which they love. But when they're drinking, it can get messy.

For example, telling a white person that Cinco de Mayo actually celebrates Mexico's victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862 will most likely result in blank, slightly hostile stares, because white people hate to be corrected.

Therefore, when hanging out with a white person on Cinco de Mayo, it's best to ignore this fact and simply buy them a Corona, a shot of tequila or a frozen Margarita, the official white-person drinks of Cinco de Mayo. White people will appreciate both the free drink and the fact that you're celebrating Mexico's freedom from Spain with them.

If you do bring it up and upset a white person, you can correct the situation by telling them you only learned that fact because of your foreign study program in Mexico. This then gives them an opportunity to tell you about their foreign study program, thus alleviating any further tension because they will have forgotten all about you as they reminisce about the price of beer in Prague.

At no point should you draw attention to the actual Mexicans bringing the white person the nachos and clearing away the empty Corona bottles. White people become uncomfortable when they think about poor immigrants doing menial labor for them. However, take heart. The more tequila a white person drinks on Cinco de Mayo the more likely they are to begin over-tipping, which will help alleviate the guilt they feel over NAFTA.

Lasts, Firsts

It's the stuff of movies, of novels, of fiction. It is a thing you never think will actually happen -- that thing so cliched that its reality stuns you with the force of a lightening bolt.

When she knew she was dying, she wrote me a letter.

Pen on paper.

And she left it for me.

A woman knew she was dying, and she wrote the things she wanted me to know. The last things she would say to me. The last thing I would hear. If there are ever words you should heed, they are these.

I have been thinking about this letter lately, because I'm at a bit of a crossroads. There are things I want to create. To write. To photograph. Things I want my life to be. The way I want to spend my days.

And there is the lonely, cold way that they are.

And I wonder, sometimes, if I pulled this scribbled letter out, whether it would lift me or crush me.

In my mind, I see the page. I see her always terrible, yet now lazy handwriting. The effort she put into pushing the pen onto that notepad. She left her last words on pretentious paper. So typical. So perfect. I know where I keep it.

In a brown paper envelope, it sits among a funeral notice and photographs I can't bear to look at, because maybe almost four years later I am still not whole again.

But maybe each death will leave us less whole. Each birth replenish us.

My niece will be born in three months, god willing. And I have never anticipated anyone as much.

I anticipate my own family. Lover. Husband. Children. But for now, baby niece, sweet soon-to-be Diana, rules the universe of us all. The first of our next generation. As the first of the last generation, I hope to help her on. And am glad for my own daughters that they won't bear that burden. Perhaps being the first, I chose my hesitation.

For maybe half a day I resented my younger sister marrying first. And since that day, I have gladly taken my place among the "not in front."

I have had enough standing out. Next Friday I will see her in a 3-D ultrasound image for the first time. And I'm quite excited.

The turn of this post I confess is unanticipated.

I watched a show that made me think about Phatiwe's letter. But instead, I turned towards a tangible and coming future. I meant to talk about last words, but instead found first words...

On Books

I have an unnaturally strong attachment to books.

To me, they are the things, aside from photographs, that if your house were burning, you might run back and try to save. There may be a million copies of 'Song of Solomon' but that is the one that made me shiver. That copy of 'Sula', with its "Circles and circles of sorrow" changed how I thought, how I feel, how I am. Who knew? Who knew there was a word for what I felt, and that someone else had taken those feelings, those exact same feelings, and put them more exquisitely than I could have fathomed... Until I read it.

And then I knew.

I knew those feelings. That sorrow. That spiral. That prayer/poem/hymn/cry.

They are things that can evoke in us spiritual responses. Feeling that touch us so deeply that we maybe sometimes make bad decisions.

To hold on to sentences. Phrases. Paragraphs. As objects on a page. As pages in a book. As a book that we have held. As a thing, we have touched, that has touched us.

Therein lies the mystery of books, of reading and of language.

We have created this system of symbols that mean our words. Our words are symbols themselves. We take collections of lines, put them together, and through the glorious invention of writing, you are reading this. You know what I wanted to tell you. You know. Because these symbols, these lines, mean something to us.

So these things on my shelves, these cumbersome, space-sucking books... these worlds, these ideas, these revelations... I will have to pare down. I don't live in a proper house, so I have just the few shelves I own now, and the space I might use to add a new one is very small. I am New-York-City-Maxed-Out.

Bummer.

The Ego vs. Facebook

This may surprise some of you, I've realized, but I always feel painfully awkward when I discover that someone has remembered me. When someone does something for me that shows they were obviously thinking about me -- about what I like, what would be very nice for me to have, what would make me laugh -- it kind of breaks my heart.

That sentiment may be echoed in the last post's story about the ring, but Facebook, oddly enough, is forcing me to confront a character flaw of sorts. One that is a bit of an irony coming from someone vain enough to blog.

It really does surprise me that people find me -- significant. That I mattered or had any impact on their lives. I keep being delightfully surprised by contact from people I haven't heard from in 2, 5, 15 years...

I'm somewhat cursed with an ability to remember most things. Conversations. Lectures. Books. Articles. Shows. Probably most of the things you ever said to me. (Remember, Matt Jenkins and Vanessa when we were eating pizza on the stoop of 1426 and the cops came because we were blasting Tribe Called Quest out the window at 2 a.m.?)If my eyes caught it, I probably can't shake it. And I remember slights. Embarrassments. We all do. I still feel shame sometimes over things I did long, long ago.

Case in point: Sunshine Forest Pre-School. 1981? 1982? It's general play-time. I go up to Alyssa - and I tell her, very matter-of-factly, that this afternoon, I am going to Robin's house to play. And YOU, are not.

Even at 4 years old, there was this insecurity. This contest. The need to violently throw myself into the world and hope it noticed me. "Screw you four year old!"

That was also the first time I was publicly punished. Banned from snack time. No "Zesta" crackers and apple juice for me (another problem with the memory, remembering a forbidden snack from 27 years ago... great. I wish I knew where I'd put my checkbook...)

Returning to my point -- you can tell this is awkward because I'm storytelling instead -- I've heard from people who I would have thought I was too insignificant to be noticed by. I get Friend Requests (which I think should be a proper noun) from people who I am stunned remember who I was. Someone I always felt was too cool, too beautiful, too sophisticated...

Example -- at the New Jersey Governor's School of the Sciences in 1994 -- when I'd been nominated by my high school for being the person they thought could get in -- the girl I thought was the most beautiful, most fascinating, coolest person wound up being my best friend there. She seemed to like being with me as much as I did her, and I admired her so. She sang and played music. She's now a marine biologist, and I'm a little bit jealous of that. I felt so lucky.

I was even excited to be her friend on Facebook. We always worship those we once adored, I suppose. Not in the way we ardently throw ourselves into the blood and guts of family love, but in that "how does someone like you like someone like me" crazytown way.

Unfortunately for me, I have always fallen in love with men who fall into the second category. Only a few have been the blood and guts love kind. I miss them always.

My therapist in Boston once asked why I assumed I had been so insignificant to the men I'd loved -- why I was shocked when one of them would reach out to me after our usually catastrophic break-up. I'd been so convinced, somehow, that fleeing me was the only natural thing to do. That they were back because they felt sorry for me. Pitiful me. Sad, leave-able me.

I have no explanation.

A few faces have re-emerged lately, not my doing -- which means they found me somehow. Maybe through others. But still. For the young'uns, Facebook is a chronicle of everyone in college they ever spoke to. But when you've got a few years under your belt (not that many) there are faces that come back that surprise you.

This isn't meant as a litany to my insecurities. Because I'm very detatched writing it -- and it's something that was preoccupying me so much so I actually put down the third book in the 'Twilight' series to think, have a glass of wine and write.

It's more of a why and a how. How do we wind up like this?

I now sit in an office almost alone at night, News Editor for a Web site (note my AP style!) Yet with one, maybe two or three other people, which is kind of torture for someone who has thrown herself at the world with such force, because she always insists on being noticed and in the fray... Who thrives on having a partner at all times.

Who needs the maddening crowd. But who oddly doesn't think she will be remembered. How does this even make sense?

Weird, right? Mostly unexplicapable and irrational.

I would bet cash money that none of you would ever bet that I'd be shocked by a gift of lemons in a plastic cup -- left on my desk at work because someone cared enough about me to notice something about me -- something I enjoyed -- and wanted me to have that.

So much so that when I wasn't around, he remembered to do it.

You've had those days.

Even if it was the tiniest gesture, it was for you and about you.

I think it started on that train platform, listening to my father's music. And then I heard from someone I was flattered to be remembered by -- on the Facebook. Not even because we'd had some intense relationship. We had been neighbors for one year. He married. Had a daughter. I moved to New York. Someone for whom I assumed I wouldn't even register.

I first started writing a "maybe" sentence, but that would have been a lie.

I love without caution, but have always assumed I was somewhat invisible.

I delight in feeling like a fool. Maybe just this time. But I wanted to get it off my chest.

Something is about to happen.