tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-138261022024-03-14T05:10:03.032-05:00Imbroglio<i>Definition:</i> Imbroglio (im-BROHL-yoh), noun<br>
1: a confused mass<br>
2: a : a complicated situation b : a painful or embarrassing misunderstanding c : a violent or bitter altercation : embroilment<br>
3: my high school literary magazineJenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.comBlogger195125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-39504248802101849102015-05-11T23:11:00.002-05:002015-05-12T09:52:44.291-05:0010 Years GoneIn the story we would tell ourselves, we lived in Brookline.<br />
<br />
We had one of those oversized duplex houses, with four bedrooms on each floor and ample front porches. I lived upstairs. She lived downstairs. I was less bothered by stairs than she was.<br />
<br />
And we would talk about how she would babysit my children, never having children of her own, even in our 20-something fantasies, and then I'd come back from date night with Mr. and she and I would spend the rest of the night on the porch, whiling away the hours with bawdy jokes and gin and tonics. She loved smoking Camel Lites. And really, once you have Stage 4 cancer, why would you stop smoking?<br />
<br />
The night she told me she was dying, I had a date. An Internet date, in the early years of Internet dating, and he was a nice boy who didn't have a cell phone and was going to meet me at a place in Harvard Square after his class. She met me at the B-Side Lounge and told me of the past months of painful cramps, laid out on her bathroom floor, of the medical tests, of the doctors who told her she was just fat, that was her problem...<br />
<br />
But now they'd figured it out and she had cancer. Bad cancer. And not much time.<br />
<br />
But she wanted me to still go on my date. Because her cancer wasn't going to mess up anyone's anything.<br />
<br />
My date, who didn't like drinkers, sat and watched me pound martinis, telling him I was so so so sorry that my best frined just told me she was dying but still made me go meet him.<br />
<br />
None of us could save her. All women must die.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x65akZ6H2E4/S-ouqutIXfI/AAAAAAAAB-U/iMafBZIBGEU/s1600/Phatiwe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x65akZ6H2E4/S-ouqutIXfI/AAAAAAAAB-U/iMafBZIBGEU/s320/Phatiwe.jpg" width="226" /></a>I <a href="http://jennyboy.blogspot.com/2010/05/in-memoriam-phatiwe-sharon-cohen.html">wrote five years ago</a> about her loss, and it was still so very accute for me that my words still had a rawness. A frailty.<br />
<br />
I no longer carry that weight. But there are still days when I see someone being a dick on the subway and think, "I have to tell Phatiwe about..."<br />
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You never lose the desire to share your world with them. Even a decade after you got to tell her words she could hear.<br />
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Love does not, in fact, expire.<br />
<br />
Who was Phatwie Sharon Cohen, born Sept. 27, 1977, in Botswana? She grew up in Africa, and the only story I remember that she told was of having to make gin and tonics for grown ups when she was too young for that shit. I remember she moved to Boston and she didn't have enough, but she was still brilliant enough to survive being hungry and cold to make it to Dartmouth, where she seemed to thrive. It was hard for her, in many ways, but many of us loved her.<br />
<br />
After we left school, we lived together in Boston, then she lived with Vanessa and Chayya, and then she lived alone. And then she moved back in with her father in Lowell, and I would drive out and visit her there. Growing thinner. But never quieter.<br />
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My last weekend with her was the weekend they chose the Nazi pope. My mother came up and we hung out, making jewelry and watching CNN to see who would be elected pope. It was a beautifully normal, beautifully weird day.<br />
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She made a silver and turquoise necklace that day.<br />
<br />
I still have that necklace.<br />
<br />
I always will.<br />
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<br />Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-32623913857565278482014-05-30T00:41:00.002-05:002014-05-30T00:45:57.125-05:0037 Years. Sometimes you become a thing you never thought you would be. A 37-year-old person. I feel like I've finally reached an age at which existence seems kind of miraculous. Maybe it's a symmetry of things.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F8HKHhnY5tE/U4gZ3BXA-vI/AAAAAAAADrE/xPWYqrWi-vg/s1600/babyJB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F8HKHhnY5tE/U4gZ3BXA-vI/AAAAAAAADrE/xPWYqrWi-vg/s1600/babyJB.jpg" height="227" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Baby me.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I was 7 when I should have died. Thirty years ago this summer. And I have been thinking a lot about that. How a thing that is 30 years past is still the thing that shapes so much of how you see the world. You are half you, the you that would have been no matter what. But you are always that other half of you. The you that was changed.<br />
<br />
I will have a lot more to say about that later. This summer is a summer of writing and thinking, I think. I have been quiet a long time, but I was letting things simmer. You can't tell someone what you think until you've figured it out yourself, can you?<br />
<br />
So today. Today I turn 37 years old. A proper grown up. A person who should have could have would have accomplished stuff and things. "You're still young," my father said today.<br />
<br />
But am I? To some, yes. But youth carries a sheen of irresponsibility. I don't get that anymore. I shouldn't. I am one of us all the way. Us Americans. Us humans. Us adults on this Earth doing our stuff and things.<br />
<br />
I don't know why it was this year. Maybe it was all the other things I've thought in the past year about life and hurt and resposiblity and what I did and what I felt. What everyone did. What everyone felt.<br />
<br />
The things frozen in time don't have to create coffins of ice we live in forever. We can caress them with tenderness and say no. You were important. But you are not the way forward.<br />
<br />
I finally grew up in a way that feels irrevokable. A loss of innocence. A loss of youth and ignorance. A loss of careless freedom. A loss of a fantasy of the world.<br />
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But the world that is real, for all its messy, jagged corners... I sleep better here. On the other side of that long, hard winter. Where self exploration became a carnival of tissues, long walks and "what could have been."<br />
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I hope I look back at this someday and find naivete. Vanity. Youth. Because that will have meant that I lived decades more, and saw that night when I turned 37, surrounded by my friends at book club, looking forward to a rooftop barbecue... And see myself for the novice I was.<br />
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The girl who thought she knew so much in her 30s. But who from the ripe old age of three times that, looks at her and shakes her head and smiles. You delicate, gorgeous child. How could you see how much the world would grow.<br />
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I hope to someday look back upon my now-self and adore her innocence.<br />
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I hope we all get that.<br />
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<br />Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-63038932953497335842013-12-19T00:37:00.000-05:002013-12-19T00:37:12.053-05:00Two 19-year-olds flew to Paris...It was just past midnight, Washington, D.C.-time, and we wanted to celebrate New Year's Eve. Bad enough that we hit the flight-attendant call button and asked for champagne.<br />
<br />
"Non," she said.<br />
<br />
"But it's midnight, in America. It's New Year's..." we said.<br />
<br />
<i>Tsh tsh tsh</i>. In that weird, almost harsh shush of disapproval. "It's 5 in the morning in France. You missed it..."<br />
<br />
"Please," we begged. "We're 19. We can't have champagne at home, but we can on the plane. Just one toast...."<br />
<br />
She brought us 2 glasses.<br />
<br />
That is when my friendship with Phatiwe began. We were flying to Paris for our foreign study program in Lyon. It was New Year's Eve. She flew from Boston to D.C. Me from Philadelphia. It was the first thing we ever did together. We had mutual friends before the trip. Had spent time together. Parties. What not.<br />
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We had found out we were going on the same program in France and decided to fly together. It seemed like the thing to do.<br />
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We arrived at 7 a.m. on a frozen holiday morning. Paris was glistening with frost and asleep. Our room was not ready. Others met us, but by the time they arrived, she and I were a thing. Four of us shared bunk beds in a Trocadero Ibis hotel. She took such long showers. Everyone was confused. We ate cheese. We drank wine in cafes. A Nigerian man who said he was on a professional soccer team tried to take me home with him to smoke a shisha.<br />
<br />
She didn't let me go.<br />
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Always the smart one, that girl.<br />
<br />
We got to Lyon and my family, who spoke no English, who took me in to fill avoid in their own family left when their eldest daughter went to college in Germany, they picked me up in a small car. Tossed my suitcase in the back. Were proper. Reserved. Msr. Humbert bumped the shit out of the bumpers on the cars around his when he parked. "That's how we do it here," he said, seeing my shock.<br />
<br />
Americans never park like that.<br />
<br />
Phatiwe's family luxuriated in her English. They went skiing, they had dinner parties, they were like a firecracker of bravado, mispronounced-English and hugs.<br />
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Les Humberts had a wood-paneled receiving room. My bed was remade every day. She ironed my underwear. But every night. At first. We sat with the dictionary at the table. I was their American, and by God. I was going to speak French.<br />
<br />
Mme. woke me every morning about five minutes before my alarm (I had told her my wake-up plan...) and told me it was time for my shower. She, meanwhile, went into the kitchen and made me a bowl of chickory coffee and tartines. (After a month of hungry during which I dropped 10 pounds, I also got a peeled clementine. Sectioned. On its own plate.) She would sit in her bath robe, speaking with me in French every morning while I had breakfast before sending me off to class.<br />
<br />
I still remember her shaggy robe. Her pixie haircut. Her gentle wrinkled eyes. The way she held her hands while she talked to me. She spoke slowly. It was morning. But it was still her job to teach me.<br />
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When she was dressed, she worse skirts, stockings. Cardigans with gold buttons. Scarves. Always lipstick.<br />
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One time she took me to get my hair cut, my ability to communicate how I wanted that done was still poor. And I wound up with a fluffy bob. "Tellment feminine!" she exclaimed, showing me off.<br />
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Another time their friends came over to play bridge. They paraded me around. "Look, this our American. She speaks so well!" And they made me talk with all their friends.<br />
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Pierre-Yves and Pauline taunted me at dinner every night.<br />
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This is why I learned French. A very kind family took me in and made me one of their own. Thought it was their job. To make sure I left really knowing. They were wonderful.<br />
<br />
We wrote sometimes afterward. But I was a student. I was lazy and felt awkward. Embarrassed to feel things for these people who gave me a home.<br />
<br />
I just looked up our old address on Google Street View. We were above a chocolate shop. I came out the gate and passed windows where men made chocolate chateaus, elegant towers, Noah's Ark... out of chocolate. We smiled and waved every morning as I walked off to the bus I took to school.<br />
<br />
Phatiwe and I hated the cafeteria. Shitty faux baguettes with thick unmelted slices of brie, pizza with gummy cheese and black olives that Karen (she who would not eat) ate by scraping her long fingernail across the cheese and then licking the nail. It was like watching a train hitting a wall. Watching a hungry girl choose to starve.<br />
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She was beautiful though, and we liked her. But we had no idea what to do. At 19.<br />
<br />
So Phatiwe, Josh and I went to Moroccan cous cous restaurants and had cheap lunch feasts. We had about $6 a day for lunch (30 francs, back when those were a thing) and for that, when we pooled our resources, we could get a big pot of meat and vegetables to pour over cous cous. On those days we gorged ourselves. Mostly we at the sad baguettes.<br />
<br />
A few times, just a few, she and I went to lunch at proper brasseries. A splurge. We had a few 6 franc cafeteria pizzas to afford a 50 franc lunch with croque monsieurs, frites and a pot du vin blanc. One time we double splurged and got more wine.<br />
<br />
We were two entirely trashed kids in our French Civilization class that afternoon. We talked. A lot. Everyone knew we were drunk. They were surprised that being that drunk made us so much better at speaking French. Even the professor. We were not in trouble.<br />
<br />
Her family, I don't know their name, loved having an English speaker at home, so her French was a mess. They loved speaking English. She was a gonner.<br />
<br />
The most she really learned came from our nights at bars. How to order. How to sweet-talk a bartender.<br />
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One time a bartender with snowy hair took our order for two double-Baileys.<br />
<br />
"Non," he said. "Je ne peux pas."<br />
<br />
Each drink would have been about $18. He refused to let kids spend that much. We had reasonably priced gin and tonics instead.<br />
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We saw "Microcosmos" one day because we wanted to sneak into a movie that had English. It was microphotography about bugs. No words at all. FML.<br />
<br />
And then we saw "The English Patient," which we'd seen at home, with Kevin. Kevin was handsome. I had a crush on him. And he took the "speak only French" mandate very seriously. The only time in France that he broke was at that movie. Because he couldn't understand why it made her and I both wail like babies.<br />
<br />
I saw him years later at a midnight screening of "Planet of the Apes." I regret to this day that I was too stoned to really talk to him. Even though he still had the same girlfriend. (She was there.)<br />
<br />
But it was Phatiwe who took me to the "Planet of the Apes." And Vanessa and Jason and probably Dan.<br />
<br />
I got home from a long weekend in Mexico (yeah, yeah) and they handed me a joint. Smoke this, and we have a surprise for you... I did what they said. MONKEY SPACE MOVIE. BOTH FAVORITE THINGS.<br />
<br />
I had good friends.<br />
<br />
Why are you reading this. Why this random walk down memory lane.<br />
<br />
Something has been brewing in my head. Some mix of love and loss, locked deeply down in my heart and soul inside the dark core of sorrow that I harbor still. Where alive Phatiwe lived. Where dead Phatiwe now lives.<br />
<br />
For a long time her absence and what it meant to me was a non-thing. But that's not the case now. I don't know what awoke that sorrow. Perhaps a final, hesitant need to let it go. I started talking about her again recently. And it feels like an imposition. Remember her. Remember my sorrow. Feel my ache. MY PAIN. GOD DAMN IT.<br />
<br />
But I can't do it that way. Not anymore.<br />
<br />
Her absolute and complete and earnest love of every part of me both proves to me that it is true and convinces me that it is not possible that this thing will ever happen again. That someone will love me so very much. Who I love like a sister. Who doesn't have the burden of being a sister.<br />
<br />
"Your person" my aunt said to me, one cold night on the Upper East Side when she came to talk, and we hadn't had time, so she made time.<br />
<br />
My person who loved me that way. Who I could say anything to. Any crazy, awful, bloody thing to. And she would ash her cigarette, look and me and say, "It's ok."Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-82365776748795410352013-07-08T22:31:00.002-05:002013-07-08T22:35:49.223-05:00Exorcism.We all have the things -- those things -- that haunt our memories. That shaped us and made us and tore us to pieces, sometimes literally, that left us the men and women we are sitting here, looking at these screens.<br />
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For decades, my ghost had haunted me. A dark, stark memory. Bright as the sun. As soul-sucking as a black hole. A frozen movie, each frame crystalline, a solid entity on permanent replay. </div>
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The thing I did. </div>
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The thing I did to everyone. </div>
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And I lived with that thing for almost 29 years. A whirlwind of a girl in a state of permanent panic. A runaway from today. A tornado that refused to touch down, because to touch down would be to see it again. And again. And again. And to be trapped in it.</div>
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What I didn't realize was that refusing to touch down was what gave it its life. The trap was the spiral. The swirling tornado. </div>
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Once it hits the Earth, it loses its fury. It wrecks its havoc. But then, then... it disappears. It spins itself out. </div>
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Looking the thing in the eye. Stopping and staring and screaming. </div>
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You take its power back. </div>
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You know. You see. You forgive the little you. The storm swirls. But then, quiet.</div>
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And for the first time in your life, you are a grown woman, alive, thriving, and looking at the ghost of your life and wondering how you managed to be such a firecracker while living inside that tornado.</div>
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And amazed at the delicious, contended stillness that exists when it finally, finally dies.</div>
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No one around you can understand, the purgatory you put yourself in. Because you were a too-smart-kid, who believed *that thing* happened because of *you*. Who was determined to carry the weight of the world, crumbling and seething. Not at those who blamed themselves. No. What did they do? You did this, child. </div>
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And forever is a long, long time. </div>
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Blame circled upon blame. Fault upon fault. Until the humans could no longer stand the weight of their own reasoning. The things they did. The things they did not do. The simple truth was nothing any of them saw. Parts moved around parts. Matter slipped past matter. Atoms and electrons bound, tearing apart the bonds of others. </div>
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A child stood, screaming, her body in parts. She saw her shadow, and saw it was different, and knew enough at seven to keep facing forward. Whatever lay behind was a thing she would not want to see. </div>
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I remember that moment. Looking down and seeing my hairless shadow, freezing cold on a hot July day, July 8, 1984. Feeling my blood pour over my body and knowing even in that moment of shock that to turn around... No. Stop here, let them help you. You did this, laying down in that go-cart, letting your hair get caught... But don't, for the love of God, look at it. Look down. Look at that shadow.</div>
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To this day, I see it every time I pass that street. My blad, scalp-less shadow, stark in the noon-day sun. </div>
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I am older today than everyone who was there. (Except maybe one, but I don't know...) </div>
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I am sure in that moment, none of them believed that would be the case. </div>
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I was sure, in those first minutes, that I was dying. A stark moment in anyone's life. I'm not even sure I knew what dying meant. But I thought it was happening to me. But I asked my mother.</div>
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I saw something of my reflection in her glasses. Her hair. Her aqua shirt. It said "Chic." My blue and pink striped shirt, which was cut off me and gone forever. Riding in the van. Stopping at the toll and my father telling them about us. We raced on. At the hospital, I remember a cooler. I remember a needle in my thigh. I remember my head being wrapped. </div>
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I remember an ambulance.</div>
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I remember the faces of doctors hovering over me once I got to Philadelphia. The hospital there. Where I would spend weeks. I remember hallucinating. I remember waking up so very, very thirsty and sucking on lemon swabs. </div>
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I remember my nurse, Judy. I remember the gifts. I remember the burn of the stitches being pulled from my ankle, where they took a vein. </div>
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But those were in later weeks. Weeks where I watched Mary Lou Retton in the Olympics from a couch. I imagined a doctor pulling an IV out of my arm, but we were in a trailer in my grandmother's driveway, in my mind. Whatever they gave me made me unable to tell real from dream.</div>
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My friends in college never learned what happened to me until I tried a whippit. </div>
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Nitrus Oxide. The same feeling that you feel slipping under anesthesia. </div>
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I huffed a whipped cream can at a party at Yale. I started sobbing. </div>
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I learned I probably had already had way stronger drugs than any of my friends would ever play with. So I was never even curious. Anything they tried I was sure, after that whipped cream, was not going to be a fun thing. </div>
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Those kinds of things are only fun when you don't need them. </div>
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Dan took one of Phatiwe's Percocets once. She thought he was in pain. He thought it was fun. She didn't really get why that was. </div>
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And so it goes. </div>
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It has been ten years, a little more, since the first time I was brave enough to write about this. </div>
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It's graphic. It's raw. It's a first draft that was written in a little bit of a haze. But I guess that kind of thing is hard to edit. </div>
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It was published by the school magazine in 2002. <a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7ONgwCWS2uiM1FsRlQzRlVEMjA/edit?usp=sharing">You can read it here</a>. </div>
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I confess, I didn't read it again. </div>
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I'm pretty sure I know what it says.</div>
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Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-70495132039843470132013-05-29T22:35:00.003-05:002013-05-29T22:39:54.811-05:00On the eve of my 36th birthday...A birthday. A special thing. Another year you managed to live through. To see each day play out. To eat and drink and touch and taste and smell. And to not die.<br />
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Any one of those moments? You were never guaranteed them. I was not guaranteed them. I got them because of science. Because of fastidious humans caring if other humans survived, and because of my miraculous parents, who took my broken self and helped build her back into a regular-ish person.<br />
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I could have easily not had this birthday. I could have died when I was seven years old and my scalp was ripped from my body. But I did not. Humpty Jen was put back together again. So many people worked so hard to make sure that one day, one day... that little girl could have a very, very ordinary 36th birthday.<br />
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I wish I could hug them all right now. Show them that yes. Yes, your hard work and terrible days and that awful day you put that little girl back together mattered. What you did? It made someone else have a long, happy life full of pop culture news, fancy drinks, birthday parties, planting flowers with nieces and Jon Snow bobbleheads.<br />
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Your work mattered. It made me able to be.<br />
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Not every consequence is... real serious. Sometimes our best stories begin with a mishap. Something awry. Missed connections.<br />
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But the fact that I get them is special to me. I feel sorry for the people I know, mostly other women, who are ashamed or shy about their birthdays. "I am older," they think. "I have not had XYZ happen yet... I lose."<br />
<br />
Nope. You have those thoughts? You win. You win over all those women who never got to see 36. For Phatiwe, who never will see 36. To pray that Diana and Sophie see 36, and honor their survival and still have a wonderful day.<br />
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Like I did. Celebrating with so many of my friends. Because we are all here to share it.<br />
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Which is the real gift.<br />
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The alternative to getting another year older is NOT getting another year older.<br />
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A thought some people I loved very much will never get to even consider. Because their stories ended.<br />
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Mine has not. And that?<br />
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Anything is possible.<br />
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I will wake up tomorrow with plans, but the world will unravel around me. Maybe it will go as I hoped. Maybe it will go as I planned. Maybe it will be a storm of surprises.<br />
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Or maybe it will all end.<br />
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But it probably won't. I pray it won't. My birthday came again. Another year. Another toast. Another day among the other people I love.<br />
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I win.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-42634265299608659902013-04-09T21:11:00.001-05:002013-04-09T21:11:16.070-05:00Ten Years Later<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hXM9Sqq9kmM/UWTCojX8qmI/AAAAAAAADcE/RHSeuyY-7wg/s1600/grandpopwithpie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hXM9Sqq9kmM/UWTCojX8qmI/AAAAAAAADcE/RHSeuyY-7wg/s320/grandpopwithpie.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I had written so many beginnings in my head, but then I decided to begin with the photograph. A photo I'd taken on real film, with a real camera. I was in graduate school. It was homework.<br />
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Now, about a dozen years later, eleven or twelve years and then some after that Thanksgiving, 2001 or 2002, it is the photograph that always comes to mind when I think of my grandfather. The only one I knew.<br />
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He was one of those people who made you realize that you were loved unconditionally, and that people would go to silly lengths to convince you to avoid something if they loved you.<br />
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Because you were so precious to them, they resorted to dirty tricks.<br />
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That next Christmas, in 2002, I was going to India. Maybe it was this Thanksgiving -- or was it the one after? -- when he chased me around the house with a National Geographic magazine, showing me photos of India in drought. There was no water there! You cannot go!<br />
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It was too far. Too risky.<br />
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I went. But that is another story. Now, a decade later, looking back on that day, being irritated and charmed by the man with the National Geographic magazine, showing the dark side of the dirty place I was about to visit... I saw how very much he loved me. How scary it was for others, me traveling to the other side of the Earth with a strange family for a strange party. A several-day wedding for my Indian friend from college.<br />
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I think I was the only one of my grandfather's grandchildren he saw graduate from college. The only other option was Julie's. But I honestly can't remember if he came to Boston for that. I can't. But I remember him coming to Dartmouth. I remember him coming and seeing me sing at the Lone Pine Tavern the night before graduation. I remember him and my grandmother, BeeBop (yeah, yeah...) after the ceremony. It was an unusually hot June day in New Hampshire. We were all uncomfortable, but Grandpop, by then, was a little bit delicate. The heat and standing for so long.<br />
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I remember lunch afterward at Murphy's. I remember packing their cars with my things. I remember driving home to New Jersey with Vanessa and Sarah, being told at a New Jersey rest stop that I had almost no oil in my car... I remember my grandparents, seeing me graduate from my Ivy League school. I was so proud of myself. I hoped they were proud of me.<br />
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I spent the summer doing that delightful, entitled thing -- backpacking around Europe. They helped me pay for my Eurail pass. He told me after that he thought I'd be a musician. But if I was taking photographs -- the pie -- he thought I'd be a wonderful photographer. Or a writer! They weren't sure but he was sure I'd be wonderful at whatever I did.<br />
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You know, that pie. That pie was the best kind of pie. Flaky crust, creamy strawberries, perfectly sweet and then a fluffy, buttery whipped cream top. Every holiday, one came out, and he teased me. Pretended he was about to give me the tiniest of tiny pieces. And I would howl in protest. Like some kind of crazed animal-child. Pie discrimination against the young! I am owed my fair share of this pie! I was very invested in pie justice. I expected the fight. It became ritual.<br />
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He was just teasing, but of course I never knew that.<br />
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Now, as more of a grown up than I was that hot day in Hanover, I can see my own father taunting my nieces just a little bit. To see their adorable, earnest, horrified reactions to NOT HAVING PIE! The most terrible of things to a person who lives in just-this-moment. I remember my father pretending Santa had not come.<br />
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That moment of confused fear of denial made our happiness all that more exuberant. Who wouldn't have teased us first? Pretended there was a chance you weren't going to share that pie.<br />
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Because one day, you, that man who started off with nothing is sitting in front of his granddaughter, the Ivy League graduate, with her camera for her graduate school journalism class, taking a photograph of you with that pie. That pie that you pretended to fight over with her for all those years. And you smile.<br />
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And in the window, she catches the reflection of your family.<br />
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And a decade after you are gone, she can still remember those silly pie fights, more than any other thing that ever happened, and how she'd always win. Because you let her.<br />
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I remember birthdays, and weddings and reunions. I remember Easter egg hunts. I remember watching John Wayne movies. I remember visiting all the time. I remember, like a photograph, the white of my grandfather's hair standing on the Dartmouth campus.<br />
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I remember the months of false alarms, when in my youth and confusion I got scared and angry, not knowing when I was finally allowed to freak out. To let go. I remember the last time I saw him alive. He would not open his eyes. I cried. He was done. I remember a time when we watched a show at the house in the mountains about a promising new cancer treatment idea, and having a tiny bit of hope.<br />
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I don't know if those last memories I have were all my own, or if I conflated them with stories from other people. The medical bed in his bedroom. Refusing to open his eyes. His mouth. Choosing the time of the end.<br />
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I forget that a lot. I wouldn't have cried writing this, most likely, if I hadn't let myself remember that.<br />
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Because the thing that I remember first. Every time. Is the man waving the National Geographic magazine at the girl who he feared would be thirsty, in a world where he couldn't even pretend to deny her a slice of pie.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-41402351626067905102012-12-27T02:56:00.000-05:002012-12-27T02:56:00.323-05:00"I believe the curse you've cast is over..."After leaving The Newburyport Daily News, that job everyone has that makes them what they're going to be when they grow up, I took a job writing about technology because it was only 20 minutes from my house. Newburyport was about 50 miles. Fifty highway miles. It took me a long time to get there, and sometimes Victor would wonder if I had a night meeting and call me to make sure I was still coming to work, when really, I just lived so far away that being late was, well, a huge pain in everyone's ass. But I did my work, and I did it well, and even if I showed up real, real late, I got my shit done on time.<br />
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Swift writing is one of my gifts.<br />
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When I moved to TT, as we'll call it, I began writing about Microsoft and my drive came between let's call it 8:30 and 9:30 in the morning. I would wind my way through Cambridge, across the river and up Memorial Drive into Needham. I remember mornings when the winter sun would hang low and create such a glare on my Honda Civic's windshield that I would nearly have to close my eyes to see. I remember weaving through Needham, through Cambridge, listening to WERS, 88.9 FM, the Emerson College radio station.<br />
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It was the winter of 2004/2005. The last winter I would spend in Boston. The winter my best friend withered. The winter I spent with Tony, who I broke up with then let move in with me, because I needed to have something to do with my mind. I gained weight. I drank pinot grigio by the gallon. I cried all the time.<br />
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And every morning, every morning as I drove to work, drinking coffee in my travel mug, I listened to WERS. That's where I first heard The Decemberists, a band who I've loved enough to see on consecutive nights in cities 100 miles apart. Their morning show, The Coffee House, was folk and indie rock and singer/songwriter pieces. The commute home was reggae and then it turned hip-hop after I went to the gym. It's still the best radio station ever.<br />
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I made a mix recently of the songs I first heard on that radio station during those morning drives to Needham. The names you won't recognize: Mia Doi Todd, Antje Duvekot, Meg Hutchinson. Shivaree.<br />
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But those songs still carry weight. Their lyrics are still powerful, uplifting and can still bring my whole body back to a freezing Massachusetts morning, when I'd totter over to my car, warm her up, and sing along the whole way to work.<br />
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<i>You were looking for an orchid,</i><br />
<i>and I will always be...</i><br />
<i>You were looking for a tealight, </i><br />
<i>and I will always be....</i><br />
<i>A forest fire. A dandelion.</i><br />
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Last week I had to erase my Mac, and restore just my music and photos and documents (I think I forgot the documents, but... I've got backups?) but I digress. I had to choose new music to sync with my iPhone, which I use as an iPod for my commute. I chose the WERS mix.<br />
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Today, I woke up late. As you've read, I've been having some trouble with my employment situation. I'm trying, but I don't know what to do right now.<br />
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I got dressed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, gathered my things... But today instead of putting on a podcast, I put on the WERS songs. "<i>I can fall in love again, I believe the curse you've cast is over... No more, no more casa nova...</i>" and then "<i>But you're still the one by which I chart my course...</i>" (Meg Hutchinson's beautiful, heartbreaking song True North. Go buy it.)<br />
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<i>Can't you feel we're moving in new directions...</i><br />
<i>Can't you feel the pull? </i><br />
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<i>But you'e still the one by which I chart my course.</i><br />
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<i>You're still my, still my, true north.</i><br />
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I stopped in the Blue Sky Bakery and spent too much money on an iced coffee that I would drink on the train and on a blackberry cherry bran muffin that I would eat three-quarters of while pretending to concentrate in my office.<br />
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That song came on -- "True North" -- as I was walking from the bakery to the N train. I took a sip of my coffee, and the past seven years melted. I was back in my Civic driving up a frozen hillside into the sunlight on a January morning outside Boston, and I had no idea who I was going to become.<br />
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I didn't know that in six months my best friend's cancer would take her life, and that just two months later I'd have a new job and an apartment in Manhattan, four blocks from one sister and nine from another. That I'd move to New York ten days after my one and only job interview there for a job that I stayed at for three years, where I made good, good friends and learned how to really be a reporter. Where I would learn about office politics, where I would adopt Harold, the old-man butler of a cat, who would die on my Brooklyn living room floor five years later from liver cancer. That the people that would still be with me fifteen years on were those people. In retrospect, of course. Of course it was them. But then again, nothing ever is what it seems at the time.<br />
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I walked listening to Antje Duvekot's "A Long Way," remembering that night Phatiwe and I sat in my car, smoking cigarettes together, parked in front of my house, because it felt like some kind of rebellion. And she cried, talking about her surgeries and her scars, and it was the one and only time my battered body and my years of reconstructive surgery made me able to make someone else feel better. She felt like a freak, I told her to shut the fuck up. She was beautiful and perfect and we would buy a duplex house in Brookline and live happily ever after, and I knew how much it hurt to have your body pulled apart and moved, and how much it hurt to have your skin pulled so tight it felt like breathing would rip it.<br />
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We sat in that car, talking talking talking so late I don't know when we decided it was silly to be still in the car, and went back inside. Slept. Went to work. She died a few months later.<br />
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<i>And if you don't love me let me go...</i><br />
<i>And if you don't love me let me go...</i><br />
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The Decemberists' "The Engine Driver" was playing when I slinked into the Subway this morning. Songs and songs later. And I remembered the night, after a session with my therapist Esther, who made it ok for me to cry and for me to talk about everything, eventually, this song came on. "<i>And if you don't love me let me go...</i>"<br />
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It's the kind thing to do, she said. But sometimes you have to let what you love go too.<br />
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<br />Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-31418629453433884772012-11-05T23:55:00.002-05:002012-11-05T23:55:31.846-05:00Going Back, Pondering HomeThe past few months have been pretty eventful, to say the very least. I moved on from a job that wasn't taking me where I wanted to go. I found a new gig blogging for The Stir, which is fun and challenging in ways that are surprising and make me strive to be better at it, and I reconnected with a lot of old friends.<br />
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It's been refreshing and sometimes a little daunting -- making big changes, revisiting your old self as your new self. I went back to Boston for the first time in seven years in October, and the things I saw were both familiar and alien in ways I hadn't anticipated. I went to see J and M and their kids, which was wonderful and I loved spending time with all of them. It was the city, though, and the memories it held that left me curious and conflicted.<br />
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I got up early on a Saturday to fly up, and made it to Boston in less time than it typically takes to get to the Upper East Side. And as we began our descent, lowering over the city, I looked out across it and the first thought I had was: "I wonder where the cemetery is... Where Phatiwe is now..." I know I could see it. I wasn't sure which direction, South, I think. But I looked out and wondered how it would feel to be back in the city where I'd watched her die.<br />
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Recently my aunt and I talked about who our people were -- the ones we could say anything to -- she had been mine. So when she passed away in 2005, I lost more than a friend. I lost my person. The one who did not judge. I know many of my dear friends also do not judge, but... but you know what I mean. We all have those people. Who we trust with our deepest, darkest selves. And who handle them with care and love us more fiercely for it.<br />
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I was going back to our home, and I was afraid.<br />
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M picked me up though, after my failed attempt to enjoy a pumpkin spice latte (those things are like sugar and chemicals mixed with caffeine. poison!) and I got to spend time with her and the kids. I was pretty psyched that by the end of day 2, the little one felt comfortable enough to plunk herself down on my lap. Auntie win! But I digress. I spent some time with them, then went to Harvard Square, to see it. I felt older. I felt wiser. I felt more worldly than this little brick square that I'd found so captivating when I'd been 20-something. New York does that to a girl. Brooklyn is no small town. Cambridge is.<br />
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I went to Urban Outfitters, because I hadn't packed warmly enough, and that seemed like a good idea. I got a granola bar and a coffee in a cafe and ate it on a bench. I walked past the two streets of things... Then down Mass. Ave. toward Central. Everything was so much closer than I had remembered. Or else my concept of scale had grown. Now a 20 block walk is normal. Unless I'm lazy and get a cab.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G2Hmf3oxPPo/UJiXnUdRs7I/AAAAAAAADZs/b4DaRTdR_DM/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G2Hmf3oxPPo/UJiXnUdRs7I/AAAAAAAADZs/b4DaRTdR_DM/s1600/photo.JPG" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I lived here.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I walked past my first apartment after grad school. 334 Harvard Street, apt 6E, I believe. I forgot the building's weird 60's architectural flare. It was a misfit in that neighborhood. I took a photo and kept walking, back into Central Square. Past restaurants and cafes and bars that I knew I'd been to, but which felt... It felt like being in a movie. I recognized things, I remembered being in these places, but I couldn't remember what it felt like for that to be my life.<br />
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That afternoon, though, we drove up to the North Shore -- to Amesbury to go apple picking. And we drove through Newburyport, Newbury, Rowley, Ipwsich and Essex. The stomping grounds from my first newspaper job. I told M and C about those towns, what I knew of them when I covered them for the paper there. I passed things I'd passed every day, and that, somehow, felt real. I knew this town. It was a part of my life that was, actually, mine alone. My days roving around, scouting for news. Visting town halls, libraries, the schools. Figuring out what people thought, what they cared about.<br />
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It was so wonderful to drive down 1A and see them all. Then we had an amazing fried seafood dinner and I got to drive home with J, talking about stuff and things.<br />
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Once we got back to Cambridge, it was bedtime for the kiddies, and I was going out to meet some other old friends to drink beers and listen to some music. They are an entire other story, but that... I didn't recognize the streets that had been like five blocks from where I had lived for 2 years, but falling back into hanging out with them was effortless. It was like not a minute had passed, let alone 7 years. <br />
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Sunday we had some apple scones made from our apple-picking bounty, went to the MIT Museum, which is really great, and then I went and hung out with other J. Watching football, catching up, having a lovely day. I flew home Sunday night, uneventful.<br />
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The thing that was striking to me was how faulty the memory can be, how things are erased to make room for new things. Streets go missing in one's mental map, but somehow the menu at Mr. and Mrs. Bartley's is forever. Storrow Drive was longer than I remembered. Mass Ave much, much shorter. I didn't venture toward Kendall Square or Inman Square, my last stomping grounds there. The heart of Cambridge was enough for a first trip.<br />
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I told an ex in Boston once, after he asked why I didn't live in New York, because it seemed to suit me so much better than Boston... Why I still lived in Boston. I told him then that I knew once I moved to New York, I'd be home. And so I didn't want to do it until I was ready to mean it. And then one day I was.<br />
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Now that other life I had feels like a hazy dream. A dream in a small town with brick sidewalks and a Trader Joe's with a parking lot. With Harvard Square. Places I went from being a kid to being too old for my own good. It was a very good weekend. And then I came home.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-27747119433604358242012-09-18T20:31:00.000-05:002012-09-18T20:38:17.712-05:00A Rainy Night on Which I Was Supposed to Listen to Music<i>Ah Brooklyn, Brooklyn take me in</i><span class="s1"><br />
</span><i>Are you aware the shape I’m in?</i><span class="s1"><br />
</span><i>My hands they shake, my head it spins</i><span class="s1"><br />
</span><i>Ah Brooklyn, Brooklyn take me in...</i>
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I came here, to Park Slope, because it would cost me half of what it cost to live on the Upper East Side, in a fifth-floor walk-up, slowly going crazy at 28. Or was I 29. Those times are kind of a blur. I remember my birthday party, where a cassoulet was spilled on a girl. She was hurt. No one was adequately kind about it. I wish we'd been nicer. Nobody liked her. But that's no excuse for callousness. We were cruel. We were young. </div>
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You may not think 29 is young, but it is. And looking back, from the young-old-age of 35, I wonder what kinds of mistakes I'll make now that I see with simliar eyes someday. </div>
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I came here with a friend, and met a new friend. I met a dozen others. We lived across the street from a Hagen Daaz we never really let ourselves get used to. We sometimes had fresh bagels for breakfast. We were not often sober. We had roommate fights. Who would clean, who would buy things, who made the coffee, who was allowed to sleep over... Nobody ever asked. Everyone always just did. We got angry. We got mean. We turned on each other. We regretted that. Because we really did, I still believe, really like each other a lot. We were just shitty roommates. </div>
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I turned 30 there, and with a mix of fear and relief, I moved out. </div>
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I bought my home and I now live here, and have ever since. And I have to say living alone is a mixed bag. Sometimes, on sunny, warm mornings, I make coffee and I watch trashy TV sitting in a patch of sunshine. Or there's snow outside and I revel in making a giant batch of chili to freeze to get me through the coming chilly weeks. </div>
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But other times, like tonight, when the concert was postponed, and I had nothing planned... I dreaded going home to my apartment alone. I had no plan. Sure, there's always plenty to do in life. I could organize things. I could fold things. I could clean things. I could read things. </div>
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Sure. I have dozens of books I've bought with every intention of reading. </div>
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But on a night when you were supposed to be "not at home" to suddenly be "at home"... It stirs up some shit. Those fears that you'll be alone in this little apartment forever. That you're so easily cast off. That nothing you ever do matters, and that you'll always be the one making invitations. That nobody will ever think to remember you... And it makes me hate being single. Hate having no one here to wonder where I am. To curl up with on the sofa. </div>
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Anyway. It obviously makes me feel sorry for myself, which is kind of weird. Self-pity is the most poisonous of feelings. </div>
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If only I had just let it be a thunderstorm. </div>
Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-88662924623524555082012-08-17T00:28:00.004-05:002012-08-18T00:52:59.281-05:00CrossroadsI left my job in August 2009 because it broke me. The late night hours alone. The shift in schedule. And a manager whose style of management left me feeling like, well, frankly, like a worthless piece of shit.<br />
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So one day, calculated so that my first day off would coincide with the first day of my sister's visit from San Diego, I quit. I quit saying I didn't want to be a web producer. That I wanted to write. That this wasn't for me. And they let me go.</div>
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I spent 15 or so months as a freelancer, writing and web producing for national food, news and business publications. It was hard to be that alone for that long. And hard to keep the work coming as bosses changed, budgets changed and rules changed. I got tired. And COBRA was running out.</div>
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And just then, S.W. had a job for me at Ziff Davis Enterprise. And I became what I am. Writer, editor, web producer for business technology sites. And it has been a windy road. We've had ups and downs. And some things were easier than others. It's hard to be evocative yet vague enough to make sure those you worked with and cared about are protected so that you can talk about your feelings without offending or being misunderstood to offend... I valued everyone I worked with. I truly did. But it was never the job I wanted. </div>
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But going to work with N. and F. every day. That was the best thing that ever happened. When N. would laugh too loud to get my attention to read me something. When I'd gasp out loud at a Gawker post to gush about it with them. When F. asked me a question about "Die Hard" and I was all "Dude, there's a boy right there... Why are you asking me???" </div>
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We had fun. I confess I wasn't in love with my work, but going to work was fun. </div>
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Then, on February 2, we were sold. Twenty-six of us survived the transition. The other 100 or so did not. Some stayed for two weeks. Some for four. But in the end... For seven months I tried very, very hard to keep doing what I did. To keep these publications running smoothly and to keep the readers oblivious to the chaos behind the scenes. </div>
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But today. Today my boss, bless her heart, she told me she got another job. She was leaving us. Our captain, who two days before had told me it was time to abandon ship, jumped. </div>
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I am not angry. </div>
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I am not bitter. </div>
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I am deeply conflicted about what I should do now... </div>
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I want to write many things. I have novels and romances and nonfiction pieces in mind. I have a memoir I have mentioned enough that you're probably all angry at me for still just talking about it. So. Two people today said to me that if there is some kind of higher power, it's tired of me resisting it and I should really just fucking write. </div>
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But the rest of me is practical. I might get a better job title, but at what cost? I have been full of despair for seven months. Left to do this job alone, do I even want to bother? They've been cruel since day one. Do I give them more? I don't know. How much more is worth it? Is any more worth it? I'll make it a while on my own... And friend editors have offered me work. </div>
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My gut is telling me one thing and common sense is telling me to wait. But I'm worried about waiting. I'm worried about what happens to me in this crap new world. </div>
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I want to go back to writing, and writing for myself. I think that is what's in my bones. But it's scary. I ran out of money last time after about 15 months. But by then I was also lonely. But also in really great shape from having made working out a part of every freelance day. I never got that back in staff-world. </div>
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This piece isn't graceful or enlightening. I'm brain-dumping into the void trying to give myself permission to do the scary thing. The un-wise thing. </div>
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Everything in the universe is enabling me to be something I'm fighting tooth and nail. </div>
Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-9666191339568659752012-08-08T23:02:00.001-05:002012-08-08T23:02:57.971-05:00On Wanting More Space...I live in a small apartment. I have no bedroom door. My space has clearly defined rooms, but it works in a context of me. I would probably be able to let someone else live here too... Someone who didn't come with a lot of baggage. Literally. I have way too many things.<div>
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Today, however, I indulged the idea that I would not always be a team of me. I don't mean that to sound sad. On the contrary, I looked at a two-bedroom apartment with the full intention of making an offer on it, if it... if it struck me. </div>
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I am a believer in knowing what is right when you see it. In following my gut. At least I try to be. I know that every time I have followed that instinct, I have been right, and when things have gone awry, I can, in retrospect, see my own misgivings before following through with something I did not trust. </div>
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The small apartment in which I live now, to tell a brief story. I saw it first online when I was at a hotel, at a convention, in Hilton Head, during Georgia forest fires. The hotel was full of smoke. I walked on the beach. I got bored and checked the new listings on a Thursday. </div>
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There it was. Photos that were just so. Of this small apartment with a navy bedroom, an odd sense of living-room space and a long marble kitchen counter. "That is my home," I thought. I felt it. I had been to two dozen open houses. I had seen hundreds of listings. That one. I knew it. It wasn't even extraordinary. But I knew that was my home.</div>
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I write this from that room. </div>
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That was a Thursday. On Saturday morning, I was home in Park Slope, wearing a slouchy sweatshirt, and it was raining. I knew it was the time of the first open house. There would be another tomorrow... And I slumped down in my chair. And thought to myself: "If you lose your house because you're lazy, you will hate your lazy ass forever." </div>
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And I got up. Put on a hoodie. Got an umbrella. And came here. It was, so different from this place I'm in now. It had an Eames-like table, artsy dining chairs and a clumsy leather sofa sectional set in different parts of the room. The hallway was black. But I knew. I saw. This was my home. </div>
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I put in an offer the next day, when I made my brother in law (slash-broker), friends and sister come with. </div>
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Nate made us coffee in some fancy double-drip thing he had going on. And then I took over his home. </div>
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I have moved my bed from this wall to that in the subsequent five years. Oh, I wish I had a window. Oh, I wish, I wish... Oh, asshole. Go to sleep. </div>
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The moral of my story is this; I saw a photograph of a living room on the Internet while I was at a Carolina beach hotel for a conference, and knew. Even then I knew. </div>
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Today I walked into a beautiful apartment and I knew. I knew I was buying an apartment, even though I'm not married, for me and my children. I knew I didn't want to walk up to the fourth floor carrying a baby. I don't have a partner right now, I haven't made that choice yet. But I decided that my next home needed to be ready for that.</div>
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And not being ready for that, I have decided to get a new couch. It's blue I will have to repaint the living room. I think that saved me about $100,000, and a lot of hassle. Someday, I'll have to make that move. But not yet. </div>
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But it's nice to know that I expect it. </div>Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-31979838942547219282012-08-01T00:46:00.002-05:002012-08-01T00:46:52.553-05:00On the idea of being an artist...Several things have happened lately that have had me thinking about the nature of writing, of creating art and of thinking about how we interpret our experiences. In brief, my mother wrote me a beautiful piece that was a response to an earlier post that I'm going to type in this week as its own post, I talked to a friend who despite my own misgivings sees me as a writer worth investing time and resources in (it makes me both proud and shy...) and I listened to a bunch of Tom Waits songs on YouTube, recorded in 1977 -- the year I was born.<br />
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Waits was 27. He was more handsome than I had thought was possible, having only seen him after his years of... whatever it was he did that made him earn the face his voice always owned. I watched these videos with this youthful, smooth face, with this voice that carried the weight of the fallen angels... fingers dancing over the piano keys like fairies flitting among the fireflies... It was youth and delicacy that found its gravity in this soulful, earth-raking voice. It was the voice of the continental drift. The oldest of stones, grating against each other. But his words. His words have always, since I was 16 and Nancy first gave me a mix tape, his words can still make me pause and listen to their poetry. </div>
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I am a dismal poet, but I know what I like. </div>
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Tom Waits has a gift I will never have for lyrics, for poetry. For creating melodic music that takes a raw machete and slings it through your unsuspecting chest, leaving you with the feeling that you too were there on that barstool, unrequited. </div>
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<i>And they all pretend they're orphans</i></div>
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<i>And the memory's like a train</i></div>
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<i>You can feel it getting smaller as it moves away....</i></div>
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Watching the 27-year-old Waits sing made me both question and falter as I contemplate my own position in the world as an artist. </div>
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I have these two ideas of myself -- the writer, musician, photographer, artist... and the me that's a logical, mathematical, overachieving worker who thinks of success in traditional, money-making ways. So, I want to be both the writer and the achiever, so I try to find successful editing jobs. </div>
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I think watching Waits was a... </div>
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I think of Keats, younger than me, writing his Odes. </div>
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I wait for what, exactly? </div>
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Am I waiting to feel I've earned a wisdom that allows me to profess, assert, to create? </div>
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Or am I afraid? Afraid that what I offer is trite? Done? Shit? </div>
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Maybe that shit is the thing that keeps me in this state of paralysis. </div>
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I want to ask Patti Smith how she so easily seems to have embraced the idea that she was an artist despite all of the other roads she walked to make money, to make ends meet, to make sense of things. That is the thing I have the most trouble embracing. She starved, she struggled, but she always believed in her poetry, in her art. I have always made sure I was comfortable, yet I have always struggled with the idea that what I wanted to make was art. It never seemed "important" enough, on one level. And on the other it was always the only thing that mattered. </div>
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I could always draw. I could sculpt. I could paint, when I tried. I loved photography. I studied it. I practiced it. I write every day. In some way. But I need to get back to being more like Joan Didion. Making lessons of my own days. Writing the world I see. </div>
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I know the Brooklyn I inhabit is the playground of thousands of wanna-be writers. It's almost a cliche of a setting. Maybe I'll imagine something different... </div>
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I think the biggest obstacles to writing those things I've always talked about writing are the contentment one finds growing out of the 20-something angst, and the lack of urgency to "get it out"... And the need to process how that change then changes what you thought was your "thing to say"... </div>
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I no longer feel unique. I no longer feel like what I experienced was a one and only. True, my life is only ever my own, but... But what really is it that I want to say? Maybe the lack of uniqueness is what will make it a tell-able story. It's no longer a horror story. It's just real. </div>
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But for me, therein lies the rub.<br />
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I've recently had my first adult injury. A sprain. Ankle. I lived 35 years without ever thinking my "actual body" would ever really let me down. Last December I fell down some Subway stairs in the rain and had a strain, and my foot hurt for a long time... But this was, this was debilitating. I was broken. And not just skin-broken, which was how I think about all my childhood injuries. In a lot of ways, I always prided myself on my body's structural integrity. I may have lost my scalp, but motherfuckers, my skeleton was a force to be reckoned with.<br />
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So, I have a sprained ankle and after a whole week, I am still limping. I am still broken. Whatever a "sprain" is -- it is no joke.<br />
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It makes me feel my age, when I think about my now-damaged body, my hesitancy to be creative, and the line-free face of Tom Waits, singing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrkThaBWa5c">Waltzing Matilda</a>...<br />
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For so many years, my excuse was that I wasn't old enough to be a real writer. Toni Morrison wasn't... She was 39 when she wrote The Bluest Eye. I still have time, right?<br />
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My crisis is a crisis of confidence. Confessing that is hopefully part of rendering it powerless. I know somehow that writing is my gift, the ability to tell you the story that happens in my head, but that that story happens to be... as it is. I told my cousin the trick to writing a paper is to tell the story on paper as you would explain in to me right now...<br />
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That is storytelling. Which is most of the battle.<br />
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To make it a craft, that takes more. Unless the story is best told plain. But that's the kind of story I aim to tell. </div>Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-56143269918530247252012-06-11T23:38:00.001-05:002012-06-11T23:38:48.265-05:00A Remarkable, Unremarkable DayToday started off as a normal day. <div>
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It was too sticky in my bedroom, and several times between the first alarm and the actual-wake-up, a cat either nuzzled my cheek, stepped on my head, or ran across my stomach. I went to my job and did my job-things. On the way I got my iced coffee at Gorilla, and paid for the iced coffee and a muffin that I got last week and didn't have enough cash to actually buy. It's nice to know your neighbors. </div>
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I listened to some Planet Money on the D train to Herald Square. I syndicated some stories. I changed the Interwebs. And then I had my first trip to The Dermatologist.</div>
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I had this little red bump on my nose. It was very tiny, just a couple of millimeters across, at most, but it was red, and it has been there long enough so that I couldn't tell you how long its been there, but I know it wasn't always there. Of course, you use the Googles, you WebMD, and you really do think at the end of the day you have cancer. It was a bump, it was red, and that is the potentially WORST POSSIBLE KIND. </div>
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So, for a few weeks after doing the Googling, I lived in a state of subdued mini-panic. "This thing on my face? Yeah. You can't see it but it's totally murdering me." (Basically the same level of internal-monologue-drama as Hannah had in 'Girls' when she found out she had the HPV, which is really basically like having a cold, unless that also gives you cancer... But it usually never ever does.) </div>
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I went to The Dermatologist to have my potential murder speck analyzed. </div>
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The Dermatologist, a gorgeous, really-really-skinny woman roughly of my own age, who had total fake eyelashes, gave it a technical name, "or maybe its another (<i>insert latin but normal thing here...</i>) but either way she thought I was cute, and shouldn't worry even a little bit, but let's cut that bugger off and then biopsy that shit and you won't have to worry about it ever again. </div>
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After that, I got a needle in the nose, pretty lady went at my nostril with a razor blade, scooped out a "look how tiny that is" thing, and then cauterized it, which HURT LIKE HADES. That super painful nose numbing needle? Yeah. We should have given that a few more minutes. </div>
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She also recommended a powder sunscreen, since I sweat in the humidity and heat very quickly, especially if I have wet hair, and then my moisturizer beads up and and sweats off. Especially if it has sunscreen. She recommended <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_hi_2?rh=n%3A3760911%2Cp_4%3AColoreScience&bbn=11058281&ie=UTF8&qid=1339474314">this stuff from Colorescience</a>. Powder! No face sweat! But based on the alacrity with which she excised my fear of face cancer, I was prone to trust her, despite her lashiness.</div>
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Which brings me back to work, which I attended like a good worker bee until 5:20, at which time I had to book my ass down to Babbo, the flagship piece-de-resistance of <a href="http://www.slashfood.com/2010/09/10/mario-batali-sits-down-with-slashfood/">Celebrity Chef I Once Interviewed Mario Batali</a>. (If you use the Googles, search "Lawinski Batali". There is a result.) </div>
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To go into the details of THE BEST MEAL OF MY ENTIRE LIFE COUNTING EVERYTHING ELSE I EVER ATE, well, that is a post I will write tomorrow when I am trying to sort my thoughts on the Cloud Expo thing I have to go to in the morning. I took a lot of photos. They turned out pretty nice, for a phone thing. </div>
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After dinner I came home and threw on some pajamas, washed my face and put some ointment on my nose wound, and put on the series finale of "House" that's been on my DVR, waiting for me to watch it. </div>
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I did, indeed, cry at the end. But not for the reasons I had assumed I would, considering TV finales of the past. (The oddly haunting, disappointing "LOST" finale...) </div>
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Old readers know about Phatiwe, my dear, dear friend who I lost to uterine cancer in 2005. </div>
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In the final episodes of "House," Wilson is diagnosed with cancer which cannot be treated. Which will leave him with six months of life, which will end painfully... or he can fight it and live the rest of his life sick from chemotherapy, hoping to hold onto something he, as an oncologist, believes is a lost cause. A futile fight. </div>
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How do I live those last months? Fighting yet suffering, ultimately futile. Or do I choose my exit. In the episode, (MAD CRAZY SPOILER ALERT) House fakes his own death, about to face being returned to prison after some antics go awry and a hospital ceiling crashes in after he floods a bathroom... Yeah yeah, a series of implausible events... But he fakes his death so that he can stay with Wilson during his last few months. And as the series concludes, Wilson is on a motorcycle beside House, and they're strapping on helmets, and Wilson wonders, about to warn House that the cancer will get bad... and House goes, "Cancer is boring..." and they strap on and ride. </div>
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I wonder if I would make that choice. If my friend would have made that choice. If she had chosen differently if that last year would have been less scary. If she would have spent more time with me instead of trying to shield me from the horror of what she was experiencing. Which she did. Which just filled me with more sorrow. To be loved so much by someone who was willing to suffer alone rather than have it hurt you... Wilson and House talked about that. Wilson made his choice. House got to make one too. And he chose to throw his own life away to spend the rest of Wilson's with him. </div>
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Yes, it is fiction. But it is a beautiful demonstration of what it means to really love someone. On just another normal day, when everything we do is actually kind of extraordinary. </div>
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<br /></div>Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-33291524931322935852012-02-16T23:31:00.005-05:002012-02-16T23:44:44.549-05:00In Medias Res...In my last post, I wrote that I wanted perspectives. I wanted to know how other people saw my life. Because it was theirs as well. And my sister told my mother I had written that.<br />
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And my mother, who I have never had the strength to question, wrote to me. She spent hours typing out her memory of the events, what she saw, what she felt. What happened outside my own head. And as importantly, what happened in hers.<br />
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The first time I read it, I read it fascinated by the story. The second time, it was about my mother's life. The third time, still reading on my iPad laying in bed on the Saturday morning she sent it, it was my story. And I began to cry.<br />
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The circumstances of my life have been in flux. My company was sold and the aftermath is unsettling. I have no direction, no idea what I'm supposed to do... I do not know if this will settle in a way I am able to... I don't know if I'm gonna get fucked over, frankly. Or if I'll get a chance to take this company who has no idea what I did and create something awesome that will give other journalists great opportunities. That's my fantasy upside. I'm betting on fucked over.<br />
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So of course, in times like these, you reevaluate your dreams, your goals and who you thought you'd be.<br />
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I emailed N**k my essay from 10 years ago. It began as two paragraphs in my Boston University graduate application essay. They asked me if they could "publish my application essay" but if I could "actually just elaborate on this bit..."<br />
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I wrote it and didn't ever re-read it. I wrote it and emailed it to them. It was edited for punctuation. It was published.<br />
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I wonder if I'd had the capacity (I wrote balls, but that's too hard on myself... my PTSD teen self who would freeze in terror if anyone ever asked why she had a scar...) if I could have written about it at the time, if I'd have gotten into Harvard. They love that shit.<br />
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I almost love Dartmouth more for taking me with my good grades, tennis playing, play-starring-in, mock-trial-lawyering, over-achieving self who wrote about what it meant to learn about art history and then stumble upon the Mona Lisa... To taste both independence and history and art in one event...<br />
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I could have exploited myself into Oxford, probably. But it never occurred to me at the time. Instead, I wanted to come up with something "creative" and clever. I wound up in the best place I could have possibly found. Dartmouth banks its success on its alumni remembering how they fell in love with life there, and it still holds true. They thought I was awesome. I portrayed myself as I wanted to be seen. We were both happy.<br />
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Anyway.<br />
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One thing that's probably more interesting to me than to other people -- I love being on the subway in the winter and wearing hats. Hats cover my scars, and so when people stare at me on the train when I'm wearing a hat, I have a totally different experience than when I'm not. When I wear a hat, I wonder what it is they find interesting. Am I pretty? Is my hair a mess beneath the hat? Am I drooling?<br />
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When I'm not wearing the hat and someone stares at me, I think they're staring at my scar, my crooked hairline and my sparse forelocks. I see their stares and sometimes I can tell. Those that look at my face then whose eyes travel up and linger... they are staring. Others, maybe they're not staring? Fuck it, most people are.<br />
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Everyone always tells me that after a few times, they "don't notice" anymore. Having seen it more times than any of you, having examined it every day, it's not really something you don't notice. Maybe you mean it doesn't define me? And maybe that's something I have made happen on purpose. Through years of distracting you with me.<br />
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I am an expert.<br />
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I love wearing hats on the subway. I get to disappear for real into the fray on the train. To really be an invisibile, normal New Yorker. Few of you can really, truly appreciate how glorious it is to really disappear into the crowd because usually you are the one face the security guard remembers...<br />
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It's fun to prentend, sometimes, that I'm not that interesting.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-35746241014260716572012-01-12T23:36:00.000-05:002012-01-12T23:36:55.136-05:00Learning How to Write, All Over AgainI haven't written in a long, long time. It's the longest span of not-writing I've ever had in my life. I'm 34. I haven't posted in over half a year. I haven't written more than an email or an article for work. I have had... I have taken some time to think about if and how and what it is I want to do with this thing I can do... And I'm still not there, but it's time to start writing again.<br />
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I have begun doing "those little things that need doing" around my home. I got a new shelf for my cabinet. I figured out how to replace the little bulbs that illuminate my stove (Ikea. Duh.) and a new spice rack. I bought a mirror to hang over my bed. I got frames for the photos I mean to hang. I figured out how to arrange my books to look less hoarder and more... just organized and good at life.<br />
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That's a phrase a friend uses when she's flummoxed or has hit a roadblock or needs to figure something out. "I'm not good at life." It just means there's a new problem that you have to work out, and it's not "right there", but it's a cute, yet self deprecating, way to think about it.<br />
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If you're not dead, you're good at life.<br />
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And I haven't always been that good at life.<br />
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(Jump ship and forward to the end if you want to skip the parts where things get hard.)<br />
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I've been thinking a lot about why I haven't been writing, what it is I would write if I could, and what it will cost me to be that honest. Yet, as I have grown, I have realized that the honesty I so feared has disappeared. I can no longer espouse absolute truths. I can offer my perspective on this that happened to me. But nothing ever happened just to me. That is the gift of growing up. Realizing that even in the deep, dark, bloody center of your own universe, you are a point at which dozens of lives interact. You are your mother's child. Your father's daughter. Several people's grandchild. The sister of many. The cousin of dozens.<br />
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More people were intimately involved in "that thing about you" than you realized were possible.<br />
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I know what I did. I know how it happened. But I know how it happened to me. Now how you saw it, or she saw it or he saw it. Or they saw it.<br />
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You get the point.<br />
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It took me... 28 years to learn the difference between these things, and again come around to being able to say "this is what happened" and accept that it was just my point of view, yet accept that as a story worth telling. It is not an absolute. It is never complete. But I am embarking on a quest. I hope to interview my doctors. Ask others to write (please reach out if you'd like to write?) and hopefully craft both a first-person memoir of a horrible thing, and a story that views a thing from different perspectives, which I hope will also touch and enlighten me. I want to know. I am finally, finally, not afraid of asking questions.<br />
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I finally learned what my old therapist always told me. That my stories of suffering hurt me to tell more than it will ever hurt anyone to listen. Because our listeners offer us love and comfort and do not share our pain, guilt, fear and shame.<br />
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They listen to help us feel better, because telling is the ultimate salvation.<br />
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When we share who we are, we forgive ourselves. I want us all to forgive ourselves. Lofty, yes. But I think hearing how we think things went down.<br />
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Case in point. A child sat in the front seat of a go cart and she couldn't reach the pedals. She put her hands on the edge of the seat. She pulled her body down so that her legs reached out, her back lay flat against the bottom of the seat. Her long, brown hair fell into the crack between the seat bottom and its back. No axel cover protected the whirling bar, covered with sticky grease. That bar curled her hair and pulled so hard it tore her scalp from her head.<br />
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Her mother ran behind the go cart, she told her. She pushed it, to make it go faster, and pushed too hard. The child fell backwards, the force knocked her down. Her hair caught. It was her fault She pushed too hard.<br />
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Who is right almost doesn't matter, since both stories will forever dictate how the teller lives her life. Unfortunate. I could have saved her so much sorrow, if she just knew I did it by accident.<br />
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I can't remember, now, ever having been angry with myself for that slip -- the slide and the catch and the fall... I never blamed anyone, Christ, let alone my parents. I always knew I lived only because they were right there to save me from what was just a terrible accident. I wrote "tragic" and erased it, because my life, while it has had its trials, has been anything but a tragedy.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-7744331548199874042011-07-06T01:09:00.002-05:002011-07-06T10:13:18.397-05:00The Long and Winding Road"Touch your forehead," I say to Cecilia. I want her to feel the sweat, the flesh, the weight of her forehead. It has substance. It acts. It reacts. <i>Feel what you are made of,</i> I think.<br />
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"Now," I say to her, offering a feel of my own to someone NotMe for the first time in my life--that I had control of. "Feel here." I guide her fingers to the fleshy, warm, wet skin of my temple. "Feels the same." I move back.<br />
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"Now, feel here..." and I guide her fingers to the thin, darker skin of my forehead. "Feel here."<br />
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I can see her face change. She moves through expressions of discovery. Realization that what she expected to feel was not what she found. The skin is smooth. It is tight. There is just skin, and then there is bone. There is no fat. There is no muscle. There are very few nerves. I do not flinch under her touch. I can barely feel it.<br />
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I tell her I was one of those people they tested skin expanders on. My hair was once one quarter of the hair on my head. We spread it. No one knew the consequences.<br />
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1.) I overheat when exercising. I have about 1/4 the pores on my head as the rest of you. When I run, play tennis, lift weights, I do not have the physiological ability to cool off through my head like you do. It took me until I was in my 30s to figure that out. Why I turned so read doing exercises my body was fully capable of handling.<br />
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It also explains why when my parents wanted me to wear hats skiing, why I said no. I wasn't losing that much heat. I was warmer inside because I couldn't lose that heat through my head.<br />
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I still can't.<br />
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2.) Head massages are useless. People seem to love head massages. There is a little patch on the back, left side, that has what I assume is mostly real feeling, and that feels very nice. Move off that one inch, and I am indulging you. Sorry.<br />
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3.) I have resisted getting wrinkles. Perhaps it's because I have lost those sagging muscles and my skin is pulled so tightly that it won't sag... Maybe it will later. I should perhaps not be shy about having that altered in the future. It was done enough in the past.<br />
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4.) If someone is operating on your face, ask to be put to sleep all the way. One of the awfulest things you can experience is the sound of someone cutting your face. The sounds it makes when they are sewing things up, when you are awake and can hear them, but you cannot feel them.<br />
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It was my last. The last I would let happen.<br />
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The last time I would live as someone who needed to be fixed.<br />
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Writing that makes me realize the strength 18 year old me had, that was lost on my own self as I grew older, thought men mattered more, thought being beautiful meant more than being me. I have never thought twice though, about that decision I made then.<br />
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I am done.<br />
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This is as fixed as I will ever be.<br />
<br />
<i>Take me, baby, or leave me.</i>Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-75815907708733134952011-05-14T14:42:00.000-05:002011-05-14T14:42:47.305-05:00For My Grandfather, An Homage to Unconditional Love<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iQyZu4exC98/TctgBZhLItI/AAAAAAAACIA/_pu-LdE0EXU/s1600/grandpopwithpie_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iQyZu4exC98/TctgBZhLItI/AAAAAAAACIA/_pu-LdE0EXU/s400/grandpopwithpie_web.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I found this photograph going through my things to find the letter Phatiwe left me on the day she died. My best friend passed away six years ago today and left me a letter. I was going to make myself read it. And share it. And live by what she wished for me. It was aggressively loving and kind.<br />
<br />
But what I found instead bears as much weight.<br />
<br />
It's a photograph I took of my grandfather, with his favorite pie -- strawberrry chiffon. A strawberry-filled creamy delight with flaky doughy crust. Sublime. He is gleeful. I am as well, photographing it for my graduate school class. Photojournalism. Events. Making sure you capture "that thing". It's the thing I do best with the camera. In this he poses. But that smile is actually just for me. <br />
<br />
We used to fight over how big a slice we each got, and I'm not sure it was always in jest.<br />
<br />
Taking this photograph is among my top 3 memories of him.<br />
<br />
First, when I was leaving for India and would miss Christmas for the first time, he came to me with an issue of National Geographic about a drought in India. If I went there would be no water! I'd die! I assured him that the family I was traveling with were doctors from NYU, and they would not let me die. I got some kind of parasite... But I came home safe and sound. He lived four more months. I will not write about our goodbye. I have that image seared in my brain. I hate it. I love it. I share with with some of you. I hope to never understand his quiet determination in those days. He did it out of love, I think. That impish glint in those eyes above. "My pie. But I'd give you the moon," they say. <br />
<br />
Second best memory of my grandfather: sometime after I graduated from college... Oh. I guess there are more than those two. But this one first. Maybe they are the same memory...<br />
<br />
The night before my Dartmouth graduation I sang my last set at the Lone Pine Tavern, the campus pub where I performed every other Friday. We packed the house. And sitting in the front was my family - grandmother, grandfather, parents, sisters. And the friends who had come dozens of times to support me because they loved me - and maybe liked what I was doing. Or they just loved me and knew how much it mattered to me. It was sweet and powerful and I was shy and shining at the same time.<br />
<br />
I remember singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and meeting Jamie's eye, and seeing how proud my family was, me singing before my friends.<br />
<br />
I was the only one of his 19 grandchildren that my grandfather watched graduate from college. He never did. I think I did him proud. At least I hope I did. <br />
<br />
Later, when I was writing or in publishing or something, my grandfather said to me "after your graduation, I thought you'd be going into music or something, but..." I can't remember the rest. I just remember thinking he though I'd be a musician, and was proud of me, and that made me realize my own ideas about being an artist and being a success were not at odds with one another. I could be an artist and still make my family proud. He was ready to love me whatever I chose. And to support whatever that was. The least-likely supporter, in some ways, of a singer, painter, actor, writer... but that is my own prejudice about what people like. What entrepreneurs who build businesses that build stadiums should value. I thought he would think my singing was silly.<br />
<br />
I was wrong. <br />
<br />
I will always cherish that. And try to remember it in those times I beat myself up for this or that. Whatever failing I imagine in myself. And I will try to remember... I sang a song once, and my grandfather thought it was good enough that everyone would want to hear me sing.<br />
<br />
And staring down my 34th birthday, I wish I could embrace myself that fully. I watch my niece, "two in June", and I see her dance. And by dancing, I mean moving whatever part of her body she thinks should move to whatever part of any song she sees fit to move to. We clap. We spin. We wave. We bounce. I adore every single move she makes. In my eyes, she can do no wrong. I adore her, and cherish her smile, with a love I didn't know I was capable of feeling. <br />
<br />
When I am with her, we exist in a realm without self-consciousness. We exist in a place of pure joy.<br />
<br />
Which is what I see in my grandfather's face in this photograph. That place families live. When we all just say, "Yes, I love you."Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-59632012127522063222011-03-21T15:46:00.000-05:002011-03-21T15:46:30.670-05:00I Curate My Life Through TwitterTwitter, when used, I think, in its greatest capacity brings together the social networky-ness of Facebook and the pervasive Interwebs roundup that is the Google Reader. I find the Google reader interface to be too overbearing and I never have the time or patience to scroll back through things. I'd rather someone give me a 140 character blurb about it with a link and I can go read it, or favorite it to go back to later.<br />
<br />
And you can find some fascinating stuff. I got a copy of a journal called <a href="http://www.afterzine.com/">Afterzine</a> in the mail the other day because I wound up following the man who edits it because I followed the <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/">Paris Review blog</a> editor because my neighbor Caitlin used to work there and so I followed her too. I bought the journal because its founder said he'd give half the proceeds to a Japan relief organization. About a day or two before every retailer started trying to use the earthquake for marketing.<br />
<br />
For an indie journal printed in someone's apartment in Brooklyn, it seemed an appropriate way to raise money for a cause. For J Crew, it just seemed douche-tastic.<br />
<br />
But poking around Twitter unearths a treasure-trove of tumblrs and blogs and articles and journals and novels and news about Book Court and what happened when four New York Times journalists were kidnapped and the crazy shit Fahmiwrite's kids say. (They're awesome.) <br />
<br />
And sometimes I can make y'all read my stories.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-29211201910573269182011-03-19T00:45:00.000-05:002011-03-19T00:45:49.945-05:00Renaissance ReduxSo much has happened. So many things found and lost and my heart was broken again, but by someone from whom I least expected it.<br />
<br />
I stopped writing.<br />
<br />
I stopped wanting to share. The days were dark. The nights were long. It was always snowing. I was broken.<br />
<br />
But I had weathered much harsher storms. And so I emerge. As one does. Slightly softer. Slightly harder. Not who you expected you would be. As you perhaps did, once the snow finally melted and you remembered what it was like to squint because the sun was shining.<br />
<br />
I had a lot to say, but couldn't be bothered.<br />
<br />
Now, I ask again. Indulge me.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-78056232166986057042010-10-07T18:26:00.002-05:002010-10-07T18:29:06.900-05:00What I've Learned About FreelancingWell, there are several things, but at the top of the list: Freelancing is hard work. Finding gigs. Getting things done on time and well, while keeping your different audiences in mind. And getting paid. That last part isn't nearly as easy as you would think.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6RuEbX-xI10/TK5W_ML8KbI/AAAAAAAACGA/zUtz-NvKCYg/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6RuEbX-xI10/TK5W_ML8KbI/AAAAAAAACGA/zUtz-NvKCYg/s1600/images.jpg" /></a>A major media corporation has owed me $450 since May, and I don't know if I'll ever see that money. Others, like AOL -- which I'm giving a shout out because while I think they could pay better, they have a really great system -- automate payments and keep their freelancers happy. AOL pays every month, on time, directly into my account. Hooray!<br />
<br />
Another thing I've learned is that I HATE running a business. I hate figuring out taxes. I hate marketing myself. I hate drumming up new work during slow times. I hate watching people go to work on days when I've managed to find myself with nothing to do but think about pitching stories, finding a steady job or moving to Italy and opening a bar for expats in Naples.<br />
<br />
Other things I dislike? Figuring out how to get/keep health insurance. I've been using Fox's COBRA coverage since I left last year, and I have until February. That's not going to cut it after that, and I'll likely insure myself through the Freelancer's Union if at that point I'm still self-employed. But it's a hassle, and I do get a bit paranoid each month until they cash my check that it's gotten lost and some mishap of the U.S. Mail will mean I join the ranks of the uninsured.<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong. There are serious perks. For example, I am never late for work. No matter how late I feel like sleeping. Which is great for someone like me, because, well, morning? Not my best time.<br />
<br />
I am free to come and go as I please. I go to the gym in the afternoon when it's not busy and watch Oprah on the elliptical. I can fly to France at a moment's notice and don't have to get anyone's permission. I can choose what I write, when I write and where I write.<br />
<br />
I am ultimately free -- with all the glory and burden that encompasses.<br />
<br />
I am an army of me. And a marketing department of me. And a communications department of me. And an accounting department of me. When my computer breaks, I have no IT department to come fix it. When my Internet service goes down, I either have to find a coffee shop (which isn't always a bad idea) or pirate it from a neighbor who hasn't password protected their router. <br />
<br />
It's also the loneliest job I've ever had. There are no co-workers to gossip with or about. I have no one to vent to when a story isn't going well, when I've had a shitty commute or when my coffee has overturned all over the inside of my handbag (Don't ask.) I even miss those nights at Fox when we'd order Chinese food for dinner, hemming and hawing over the menu, then discovering a cheap place on 8th Ave. that would deliver AND had delicious wonton soup. It was back during my <a href="http://jennyboy.blogspot.com/2008/09/wonton-soup-is-my-mashed-potatoes.html">wonton soup phase</a>. <br />
<br />
So, I'm looking for ways to work out in the world. I want: companionship, steady work, steady paychecks and to write about something interesting. Good thing I find lots of things interesting.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-85184599275207211242010-09-20T00:37:00.005-05:002010-10-07T18:30:28.167-05:00Making ListsImagine this.<br />
<br />
You work your way through a an Ivy League college. You go to a top tier law school where you work hard. Excel. You land a job at a prestigious New York law firm. You spend your twenties working, sometimes living in the hotel across the street from your office. You never get to really see the city you moved thousands of miles to experience. You move to California to try and get a life. You get laid off. You get a job. You get laid off again. You haven't dated because you've been working your ass off for a decade.<br />
<br />
At 30, you are diagnosed with incurable, inoperable cancer. <br />
<br />
The woman I've described is real, a few details tweaked, let's call her Alice. An old friend -- who has known Alice for many years and loves her very much -- is planning ways to spend time with her. I haven't seen my friend in almost 10 years, but tonight we stood on a Manhattan street corner for an hour, talking about life. She's had a lot on her mind. Trying to be a good friend. Struggling to deal with hearing her friend talk about last times.<br />
<br />
I have had those conversations, and when you know you're having them -- as opposed to the last conversations you don't know are your last -- you let go of some of the bullshit we put between ourselves and each other to make things hurt less. This is going to hurt like hell. But I'd rather have no regrets -- and tell you how much you were loved -- than protect myself. I have lost a friend like this.<br />
<br />
What do you do with the time you have left? When you realize things really are as fleeting, as precarious, as we all pretend they are not... Who are you?<br />
<br />
Riding home on the subway, I thought about D., my baby niece. I babysat her today. We went on the swings and the slide in the park. (The slide is very competitive. We didn't fare well.) I made a video of her eating pudding. When she hurt her hand, not only did her mom have to kiss it better, I did too. <br />
<br />
I thought about Alice. She wants to do things with her nieces, whether they'll really remember her or not. They are babies.<br />
<br />
I would want D. to remember me. To know that I held and and hugged her and kissed her boo boos. That I rocked her to sleep in my arms after some man broke my heart, and promised I'd try to keep her from ever knowing what that felt like. That I let her sleep snuggled against my shoulder, and though it was the cutest thing ever when I woke up to find her looking at me and say "hi." I would want her to know what my voice sounds like. What I like. What I look like. How very much I love her. <br />
<br />
Sometimes it's hard to let people in. I've talked about this before. Sometimes just when we decide to open our doors to someone, they slam theirs shut. Or we never even work up the nerve to really show ourselves. Most of our little secrets aren't that sexy, and falling in love involves a lot of illusion, up until it doesn't.<br />
<br />
I wrote a list once for an old lover of things he never learned about me that I wish he had. <br />
<br />
I'll share some of it here. Little things that show my flaws, my strengths and my quirky nerd side. My softness. My secret regrets and should-haves... My wishes, favorites and near misses. To remember me by.<br />
<br />
<i>I don't really like eating fruit very much, but love raspberry sorbet.</i><br />
<i>Sometimes I drink too much and fall asleep on my couch.</i><br />
<i>I am afraid of having to raise kids on my own.</i><br />
<i>I love Greek yogurt with cherries and primate photography.</i><br />
<i>If I had to do it again, I would have double majored in biology and economics, but I'd still be a writer.</i><br />
<i>I feel like I wasted a lot of my twenties sometimes.</i><br />
<i>I sometimes wish Lucy were Harold. I miss him even more than I miss you sometimes.</i><br />
<i>I used to steal books from the bookstore I worked in.</i><br />
<i>I subscribe to the newspaper but never read it. I just want to make sure it still exists.</i><br />
<i>I wish I liked fish and mushrooms.</i><br />
<i>People think I read a lot more than I do.</i><br />
<i>I spent months reading trashy online fan fiction when I worked the night shift; I was that unhappy.</i><br />
<i>I loved things about you that you probably didn't notice about yourself.</i><br />
<i>A friend once talked to me about wanting to wake up next to his lover every morning and be grateful that he got to be there with her that day, and many others. I thought that about you. </i><br />
<i>I wish I had a window in my bedroom.</i><br />
<i>I love cloth-bound books and paperbacks of unusual size.</i><br />
<i>Sometimes I wish I had become a doctor.</i><br />
<i>I like my toes but not my fingers.</i><br />
<i>I love the smell of salt marshes, musk and jasmine.</i><br />
<i>I felt a little bit smug when the vampires in Twilight wanted to go to Dartmouth.</i><br />
<i>I have never been able to fall asleep very easily. I'm torn between wanting today to be longer and being afraid of tomorrow sometimes. </i><br />
<i>I never trust my intuition, but it's usually right. </i><br />
<i>I love Tom Waits' "Jersey Girl" song. </i><br />
<i>I don't always think $1,000 is too much to spend on the right handbag.</i><br />
<i>I am afraid of riding in cars in the passenger seat, but not so much in the back. Driving isn't scary.</i><br />
<i>I like being able to do push ups now.</i><br />
<i>I let myself believe the Magic 8 ball speaks the truth when it says what I want to hear.</i><br />
<i>I will spend all day watching the Lord of the Rings if it's on TV, but never put on the DVDs I own. </i><br />
<i>I want children but am afraid of being pregnant.</i><br />
<i>I think Twitter is silly most of the time, but do it anyway.</i><br />
<i>The first time I tried Scotch I was an exchange student in Scotland. I thought it was terrible.</i><br />
<i>I totally judge people by the contents of their book shelves.</i><br />
<i>I love best that time of day when you first wake up and are half-asleep and your body is perfectly rested. </i><br />
<i>I touched the South China Sea and the Arabian Sea before I set foot in California.</i><br />
<i>I don't really care if I get to all 50 states someday. Some of them don't seem that awesome.</i><br />
<br />
It's a start.<i><br />
</i><br />
<i> </i>Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-60866719281120794042010-09-07T17:54:00.003-05:002010-09-20T00:40:17.122-05:00Potential? I gots it.Those of you who know me have likely heard me mention Trainer.<br />
<br />
Trainer is tall and has arms big enough to crush your average mortal. He's the kind of man who people stop on the street and stare at because he's both strikingly attractive and in ridiculously good shape. He is also my personal trainer. We hang out almost every day. And when you see someone every day, and you're on some sort of cardio machine sweating buckets and he's standing there... or you're lifting weights and he's counting... you have a lot of time to talk.<br />
<br />
From the sound of things, a lot of his clients are talkers. While huffing and puffing on the treadmill, I listen, silently cursing him for making me do sprints at 8 m.p.h., which makes me think I am going to die (maybe someday I'll look back at this and think <i>Aw. I thought 8 m.p.h. was fast! How precious!</i>) <br />
<br />
I know more about him than I do about some men I've dated. I know about his cousin. I know about his mother. I know what his philosophy is on exercise and life and that he wants to have his own show. I know that he thinks people need to slow down in relationships and get to know one another before sex makes you lose your head. I know that he wants a Bentley. He wants to be famous. He's ambitious. One time he told me God had brought us together so that he could help me be the best I could be. (And show that guy who broke my heart how hot I was, but I digress.)<br />
<br />
That's what we talked about today -- while I was doing pushups and then while he was stretching my legs and then later when we were just standing there (before he put me on a treadmill for my post-workout workout...) -- we talked about being the best you can be. About realizing your potential.<br />
<br />
He had recently met a life coach and motivational speaker who had talked to him about his life and his potential, and he had some very interesting things to say...<br />
<br />
Trainer is a few years younger than me, but has been a trainer for 14 years, but the coach asked him what he had to show for it. What do you know how to do? What can you do? You train people. We know that. What else can you do? What do you want to do? How have you shaped your life to get you there?<br />
<br />
Have you lived up to your potential? Are you holding yourself back?<br />
<br />
He talked about how one 20 minute conversation with this coach had made him re-think how he wanted to focus his time in the next 15 months, what he could do differently that would get him where he imagined he should be. Now, trainer has an ego. He wants to be part rock star, part fitness coach and part Dr. Phil. When you listen to him talk, perhaps he'll be able to do it. <i>"Not perhaps, Jennifer. You've gotta talk about things like they're already done. Like you've already succeeded." </i><br />
<br />
How do you realize your potential? What do you want? How will you get there?<br />
<br />
First, you have to know what you want to be. Who you want to be. You have to think about who in your life is helping you get there. Who is realizing their potential -- or working toward it. And who is holding you back -- intentionally or not. (<i>Are the people in your life striving to be better or are they complaining about how they don't like what they have but don't make any changes? You know you know someone like that... Probably several someones...</i>)<br />
<br />
It made me wonder what I was letting things slide. Where I was falling down on the job, so to speak, of making my life what I want it to be.<br />
<br />
Working out with him has changed my body, my mind and my attitude about what I'm capable of doing. I carry myself differently. I expect more of myself. I don't sit around in my apartment wallowing in woe-is-me self pity. But how good can it get? I want to be able to run a 10K. I'm not there yet, but I bet I can do it. I'm stronger. I can do pushups. A few months ago, I couldn't do a pushup. Singular. <br />
<br />
But there are so many places I can see I let myself down, when I sit down and really think about it. When I look at what I know I'm capable of and then what I do. How I live. The choices I have made. If I want what I say I want out of life, what have I done to make that happen? <br />
<br />
Nobody wins the U.S. Open without practicing their serve. Day in and day out. For years.<br />
<br />
I talk about writing a book. I talk about wanting to create something. I talk about a lot of things. But what do I <i>do</i>? I'm never going to afford that Brooklyn brownstone of my dreams on a journalist's salary. I'll have to settle for affording it because I'm a best-selling author. <br />
<br />
If you're going to imagine potential for yourself, you might as well dream big. Now, to actually do it...Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-89508902569708661222010-07-07T13:51:00.004-05:002010-10-07T18:44:19.347-05:00Second ChancesI know I have been a harsh critic of Elizabeth Gilbert in the past, but I am giving "Eat, Pray, Love" another look, and I think perhaps the first time I read it I was not in the right place in my life to get much out of it. I found her navel-gazing irritating. Her flakiness maddening.<br />
<br />
But sometimes in life you have to give things another look. Re-open old books. Give old relationships another try and see if maybe who you are now will be more compatible with the other. <br />
<br />
I am reading about Gilbert's experiences with meditation, grieving and letting go of old loves and her old life. Opening yourself up to the new and trying to move forward. It's harder than I would like it to be, and reading about her experiences has helped me both look at things in new ways and has made me feel less alone.<br />
<br />
There's a conversation I read last night about letting go of your old connections -- in her case her last lover -- and even if you love them and wish them well, you have to stop obsessing and open your mind so that the universe can fill it with love and its new possibilities... I liked that. It made me sleep well, and I haven't been sleeping well.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-31097818246035519362010-06-21T19:52:00.005-05:002010-06-21T22:51:38.691-05:00Someday You Will Be LovedLove is not a reward for good behavior.<br />
<br />
Letting yourself forget that makes for sticky, messy times and eventual heartbreak. It's a thought I've been having, thinking about conversations, relationships and the experience of my friends.<br />
<br />
But that's not why, on the longest day of the year, I can't bring myself to watch the sky. For the first time in a while I feel comfortable in my own skin. Safe in me. Not hiding, just being alone. At home. As alone as one can be with a kitten attacking your feet with every trip to the kitchen.<br />
<br />
I have been trying to decide what I want and what I can do to make it happen in the wake of my own minor tragedy. <br />
<br />
I believe you can fall for someone in an instant. I believe in love at first sight. But its the dedication, the reverence and the steadiness that get you past that first flush.<br />
<br />
And we never had that. With this one, I hoped it would come. I had begun to think it was growing. But it isn't something one can do on one's own. If I could have willed it into existence, God it would be taking over Brooklyn right now, casting its shadow across the city. I wanted him that much.<br />
<br />
Things do not always take the course we would like, and sometimes, letting go of your hopes and embracing reality is a scary path. It's hard to accept that you have no control over the course your own life takes when you imagine a future that's contingent on someone else's choices.<br />
<br />
It's hard to accept things in which you are not given a say. To have something inflicted upon you without letting yourself become a victim in tragedy -- whether Shakespearean or playground variety.<br />
<br />
To let go of someone you believed was yours.<br />
<br />
I loved how much he loved his garden. I loved how his hand felt in mine. I loved how he would sigh and smile and lean over and kiss my temple. <br />
<br />
I made space for him in my home and in my life. I bought him a toothbrush. <br />
<br />
Yet, I did see myself becoming less myself vying for attention amid the swirling chaos of another person's life. I could never have lived like that for long. I'd have evolved into a shell of me, and I have done that before. You wind up as dry and brittle as a snakeskin. Cast off. Frozen in time. Wondering why you weren't as valuable to someone as a nap.<br />
<br />
I felt like I had to sometimes jump up and down and wave my arms and say "Hey! I'm over here! Remember, the woman you held as you slept last night. Who you kissed goodbye this morning and smiled down at like she was the sun."<br />
<br />
But I wrote this myself, in my post on family: <br />
<br />
<i>But, and I have both learned and hoped that this is true, those who love you will take whatever curve balls you throw them -- whether it be having a "not eating carbs" phase or finally confessing your own battles with suicidal depression, addictions and fear -- and they catch them. They might bobble the ball. They might even drop it. But they will pick it back up. And hold it, staring at it lovingly and solemnly.<br />
<br />
And then they will look up. And really, really see you.<br />
<br />
And love you even more. </i> <br />
<br />
That's what we all deserve, and if that's not how we would feel about each other, perhaps he has done me a favor. I wanted to see him. He chose otherwise.<br />
<br />
Love is neither a reward for good behavior nor something one needs to fear losing when one truly, beautifully, opens.<br />
<br />
It only gets stronger.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13826102.post-44538345974684725492010-05-11T23:50:00.004-05:002010-09-20T00:41:35.166-05:00In Memoriam ... Phatiwe Sharon Cohen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6RuEbX-xI10/S-ou0YQqTlI/AAAAAAAAB-c/KZeTIdALVJU/s1600/Phatiwe_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6RuEbX-xI10/S-ou0YQqTlI/AAAAAAAAB-c/KZeTIdALVJU/s320/Phatiwe_web.jpg" /></a></div>It has been five years since I got that phone call. The "I have lied to you because she asked me to... come now," phone call.<br />
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I was maybe ten miles away.<br />
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I did not get there in time.<br />
<br />
On May 12, 2005, between the time Sophie called me to tell me Phatiwe was dying and the time my sobbing, hysterical self had navigated the suburban Boston roads to the hospital, she leaned over to do god knows what... and a tumor in her body pushed against an artery leading to her heart, and she collapsed upon herself.<br />
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They kept her on life support for themselves -- and for me. To wait for my arrival. Minutes too late. To hold the hand of the woman my 27-year-old self considered her best friend, because she was. I was hers. She was mine. We sat in my Honda Civic late at night, parked on the side of Whichever St., and we told our stories. We laughed. We cried. We worried. We imagined futures where she was okay. We imagined my life far, far into the future.<br />
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It was the first time in my life I was grateful to have gone through surgeries, so that I could comfort her, knowing of the pain, the shock, the horror of waking up with the body you did not go to bed with. It was the only time my knowledge was ever useful. Could ever help anyone else through their own suffering. I think maybe I helped her sometimes. I think. I hope. I imagine.<br />
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When I arrived at the hospital, having parked in the garage, trekked to her floor... Sophie told me she was gone. I took too long. I was too late. I held her hand, her still, yet warm, hand. And I told her I didn't have anything to say... I had already told her everything there was I could think to talk about. I loved her. That was all there was. It was all I could say again. I love you. I squeezed her hand. I cried.<br />
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I walked out of the room, leaving her father to say his final goodbye.<br />
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In the waiting room, I wailed. I cried like the universe was collapsing around me. She was gone. My mother and father arrived before the end of that day. Friends traveled to meet us. I remember picking out her funeral clothes. I remember sitting in the front pew, shaking with grief, watching everyone else say goodbye to the first person I ever... the first person I ever died with.<br />
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When someone chooses you as the one who dies with them, they take more from you than they realize they ever will. They know it will be hard. But they of course cannot know the aftermath. I fell apart during that year she died. And it took me five afterward to put myself back together again. To be able to hold someone's hand and be consumed with excitement and possibility instead of fear and loss.<br />
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I moved to New York weeks after she passed away (sorry Shamus, but it worked out for the best, no?) and abandoned my job, my life, the home I had built for myself. I had been recruited by a technology magazine weeks after Phatiwe's death, and when I told them no thank you, I was moving to New York, they said "fancy that, our headquarters are in New York..."<br />
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And so I left. I left and I never went back. I have never, in five years, visited her grave. I wouldn't know where to find it. I won't go back to our haunts. Our neighborhoods. Our friends had moved away over the years -- by the time she was sick, everyone was gone except the two of us... She and I went through her death alone. And I say I don't visit because when you live in New York, everyone comes to you... Which is true in its own way. But I also have buried that city in my soul. It was where WE lived. And where SHE died.<br />
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Five years ago today.<br />
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I have a gold Oriental (tacky enough that its the only way to describe it) fan that hangs on my wall in my bedroom. My bedroom is otherwise entirely tasteful. I have a photograph of her and me, standing at the base of my parents staircase. I have an envelope of photographs I took to display at her funeral that have sat untouched for five years, and I have the letter she wrote me.<br />
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It seems a cliche. The letter one leaves for a loved one at the end of things.<br />
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But she left one for me. One that I read only once and then put away. She hoped I finally saw how wonderful I was. (I just read it again. Now it just makes me smile...)<br />
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Who was she? She was a spitfire. She was fucking feisty. She drank Long Island Iced Teas. She listened to the Rolling Stones while hustling people at pool. She talked about gin and tonics like they were the gospel. She loved super-sweet Dunkin Donuts iced coffees in the morning -- which I learned that summer between my graduate school semesters when I built my days around waking her up and driving her to work, stopping at a different Dunkin Donuts every day. Our late night drives, drinking Starbucks grande Mocha Valencias (caffeine bombs!) while listening to Tribe Called Quest and driving around our white, upper class, somewhat-Jewish neighborhood like thugs. Falling asleep to "The Matrix" every night as soon as we put it on and then waking up during the big fight scene, turning it off and finally going to bed.<br />
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The time I had a date and she asked me to meet her first... and she told me she had cancer... And I still went on my date, drinking martinis like a fish and begging him to forgive me for being so terrible.<br />
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I called my parents, begging them to save her.<br />
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And on this day, five years ago, a broken shell of myself called our friends and told them she was gone. And then came to me and held me and my mother made us pulled pork and breakfast and took Michael to the ER when he had a weird lip infection. I remember saying goodbye. I have a few images of the cemetery. But mostly I remember being in the car with my mother, shaking with fear that some part of me was dying too. And maybe it did? <br />
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And now, five years later, that part seems to be one of those innocent parts that doesn't know dark things. And I miss her entirely. Sometimes I smell her smell -- black girl hair and a musky perfume -- on the subway and I do a double-take. I feel her presence around me. But I also do sometimes on the treadmill, when I am full of hate for the exercise and I know she would want me to keep going, because I really want that for myself. And that's all she really ever wanted for me.<br />
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Thank you, and God care for your soul always, Phatiwe Sharon Cohen.<br />
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I miss you every single day, even when I don't remember I do.Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02402835538186941575noreply@blogger.com4