The Satisfaction of Reciprocal Action

In Venice, all the Gondoliers wear striped shirts, a funny way of alluding to their status as bandits on the go. They loiter on bridges thieving tourists, offering up the drug of pure romanticism for upwards of eighty euros: a ride down the Grand Canal, the liquid Lover’s Lane. And oh, how disappointed I was at the time that they didn’t have the occasion to pick my pocket! How nice it is, I thought, to sometimes succumb to clichés, even if costly.

The city is as one would imagine: a haven of art and gold-encrusted basilicas and palaces. A city, which in spite of its splendor, is nevertheless sinking, is perpetually flooded. Without effort, the place conjures up prototypically Italian images: people air out their laundry above the open waters and nearly all the churches cling tightly to their claim of possessing the relics of long-ago slain martyrs, two traits which are insoluble elements to be found in all the regions of the country.

I can catalogue all the tourist hot spots my friends and I paid visits to, and approximate the number of shops we toured, lingering to examine the Venetian glass and masks as though we were absorbing artifacts in a museum. I won’t ever forget that I visited St. Mark’s Basilica and admired all the mosaics or that I fed pigeons in the main piazza while listening to dueling musicians on opposite ends of the square. But what I hope will remain written in my memory is instead what may perhaps seem mundane, what events and interactions that made me feel not like a travel-guide gospel following, fleeting tourist, but instead connected, rooted when I was train hopping and wheeling around a suitcase for four months’ on end – the encounters that left me believing I was a fundamental part of something that didn’t and never would actually belong to me: a country foreign from my own – Italy.

While we were in Italy, my boyfriend, James, developed a ticking obsession with uncovering the dialects of the land, learning the variances of the language that were being forgotten and thereby, in his own way, learning to preserve them in their state as they once existed. His main form of self-education derived from the sought-out source of so many inquiries, curiosities, and knowledge: books. So when the rest of us were waiting in line at the tourist office to get our hands on a map of the warren canals and walkways, or looking through the myriad of postcards by the front desk, it didn’t surprise me that he was the one instead asking a local resident where he might track down “un libro nel dialetto veneziano:” a book in the Venetian dialect. The lady at the office gave us the name and locale of a place called “Libreria Fillipi,” which was his best bet for finding something obscure, even rare, like a dialect book; most of Italy has allowed its idiosyncratic linguistic sectors to be muffled by the universal, modern sounds of standardized Italian. Together, we used our unskilled map reading abilities, which were only worsened by the rather undetailed free map of the city, and more time than I can even recall to track down this peerless bookstore in efforts retrieve the souvenir James so coveted. I’m sure I yelled at him for wasting over an hour just so we could go in “yet another damned bookstore” that didn’t even cater to our native language, and that my friends rolled their eyes and criticized his inability to ever lead us in the right direction. Now of course, I am thankful for our bookstore stop-ins, because it left me thumbing through the items on the shelves, and my desire to become more fluent in Italian led me to buy some for myself, so that, when back in America, I would have the tools for maintaining my grasp on the language, perhaps even fine-tuning and improving it so that when I hopefully one day return to Italy, whether for work or for volunteer, I would be equipped to communicate and subsist there on my own.

When we finally stumbled upon the bookstore, however, in spite of his initial persistence on finding the shop, James hesitantly peered through the open doorway and said, “I’m scared. I’m not going in,” and I immediately pushed past him, mumbling, “Oh, we’re going in” and walked over the threshold, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to resist following me. This is one thing that I learned about myself while traveling: that being confronted with a language and customs foreign to my own, even after spending four years of high school studying Italian tongue and culture, is undoubtedly intimidating, and yet was able to force me out of shyness like a clam being broken out of its shell. To be extreme, it invoked in me a sort of fight or flight reaction, only about very petty problems: do I go in that shop in efforts of retrieving a book for my beloved boy even if we can only shakily tell the owner what it is we’re looking for, or do I leave, thereby leaving everyone in my party crabby because we would have spent away precious moments futilely, and risk never understanding the nuances of Venetian? Or, of more personal interest to me, because in spite of my proclaims of traveling to Europe to absorb cultures unknown to myself, I’d be a flat-out perjurer if I said I didn’t also go with the intention and hope of procuring some of Italy’s world-famous goods: can I muster up the courage to go into that boutique and ask for a size thirty-nine, which may or may not be my shoe size in Italian standards, in those perfect, knee-high, cavalry-style leather boots, or do I walk by the store front and risk not getting my hands on some classic leather wares? Obviously, both scenarios present dire situations.

But all frivolities aside, I learned how exhausting it is to try to communicate with a limited scope of a language, and that oftentimes, immersing myself in an uncomfortable situation is entirely necessary, not just so I can add yet another pair of boots to my ever-growing collection, or aid my boyfriend with his equally obsessive, yet more deeply valuable stockpile, but so that I can firstly realize that I am capable of handling situations – like communicating in another language and interacting with strangers in an unfamiliar landscape – which I never previously understood the difficulties of, and secondly, through this, understand that even though I’m not quite unconquerable in terms of facing anything, I can nevertheless manage unaccustomed affairs. That’s not to say that I previously had no awareness of my own ability to confront new circumstances or that I had never before been doused in the cold waters of alien situations, but that there’s something about traveling unaccompanied by adults to someplace other than Ocean City, planning entire weekend getaways alone, buying train tickets and learning how to maneuver that sort of public transportation alone, using maps and broken Italian to pinpoint destinations, and fumbling to be respectful and to learn more about another culture that is at once liberating and of course, that makes you uncover aspects of yourself that you never realized were buried somewhere at the center of your core.

Like this crux of the self, inside Libreria Fillipi, which we eventually made our way into, was the very essence, the very heart of what has always enchanted me about books: their history and age and physical composition. It was the retirement home of old hardbacks, published on-site vessels of printing press illustrations, Venetian words, and the smell of flattened wood. Sitting amongst the fortress of shelves was a man older, I’m sure, and yet as well preserved as the pre-historic fossils we later saw in the Museum of Natural History. We browsed, hardly able to bring ourselves to handle the books, because they seemed so ancient, so fragile, so unique, like artifacts from another time. The man in the shop assisted us in finding a treasure in the Venetian dialect, which James proceeded to buy, unable to resist the opportunity as was usual with him. When he finished making the transaction – he purchased a lovely anthology of folktales from the area with amazing illustrations made by metal plates on an old-fashioned letterpress – we asked the best place to buy,“Cibo che è buono ma economico,” (food that is good but economical,) and he explained to us some very complicated directions involving more turns than we knew we would be able to remember, and we figured we’d smile and say “mille grazie” and leave the store ready to go ourselves into the nearest place with cheap eats, since there was no point in trying to remember how to get to the recommended restaurant. But when we could only half-heartedly repeat the directions back to him, he decided to get up from his chair behind the counter, leave shop, and walk us himself to what he thought was most suitable: a small self-service sort of place with multitudinous amounts of pastas, stews, and seafood. He led us down bridges and around turns and was stopped along the way by an older woman who kept remarking that he was spending all his time with us young flowers – i giovani fiori – instead of her. And we were indeed blossoming, growing in ways I’m sure we never previously imagined, opening up our petals to receive the refreshing sunlight of a land other than our own. Of course, even with my previous years of Italian and James’ continuous studying, my friends and I were unable to adequately express our gratitude for this entirely unforeseen favor being paid to us, in part because the language was a barrier and in part because we were in sheer shock that someone would up and abandon work for a brief time in order to escort us to our dinner table across town. We feasted on the high of interaction, of kindness, digesting while conscious that transmitting messages and sharing with others was possible in spite of the problem of not sharing the same vernacular.

…

I came to Italy expecting all the mystique of the Grand Tour, completed by so many writers before me – anticipating the awe that ancient art and churches older than the heavens would inspire in me. I expected to always make notes in my journal, my creative impulse sparked by the stark differences between Italy and America, and the utter historical nature of everything before me. And of course, I expected to come back a worldly and all around aware woman, fluent in the romance language established in one of the supposed romance-breeding countries of the world. While I did manage to lasso a tighter grip on the language and have certainly changed from my experiences abroad, the alterations are not as towering and great as I had originally thought they would be, and in fact are more subtle shifts than even changes at all. In fact, in spite of my initial eagerness to gaze at all the art of Italy, after a couple solid months of stepping silently into cathedrals and admiring countless paintings in museum exhibits, I began to guiltily lose my desire to continue investigating the works of the skilled artisans of yore.

But then I came across the words of one of my favorite writers, Mark Twain, who likewise wanted to chronicle his times in the honored and ancient country of Italy in his Innocents Abroad, and ultimately came to realize that perhaps what is not important about traveling is making a checklist of all the revered places and art to be seen, but instead, the broader experience of globe-trotting, which of course encompasses the smaller aspects, like encountering new people and holding with them conversations that turn up smiles, or make your brain bend in a new way, or that are just pleasant interactions to be had. Twain says, “I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo — that man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture — great in every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast — for luncheon — for dinner — for tea — for supper — for between meals. I like a change, occasionally” (Twain Chapter XXVII). Admittedly, one of my favorite visual experiences in Italy was viewing Michelangelo’s Davide in its nearly fourteen-foot glory, but the sentiment of the statement holds true for me. It’s not that Twain didn’t like Italy – in fact, it can be argued that his admiration for the country was deep considering he returned to live there with his family for many years – but that viewing its art continuously doesn’t exactly fulfill much internally; it’s more of a mandate for traveling to Italy than something that personally hits home. What I ultimately craved during my time away from home were relationships, connections, not pictures of myself in front of all the important monuments of Europe or postcards reproducing all the famous art of the region.

What I came to realize was that yes, Italians and Americans behave differently on the exterior: we downed our wine the way they took morning shots of expresso, instead of slowly sipping; there were bidets in all of our apartments in Italy, which collected lint and to us, made a good receptacle for dirty mop water; our dinners were leisurely two or three hour affairs, eating up the better part of our evenings, rather than quick, on-the-go, get-down-to-business meals; we dodged automobiles and mopeds racing down cobblestone alleys faster than most cars drive here on I-95. In short, we experienced all the stereotypes of the Italian-American dichotomy. But on the car ride home from the airport after so many hours on a plane, when my dad asked, “So what are the Italians like?” my best response was simply, “The same as us.” And it’s true, but I didn’t necessarily expect to come back thinking that, even as obvious as it may seem now. It goes back to that root question posed in so many of my classes, whether they be English or Anthropology or Philosophy or another subject entirely: “What does it mean to be human?” And perhaps a part of the experience of sentience is that it is never done in complete solitude, for there are always others around us, who, whether or not enduring the same conditions as us, are nevertheless undergoing conditions, undergoing something, which in itself can be a state that everyone shares, something that binds us together and is just one trait of the very broad and abstract characteristic that seems to be so often brought up in class, in literature, in life: universal humanness.

What I Know I'll Miss about America

Sure I'm excited for gondola rides and exploring Roman ruins, but there's nothing like ten days left in the States to make a gal cry out, "God Bless 'Merica."

1) Pills, Pills, Pills

I've read some mixed reviews on this one; some sources warningly report that Europe doesn't offer as many options in terms of over-the-counter medications (something about overdosing on milligrams and its adverse effects), and elsewhere, I've gleaned that there's Advil aplenty. Usually, I'm all about pushing the holistic healing way of life, or at least pretend to be, but I realized this evening, when I felt a little of that muscle misery that acts as an accomplice to sleep swindling, that perusing my medicine cabinet is like finding old mason jars in an unknown thrift store filled with antique buttons and trims and other notions: there are treasures sequestering themselves in each container. I came across some pills with little upwards pointing arrows, whose subtitle, so to speak, read "aspirin + caffeine." I simpered and arched my eyebrow like the capsules were an anonymous man across the bar room that I had to invite inside my body with the appropriate gaze and stance. The double feature of a pain killer and a pick-me-up was enough to make me feel better before I even got to swallowing it.

So, in case I can't get my fix abroad, I've designated room in my suitcase for one very large bottle of ibuprofen, because God knows that when monthly menstruation kicks in, you'd better get me some fucking pills now before I start telling every male I encounter that he's a "fucking idiot" and contemplate running away to a convent where forced face-to-face encounters with members of the opposite sex will be so rare as to be almost holy. Though, admittedly, I will miss standing in the check-out line at Rite-Aid with tampons, panty-liners, Motrin, and six different kinds of chocolate.

2) Around the Clock Closet Access

Yeah, I know I've only worn those purple suede stilettos on one occasion - to church, because for some reason my sixteen year old self thought that was undeniably acceptable - but what if I watch the Italian women balancing on some cobblestone streets in high heels with the elegance of symmetry and decide that I absolutely must learn to do something other than stumble around in them? It's terrifying watching all my essentials stowed away in one suitcase, and looking into my closet with the contorted rod and over at my bureau with the overstuffed drawers and wondering, what am I leaving behind? People have asked me, "do you wake up every day and pick a theme and dress that way?" Past roommates have shopped in my closet for Halloween wear and party apparel. Maybe none of that is flattering. Maybe it means I walk around looking like a costume shop gone awry, but it also means that I have about a gazillion garments to suit my fancy for the day. Nineteen forties film star? No problem. Casual cowgirl? Call me up. Boho babe? You bet. Let's just put a slogan on it: you name it, I've got it. Not having the luxury to act all totally Clueless Cher every morning with my wardrobe is, like, uh-uh, no way, not even!

3) Other Drug Addictions

Apparently Mexican food in Europe is like, peas and carrots thrown on a tortilla with a little melted cheese.

Wait, what? Isn't that the kind of mushy meal people force feed to babies? How will I ever fulfill my desires to turn up the heat? When will I ever get to eat a carb-overloaded dinner that doesn't consist of pi-zza or a-pas-ta? I'll probably smell like garlic all the time, but not from savoring my beloved bowls of fresh guacamole.

And while I'm on the subject of heart-attack worthy helpings of our daily bread, I just know I'll start acting pissy when I realize my ability to eat fast food judgement free is finito. Yeah, I saw Supersize Me and Food, Inc., and I heard all about Fast Food Nation. Does that stop me from thinking McDonald's is as precious a chain as my gemstone necklaces? No. Once, I went to Canada and ordered a medium sized number ten (hello, chicken nuggets and french fries?) and the cashier sized me up and down as though she were the most sought after supermodel in the nation, and said, "A medium?" The people in front of me had all ordered salads.

Since everyone knows every good burger joint serves you up a half gallon sized cup fizzing happily with soda and ice, let me just take a moment now to bow my head in remembrance of all that cold, cold, caffeinated Coke. Apparently I have to ask for ice in Italy? I mean, I know it's mostly there to cut down on costs for restaurants and make me buy Sensodyne like a good little consumer, but really, no ice? Gulping down a sweet carbonated beverage with crushed ice totally reminds me of the best part of being sick as a kid: mommy breaking up frozen water with a hammer in the kitchen and pouring coco syrup over it to ease my aching tummy. Forget cartoon marathons on the couch: that remedy totally convinced me that catching the stomach virus wasn't all that bad. Diet Coke from the fountain is ah, such a wonderful treat.

So yeah, buona viaggia to me.

Female Frenzy

Today, over the telephone, James and I compared lists of our must-have items when it comes down for packing for our semester in Italy. For the most part, we agreed on the most essential ingredients for contentment while living abroad: clothing, our laptops, copies of important travel documents, the fruit of Apple's womb - iPods, practical shoes, and framed photographs of our families for when the internet connection gives out and Skype dates just aren't possible.

Naturally, being the girl who packs suitcases roomy enough to house human beings full of clothes and odds and ends for a week in Florida, I felt relieved at the realization of how very few pieces from my junkyard of possessions I actually needed. It was a cleansing moment. Suddenly and without warning, I could view all of my belongings objectively, like those clean-up specialists who come in to the houses of unsuspecting hoarders, sweepingly ridding of heaps of accumulated refuse.

My enlightenment, of course, didn't last long. A few hours later in a personal grooming lamentation, I bitterly began compiling a mental list of all the miscellaneous objects I'd be forced to pack that my dear James wouldn't even have to stop and think about. Here's what got me heated up as I sat in the boiling bathtub water shaving my legs:

1) A four months' supply of tampons. Aren't we all so grateful tampax started making those dwarfed ones that are all discrete and portable?

2) High heeled shoes. Because I can't exactly wear my comfy brown oxfords or warm black cowboy boots with my patent leather belted pencil skirt.

3) Pajamas. I don't really know a male in the history of males who sports sleepwear that consists of something more elaborate than boxers.

4) Mace. We aren't going to take our chances in being optimistic about the shift in the behavior of notoriously aggressive European men. And thieves. Even though I've survived in the projects of Baltimore city without a can of it all these years.

5) Bras. I ain't no 32A. Those overpriced contraptions are going to take up a lot of space.

6) Hairdryer. Hair Mousse. Hair Luminator. Hair pins. Hair Accessories. All phrases starting with the word, "Hair." Let's face it, I'll never be able to compete with Italian women in the realm of thin frames and effortless fashion, so I may as well attempt to keep my locks looking decent.

7) Lotion and Perfume. I don't get it, do men have skin that is just flat out resistant to drying and flaking and other unappetizing adjectives?

8) Jewelry. So what you have that one cross you got for your confirmation or inherited when your grandmother passed away? I have twenty years' worth of gold and silver adornments that I somehow have to detangle and condense and transport safely to another country.

9) Nail file, polish, and remover. Because how else will I mix up the small fraction of my wardrobe that I have to subdivide and bring along, and what else can I do to soothe my clothing crises when it seems I have nothing new to wear than give myself a good ol' fashioned manicure?

10) Makeup. Sometimes, I literally have nightmares about forgetting to pack my makeup for long trips away from home. Because, really, Alba will not have any sort of drug store or beauty supply place where I can pick replacement cosmetics up. But really, in all seriousness, I'm almost certain they wouldn't carry Bare Escentuals, and I've been devoted to the line since I was fourteen years old, and it would just be wrong to revert back to Maybelline at this point in time.

And yes, these really are all necessities. Except for maybe the nail polish, but after all, a few bottles would hardly hog all the storage space in my luggage, and I know I'll be constantly gnawing away at my cuticles and fingers if I don't have miniature red stop signs as nails warning me to halt. And yes, just for the record, I do indeed like to go on living under the delusion that I'm not at all high maintenance. Because, clearly, every disgruntled female traveler would think as one man when it comes to the importance of my little travel checklist.

Why I'm not Cut out for the Workforce, Part One

"I think I should, like, design tablescapes for a living," I told my mother as we perused the buckets of ten dollar floral arrangements at the supermarket, fawning over the textures of the corollas with the same "ooohs" and ahhhs," that would issue from our lips while thumbing through fashion magazines, their pages embossed with innumerable textiles and colors.

"Oh, God," my mother said, quickly steering me away from the flowers, which clearly nurtured my ever blossoming imagination. "What are we going to do with you?"

"What?" I asked, as though her words were true blasphemy, and I wasn't just a dreaming, doe-eyed little dolly. "It's the people who dream big that make it big. You have to have far reaching goals to ever really get anywhere in life."

"You're right," my mother said, drawing out the last word steady and even, like making a foot long line with a wooden ruler. "Help me find this cheese for my quiche," she said, pointing to a jotted down recipe with a French sounding dairy ingredient that neither of us was going to even attempt to pronounce. I scanned the shelves in the refrigerated aisle, looking for those pressed curds of milk, and the instant after I spotted the right type, uttered an "I gotta get outta here," shivering my way to the warmth a few paces away outside in the summer evening air. On the way out, I noticed the button down, Hawaiian shirt uniforms of the employees, and considered how they could look vintage esque with a forties style curl set and pin up red lips, and thought about how I wouldn't mind working there if it meant I could get discounts on those dark chocolate covered pretzels and organic yogurt I so loved. But that's the issue: I'm as flaky as that grated cheese my mother was headed to the check-out line to purchase, never able to make a decision, melting under a mere ounce of pressure. Two days on a summer retail job and I was braced to quit, convinced that I had been right all along: my best suited career path was clearly housewifery.

It's not that I don't possess the competency to wrangle in employment, and I've honed my panty arranging skills and less than thirty second bra fittings at a national lingerie boutique, that, let's face it, is well known enough to not be categorized as any sort of elusive little secret. I may fumble for a few moments while wrapping up those lace panties in tissue paper at the cash wrap, but I practically assist browsing customers in my sleep. Literally. This evening, my mother reported to me about her entrance into my room during the morning hours, which was speedily greeted with a not-so-groggy sounding and polite, "What are you looking for?" "My black flats," my mother told me. "You've come to the right place!" I said, enthusiastically, and my mom, who had been searching for a while, continued her hunt even though the shoes were in fact in the foyer downstairs, while I rolled over and fell right back asleep. I have absolutely no recollection of this little exchange, but I do know that it mimics the conversations I hold with customers on a daily basis: "What are you looking for today?" "A great push up bra." "Well, you've come to the right place..."

The point is, I learn quickly, so long as we're not talking about mathematics or quantum mechanics or genetic engineering or anything of a semi-scientific, methodical nature. But, the problem is, I don't want to do any sort of laborious task if it isn't somehow synced up with my vintage fantasy world, sex, swing dancing, reading memoirs, and being generally slovenly. Oh, or eating chocolate.

Now, I know there are a great number of people out in the world pursing their lips like dried up fruit, all crinkly and shriveled, writing me off with a tuh sound or an internal Join the club, sister, and for those of you who would genuinely like to give your two weeks' notice and retire at an age closer in years to adolescence than to granny-hood, I commend you and will hopefully someday soon see you in the, "I bought a recliner before I hit sixty" league. But for the remainder of you, who I like to imagine as that annoying little fraction that I always forgot to carry up at the end of a long division problem in grade school - those ones who whine about never having enough days off and the flat out ineffectual nature of their supervisors, but twiddle their thumbs and feel entirely unfulfilled lounging on the couch for a full afternoon, and gnaw at their nails if they work anything under forty hours a week - you my friends, will never understand my predicament. I know that my arguments entirely discount necessities like paying bills and generosities like donating yearly to reputable charities, but I like to think that these toilers would "keep up the good work," so to speak even if all their finances were perpetually in order and they had no need whatsoever to usher in that biweekly paycheck. These people, even if half of their vocabulary consists of the words "hate" and "job," nevertheless find themselves somehow continually fueled by working nine to five, always on the go and hardly ever needing to be rebooted, like eco-friendly cars with seriously great gas mileage. I on the other hand, truly, genuinely, and confidently can proclaim that I have about as much desire to become a permanent member of the workforce as I have to change my major in college to Biology.

Of course, all convictions aside, there are always aberrations, and if I could have a completely impractical, whimsical career that involved planning garden parties or working on essays at my leisure or maybe tasting wine five days of the week, I'd drop out of school now and book my oneway ticket for the Employment Express. But as fanciful and imaginative as I can be, I can at the very least acknowledge these daydreams are never going to be actualized, and rather than quitting my job on the spot, I let the menial labor workforce keep me on its line, alive but skewered, like a fish who, as they put it, fell hook, line, and sinker.

Single Speed

Yesterday, I told James that we should get married now so I could have one of his vintage bicycles. Actually, I didn't give him the luxury of selecting one to gift me, as I had a particular blue hued one in mind. To me, this was an obliging and undemanding request, not an imposition. "Well, yes, I'm going to marry you, but you can have the bike now," he said to me. It may as well have been the Gold Rush of 1849, because I had already packed my bags for California, my eyes glinting with the reflection of all that potential opulence. Exactly what I had wanted to hear. "No, I couldn't possibly," I said, feigning that I truly believed this idea was pure cockamamie. "I can see how protective you and your father are of them," and then pure instants later, when he demanded I have the fendered beauty of my desires, I practically squealed, "But I would ride it wearing play suits and have a wicker basket up front that would fit my miniature dog breed, and put a motor on it, maybe, possibly!" By "put a motor on it," I naturally meant that I would watch daddy purchase it and then attach it to the old fashioned two wheeler that I had longed for since about age fourteen.

Of course, James rode these bicycles before it was cool to shop vintage, before perhaps, they were even novelties - when people were selling them at yard sales for two whole dollars, and when they were too rusted out to be worth restoration. While I brought my off road bike to college which I attempted to give charm with a little bell and metal pannier, James was riding his timeless transporters around campus. Sometimes I wonder how we hadn't met sooner, why I hadn't enviously and longingly looked at his bicycles and paid a compliment to their owner, commenting on how I had always, always wanted to have one just like his! We may never have had such an encounter, but instead I have the memories of me riding tandem with him much later on the brick walkway, as though his frail little bike were instead a great steed, or soaring down mountainous hills, together learning to fly, or James pedaling across campus, worried, searching for me in every cranny and crack, and parking his bike only to forget later where it ran off to once he found me. And it is this that makes me think, yes, we should indeed, share a bicycle, pass old treasures off to one another.

Oh, and let's not forget: he'd better follow through with this underhanded endowment, because I've already been dreamily gazing at pictures of gals on vintage bicycles!

Always loved the bike riding Ginger in Carefree.

Pin curls, penny loafers, and a bicycle just like the one I want!

Appropriately enough, this is one of James' relatives.

Who doesn't love a bike riding pin up?

That's all for now.

♥ Vintage Betty

Becoming Our Parents

The details of the argument are never important after the fact, but there was a miscommunication about money, hundreds of dollars of it, and fragile under the stress, I turned red with anger and combusted like an exploding fire hydrant uninvitedly flooding the streets. And then I pointed at Him, jabbing some invisible elevator button that would hoist me to a more commanding level, and said, “This is on you. Get your mother to write the fucking check, or that’s it.” I paced around in the middle of the road in front of my house, avoiding his touch that begged for patience and acceptance like the Artful Dodger, mumbling fragmented phrases: “So. Irresponsible.” “Fucking insane.” “I can’t believe it.” “It’s bullshit. Bullshit.” It didn’t matter that James and I had just spent the last two days doing nothing, but nevertheless enjoying the privacy of a house to ourselves: we slept until late in the afternoon, perused a local nursery, cut up fruit for a salad, imagined ourselves down the line growing and making our own food, working as a complimentary team, and watched Rick Steves show us Italy while we planned our semester abroad, enveloping into one another on the couch. No, none of that mattered now, and I was notoriously a bitch anyway, or at least too honest, which meant that I was entitled to scream and threaten to end our relationship, or if not entitled, then expected to. And I was, after all, living in the moment like a very enlightened woman, because the utter loss of so much money at that point in time made me sure we could no longer exist as a couple. Need reinforcement about female fury stereotypes? I’m your gal.

Later, after I had sufficiently infused my dialogue with “fuck” an appropriate number of times and made more exaggerated hand gestures than all my Italian relatives combined, and when the finances were on the path to resolution, I went upstairs, rummaging in a hat box for an appropriately uplifting, religiously inspired card to make out to His mother for her birthday. James, being the pure gold, rust-resistant medal of a man that He is, instantaneously forgave my behaviors, insisting against my self-deprecating words that, No, I was not crazy! Why would I ever think such an irrational thing? I had every right to be angry!

“How about this one?” I’d ask James, thrusting a card in His direction, and He’d respond gut-impulse: “No. She hates glitter. She’ll say, ‘that’s nice, but I wish it didn’t have glitter.’” “Why does she hate glitter? ‘Cause it gets all over the place?” I’d answer for myself, trying to focus on our conversation while my parents were cussing and shouting at one another, bursts of thunder and lightning, a few rooms down. James had nodded, and I suddenly dropped the pastel colored Hallmark creation and looked up at him. “I’m sorry. Really. Do you see?” I said in earnest. “It’s learned behavior. That’s how they communicate, and it hardly phases me anymore.” His face, ever gentle, paraded his understanding, and he said, “Let’s go downstairs. I don’t like it when people yell.” “Why?” I blinked, apparently only partially aware that loud arguments were unhealthy. “Because it makes me sad,” He said plainly, and I knew that that abstract declaration was as best as He could explain the sensation He felt.

As we made our way down the staircase and onto the front porch to sit hand-in- hand on the rickety wooden swing overlooking the garden, I thought about how no matter how much we all love our parents, the idea of morphing into them without our own consent makes for that cliché heart-sinking-to-the-bottom-of-stomach feeling in all of us. Later, I cried to James hysterically about how very similar we are to my mother and father, and how I didn’t want to wind up twenty years down the road sleeping in separate bedrooms, eating and watching television in different rooms, seemingly only talking to one another to argue. And I pointed out how very much he was like his own dad, and said I didn’t see myself going on forty, living in an inherited house in disrepair with no flushing toilet – that no, I couldn’t do that. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I needed him to reassure me that that wasn’t where my life was headed, especially if I decided to spend it with him, that I could do better than that, even though I was rotting away in the jungle-like humidity of a Baltimore summer, alone, while my friends headed abroad to third-world countries to assist in some noble, Peace Corps worthy cause, or moved to L.A. to work for big-name production companies, or landed internships with nationally renowned doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital. James reminded me that we were composites of so many different people and ideas and places, not just our parents, and told me that the fears I was presenting were a commonality between us, and our awareness of them could help us to eliminate them, uproot our weeds with a garden hoe, and that together, we could create our own utopian-like Eden. His words, a mix of cooing and encouragement and urging allayed my trepidations better than any chamomile tea or hot bath or spontaneous shopping trip could have. True, I thought to myself, I may be a Fallen Eve, susceptible to imperfect ways – unrestraint anger, jealousy, vanity, and greed – but at least I have a companion who unrelentingly shows me that Paradise can always be regained.

Red Corduroy Pants

In elementary school, I loved Lindsey Krebs in the way that second grade boys love hot rod model cars and Legos: compulsorily, as though zealous adoration were a classroom rule that if disobeyed, was punishable by the principal. Lindsey had the sort of curvaceous handwriting that made her seem more sophisticated than the average second grader. In fact, her lettering looked the way her name sounded: soft at first, zesty upon second glance. Lindsey did her capital “L’s” in cursive, big loops at the top and bottom. On rainy days, I would practice mimicking Lindsey’s handwriting on spare sheets of notebook paper or on the foggy bus windows during the ride home from school. It was on days like that – when droplets of water fell onto the pavement like stones – that I longed to jump into the loops of Lindey’s “L’s” and stay there until the sun came out again.

Lindsey was blonde, but not in the typical eight-year old blonde way: her mom did not make her wear her hair in French braids the way my mother did, and she never embellished her locks with a frilly ribbon. Lindsey’s golden hue had natural variation; the lighter strands of dandelion yellow looked the way all women who visit the hair salon monthly for a cut and color wish their hair would look naturally. The girl’s bangs swooped just below her eyebrows, and occasionally, she would brush them to the side with a few fingers. My bangs, trimmed on a regular basis by my mother, were cropped too short to get away with that sort of effortless little sweep.

Lindsey knew all the lyrics to the poodle skirt, petal-pushing songs in Grease before I even knew about the romance between Sandy and Danny. She got to be a flower-crowned May blossom girl in our school play about the months of the year, while I acted as the leprechaun representing March, jigging my way onstage. She was cool in the unconventional sense: she made the hand-me-down clothes from her older sisters look like nineties grunge or hippie chic, while I probably just resembled little orphan Annie in the outfits I inherited from my cousins. I was the typical “cat got your tongue?” little girl who was oftentimes too shy to do anything other than silently revere the cool kids, and because of that, Lindsey thought I was a snob. Once, her and my best friend Brittany Severe stayed in from recess to help the teacher assemble packets for class, and when I came in from swinging along the monkey bars outside, Lindsey came up to me and spoke for the two of them, and made a humiliating proclamation: “Me and Brittany decided we don’t want to be your friend because you’re mean and obnoxious.” I couldn’t believe it: Lindsey hardly knew me, and Brittany had been my best friend since kindergarten. True, I was reserved, but there was a part of me that loved making fun of people. Only to me, pointing out someone’s high waters or making a comment to boys about the obvious crushes girls had on them was gentle prodding, not invective. I guess no one else saw it that way, and as a second grader, simultaneously being pummeled by Lindsey Krebs, the free spirited goddess, and my long time playmate was worse than not understanding how to multiply numbers. I was confused, but determined to prove them wrong, and form some sort of triple alliance of girl power with them, even if they hated me.

Growing up, my mother was the type to make me help out around the house: there was always some piece of antique furniture that needed to be dusted, or some dishes that needed to be put away, or a table that needed to be set for dinner. Usually, doing them matched up with the sometimes timid and newly companionless aspect of my personality, and I would invent scenarios to make the tasks seem romantic: I could be an underappreciated servant girl like Sarah in A Little Princess who was secretly the richest girl in all her boarding school, or pretty Cinderalla doomed to wait on the big-feet of her stepsisters. It was during one of these ritualistic chores that I decided I was ready to confront my mom about something that had been lingering in my thoughts for weeks:

“Mom, I want a pair of red corduroy bellbottoms,” I said to my mother, not looking up from the potato I was peeling.

“Do you?” my mother said, raising her eyebrows, glancing up from her cutting board. “Why red?”

“Lindsey Krebs has a pair of red corduroy bellbottoms and I have to have some just like them,” I told my mother. To me, Lindsey was never just Lindsey; she was Lindsey Krebs or no one – you needed to hear the whole name to get the full effect.

“Well, okay, honey. How about you put that on your Christmas list?”

“Christmas is in December!” I said, putting down the potato peeler and facing my mother. If Lindsey disliked me, maybe looking like her would be the first step to being like her, and then she would have to undeniably embrace me.

“Yes, I know, dear – it’s in December every year,” my mother responded, emptying the carrots she had chopped into the frying pan.

I wanted to respond, but didn’t: I let the rhythmic peeling of the potatoes and the sound of my mother’s spatula raking against the frying pan speak for me.

“All right, then,” my mother sighed, wiping her hands on the thigh of her jeans. “I’m through with you. Thanks for gettin’ them ‘taters ready,” she added, trying to make me laugh.

I smiled in the same way I did when my father belted out opera songs about Willy, our redheaded golden retriever, in the car – the sort of smile I reserved for when I wasn’t sure whether or not I supposed to be chuckling. I didn’t know if Lindsey’s parents made up their own rhyming jingles, or if they could only buy her new clothes on holidays, but I could guess the answer.

Once a week, our second grade teacher at Relay made us write in our marble composition books. We were to respond to questions like, “What are you going to do this weekend?” and “Do you like winter?” and “What do you like to do best after school?” I didn’t mind answering any of these, but I always preferred it when we were assigned free writes; I liked inventing mystery stories that Scooby and Shaggy would have trouble cracking.

Usually, when I read the week’s journal question on the blackboard, I would tap the eraser on my pencil against the desk or dig at the initials written on the pencil’s ridges in black magic marker; this was my way of thinking. But there were occasional questions that required no premeditation at all: I knew the answer right away. “If you could wish for anything in the world, what would it be?” was one such question, one of those ones I knew as intimately as the archs and twists in Lindsey’s handwriting. I began scrawling with the dull point of my pencil; when I could beckon my words so easily, I couldn’t be bothered with trying to conceal my unsteady penmanship. I finished before the teacher asked us to stop, and passed the time tracing the eyelet flowers on my white pinafore, looking up every so often to see where Corey Beals was wiping his boogies and to notice the way Lindsey Krebs poked her tongue out the corner of her mouth when she was concentrating too hard.

When the teacher finally called the attention of the class, she asked someone to share what they had written. I raised my hand, arm darting up swiftly like an arrow aiming for the classroom ceiling, but the teacher called on Zach Falwright instead, who’s wish would be to have a room all to himself filled with Dr. Suess books so that he could read all day without listening to his little brother whine, and make up rhyming stories of his own. Elise Robbins was next, who said she wished that her father would stop packing peanut butter and jelly and sugar-free snack pack pudding everyday in her lunch. After each of them shared their stories, my arm instinctively bolted upwards, but the teacher was looking to call on those students who didn’t have their hands raised. Lindsey was her next victim: “Lindsey,” the teacher said. “Won’t you share your journal entry with the class?” The girl opened up her composition book, which was neon orange, not magenta, like mine – a tell tale sign of my overt girliness and aversion to all things sporty or action figure oriented or just plain boyish. Lindsey could play dodge ball with the lads or belt the lyrics to songs in movie musicals on the bleachers with us lassies; she was versatile and fit in with just about anyone.

“I can’t find my page,” said Lindsey, thumbing through the book. “Hang on.”

“Shall I come back to you, dear?”

“No,” Lindsey responded. “No – here it is; I found it.” She smoothed the page over with her hand, pushed some of those blonde locks behind her ear, and began. And there it was – Lindsey’s wish, out on the table, like an hors d’oeuvre for the whole class to sample: she wanted her family to be happy. I looked at Ms. Campbell, our teacher, who wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Eventually, she just said, “Lindsey, that’s wonderful.” I couldn’t believe it. It was worse than the time after school, when I was waiting for the bus to arrive, and my teacher asked, “You know who’s handwriting I love?” And when I asked who, expecting to hear my own name, I heard Lindsey Krebs’ instead.

“Does anyone else want to share?” the teacher asked the students. “Elizabeth – didn’t you have your hand up?”

“I changed my mind,” I said.

“You sure? Well then,” she began, before I could respond, “Are we ready to move onto Spelling? Corey, would you mind passing some lined-paper out to the class?”

As the boy rose, obeying his teacher’s request, I took the eraser of my pencil and began, word-by-word, eliminating what I had written in my journal. I wanted Lindsey Krebs to see, to know what my wish was, but I knew now that I could never let her know, and too, I knew that Lindsey Krebs and I would never be friends.

forget-me-not

For my birthday, my mother had the loose links to this lovely forget-me-not bracelet from WWII welded together by our trustworthy local jeweler. This piece belonged to my grandmother, and when my mother was a teenager, while perusing her mother's jewelry box, scouring for some hidden hand-me-down goodies, she came across these ornately engraved little pieces strung together on a piece of black ribbon. She asked her mom if she could keep the bracelet, fascinated by the names on each piece of metal, but apparently never further researched it or enquired about it, because she is unsure of who all the names belong to. What we do know, however, is that forget-me-not bracelets were a typical acquirement for women on the home front during the war, who had friends and lovers and family members leaving them behind to go fight overseas.

I couldn't have asked for a more thoughtful gift; the history alone is enough to keep me wearing it, yet another heirloom to wonder about. I'd like to someday find out who all the people on the links are - what sort of characters my grandmother was attempting to hold on to in the form of sterling metal linked around her wrist - something permanent and united in spite of the potential temporality of life in war.

Blossoming

Today, ah: the first glimmer of Spring and my twentieth birthday. James visited and we took a stroll around my historic hometown, and I for once let the gingerbread on porch railings and high peaked roofs fade into the background, and absorbed instead the inflorescence around me. I though of Wordsworth at Tintern Abbey, the scene a stamp on his memory:

  "...Once again
  Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,  
  That on a wild secluded scene impress
  Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
  The landscape with the quiet of the sky."                  

Do we not all love to watch flower petals cup their pollinated crux? Or notice the withered leaves, skeletal, turned to lace, thin as eggshells? And look overhead to the branches coiled like telephone lines, supporting wiry florets against the backdrop of human edifice?

Here are some of our findings from the day, photo credits mostly to my lovely James, and a few to myself. Hope everyone enjoyed the weather as much as we did. And yes, I had a lovely birthday (eh hem, I managed to hold back the tears this year...usually getting older and feeling alone makes for an all too tragic twenty-four hours.) I can't wait to share with everyone some of the wonderful goodies I've been so fortunate to receive. Updates on that in another post?

♥ Vintage Betty