Sunday, March 30, 2014
WHY?
Customer: I live in Winthrop, but I commute every day over the mountains. I don't think I can keep this up. I've started looking for jobs around here.
Me: Oh, well we're hiring!
Customer: Really? Do you know the hours?
Me: Yeah. Actually, it's my job.
Customer: Oh, are you going away to college?
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!
Sunday, March 16, 2014
The Then Me
The date: October 26, 1996. The game: Honeybears vs. Cheetahs. The place: Frank Love Elementary School.
Until last week I had never seen a video of myself as a child. My parents didn't (and still don't) own a camcorder, and I grew up in the gloomy, grey Zoloft days before cell phones. All the documentation of my childhood has come in the form of 35mm film rolls that spent years in cardboard boxes before maybe being developed.
In elementary school I had friends whose TV room shelves were stacked with home videos of ballet recitals or summer barbecues on the front lawn. Though I never once uttered this sentiment aloud, I was deeply envious. An immensely analytic child, I convinced myself that the reason there were no videos of me was that I wasn't cute enough or interesting enough, that I didn't say the darndest enough things. It was shameful to be that kid--the one who had already, at age eight, disappointed her parents to such an extent that they wanted no video record of her appalling, nail-biting, flat-footed ways.
Last week, in an attempt to make our guest room suitable for my friend and her husband who were visiting from Minnesota, I was cleaning our obscenely cluttered shelves full of movies. As I sorted through VHS after VHS of recorded episodes of CSI and Law & Order: SVU, I came across a videocassette tape (that's right, I said it) in a sleeve that was labeled, simply, "Olivia." Curious, I slid it out. Printed in small all-caps were the words "1996 Honeybears vs. Cheetahs." I was holding the world's only video documentation of myself as a child: the final game of my eight-year-old soccer season. I felt what I imagine Buzz Aldrin must have felt upon becoming the second person to ever walk on the moon. This colossal thing was happening in his life--was, in fact, happening to him--but someone else had already felt it. By the time he wafted down the ladder onto the moon's surface, Neil Armstrong and the rest of the world were already thinking, "Meh, this space thing--I'm over it."
I know that people have been making home videos for, like, millenia, so I'm hardly the first person to experience the sheer delight at seeing the gawky child prototype of her more grown-up self on camera. This being the first time it had happened to me, though, I was in awe. I popped the VHS into the player (because yes, we still have one of those) and after a moment of blackness there was Alexa (whose dad was the one filming), holding up a piece of poster board with the date and our team name. The shot cut to the field and there was little Tessa in her gigantic shorts that went practically down to her ankles. There was Nicci, whose dad you could hear in the background shouting his standard "Take out the coach's daughter, Nicci!" Kevin and Chris, my coaches, were pacing up and down the sidelines like they did every game, trailed by the teeming throng of us, the substitutes, calling out the positions on which we officially had dibs. The other team had a throw-in in our half of the field and Kevin shouted, "Girls! Back up! Defense up!", an instruction I'd heard for nearly 13 years and yet never quite understood, as "up" the field was the completely opposite direction.
When the ball rolled out of play and Chris yelled "SUBSTITUTION!" I got my first glimpse of the Olivia I had once been. My hair was long--close to halfway down my back--and pulled back in the high ponytail that I always thought made me look distinguished. My red knees were peeking out from below my shorts and I was standing with my legs crossed, as I still stand today, waiting for the ball to be thrown back into play. There was a look on my face of intense focus and what I can only describe as unbridled elation. The soccer field was my universe. I lived for hollow pop of the ball when it made contact with my cleats. At eight, I was content to spend all of eternity sprinting across the field like a wild horse, stopping only at halftime and only long enough to scarf down a couple orange wedges.
It was strange to witness myself in the act of living an experience I don't specifically remember. It was like I was watching someone else, but someone whose exact mistakes I'd already made, whose future I just so happened to be living. I felt like a voyeur. I knew this girl--knew that she loved making daisy chains, that she was terrified of the basement. I knew that she preferred a book to a conversation, that her favorite flavor of LipSmacker was Pink Lemonade, that she wanted to be an architect. I even knew that she wasn't entirely sure what being an architect actually meant.
I am now 26 and still so much that girl. I still love daisy chains, still descend into the basement with thick-soled shoes (the higher I am off the ground, the farther I am from the rats) and trepidation. Books remain my closest companions. (Though no one can tuck a person into bed quite like a good book, I'm met with resistance if I ask Jane Eyre to take out the trash.) I am so like my eight-year-old self that I wonder if she was the person I was meant to be all along, if my lifelong hunger for movement--to college and Europe and Australia and Orcas--has been nothing more than a subconscious search for who I used to be. While I am still her in so many of the obvious ways, I can't help but think that she was the one who had it all together. She knew her position on the field, could anticipate the bounce of the ball on a dirt field. Now, most days I feel like I'm still waiting to sub into the game.
The video ended--a resounding 5-0 win for my Honeybears--and I ejected the VHS. I spent so long feeling sorry that I'd never seen my younger self on video, but I was--and am--so proud of the girl in that footage. It's best to keep the things you need, I decided, sliding the video back into its sleeve and replacing it on the shelf next to my collection of Disney movies. It's best to keep the things you were. You may become them again one day, and it's good to know how to get them right the second time around.
Until last week I had never seen a video of myself as a child. My parents didn't (and still don't) own a camcorder, and I grew up in the gloomy, grey Zoloft days before cell phones. All the documentation of my childhood has come in the form of 35mm film rolls that spent years in cardboard boxes before maybe being developed.
In elementary school I had friends whose TV room shelves were stacked with home videos of ballet recitals or summer barbecues on the front lawn. Though I never once uttered this sentiment aloud, I was deeply envious. An immensely analytic child, I convinced myself that the reason there were no videos of me was that I wasn't cute enough or interesting enough, that I didn't say the darndest enough things. It was shameful to be that kid--the one who had already, at age eight, disappointed her parents to such an extent that they wanted no video record of her appalling, nail-biting, flat-footed ways.
Last week, in an attempt to make our guest room suitable for my friend and her husband who were visiting from Minnesota, I was cleaning our obscenely cluttered shelves full of movies. As I sorted through VHS after VHS of recorded episodes of CSI and Law & Order: SVU, I came across a videocassette tape (that's right, I said it) in a sleeve that was labeled, simply, "Olivia." Curious, I slid it out. Printed in small all-caps were the words "1996 Honeybears vs. Cheetahs." I was holding the world's only video documentation of myself as a child: the final game of my eight-year-old soccer season. I felt what I imagine Buzz Aldrin must have felt upon becoming the second person to ever walk on the moon. This colossal thing was happening in his life--was, in fact, happening to him--but someone else had already felt it. By the time he wafted down the ladder onto the moon's surface, Neil Armstrong and the rest of the world were already thinking, "Meh, this space thing--I'm over it."
I know that people have been making home videos for, like, millenia, so I'm hardly the first person to experience the sheer delight at seeing the gawky child prototype of her more grown-up self on camera. This being the first time it had happened to me, though, I was in awe. I popped the VHS into the player (because yes, we still have one of those) and after a moment of blackness there was Alexa (whose dad was the one filming), holding up a piece of poster board with the date and our team name. The shot cut to the field and there was little Tessa in her gigantic shorts that went practically down to her ankles. There was Nicci, whose dad you could hear in the background shouting his standard "Take out the coach's daughter, Nicci!" Kevin and Chris, my coaches, were pacing up and down the sidelines like they did every game, trailed by the teeming throng of us, the substitutes, calling out the positions on which we officially had dibs. The other team had a throw-in in our half of the field and Kevin shouted, "Girls! Back up! Defense up!", an instruction I'd heard for nearly 13 years and yet never quite understood, as "up" the field was the completely opposite direction.
When the ball rolled out of play and Chris yelled "SUBSTITUTION!" I got my first glimpse of the Olivia I had once been. My hair was long--close to halfway down my back--and pulled back in the high ponytail that I always thought made me look distinguished. My red knees were peeking out from below my shorts and I was standing with my legs crossed, as I still stand today, waiting for the ball to be thrown back into play. There was a look on my face of intense focus and what I can only describe as unbridled elation. The soccer field was my universe. I lived for hollow pop of the ball when it made contact with my cleats. At eight, I was content to spend all of eternity sprinting across the field like a wild horse, stopping only at halftime and only long enough to scarf down a couple orange wedges.
It was strange to witness myself in the act of living an experience I don't specifically remember. It was like I was watching someone else, but someone whose exact mistakes I'd already made, whose future I just so happened to be living. I felt like a voyeur. I knew this girl--knew that she loved making daisy chains, that she was terrified of the basement. I knew that she preferred a book to a conversation, that her favorite flavor of LipSmacker was Pink Lemonade, that she wanted to be an architect. I even knew that she wasn't entirely sure what being an architect actually meant.
I am now 26 and still so much that girl. I still love daisy chains, still descend into the basement with thick-soled shoes (the higher I am off the ground, the farther I am from the rats) and trepidation. Books remain my closest companions. (Though no one can tuck a person into bed quite like a good book, I'm met with resistance if I ask Jane Eyre to take out the trash.) I am so like my eight-year-old self that I wonder if she was the person I was meant to be all along, if my lifelong hunger for movement--to college and Europe and Australia and Orcas--has been nothing more than a subconscious search for who I used to be. While I am still her in so many of the obvious ways, I can't help but think that she was the one who had it all together. She knew her position on the field, could anticipate the bounce of the ball on a dirt field. Now, most days I feel like I'm still waiting to sub into the game.
The video ended--a resounding 5-0 win for my Honeybears--and I ejected the VHS. I spent so long feeling sorry that I'd never seen my younger self on video, but I was--and am--so proud of the girl in that footage. It's best to keep the things you need, I decided, sliding the video back into its sleeve and replacing it on the shelf next to my collection of Disney movies. It's best to keep the things you were. You may become them again one day, and it's good to know how to get them right the second time around.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
They're Here!
I know you've all been sick with anticipation these past few weeks, refreshing this blog as quickly as your fingers will let you. It's been long year, but the time has finally come: NPR Valentine's Day cards are back.
As these cards are my favorite thing about Valentine's Day, I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur. Some cards in this year's batch are fairly weak--I mean, "There ain't no Montagne high enough" for what? Finish your damn thought!--but I suppose I should accept that once they give us "I want you like I want Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine," there's nowhere to go but down.
I will say, though, that last week when I was at the bookstore working on lesson plans I may or may not have unintentionally spent a half hour of my life thinking up cards of my very own. If in the future NPR ever produces "I want to Lakshmi Singh my love for you from the rooftops," I trust you'll all remember that you heard it here first.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Why a Non-Football Fan Cared About the Super Bowl
Several weeks ago I walked into the kitchen where my mom was watching a Seahawks game. I paused for a moment, leaning my elbows on the counter, and tried to concentrate on the television. "That's called a snap," my mom explained, proud to contribute in some small way to my growing football vocabulary. "I'm aware of that, Mother," I answered. "I know a couple things about football." She turned her head and raised an eyebrow. "And by 'a couple,'" I added, dropping my eyes to the floor, "I mean literally two."I have never been what you might call present in the realm of football fandom. For me the sport has always been an impossibly unsavory combination of machismo and childishness. The football players at my high school were some of the least likeable, most egotistical and self-satisfied young men I have ever known. And, naturally, everyone loved them. I came to understand that the sphere of football and the sphere of my life, though both rattling around in the same galaxy, were magnetically repellant. Try as I might--and I'll admit that I did not try very hard--I could not crack the code of the game, couldn't wrap my head around the series of rules that seemed specifically designed to widen the gap between those of us whose lives were our homework and those whose lives were avoiding it. The draw of a sport whose games lasted, in my rough estimation, upwards of twelve hours was just unfathomable to me. And the gloating and touchdown celebrations made me cringe. Where was the humility?
When the Seattle Sounders joined Major League Soccer in 2009, I finally had a reason to read the sports section. The team quickly established an impressive fan base--still the largest and most loyal in the league--but this city is, at its heart, pure football. I got used to the soccer stories being relegated to the seldom-seen back page to make room for the latest news on the NFL Draft. The Seahawks will always be bigger news in their offseason than the Sounders ever are in the middle of theirs. I got used to this, yes, but I was never okay with it. I didn't care about a terrible call that summoned the nation to Twitter. There are mind-numbingly horrific game- and season-changing calls made every weekend in soccer and the entire country doesn't erupt in outrage. (Though if you ask me, it should.) I just didn't care about football.
I still don't. Not really, anyway. But with the season the Seahawks just had it was hard not to wake up in the morning and feel that there was something different, an airiness to the city, that hasn't existed before. One of my good friends is a rabid Seahawks fan, and this season, during the run up to the Super Bowl, I found myself watching games with her minutes at a time, voluntarily. Minutes turned into quarters, and as of today I have probably watched a grand total of five full football games in my life--which is an astronomical number for me, you see.
In the past month I've seen my city inhabited by what I can only describe as otherworldliness. Seattleites have always been remarkably pleasant people, but when the Seahawks made the playoffs the dial was turned up to eleven. You couldn't walk half a block without seeing 12th Man flags waving at the top of every flag pole, 12th Man jerseys on every person on the sidewalk, the number 12 constructed out of computer paper and taped up in office building windows. "Go Hawks!" became the official sign-off to every conversation, and the way our local news stations were covering the excitement you'd think the rest of the world--all the civil unrest and natural disasters--had ceased to be. The news coverage was a little much for me, but the mood around the city was, simply put, enchanting. People were more excited than I had ever seen them. They were united. Bathed in a pregnant glow. This great big thing was happening to them, to us, and we were stepping up and proclaiming, "This is who we are, and we are proud of it."
I work in Ballard, a quaint Scandinavian neighborhood in northwestern Seattle. While working on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, I looked out the window and saw two young men throwing a football back and forth across two lanes of traffic. Uh-oh, I thought. This can't end well. But the car horns I heard were long and continuous--blares of jubilation rather than irritation. A man marched down the sidewalk with a green mohawk, waving a 12th Man flag that was easily twice his height. My thoughts changed from Uh-oh to Am I living in a Norman Rockwell painting? By the time I left work at 3:30, just at the start of the game, I had absorbed so much residual excitement that I--and I hope you're sitting down for this--turned the car radio to the game. It's hard for me to explain just how unprecedented this kind of behavior is for me. I just couldn't help it. I wanted in on the excitement.
I still think the news coverage was over-the-top, and the parade that drew more spectators than there are residents of Seattle was over-the-top as well. I will never understand the jargon, or probably ever care enough to try. I still roll my eyes at the absurd displays of machismo after every sack. My heart will never belong to football. But my heart does belong to this city, and belonging to this city means standing behind what unites us. I may not care about the sport, but I care about what it means in the greater sphere of my life. Amid the cold and the rain, it transformed my city into a place of light, and for that reason I will always be grateful for the Seahawks.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Two Years
Two years ago today my high school English teacher Prudence Hockley was murdered on the sidewalk in front of her home. I love you, Hockley, and I miss you every day. You made me a thoughtful, perceptive person. You taught me to trust myself and to believe that I had so much to contribute to the world.
Because of you, I am who I am.
Thank you.
Because of you, I am who I am.
Thank you.
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