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The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear. Fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
– H.L. Mencken
So I’ve been thinking about this post lately. Not the boy – David’s got that part covered – but the end. This: “I learned, eventually, that you have to listen to everything, you can’t just pick and choose the parts that fit the story you’re telling in your head.”
And I was thinking about the story I tell in my head all the time – we all do it, we all tell a story about the life we imagine we live, about why we do things, and what we hope for. It’s the story we tell to get through the day, because the truth is so often less than we would like it to be.
My story’s about a girl who’s kind, and smart, and funny, and generous. Who’s successful, by most people’s standards, both personally and professionally. Whose life is more or less charmed in a number of important ways.
My truth, though, so often seems to fall short of that. I am often unkind, and particularly judgmental, at least in my thoughts. I regularly feel like everyone else is smarter than I am, particularly at work, and that I am a heartbeat away from people realizing I’m a fraud. I haven’t updated my weight loss photo album on Facebook in more than a year, because the truth is, I’ve gained 35 pounds in 15 months and I am terribly ashamed of that, and yet I cannot get it together to take control of my eating. My so-called charmed life has been scarred by some particularly shitty things, especially early on, and I lack the courage to truly face at least one of them. I live most of my life with some level of fear of not being good enough while setting such unbelievably high expectations of myself that it’s no wonder I fall short. I live with the man I want to marry and who I know loves me unconditionally, and yet I spend an inordinate of time and energy fighting the feeling that, sooner or later, he’s going to realize that I’m not quite what he thought. I drop out of communication with my friends and my grandma for extended periods of time because I just don’t have the energy or the attention span even to send an email, and by the time I do, so much has happened that I can’t bear having to recap it all, so I give up. That’s my truth.
Is it any wonder that the story I’m telling in my head is decidedly more upbeat? It has to be; otherwise, I’d never get out of bed.
I have often heard people speak of true love, but for me, it was more of a sense of what was right, like the right amount of cinnamon, or the right amount of wine. And as far as other things I have heard, to say that I was his is not at all a phrase I find accurate, though I might say I was devoted to him, And I did not know if I would be with [him] when we were 12 and 15, or 54 and 57, but I knew that I should be.
– from A Still Small Voice, by John Reed
Yesterday was David’s 3oth birthday. I wanted to post something yesterday, but with all of the birthday activity, and being sick, I didn’t get a chance to. Today, I’m home sick from work, so I thought I’d take advantage of the free time and tell you a little something about him.
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A year ago, David and I sat on a bench at the Navy Memorial, trying to talk our way through the very complicated beginning of our relationship. It was a Friday after work, the day before his birthday; I had taken him to lunch earlier since I wasn’t expecting to be able to see him again until Monday. I had written him a letter telling him 10 things he didn’t know about me and baked him cookies, which I left on his desk before he got in to work. He loved both the letter and the cookies.
We were talking about how the beginning works, when everything’s so complicated. He was afraid of making a big change; I was afraid of never getting to be with him. We knew that this was a chance we had to take, or risk wondering about it for the rest of our lives, but the first step was very scary. Around and around we went, each of us fighting the other, trying to make our way to common ground.
Eventually, the talking stopped and we just looked at each other, searching each other’s eyes, wondering if we were thinking the same thing. I decided to risk it, and leaned in. He stopped me.
“Wait,” he said. “I want to tell you before I kiss you.”
“What?” I asked, hoping I was right about what was next.
“I love you,” he said.
I smiled with tears in my eyes. “I love you, too.” I said.
And that was that. We’ve been together ever since.
It hasn’t always been a walk in the park, obviously, but even when it was so hard a couple of months ago, there wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be. David is my other half in so many ways; even after a year, he’s still the first person I want to tell things to, the first person I want to do anything with, the only person I can imagine waking up to every day and coming home to every night, the person who believes in me when I don’t believe in myself, the one who supports me and encourages me and helps me up when I stumble, the one who seems to understand me the way no one else can. His are the arms I want around me when the world feels like too much; his are the arms I burrow into each night as I fall asleep, knowing there isn’t a single place on earth I’d rather be.
I love the way, if I’m walking behind him, he absentmindedly reaches his hand back for me to take, because he wants me next to him. I love the way he comes up and kisses me out of the blue for no reason. I love that we casually say, “When we get married . . .” or “When we have kids . . .” like it’s a foregone conclusion, with no doubt that it will ever come to pass. I love that he takes such good care of the tomatoes, even though he won’t eat them. I love that he acts as my ears without either of us even realizing it. I love the way he brushes me off every morning when I tell him how handsome he looks (“You say that every day”) because I know he’s secretly pleased to hear it. I love the tilt of his head when he’s about to say something sweet to me, and the way he secretly touches my leg under the table when we’re out to dinner. I love that every time we drive somewhere more than an hour away, we have to be sure we find a Sheetz so that he can get a vanilla cappucino.
He’s so smart, and he makes me laugh every day. He makes me a better person in so many ways, and I know that I’m lucky to have found him. I hope I get to write one of these every year.
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
– Virginia Woolf
Where do you find your inspiration? As far as blogging goes, I read a number of people, particularly women, who write beautifully, humorously, truthfully, about their lives and the people in them, and I long to be among them. I don’t think I always succeed, but here and there perhaps you can catch glimpses of what I aspire to do.
Today, one of my favorites wrote about her mother who passed away unexpectedly several years ago. Reading her post, as with most of the things she shares about her family, brought tears to my eyes. Partly because I was sad for her, but also because her writing about grief is at once heartbreaking and hopeful, and that’s a combination that really speaks to me.
So for today’s post, I thought I’d link to a couple of my favorite posts by a few of my favorite women bloggers. I hope they move you as much as they moved me.
Dawn: In addition to the one I linked above, I also recommend:
Jane:
Elisabeth:
Mo:
Lyrically Me
Ladies, if you object to being linked here (or just to these particular entries being linked), please let me know, and I will be happy to remove them.
Blindness separates us from things, but deafness separates us from people.
– Mark Ross
I’ve been so distracted this past week that, for the first time since it happened, I forgot that yesterday was the anniversary of my hearing loss. Here’s my post from last year.
When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed, but your childhood.
– Sam Ewing
This is the house in Pennsylvania I lived in from the time I was 6 until I was 9:
David and I were at a wedding in New Jersey this weekend, and we detoured to my old neighborhood on the way back. I’ve done this once before – in 2003, I gave Nate tickets to see the Cubs v. the Phillies during the last season at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia (that’s the first professional baseball game we ever saw when we were kids living outside Philly). The weekend we were there, we decided to take the El out to near where we used to live and go see our old house. This weekend’s experience, just like that one, has left me pensive.
This is what I think of as my childhood home, though we only lived there for three years. It’s one half of a duplex, I guess they call it, and before I went back in 2003, I would have described it — and been convinced I was right — as having all white siding on the front, but I’d have been wrong. Also, when we lived there, the front of the property was bordered by a two-foot high retaining wall on top of which grew very tall hedges. You could hardly see the house from the street. The fence around the back yard was chain link, not wood like it is now. The people who live there now have added a play area in the back yard that’s got mulch in it, but otherwise, everything’s the same.
Except it isn’t.
The street itself is so small. Cars parallel park on either side, and there’s only room for one-way driving down the middle. I would swear it was bigger when I was a kid – the houses across the street were surely farther away than they were yesterday. Weren’t they? And the alley behind it – we don’t have alleys in Virginia – I can remember my friends and I racing down it on our bikes, from the top of the street to the bottom, and being gleefully frightened at the speed with which we were descending such a steep hill. As a grown up, though, I can tell you that the incline in the alley is 15 degrees, tops.
I looked at the windows, remembering what lay behind each one when we lived there, narrating for David – those two in the front upstairs, that was my parents’ room. Downstairs, the front door opened into the living room where I celebrated my 8th birthday with a Cabbage Patch Kid-themed party, having gotten my first (and only) Cabbage Patch doll that Christmas. In the back, the window on the left, that was my tiny room, barely big enough for my twin bed and dresser. On the right, Nathaniel’s, except when we had to share while my dad used my room for research when he was writing his dissertation. That window in the back, to the right of the screen door, was the dining room, and my bicycle (a hand-me-down boy’s bike from my uncle) got stolen from underneath it. I still remember the sinking feeling in my stomach when I looked down out of the window in Nathaniel’s room and realized it was gone.
We used to drink from the hose hooked up to the side of the house – nothing tastes like water right from the hose, does it? The latch on the back gate gave too easily, and our sheepdog, Shad, used to regularly get out of the yard and roam the neighborhood. I can hear us calling after her even now. Nathaniel and I once tried to sell lemonade and iced tea from our front porch, no easy feat considering the tall hedges out front and the fact that it was probably a weekday in the summer. To make up for our poor location, we yelled “Lemonade! Iced Tea!” at all the cars passing by. My parents’ room was above the front porch, and my dad was sleeping in that day. He yelled at us to be quiet. I don’t think we made much money.
I can still remember the slightly musty smell that hit you when you opened the door from the kitchen to go down to the basement. Oh, the basement – we don’t really have basements in Virgina, either. Nathaniel and I spent hours down there, especially on rainy days. We used to roller skate along the smooth concrete floor, crashing into the walls at either end (it wasn’t very big). We played games and made up stories – we had these hand puppets, one was a raccoon and one was a sheep, and we decided they were detectives. There was even a theme song.
David and I walked up the alley; I pointed out the space between the houses on the other side where I used to cut through to go to my friend’s house. At the top of the alley we made a u-turn and came down my old street from the end. From up there, I pointed out my old baby-sitter’s house and the church where I used to have Brownie meetings. On the way down, I recalled the particular front porch on which I spent many hours with another friend playing “Hotel” – which, as far as I can remember, consisted of us pretending someone was calling on the old phone we had and making pretend reservations at our hotel for various invented people.
When Nathaniel and I visited, I didn’t recognize where we got off the El, and we walked for a good 20 minutes from there before I recognized anything. I was struck then how much of a difference the two years in age must make, that he knew the way home from the El even after 17 years, and I had no clue. My whole world then basically consisted of the three blocks that included my elementary school one block over, my street, and the street on the other side of the alley where several of my friends lived. Big enough for a nine-year old for sure, but tiny in retrospect.
In my heart, though, it’s still big enough for all the memories we made there.
One day, our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender, instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.
– Franklin Thomas, in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellion, by Gloria Steinem
I interrupt our regularly scheduled programming (that would be Vegas in Four Parts) to bring you this dispatch from my local Social Security office.
It is not often that I’m a noticeable minority. While I have plenty of accquaintances and casual friends of other races and ethnicities, my closest friends are all pretty much like me. I don’t know what that says about me – do I need to get out more? Do I need to make a more concerted effort with the people I do know who aren’t like me? Probably both.
In any event, because I spend most of my time with – let’s be blunt – white people, I found it sociologically interesting today when I had to spend my morning at the Social Security office. I don’t mind telling you that when I lost my hearing and went out of work on disability, my then-employer required me to apply for Social Security benefits. I didn’t want to; I thought I was perfectly capable of working (though I’d soon come to find out that no one wanted to hire me), but it was policy since I was receiving disability payments from my employer. So I did.
Fast forward five-and-a-half years. I’ve finished law school and I’m working. The way Social Security works, you get to keep your benefits for a specified period of time if you start working, no matter how much money you make, to be sure that you can maintain what they call “substantially gainful” employment. I called them when I started working and gave them all of my employment information and was assured they’d get my salary info directly from my employer and notify me about when my benefits would cease. I accepted that and went on my merry way.
Well, as you’ve probably guessed and I probably should have expected, they never actually did get the information from my employer, so my benefits never stopped. When I called again earlier this month, the woman told me they have no record of my prior call or of the fact that I’m working (which boggles my mind, because I work for the federal government – seems like it’d be really easy for them to check up on that, but I guess one hand doesn’t talk to the other in big bureaucracies) and that I would have to bring my W-2 to the Social Security office for them to determine when my benefits should have stopped and “how much [I] have to pay back.” Awesome.
Ok, so on to the point of all of this. I arrived at the office at 8:55 this morning. It opens at 9. The lobby was already open and there were already about 30 people in the waiting room. So much for thinking if I got there right when they opened I wouldn’t have to wait so long. I had forgotten to bring a book, or anything else to occupy me, so I took the opportunity to people watch. And the people watching at an agency like this is good, let me tell you. This was how I came to realize that I was:
a. one of the youngest people there (there were plenty of kids with their parents, but I mean of the grown ups);
b. one of fewer than 10 white people over the course of the two-and-a-half hours I was there (and the turnover was pretty high while I was there); and
c. one of the few native-English speakers.
The other thing I noticed was that nearly all of the interviewers and people who worked in the office were white; I saw two black workers and one Hispanic worker.
I don’t know. I must be out of practice at writing, because this is not the post intended to write when I was mulling over this experience in my head today. I wanted to talk about what it felt like to see all of these people there and not see my face reflected in any of them. That doesn’t happen to me. But I bet it happens to them a lot, and I wonder what that’s like for them. It didn’t bother me, but that’s probably because I knew on some level that as soon as I left that office, the status quo would be restored.
I wanted to talk about watching two Asian men for whom English was obviously not a first, or even second, language try to explain to the greeter what they needed, and how touched I was at her patience with them and how impressed at her refusal to speak to them the way Americans often speak to people who don’t understand them – loudly, slowly, over-enunciatingly (this is, perhaps not coincidentally, the way people often try to talk to me when they discover I’m hearing impaired).
I wanted to talk about the beautiful, 8-month-old Hispanic baby who was next to me for much of my time in the waiting room, and how I distracted him so his mother could fill out her forms. He had these giant brown eyes and big, goofy, toothless smile, but his face was more like that of a little boy, not a baby. He was so happy the whole time, hardly fussed at all.
I wanted to talk about the couples – so many couples. I like to watch couples to see if I can discover their dynamic. Many of them today were elderly, and the way they gingerly held each other’s arms, or shuffled slowly behind one another as they made their way through the waiting room, or huddled together talking quietly, moved me in a way I hadn’t expected.
I wanted to talk about my sadness, too, at not being able to hear normally. That is, after all, the reason I was there in the first place. But today wasn’t the general sadness that I always feel on some level; it was more acute. There were so many people there, and many of them were not speaking English, and I was sad that I couldn’t hear the cacophony of languages that was surely floating through the air. I love languages – I’m good at them, and other people’s accents never gave me any trouble – and I wished so much that I could hear everything and try to pick out the different ones being spoken today. I can remember feeling this exact sadness one other time since I lost my hearing: walking up the steps at Sacré Coeur in Paris. It was April 2003, and there were probably hundreds of people there, sitting in clusters all up and down the steps, or climbing to the top. I just knew they were from all over the world, and I longed to be able to wander among them, secretly taking in their unfamiliar accents and strange words.
Today also reminded me of something that often occurs to me, but still amazes me every time. I look at all of these people, many of them quite old, some of them disabled in ways I can’t comprehend, all of them different from me, and I realize that at one time, they were all babies, and then toddlers. For some reason, this thought takes my breath away. I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe it’s that, by the time I come in contact with most people, they’re already grown-ups, and I interact with them having never known them any other way, and so my mind basically assumes they’ve never been any other way. Maybe it’s the idea that there are so many stories out there in the world, and no two are exactly the same. I suspect, though, that it’s the idea that we all start the same way, like Mark Twain said: “We haven’t all had the good fortune to be ladies; we have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.”
Hmm. Maybe I did ok, after all.
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
– Oscar Wilde
One year ago today, Hear Me in the Harmony was born. It seems both longer and more recent than that, but WordPress says it’s true. In honor of the day, I thought I’d share some HMITH trivia with you.
- I started over at Blogger and moved to WP on 12/15/07.
- Total number of posts: 132, including this one (that’s not so many; I wish I’d written more. Maybe this year.)
- Most viewed post: Seven Minutes in Heaven (which has more than twice the views of the next closest post, This Year’s Love)
- Total number of comments: 538
- Post with the most comments: Run For Your Life (followed closely by Who Are You, and Where Did You Come From?, one that’s very special to me)
- Most clicked link in my Blogroll: Things My Boyfriend Says (though that site hasn’t been updated in well over a year; maybe she broke up with her boyfriend?)
- The only post that doesn’t begin with a quote: Hey, It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask, Right?
- Most common search term used to reach HMITH: “white tiger,” with “white tigers” in second (Really? I mean, that’s weird, isn’t it? I have one picture of a white tiger, here, from my trip to Houston, but you know, not really being a blog about white tigers, I find this oddly troubling.)
- Funniest search term used to reach HMITH: I think it’s a tie between “ways to almost die,” “I have a crush on my dentist,” and “Michael Keaton saves woobie.”
- Best search term used to reach HMITH: This one’s easy – “Brian McCann”
- My favorite post: This one was tough, and I couldn’t choose just one – my favorites are Brothers and Sisters and Memory Lane of Men, Part 1.
The best part of blogging, though, has been getting to know so many of you through the comments and through your own blogs (because I’m always reading, even if I’m not writing). I love being part of your lives this way, and I’m so glad you’ve allowed me to share myself with you.
Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console themselves for no longer being in a position to give bad examples.
– Francois la Rochefoucauld
I’ve been holding on to this for a little while now, since Lyrically first did it back in April, and I thought I’d go ahead and share it with you now. Remember this spoken word “song” that was popular about 10 years ago (maybe longer)? The words are taken from an imagined commencement address written by a Chicago Tribune writer. Lyrically gave her take on it, and commenters offered some suggestions as well, and I started my own list with the intent to share it here. And here we are.
Never leave home without Chapstick. When the world gets to be too much, spend time with people under the age of 5. Try to laugh at something every day. Sing, whenever, wherever, even if it’s only to yourself. Life is too short to eat fat-free cheese. Read for pleasure – it’s the best way to learn new things and expand your vocabulary. Own a cat, especially if you live alone; it helps to have something to take care of. Always buy what kids are selling at card tables on their front lawns. Smile at strangers – it doesn’t cost anything and it might brighten someone’s day. Always bring socks or stockings with you when you go shoe shopping (otherwise, you’ll end up like me, with multiple pairs of shoes that are *just* too big). Diet Dr. Pepper is the only diet soda that really does taste like the original. When you move to a new neighborhood, find the local public library and get a card as soon as you can. Learn to drive stick. Don’t be afraid to ask questions – how else are you supposed to get the answers? Get unlimited text messaging on your cell phone.
Never wear open-toed shoes without painting your toenails. When making macaroni and cheese from a box, mix the milk with the cheese powder first, and then add it to the macaroni. Floss – your dentist is right (and my dentist is hot!). Be friends with your siblings. Always try to be fair, even when fighting. Don’t let kind things go unsaid. Get to know your grandparents. Recycle, recycle, recycle. Send thank you notes; especially these days, you’ll stand out from the rest, and it’s just the right thing to do. You are never alone, even when you feel like you are. Study abroad in college – you won’t be sorry. Read the newspaper. Learn to love a sport, it’s a great way to connect with strangers. Don’t play games with people’s hearts – be honest about your feelings. Go places by yourself; you don’t always need a wingman. Make your bed every day – it takes 2 minutes and makes a huge difference. Credit cards are not worth the trouble; avoid them if you can. Exercise is good for your body and your mind – make it a habit, but find something you love to do.
Go to therapy – where else can you find someone who’ll listen to you for an hour and not expect to talk about themselves in return? When someone asks you to be in their wedding, only say yes if you can honestly stand up for the relationship. Take lots of pictures. Shave your underarms in both directions; you’ll get a closer, longer lasting shave. The only way you won’t get what you want is if you stop trying to get it. Eat breakfast every day. Never stay with someone who doesn’t believe in you. Follow through when you say you’re going to do something. Share what you have with others, whether it’s money, time, talent, wisdom, or friendship. Be someone’s secret admirer.
So there you go. What’s your advice?
I loved her: for her loyalty, for her sweet good humor, for the way she held her hair off her neck when she was hot; for the streak of sadness in her and for her belief that one true love could wipe it clean.
– from The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, by Ann Packer
It’s a funny thing, hope. One hopeful thing – a boy telling you, “I’d like to see you again” – can do so much to move you away from the hopelessness that you’d been feeling and which you thought was going to be endless.
Hope is what gets you out of the house on a Saturday night when you were planning just to stay home and mourn a friendship that might never be the same. Hope is what says, come on, you can’t just sit here moping; you never know what’s waiting out there for you. Hope is what leads you to put on what you feel most confident in, and lets you understand what he tells you with his eyes. Hope makes you feel like you can be anyone you want to be, because he doesn’t know you, but makes you realize that just being you should be enough. Hope helps you be strong enough not to shy away.
The thing that hope does, too, is help you see that this is not all there is for you. This is not all there is, one boy who broke your heart by accident. There is more, someone who will hold your hand while you walk down the street and guide you through a crowded bar with a hand on your back and watch you as you disappear down the escalator after a night of talking and kissing and getting to know each other.
But it’s a hard thing, too, hope, because you have to trust it. You have to trust that, if he said he wants to see you again and asked you if that would be ok, if he took your number and gave you his, if he kissed you first, if he told you that you’re beautiful, that he meant those things. And you want to believe it, because that’s who you are and what you do, but you’re not sure, because he still hasn’t called. And you tell yourself to be patient, but it’s difficult, because it feels like a game, this waiting, and you don’t understand why, if he wants to see you, he wouldn’t just tell you so.
But even if he never calls, you know that you will be ok, because hope has shown you that there is more than this for you. And there is no rule that says you can’t call him.
What People Are Saying