Get Up and Do a Little Dance

My grandfather died on May 11, 2010 – eleven months ago yesterday – surrounded by most of his immediate family. My husband and I were not there, though, because at the time, we lived five hundred and twenty miles away in Washington D.C. My brother tells me that after he had passed away and the minister had gone, my family was sitting quietly in the hospital room, not quite ready to leave my grandpa’s side. Suddenly, my grandma perked her head up a bit and looked around the room. From the confines of her wheelchair, she declared, “I ought to get up right now and do a little dance.”

Everyone looked at my grandma in shock and amazement. She loved her husband a great deal; they had been married for over sixty-five years and had not been parted literally since World War II. Everyone expected her to be mired deep within her grief – but that came later.

She looked at all of them and explained her statement: “Just to keep things interesting.”

That was my grandmother’s quirky sense of humor, though – and her desire to entertain others. She and my grandpa shared a similar desire to make people laugh – grandma would tell stories and say unexpected things, while grandpa wore funny hats and told corny jokes. I’m sure that I inherited my own desire to be a storyteller and my no small ability to entertain a room full of party-goers from my grandparents, who always bantered with everyone, from waiters and waitresses to their buxom nurses and handsome young doctors.

I was crying while driving home from work yesterday, thinking of how it had been eleven months since grandpa died and even longer since I had seen him in March of 2010, when I remembered this story about my grandma. And suddenly I knew that she and grandpa would want me to “get up and do a little dance” for them.

I just don’t really know what that means.

I do know, though, that despite my grief – which sometimes makes me want to stay curled up in bed – and despite all my insecurities about my new job and my questions about the future, I sometimes get out of bed and keep going simply because I know that they would want me to live my life. The desire to make them happy is so deeply engrained within me that no matter what else I am feeling, I still want achieve certain things that would have made them proud of me. I get up and keep going, but that isn’t exactly the same as “doing a little dance.”

So now, I am trying to figure out exactly how to start dancing again.

Another Glass of Chocolate Milk

I can’t imagine receiving a better compliment than, “You’re so well-adjusted!”

That’s right up there with, “I love your new haircut!” and “You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?” I would love to hear the words, “Lauren, you’re such a stable person. I wish I were as grounded and well-adjusted as you are!”

ad·just verb/ə-jəst/

adjusted, past participle; adjusted, past tense; adjusting, present participle; adjusts, 3rd person singular present

1. To alter or move (something) slightly in order to achieve the desired fit, appearance, or result. Examples: He smoothed his hair and adjusted his tie. The interest rate should be adjusted for inflation.

2. To permit small alterations or movements so as to allow a desired fit, appearance, or result to be achieved. Example: A riding harness that adjusts to the correct fit.

3. To adapt or become used to a new situation. Examples: She must be allowed to grieve and to adjust in her own way. His eyes had adjusted to semidarkness.

I’m not sure if I qualify as “well-adjusted” or not, but I feel like I’m adapting to my new job fairly well, all things considered. And my boss seems to agree with me. “It doesn’t seem like you’ve had too much trouble adjusting to the schedule here,” she said the other day, with a smile. I can tell that it was meant to be a compliment and that she’s pleased with me. She knows that I’ve had a very flexible schedule as a graduate student and a professor for the past few years, and that coming in for a nine to five work day is a big switch. Then yesterday, she told me that it seems like I’ve hit my stride over the past couple of days. I’ve come up with several ideas for press releases and public relations strategies that have made her happy, so I guess she’s right – I’m getting into the groove of this job.

Please just ignore the fact that I’m sitting around in my flannel pajamas at 2 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, drinking my third glass of chocolate milk, and downloading the rather inane Nancy Drew movie that came out a couple of summers ago.

I’m not in the mood to do a whole lot with myself right now – not even read. That’s the real shocker in fact – Lauren doesn’t want to read? My husband had to check my temperature when I told him that I wasn’t interested in any of my new books at the moment.

But please take note of that example sentence from the definition of adjust: "she must be allowed to grieve and to adjust in her own way." Sometimes I adjust (and definitely grieve) by watching marathons of television procedurals, particularly Law & Order – which was basically how I spent most of my afternoons last November and December after my grandmother died. Sometimes I decide to re-read my collection of Nancy Drew novels, and sometimes I reorganize my iTunes library while I chug chocolate milk. Very rarely do I decide that I’m going to conquer a Dostoevsky novel while I’m in the midst of serious emotional upheaval. Young adult novels and my Harry Potter DVDs are usually very comforting, as is shopping. (I’ve got a bad habit of buying useless, pretty things when I’m upset.)

But sometimes, I don’t even feel like reading any more – and that’s how I can tell that I’m not as “well-adjusted” as I might appear to be. Here I am, inside on a sunny Saturday afternoon and I can’t even justify my reclusiveness with the statement that “I just feel like finishing my book.”

I’ve also gotten out of the habit of writing when I’m upset, at least when the emotion is the strongest. During high school and college, I used to journal every day – there is an entire shelf of spiral-bound notebooks in my old bedroom at my parent’s house that no doubt contain the very self-absorbed heartaches of a hormonal teenager. But it was a healthy habit, I think – one that I dropped like a hot poker when we moved to Washington D.C. and I found myself not only upset, but excruciatingly alone. I no longer enjoyed wallowing in my emotional pain, nursing the heartache as though I were watching an over-dramatic soap opera about someone else’s life. I wanted to forget the sharp edge of loneliness pressing relentlessly into me like a knife against my rib cage, so I stopped writing about it – I tried to stop thinking about it all together.

I’m not really sure what made this week so tiring, so difficult that I feel as though I want to lay around in my pajamas and thoughtlessly guzzle chocolate milk, overlook the stacks of unread books that have been calling my name all week, ignore my blogs and even put off watching my more interesting, sophisticated Netflix DVDs in favor of youtube videos and silly tween movies. But I’ll know that I’m out of the woods when I stop relying on my coping mechanisms and get back on the horse – blogging almost every day, speeding through novels on my lunch hour.

In the meantime, I’m going to remind myself that I don’t have to be on top of my game all day, every day. I am allowed to have a bad week in which I don’t get too much done, and following major life changes like the deaths of my grandparents, moving from Washington D.C. to New York, and switching careers, I’m even allowed to have a bad month or a bad six months. Sometimes it’s fine to chug chocolate milk, and most importantly – it’s okay to not be okay.

Really, then, only one question remains important at this moment – how much chocolate milk can I drink before I make myself sick?

Nostalgia

[Note: some of this recaps my previous posts on the differences between living in Washington D.C. and in Nyack.]

When my husband and I drove down to visit friends in Washington D.C. a couple of weekends ago, we shared an uncomfortable moment – an uncomfortable moment that has stretched into an uncomfortable situation.

After spending a fun evening with friends, my husband was practically glowing. As I reported in a previous post, he had a big grin on his face as he earnestly told me that coming back to D.C. felt “like coming home.” There was an awkward pause as my enjoyment of the evening suddenly shriveled up and a hard knot formed in my stomach. I had to swallow hard and hold my tongue – I didn’t want to ruin his joyful little moment.

Honestly, I do not want to move back to the over-crowded urban parking lot that is the Washington D.C. metro area. I cannot stress enough how much this really effects your quality of life. Everywhere you drive, there are too many people. It takes an hour to get to work, to a friend’s house, or to the mall – unless you live a block away from your job or just down the street from your friend. But odds are, you don’t. Our best friends live in Virginia, in fact, half of our Friday night was always spent sitting in traffic so that we could hang out with them. I went to school less than 12 miles away from our apartment, but it always took me at least 50 minutes to get there… and that wasn’t even traveling on the infamous Washington D.C. Beltway. (I’m from the Motor City, so I am a big fan of freeways – but that’s assuming that a freeway is serving its purpose of allowing you to go faster than you would go on the surface roads…)

I didn’t really realize quite how miserable I was living in D.C. until we moved to New York, at which point I regained my sense of happiness at living in the world around me. Welcome to Nyack, Lauren: a little village on the bank of the Hudson River just thirty miles north of New York City, with access to all the amenities that you’re accustomed to but none of the over-crowding and stand-still traffic. I can breathe again.

But I’ve said all this before – this is old news. (I try not to repeat myself, but I’m a little bit giddy and obsessed with the freedom that I’ve found living here amongst the Palisades Cliffs and by the Hudson River.)

The new development, though, is this uncomfortable gap between my perspective and my husband’s perspective, between my desires and my husband’s desires. He’s ready to move back to D.C. in a couple of years (or somewhere even further south, for the warmer weather and longer days). I, on the other hand, am ready to buy burial plots at the cemetery on the western hill overlooking Nyack and settle in for the long haul. I had envisioned walking with my kids along Piermont Avenue to Memorial Park – pushing a stroller and stopping by the little stone library some afternoons. I had pictured dropping them off at the beautiful brick high school in the foggy mornings, and watching football games and track meets on the sweeping lawn in front of the building. I had started planning to make connections around the non-profit scene in New York City; I saw myself going to a lot of fancy parties in cocktail dresses and smiling and eating canapés, all while raising money for worthy causes. All of these visions of my future are very much rooted in the particular town where we currently live – whereas my husband’s dreams for the future are distinctly about being elsewhere. And I first started to realize this that evening in Washington D.C.

I went to bed that night trying to ignore the knot in my stomach. I woke up and showered and got dressed, all the while still feeling hollow. Despite the great time we’d had with our friends the night before, I was hoping that my husband would enjoy the rest of the weekend with family and friends, but be content with our new home in Nyack.

I was up before he was, though, because I was meeting a good friend of mine for coffee and as I drove across the Key Bridge and into Georgetown, I gazed around at the familiar roads lined with trees that were already beginning to blossom – and I felt a little flutter in my chest.

As I drove toward the familiar Starbucks on MacArther Boulevard, I couldn’t help but thinking: this is the route I drove every day with Chloe and Chloe and Mia (yes, two Chloes) in my backseat, on our way to the Smithsonian Museums. These are the flowering trees that welcomed me every spring morning on my way to school and to work, reminding me that March and April are so much warmer and more joyful in Washington D.C. than in wintry Michigan. These are the homes of the families whose students I used to teach, and up that hill is the school where we held summer camp. There is the CVS in the old MacArthur theater, there is our favorite Asian restaurant, where we went for Max’s birthday and I got a flat tire, and there is Jetties, the sandwich shop with the amazing Thanksgiving turkey dinner sandwich (complete with stuffing and cranberry sauce ON the sandwich).

I had suddenly discovered the problem: I had felt at home in Washington D.C. – just not in the place where we actually lived. I felt at home where I worked and where I went to school – forty-five minutes southwest of our apartment. I felt at home surrounded by my summer camp kids, who wanted me to bandage their knees and tell them stories and teach them how to make jewelry. I felt at home, knowing that I was good with those kids and that their parents appreciated everything that I did with their children. I felt at home working with Eleanor, who was always more of a friend than a boss, like an aunt or even an older sister who welcomed me into her own family.

I also felt at home going to school down the street at American University, which I described a little bit in a previous post – but my description of the campus doesn’t really explain that I felt comfortable there because I was respected for my scholarship, my knowledge about certain types of literature, my proficiency with research and teaching. (And I could run up and down the halls of the Literature Department in my bare feet with the Professor’s kids. That also made me feel quite comfortable.)

The flutter of nostalgia in my heart kept growing, and when I reached the Starbucks and was swept into Eleanor’s hug, my nostalgia was in my throat, practically choking me with happiness. I felt it now – I felt like I was home. Call it a cheesy Steel Magnolias moment or something, but Eleanor really feels like family to me – and more than just a random part of my family. Eleanor reminds me of my grandma. Their personalities aren’t exactly alike, but they are similar/complementary in many ways. The two of them would have gotten along fabulously, and I always wished that I could have introduced them. (I can picture them linking arms, my grandma intimately leaning toward my friend and wanting to discuss my many good qualities and accomplishments.)

They would have gotten along so fabulously because at the heart of it they had the same expansive love for other people – and they both love me. That is why talking to Eleanor is a lot like talking to my grandmother. It’s the way that they both love me, the way that I can really say anything and they understand it in a certain way. I may have learned to distance myself from most people while living in Washington D.C., but Eleanor is an incredibly easy person to talk to and to love. I have all but forgotten what it feels like to have that kind of woman right there with you, talking to you about hormones and chocolate binges and career options and husbands and car accidents and fear and grief.

So now I am incredibly confused. My morning drive along Canal and MacArthur Streets, the pale pink flowers budding on the trees, my hours spent in Starbucks with Eleanor – all these things awakened a nostalgia that in some ways, I wish had remained buried. Even if we could afford to live down by Georgetown (which we can’t), we would still have to deal with traffic in order to visit friends or even make a Target run (across the bridge in Virginia). Even if we could live near our best friends in Alexandria and I could spend evenings out drinking with my literary buddies at AU again (and believe me, literature people are hilarious when they’ve been drinking), I wonder if my soul wouldn’t slowly start to shrivel up again from spending so much time behind the wheel of a practically-stationary vehicle during my commute. I wonder if my husband wouldn’t spend a few months dealing with the same kind of commute and come to the conclusion that we had made a terrible mistake moving back into the urban sprawl.

Most of all, I’m afraid that no matter where my husband and I decide to spend our future, one or the other of us won’t be truly happy with what we’ve chosen.

To Write or Not to Write

The headline is as follows: Self-Proclaimed Writer Gives in to Bout of Selfish Lethargy, Questions Identity Due to Lack of Discipline and Product.

It may seem over-dramatic for me to be thinking along these lines when all that’s really happened is that I’ve let my blogging slide, but I feel like a contestant on a reality show that isn’t making the cut. I’m like one of those chefs that hasn’t prepared enough for the final bake-off on The Next Great Baker; my German Chocolate layers are going to be sagging and I’ll have to try to even out the finished product with extra fondant – but you can always tell that someone has cheated when you cut into the cake. In other words, my blog is the regular writing exercise that I need to maintain at least a sense that I’m moving forward as a writer – that I’m continuing to use and hone my skills, keep track of my thoughts, and amass material for the book that I will theoretically someday write. But I haven’t been writing and posting too much lately – I’ve been more interested in sleeping and reading after work.

This leads to the dramatic question of whether or not I really have the chops to make it as a writer – or am I simply a good communicator? I am, after all, only a self-declared writer and don’t really feel comfortable calling myself an author at this point, since I have only published a couple of academic articles, and haven’t even produced (let alone published) any short stories, novels or non-fiction books.

Of course, anyone is free to disagree with the way I am parsing the definitions of writer and author, but it is important to understand that in my mind, having published my critical opinions on other people’s works of fiction does not fulfill my ultimate goal of writing and publishing memoirs and fiction. This isn’t to say that one type of writing is better than others, merely that they are different, and that I still feel as though my goal of writing stories of any kind is a far-off dream. I think I have become one of those people who says things like, “I always meant to write a novel…” Or perhaps I qualify as one of those people that says, “I’m writing a novel,” when really they have a few scribbles and dead-end ideas that they haven’t worked on for months but they can’t consciously acknowledge that they will never actually finish their project. I’m not sure whether it would feel worse to know that I am someone who failed because I didn’t have the discipline to even start, or someone who failed because I didn’t have the discipline to keep going.

In any case, I sometimes question whether or not I should really call myself a writer. Sure, I write for a living now, so I suppose that counts – I write pages and pages about how communities in the Bronx and other parts of New York are poverty-stricken and need various types of support services; I write blurbs and press releases about the events and fundraisers at our social services organization. I write web content and email updates; I engage in the act of writing plenty. I can even claim fairly accurately that I do all that well – because I am a skilled communicator. My boss seems fairly pleased with me, others have praised what I have contributed to the organization so far – I should be happy.

But although I have found a good career, it doesn’t help meet my personal creative goals. Writing for a living isn’t the same as being the author of a novel, something that I would be proud to contribute to the world’s accumulation of art. (Cue the song “Glory” from Rent – the one where Roger sings about his desire to leave behind one thing that will “redeem this empty life” when he dies.)

Maybe the problem is that we aspiring artists set the bar too high – Roger wants to “find Glory / in a song that rings true / truth like a blazing fire / an eternal flame.” But that is a seriously ambitious goal, and we can’t all be Bonos and Dostoevskys. Even if I published a novel and it got some buzz for a while, what are the chances that it would gain the kind of readership that Fyodor and Charles Dickens still enjoy? How many of us really express “truth like a blazing fire” that cuts to the heart of everyone who reads our work?

The other day, my husband asked me, “Do you still want to write a book someday?” His question seemed to come out of nowhere, and it bewildered me for a minute. Yes, of course I want to write a book… perhaps even more than one. But how realistic is that dream? Is it realistic enough for me to consider it a goal and not just a fantasy? Is it any more realistic than my dream of owning a yacht?? I have to question the practicality of my own goals if I can’t even maintain a regular (creative) writing schedule while I’m working a nine-to-five job.

It was nice to realize that my wonderful husband was asking that very question because he was contemplating scenarios in which he would work full time and I would stay home with our kid(s) and write a book, so perhaps it will be more feasible for me to devote more time and energy to writing longer projects at some point in the future. But even so, one has to question the feasibility of a goal that may always have to be put off for something more immediate. I’m reminded of a refrigerator magnet that my grandma used to have: a bright pink elephant with the words “I’ll diet tomorrow” stamped into his flank. More than a reality show contestant, I resemble that elephant; I might as well be tattooed with the words, “I’ll write tomorrow.”

My lack of desire to sit down and write is not from lack of material, though – I still haven’t blogged about the rest of my weekend in D.C., which on some level I am eager to get down on paper and share with my small but devoted audience. I had some thoughts and experiences that I, being the egomaniac that I am, think were pretty interesting. The stuff of epiphanies, -- absolutely brilliant, you know.

I’ll force myself to get back to that subject in a day or two, but once I realized that I had been putting off the writing most of the week, I couldn’t help but mull over my identity as a writer a bit. My title at work is “Communications Associate and Grant Writer,” which may be a more accurate reflection of my identity overall as my life follows its new course. I communicate skillfully and I write very specific forms. Does that make me an author? Not in my opinion.

But maybe I need to be a little less hard on myself. Maybe I also need to take heart from the very thing that shook me to the core this past December/January – the crazy new direction that my life has taken. I suppose that if it has already happened once or twice, it could happen again. I could end up living on a yacht off the coast of Greece, writing novels and collecting a paycheck as big as Stephen Kings. Of course, it’s more likely that I’ll pop out a baby or two, then try to write a novel in between soccer practices and swim meets.

(Hey, if Stephenie Meyer can do it, then why can’t I? I have to admit that I'm rather taken by the whole story of how she wrote Twilight, staying up late at night after her husband and children had gone to bed, afraid to show anyone but her sister what she was working on. And now she has five novels and as many movie adaptations to her name, not to mention all the fan paraphernalia and a flirty little red sports car that she bought with her bonus check.)

In the meantime, my modest goal is to continue blogging – because if nothing else, it allows me to keep track of my thoughts, accumulate ideas and stretch my narrative muscles in a way that I just can’t do when I’m writing a grant. I don’t need to be a Nazi when it comes to maintaining a strict schedule for my blog, but if I let it slip by too much, I will be abandoning something much larger than just the blog itself. I will be abandoning the idea that I am working toward the book that I promised my grandmother that I would write – and if nothing else, I can’t let her down. That is a pretty good reason to keep thinking of myself as a writer and working toward that goal.