Wendy’s with Kelly

I hate when plans fall through. Particularly with my group of Pittsburgh girlfriends, everyone shows such enthusiasm at the idea of going out, and then, as soon as one obstacle presents itself, everyone gives up.

Last night was one such instance. We had intended to go dancing. We chose Thursday night because by then, Vicky would be back from her various travels and Kelly would not yet have left for her internship in D.C. I was tremendously excited, not having officially “been” twenty-one—and therefore capable of entering any club or bar I please— in the States, yet. We initially made our plan when a bunch of us girls got together at Emily’s house as a sort of “welcome back/good-bye” gathering.

But then people started dropping out. Emily French left for vacation. Emily Holupka went to eat dinner with her friends from college. Becky needed to pack for vacation. Vicky was tired. Thus, Kelly and I were left plan-less and disappointed, both having returned from Europe, with Kelly already about to leave again. I tried my best to make other plans, but my friends just continued to prove their unreliability: Bob invited me to a party in Monroeville, and he was supposed to call me once he was ready to go with the address of the party. Of course, he never called.

After waiting for almost an hour to go to this party, I called Kelly. Both of us were fed up and feeling the overwhelming sentiment of, “screw guys; let’s go get chocolate.” Consequently, we found ourselves parked in Kelly’s van outside the Wendy’s drive-through, eating Frosties and reflecting on our return to the States: how we felt about different aspects of living in the States—I hate having to drive everywhere; she feels weird thinking in partial French; we both despise “needing” so much stuff)—and how different/the same people (our respective families and mutual friends) seemed. We talked about people we know who are in various stages of dying, and how shocked we were about finding out about them since arriving home. This led to discussions about our parents and our random thoughts about their mortality. (What would be our reaction upon hearing the news of our parents’ death? Which parent could handle the other’s death better?) We talked for over an hour, just sitting in the van in the dark parking lot of Edgewood Town Center.

I cannot believe Kelly is already leaving. The two of us have been on separate continents for almost six months, and we’ve only finally returned to the same city in the past week. I have seen her three times in six days, and I feel like I haven’t said even 2% of all I need to tell her, much less heard all that I imagine she has to say to me. It makes me wonder if trying so hard to keep in touch with people is really worthwhile. Our lives are going to take us separate ways in the end, anyway. In a year, I’ll have a job in one city, and she’ll probably have one somewhere halfway across the country (if not halfway around the world). We might never live within one hundred miles of each other again. What will we get out of staying in touch, other than more stress and renewed memories of a former friendship?

It scares me that I am asking myself these questions, because I have always been the one to insist upon staying in contact with others. I never considered distance anything more than an obstacle to overcome. Now the future, with its jobs and adult-ness, looms before me, begging the question, What is really worth my time and effort? Should I keep harassing Kelly when she doesn’t e-mail me back for two weeks? Should I spend the money to call her? In the end, I fear it might all be nothing more than an exercise in futility. People need people in the here and now. They need bodies. They need faces.

I am really going to miss that girl.

Meeting Andy

I hung out with Andy last night. It was so refreshing: I felt like my conversations with him were the first “important” conversations I have had with someone since I have been home. I wasn’t listing things that had happened to me just for their entertainment value, and he wasn’t telling me the logistics of his life like he was reading them off of a shopping list. What we said had meaning for both of us; we were really communicating.

I also felt like I was re-meeting Andy, like he was a completely new person than the one I have known all my life. Gone was the Andy who lived for the sole purpose of dating and pleasing his girlfriend. Gone was the high school Andy, who did as little work as possible while achieving the best possible return. Gone was the skinny, bony, boyish Andy I remember. Instead, I encountered a tall, conscientious young man who is searching for direction in his life. This is not to say he has “lost his way”—as so many of our other friends have—but, rather, he is thinking hard about his current pursuits and where they will lead him.

Any outsider would say that he is barreling 100mph toward success, with his multiple lab jobs, prestigious fellowships, graduate classes, and hospital work. Yet, instead of panicking about “needing to do more” (as success often breeds the demand for more success), he is contemplating whether or not these are all things he truly loves to do. He wants to be happy, and he is trying to find out how.

Andy has always been someone I have respected. In high school, we always competed for the best grades, but where I worked hard to land the grades and “beat him,” he just did whatever amount of work he felt like doing and watched the grades play out as they would. Luckily for him, his genius got him through, and each of us “won” about half of the time. If my class had had a valedictorian, it would be hard to say who would have received that status.

Nevertheless, I did not just respect Andy for his intellect. I have met many smart people both in high school and college, yet few of them impressed me as much as Andy did. Andy thought about life. He did not take people or events at face-value, and he was always looking to get more out of every experience. I never spoke to anyone as frankly and searchingly about love, happiness, or spirituality as I did to him during our years in high school.

For a time, it seemed he had lost this desire to “dig deep.” We no longer had much to say to one another once he got a girlfriend, and we fell out of touch, only seeing each other occasionally in the summer, both busy with our lives. When he and his girlfriend broke up, I e-mailed him, and we wrote back and forth a few times. Then, last night, I had a bit of spare time, so I called him up. I drove down to Oakland to see his new apartment (which, although he has been living there since February, was at least new to me), and we went for coffee. (Well, he got coffee. I got apple juice.) Then, we went on a walk around Oakland, ending up in a park for a while, before returning and sitting on the porch of his apartment. “It’s the little things that matter,” he told me at one point, lurching away from a spinny-contraption in the park.

And he is right: it is the little things, and I noticed all of them that night. I noticed how he looked older—not old in a worn-out way, but more mature. He has filled out since I last saw him, and he now wears a scruffy, unshaven look naturally, without looking like a boy trying to pretend to be a man. He paid for my apple juice—a small gesture, but one I appreciated more than he could possibly understand. I noticed how he thought about what he wanted to say before beginning to speak, looking into a space by the back of my head as he gathered my thoughts. I noticed how frankly he looked at me as I spoke, how he asked questions and seemed to really want to know the answers. I noticed how he lit cigarettes casually on the porch, and how I didn’t really mind anymore.

All of these things are important. They matter. We are growing, and time spent apart only emphasizes even more strongly how much and in what ways.

Self-Discovery

It’s very strange being home. Everything is simply massive: the cars are massive, the buildings are massive, the rooms are massive, the portions are massive. People in America are noticeably taller than people in Europe; I certainly no longer stand out as “the tall girl” now that I am home. I feel as if just by coming home, I have undergone some sort of transformation.

Observing changes in myself seems nearly impossible, and yet I seem to find ways I have become different—act differently, think differently, talk differently—every day. For one thing, my self-confidence has improved. For the first time in my life, I actually don’t care what others think of me. I am okay with me, I am okay with what I choose to do, so what my peers think is really irrelevant. I have always told myself that I felt this way, but it was more a matter of self-insistence than reality; I was insisting that I felt that way so maybe I finally would. Now, I find myself proving that I feel this way by acting accordingly. Finding myself doing this almost automatically is liberating, in a sense, but also worrisome. I greatly fear seeming pompous or stuck-up.

I have been through a whole range of experiences that most of my friends could not even begin to imagine: I settled in a new country and navigated (successfully) other countries without even being able to speak their native languages. I did not so much learn to take care of myself (because did know how to do so before I ever lived in England) as I proved that I could take care of myself. For the first time, I was truly on my own: every appointment was scheduled, every meal cooked, every illness treated, every purchase paid for, every plan made, and every crisis solved by me. This is not to say I was isolated from my friends and family while abroad. Rather, I became free from my dependence upon them, both material and emotional.

I have always been frugal (and reasonably so, I would like to think). Early on, I realized that if I wanted to enjoy my stay in England (and travel to foreign places), I was going to have to resign myself to the 2-to-1 conversion rate and the fact that I would come home with less than half of the money I had saved in my entire lifetime. My mother has always claimed, “What is the point of having money if you are unwilling to enjoy it?” and although I had heard her say this many times, I only listened with half an ear. Now, it has almost become a way of life for me. Sure, now that I am back in the States, I do feel a vaguely pressing need to “get back to work.” Compared to how much money I had saved before, I am now relatively poor. However, I trying to make money with a new goal in mind: in stead of simply making money in order to feel secure—saving it to have, “just in case,” as I once did—I am now working in order to raise enough money to go and visit Angela in Singapore next summer. Money comes and goes. I have finally realized that no amount of money will ever make me feel truly secure. Instead, I have discovered security in my own resourcefulness and found confidence in my capabilities.

Beauty and Irony in Amsterdam

I have visited many liberal cities, but none that flaunt their acceptance of “alternative lifestyles” as blatantly as Amsterdam. The Red Light District? It’s real. Completely and utterly. I saw women posing nearly-naked in windows, giving passer-byers (male ones) “come hither” signals. Angela informed me how this system works: the women rent out windows for a daily fee. Then, when they get a customer, they invite him in and close the shades. The shades are red: hence, the Red Light District.

Also, regarding marijuana legality? Not only is it legal, but it is extremely prevalent. You cannot walk down a street without encountering at least either one shop selling drug paraphernalia. Most likely, a sex shop will reside next door. Part of me is convinced that these shops are all for the benefit of tourists. After all, even the souvenir shops sell bongs, rizzlers, and dildos. Plus, Amsterdam cannot be any more ridden with smoking sex-fiends than any other city. Well, perhaps more people smoke hash because it is legal, but I did not find evidence of this in my observing the public, and I have a pretty good nose for the stench of weed.

If it hadn’t been for the beautiful canals running throughout the city, the sexuality and bohemian-ness would have been overkill. What was especially unusual about our stay is that we accidentally booked a Christian hostel . . . in Amsterdam, of all places! Talk about ironic. Michelle was very obviously pleased and felt right at home, while Angela balked at the idea of being exposed to more aggressive evangelism (she has had some bad experiences with religious groups). As for me, I was just annoyed that a hostel I considered extra-responsible for being generous and accommodating to its guests forced us to pay for using its sheets. Bedsheet charges are one of the things Angela and I keep a lookout for when we are booking hostels, so I am almost certain Shelter Jordan (the place where we stayed in Amsterdam) did not advertise this additional fee on its website. Furthermore, we were informed that sheets “were not an option,” so even if we had happened to bring our own, we would still have had to pay the charge. What sort of “charitable Christians” trick poor student travelers into paying extra for their stay? Perhaps the same ones who feel justified in starting Holy Wars….

A self-observation I made in Vienna:

Being around Angela and Michelle makes me realize how much I actually don’t like children. The two of them love children. Angela works at a teaching center for very young children at home in Singapore, and both girls go absolutely ga-ga at the sight of basically any child under the age of four. Even crying children qualify. At St. Steven’s Green in Dublin, Angela and Michelle could have stayed sitting on that park bench for hours just watching the little kids run around on the grass. In Prague, Michelle actually followed one little boy holding a chocolate ice cream cone in order to take his picture until his grandmother grabbed his hand and protectively pulled him away.

I, on the other hand, barely give children a passing glance. Babysitting always bored and exhausted me—representing exercises in patience and creativity that I always felt were poorly rewarded for the effort required—and those interactions only involved five hours with a set of kids. I cannot even imagine having a set of my own to look after 24/7. I would go insane!

I think my future husband (assuming I get married) will have a big influence on my decision whether or not to have kids. I have a lot of ideas and opinions about parenting, but I don’t think I actually like kids all that much. Having the ideas and enjoying putting them into practice are two completely disparate things. I have been told I would make a good parent, and perhaps I would, but would I enjoy being a parent. I suppose there is no way to know until you are one.