Flight Plan

As spring has sprung in Austin over the past few weeks our apartment has suffered an auditory assault. We live in a two-story loft that sits on a steep hill, the back of which is nearly completely glass offering an absolutely stunning view of downtown. Trees fill the space between our living room and the city streets to the north and we have taken to considering the birds, squirrels, raccoons, and occasional possums that live in the trees outside of our balcony as part of our family. Over the past few weeks new life has flushed into the trees that shape the landscape just outside of our windows. Babies, with their expecting and overly protective parents, have overtaken this space. It has become a sort of training ground for baby animals to learn to do the things that adult animals do, including flying.

Between the hours of 11:00 am and 4:00 pm when the sun is shining brightly the trees just outside of our upper-story windows become the flight center for fledgling chicks. Every thirty minutes or so a baby bird launches itself, or is shoved by its pushy mother, out of the nest with the hope that the wings will spread and the chick will take its first flaps in the act of flying. Sometimes this lesson in leaping goes terribly wrong and the confused chick, trying to feel out its wings and find its way, crashes into the glass of our second-story bedroom windows. Inside it sounds as though someone is periodically and randomly shooting cannons at our bedroom.

I feel bad for these fledgling birds. I imagine that they are pissed at their parents for thrusting them out of the nest too quickly and in desperation they head for the comforts of our home with the hopes of nestling into our pillows and chirping for our dog Pia to bring them a bottle (which could be beer or milk I believe, depending upon whether the bird has a genetic propensity to seek comfort in alcohol).

When the cannons, a.k.a baby birds, crash into the windows two things usually happen. (1) Pia, unable to figure out why someone is shooting at us, puts her ears back and retreats upstairs to her bed or to the interior bathroom floor, constantly looking upward in fear of the next blow. We worry that by May she will be suffering from PFSD – Post Flight Stress Disorder. (2) I usually run to the balcony and look over the ledge to make sure that the baby bird is not two stories below, writhing on the ground in pain and confusion. (As an aside, I’m not sure exactly what I would do if I found such a baby bird. I don’t particularly care for birds – a result, I am sure, of being bitten by an aggressive, demonic goose as a child – and I find the idea of actually picking one up absolutely terrifying. Thankfully, I have never found a wounded bird. They seem to crash into our windows, scaring Pia and I to death, and then they change flight plans and fly away.)

I can’t seem to get these baby birds out of my mind. They make me think about all of the dreams and the goals that we pursue, all of the markers of success that feel like they are just in sight, and all of the times that we unexpectedly crash into a wall, or a closed window, pursuing them. They make me think about careers and relationships and all of the conversations I have had with friends and family about “knowing” when it is time to change our own flight patterns. They make me wonder about how many times we can bear crashing into the glass and still muster the strength to continue on a particular flight plan.

The bird doesn’t have a lot of choice about learning to fly, or really about where it will fly. It always needs to adjust to the dictates of mating and migration. In order to survive birds have to fly with their flocks. (That is unless the bird is an ostrich or a penguin which, I am certain, have to learn to do adult penguin and ostrich things such as looking dashing in a tuxedo or snapping at innocent ostrich farm visitors in order to live.) But we humans choose, over and over again, in the face of disappointment or defeat whether or not we will try to fly again in the same direction or if we will – for reasons of ease, sanity, reason, duty, faint-heartedness, or sometimes foolishness – change course.

There is something about thirtysomethings, or at least myself as a thirtysomething, that leads us to have a deep kinship with the fledgling birds. Sure, we have been out of our “nests” for a while now, but in many ways we’re still learning to fly in our careers, in our relationships, in finding those things that make us happy and fulfilled and satisfied. And within our own particular contexts and arising out of our unique dispositions we thirtysomethings seem particularly prone to subjecting ourselves to crashes. Often afterwards many of us seem to find ourselves wondering when it is right to dust off the wings and try again (this time praying for an open window) or when it is time to radio the tower and change the plan of flight.

High-Five

My wrist has been sore lately. Not, as one may expect, from something like carpal tunnel caused by hours manipulating the mouse either filling in excel data cells or playing Snood in avoidance of filling in such data cells. No, my wrist hurts from too much high-fiving. A rowing friend of mine and I seem to have a serious case of self-congratulatis.

The illness began when the aforementioned friend, with whom I rowed in my more athletically spry years at Colgate, moved to Austin last summer and suggested that we join a local boathouse. In full disclosure (sorry Sarah) I was not particularly keen on this idea at the outset. While I like to think that I was a pretty decent athlete as a youth I hung up my running shoes and my oars in my sophomore year of college. (Okay, so I did do the 525 mile AIDS ride from Charlotte, NC to DC when I was twenty-four, but I chalk that up to a fluke attempt at self-discovery during a tumultuous time in my love life right before returning to graduate school.) Though there were moments that I missed my time on the track, the diamond, the court, and the water I felt satisfied in my early twenties to focus my energies on those things that I never allowed myself to do while I was intensely focused on sports in high school and during my early college years– reading philosophy, community involvement, writing, and of course drinking in fraternity and sorority house basements on a weeknight.

Truthfully, I had been resigned to say goodbye to my years of athletic prowess long before Sarah proposed that we start rowing together again. I had convinced myself that sports were what we did as kids and that adulthood was about careers, building the muscle of the mind, and focusing on marriage and adult relationships that were not founded upon hitting a ball or outpacing the other team down the river or around the track. Still, unable to say no to Sarah (I have a general problem with saying no to friends, family, dogs, co-workers, people with a pulse, etc.). I joined the boathouse and we started rowing together in January. For the first few lessons I was incredibly sore, felt like my lungs might collapse, and I generally worried about heart failure. On more than one occasion Sarah – a medical doctor – and I agreed that bringing a crash cart to practice was not a terrible idea. But the more we rowed the more the muscle memory of the teensomething body that seemed to be hibernating within my thirtysomething body kicked in.

Flash forward two months. Sarah and I agreed to row in a quad (four people rowing together) for a six mile race called the “Winter Warrior.” (I realize that six miles in a boat may not sound particularly far, but please remember that the boat is small, that there is no motor, and that the race takes about 38 minutes of steady strong rowing to complete. Not to mention that it is the strokes during the one mile to the start and especially the five miles home after crossing the finish line that can break you.) After our first practice run of the course Sarah commented that she felt about “2% Warrior, 98% like she had been hit by a Mack truck.” I concurred.

We thought about making T-shirts for the race with CPR instructions on the front and “In Case of Emergency Call (XXX-XXXX)” on the back. (Of course, the instructions had to be on the front so that the person working to resuscitate us could read them clearly.) We also considered things such as taking a picnic break half-way through the race or taking turns rowing by twos instead of all of four of us at once so that we could rest, but neither option seemed kind to our younger boat mates.

But the funny thing that seems to have come with awakening my muscle memory was an awakening of my competitive drive. I found myself really wanting to win. So, as a good “bow” rower who was going to steer us to victory, I put my Ph.D. to work and studied the course maps for days before our race. I ate well. I made sure I slept well. On race day we shaved six minutes off of our practice run and even passed a crew of eight on the course. (The only thing I have to say about the single rower that passed us is that the man clearly had to be an Olympian.)  We did really well, and the high-fiving that led to my sore wrist began as soon as we crossed the finish line.

I think Sarah and I high-fived and hugged each other in congratulations of our survival, let alone our novice boat win, no less than thirty times in the hour that we celebrated with our team as we tailgated after the race. I believe that we uttered the words “we did it” no less than fifty times over the course of the next week. And as we uttered those words the story of our row grew a touch more embellished. The course was seven miles (fourteen total) then it was eight (sixteen total) and I think in the last telling the round-trip was somewhere around twenty-two miles. I was okay with this exaggerating. We were thirtysomethings who engaged in a race that was really utterly meaningless, but that felt to us like an event on par with winning Olympic gold.

Two weeks later we rowed again in another regatta, this time in much shorter races. Our quad didn’t do so great, but our crew of eight won a silver medal (a small miracle given that we had practiced together only once). The high-fiving commenced again along with the self-congratulatory phrases such as “not bad for old ladies,” “see we didn’t need the crash cart after all,” and most honestly, “I feel really proud of us.” There was so much high-fiving among our crew of thirtysomethings that Sarah suggested that we had to either do low-fives to mix things up and/or start charging ourselves a nickel for every time we high-fived. She clarified that we definitely should not stop with the self-congratulating, but that we should at least make it extra worth it by contributing to a future post-race beer fund for each slap of the hands.

What I realized in all of this high-fiving is that we, as thirtysomethings, and fortysomethings, and sixtysomethings probably don’t congratulate ourselves enough. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was to feel really proud about something I did and to share in that pride with someone else who was on “my team.”

If we are lucky, as children and adolescents we are surrounded by various adults who build us up. People like our teachers, coaches, mentors, and parents who offer words of encouragement and who push us to believe in ourselves, even when we don’t. But when we get out of college we somewhat, though never fully, step outside of that network of up-builders. I know many thirtysomethings who haven’t been congratulated for who they are or for what they do in a long time. They work feeling unappreciated. They may be in relationships where they are not reminded enough that they are loved for who they are and that their contributions to their family are important. They always feel like they need to do better – have a better job, be a better parent, be a better daughter or son, be a better friend, or be a more active community member. And as our bodies change we feel we should fight back by eating better, exercising the body, and exercising the mind with something other than reality TV. What we thirtysomethings do never feels like it is enough to make those around us – or more importantly to make ourselves – feel proud of who we are.   

All of this high-fiving lately has led to me to see that we as a band of thirtysomethings, and maybe as a post-twenties culture as a whole, need to do more self-congratulating and up-building for others who have passed their twentysomething prime. I’m not talking about unjustified pride, arrogance, or toting that we are better than others. I’m talking about celebrating the things we do that required real work to do them. I’m talking about celebrating the 2% Warrior, even in light of the 98% Mack Truck injuries. I’m talking about doing more work up-building for each other and spending less time on the things that we feel we can’t or don’t do as well as (we think) others expect us to do them. Really, I don’t think it would be such a bad thing if more of us had wrist injuries from celebratory high-fiving.

Finding A Forever Home

In the language of the dog-adoption world placement of an animal is referred to as “finding his/her forever home.” Adoption websites are filled with listings of dogs in need of adoption who are described as such: “Joey is quite agile, high energy, active and playful. He is very sweet, submissive and gets along well with other dogs and cats. He would love to have an active forever home with someone to run and play with him every day. Joey is about 2 years old.” Or the description might read something like this: “Snickers is a shy chocolate and white parti boy. He really wants to make friends, but isn’t quite sure how to go about it. Every day, he gets just a little happier and a little more sure of himself. Snickers is 3-4 years old and is looking for his forever home.”

Since Martini passed away, our family has been in search of another dog to add to our pack. I have read dozens of doggie adoption ads, and every time I do I find myself pausing on that phrase – “forever home.” What is a forever home? Is it a particular 785 sq foot apartment? Is it with a certain set of people who love you even when you pee on the floor? Is it where one gets fed and can lay his or her head down without worry? Is it where one is confident that being left doesn’t mean being left behind? The question of what constitutes “home” is where this blog began, and recently, through the perusal of sob-stories about abandoned dogs in need of their “forever homes” my thinking on this question has been occupying much of my mental space.

In part, I have been considering what my own adoption description would sound like. My wife offered the following (just in case she needs to put me up for adoption someday): “Stephanie is 33 years old and good with dogs and older children.  She really wants to make friends, but isn’t quite sure how to go about it.  She likes others but needs a little time to get to know you; once she warms up to you, you will have a loyal friend and companion for life.  She is housebroken, for the most part at least.  Stephanie would prefer a forever home without cats.” (I like to think that if she did give me up, I would at least take myself home.)

Primarily though I have been mentally stumbling over the phrase “forever home” because I struggle with what it means. Or perhaps more accurately, the romantic side of me that believes it to mean the physical location in which children are reared, careers blossom, friends gather, and grandchildren visit resists what I think is a more accurate truth: That what constitutes one’s forever home is very different for every furry and furless being, and as such, one of life’s labors seems to be honing the particular definition of each of our distinct forever homes.

A few examples may help to illustrate this point. I’ll start with me, since “me” is what I like to think I know best (though I know this is not always true). Since I was eighteen, when I left my childhood home Littleton for upstate New York, my home – understood as the city, state, and zip code in the third line of my address – has been dictated by the schools that I or my wife have attended or the work opportunities that were accepted in the hopes that they would bolster the aforementioned educational pursuits. When I went to Colgate for my undergraduate work I lived in Hamilton, NY 13346. While at Harvard I lived in Cambridge, MA 02138. Home has also been Washington DC, 20001; Houston, TX, 77057; Philadelphia, PA 19133; Kingston, Jamaica; Dallas, TX 75205; Santa Barbara, CA 93117 and 93103; and Austin, TX 78704 and 78741. In the past ten years I have lived in eleven different cities – the shortest stint was for three months and the longest stay was four years. That’s a lot of moving. That’s a lot of not-so-forever homes.

I know a lot of thirtysomethings who have had similar moving experiences over the past decade. It seems that as a generation that has been taught the importance of attending the best schools and “snatching up” the most potentially profitable opportunities presented to us, many of us have come to form a sort of Diaspora community wandering and hoping that the promised land, the forever home, is just around the next desert oasis or parted sea.

Now, I do have some friends who can rightfully claim that in their late-twentysomethings they had already found their forever home. I know two who graduated from college, got a job in the city in which they attended college, and still live in that city today. (They both live in Texas, which I think is more than coincidental. There is certainly something to be said for southern charm.) I admire these people. I like that they are so comfortable where they are. Undoubtedly, they have their own restlessness in other areas of life, but they generally don’t spend the hours before they fall asleep wondering where their next move will be. They have, quite likely, found the city, state, and zip code that they will stay in for decades. They will raise their children there, and their children’s children will likely visit them there. I am happy for them, and admittedly a little jealous.

But I am also a little jealous of another friend, Jill, who is a flight attendant (not a stewardess by the way – she gets very upset at such degrading labels). Jill’s home is in the sky. She flies twenty-five out of thirty days a month, logging in an average of 150 flight hours. In thirty days Jill sleeps in thirteen different cities and cooks one meal at her “crash pad” apartment in DC. Jill always says that her home is the network of friends and family that she gets to visit while she is on the road. It’s a kind of forever home that defies the boundaries of cites, states, and zip codes.

In the work to hone my own definition of a forever home I have oscillated somewhere between these two extremes, never fully engaged in either but dabbling in the romanticism of both. I could never really live like Jill does. I love my wife’s cooking, and in order for her to cook for me, she has to have a kitchen stocked with her favorite spices and that said kitchen has to be close enough to a reliable market for quality meats and fresh vegetables. Plus, I hate navigating my suitcase through the airport. But I understand and appreciate the ways that family and friends, though dispersed across miles and time-zones, are always our homes. I also know that in my late twenties my restlessness – for experience, for diversity of climate, for intellectual stimulation, for love – would never have allowed me to stay in one place for too long. But as my bedtime grows increasingly earlier these days and my ovaries’ whispers for use shift into “barbaric yalps” I find myself longing for that city, state, and zip code that will afford the type of stability that the Texans in my life have found.   

Dog adoption agencies love to post “success stories” on their websites, likely with the hopes that those with pending adoptions will be patient with their new family members who are chewing on the Julia Childs Cookbook and peeing on the quilt that their great-great-auntie made. I like to think that my success story might someday read something like this:

“Stephanie has found her forever home. She lives with a loving partner whose unfaltering support grounds her restless will and whose humor keeps her humble. Her forever home is a place where the work that she felt like she was always meant to do get’s done without ever feeling like work. Her forever home is a place where her brilliant future-Nobel-prize-winning children create masterpieces of finger-paint art, practice their to-be-doctor-signatures on construction paper, and debate over the rights of toddlers to attend need-blind day care facilities. Her forever home is a city, state, and zip code where the gifts of friendship flourish and where courage is allowed to arise from comfort and contentment.”

The Home Altar

I covet laundry machines like I imagine men in the throes of a mid-life crisis covet sports cars. I walk through Lowes’ and Sears’ home appliance centers as though I am strolling through a Jaguar dealership. I try to look like I have money so that the appliance department manager will show me the features of the top of the line washing machines – the I-know-when-your-clothes-are-dry sensor, the allergen rinse, and the vibration reduction technology (referred to as VRT by us connoisseurs). I drool over the cherry red color of the LG 4.5 Cu. Ft. Cuft Stream Washer. I want to run my finger along its top edge to savor its streamline quality. I stand in jaw-dropping awe in front of the Samsung 4.0 Cu. Ft. Energy Star Model WF216ANB. This beauty of a washer, which comes in a striking “breakwater blue,” could probably teach even Al Gore a few things about energy conservation. When I am stalking the showroom floors, feasting on the touch dials, door handles, and water attachments in a sensory buffet it is all I can do to keep myself from leaning over and licking the stainless steel finish of the Whirlpool WFW94005W. I have to constantly remind myself to play it cool. The department manager has to know that I can walk away from any deal. This I inevitably will do because I do not now nor ever have had washer and dryer hookups in my apartment.

I want to talk about doing laundry because I understand it to be one of the greatest class issues of our time. For those of you with laundry machines in your home, consider what follows as a public service message. I, like Sally Field in a Save the Children commercial, am going to give you a brief glimpse into the not-so-distant lands of laundry poverty. I will do my best to tug at your heart-strings and maybe you’ll even decide to donate to the “Laundry for Thirtysomethings” fund.

Since I left home in 1995 I have done my laundry “out” in dorms, in laundromats, and in apartment laundry centers. I spend lots of waking hours daydreaming of having a washer and dryer in our house. I dream of the day when I can turn to my wife and say, “Honey, can you pass the dryer sheets,” and she can hand them to me as easily as she would pass the salt. Currently, our dryer sheets are stored in our car.  (As an aside, the car does smell quite fresh, even despite the wet dog smell that lingers from our weekend trips to the park. For you lovers of dogs-who-can’t-stay-out-of-the-water I highly recommend the power of a box of Bounce.) You see, it is not the financial burden of doing your laundry outside of your own space – not the literally thousands of quarters that I pump into laundry machines each year – that really bothers me.  It’s the inconvenience.

You see, not having a washer and dryer in your own home requires you to be a meticulous planner, and that takes time. You have to spend your moments weighing questions such as whether or not you should leave the Costco-sized detergent in the trunk in order to save a trip carrying it into the house versus worrying that it will be stolen by another human gone-laundry-mad because he just ran out of soap. (When you live in an apartment complex where no one has washer and dryer hook-ups rumors of such car break-ins abound.) You have to budget for what item you are going to buy from Walgreens in order to get the $20 in cash back that will be exchanged for quarters by either a cold machine (if it actually works this time) or a suddenly unhelpful older woman who scowls at the sight of the dog bed covers in your heaping basket. Worst of all, you have to consider what to wear when you go “out” to do laundry. This (along with the exposure of your family’s undergarments to complete strangers) is the centerpiece of the laundry class issue.

When all of your clothes are piled into baskets and bags, you are left to wear something less than desirable to the laundromat. I have learned over the years to keep a set of laundromat clothes. A uniform for battle. Underclothes include my very last pair of underwear that inevitably has holes along the banding and is far too tight, along with a sports bra that I used to wear in high school. In the summer I wear my house painting clothes – athletic shorts splattered in paint streaks from various apartment moves and a sleeveless t-shirt for a Boston Fenway Clinic Fundraiser that has an enormous pink-triangle on the back. Winter is trickier. Usually pinstriped oversized pajama pants, orange UT crocks, and a long-sleeved Colgate College Houses t-shirt that, like my underwear, also has holes. In my earlier seasons when I was a naïve laundry-doer my laundry-day outfits tended to have an odd effect – passersby the front of the laundromat would try to toss coins into my Einstein Bagel coffee-cup. I often wondered if they were quite aware that the donations were going not to my next meal but were being saved for the day, oh that heavenly day, when I would buy my own washer-dryer combo.

Laundry is a class issue because for those of us who have to do it out of house the hours that could be spent on self-improvement and self-serving capitalistic endeavors are instead spent schlepping pounds of clothes from home-to-car-to-laundromat-back-to-car-and-car-to-home along with anxiously worrying about whether we can squeak by with just enough quarters to get everything dried. Not to mention that the laundry outfit, especially the underclothing, is terribly damaging to one’s self-respect. (This, by the way, is why I like to do laundry on Friday nights when the fewest people will see me who may, despite the color and mixed-cloth of their own uniforms, pass judgment on mine. Also, please no comments on how pathetic Friday night laundry sounds. I am sure that this is also just part of the plight that keeps us down.)

The problem of not having our own washer and dryer became particularly acute last February when our apartment laundry center suddenly burned to the ground (probably an arson attack by an irate launderer, enraged that the dumpy machines stole his or her quarters again). This meant that we had to do laundry at a laundromat a mile-and-a-half away. Now, when you do laundry at your apartment center you can at least maintain some of your dignity by spending the time between cycles in the comfort of your own home. When you do laundry at a laundromat you are stuck, suspended in deadening boredom for 25 minutes during the wash cycle and double that time during drying. Over the years I have fruitlessly tried to fight this boredom with efforts that screamed “I will not allow you, oh demons of the laundry, to squander the precious years of my youth!” I have played games like Brickbreaker and Freespace on my phone for hours. I have made calls to long-lost friends and family (who, by the way, get annoyed when you say that you have to hang-up because you need to move your clothes, accusing you that the only time you call is when you are bored at the laundromat). I have watched NASCAR, which is inevitably on in the laundromat that I frequent despite the fact that the NASCAR season does not run the entire year nor 24 hours a day. I have tried to read, but reading is something that I prefer to do when I can really focus on the words on the page and not on sneaking a peek at other people’s garments. The tightness of my underwear tends to block such efforts of concentration anyway. When things have been desperate, both my wife and I have resorted to more unhealthy means of entertainment –drinking and gambling.

A few months ago Summer returned from doing laundry with a dozen $2 used scratch off tickets purchased from the convenience store next to the laundromat. I inquired as to why she bought so many. She said that she just kept scratching and winning, scratching and winning again, and she just kept scratching away hoping that “under the printed cowboy-boot was a washer.” I banned her from that particular laundromat. In the deepest troughs of my own desperation I have resorted to walking next door to the same site of the scratch-ticket-scandal, purchasing a 24 oz. Heineken keg can, and slouching over in the front seat of my car drinking it out of a brown-paper-bag. Those were the darkest of my laundry days.

Marx was right that there is something to be said for laborers having a direct physical connection to the products of their labor. I love my clean laundry. I likely love it more than most because of the work that goes into its preparation. But I, like many in the former Soviet Union who were also intimately tied to their work through physical labor, want more. I want the LG or the Samsung or the Whirlpool and I want all of the benefits – being able to watch football while your laundry is washing, being able to produce clean clothes without handling $20 in quarters, being able to do laundry naked in the privacy of your own home if you really, really needed to.

When folding the last load of laundry that I did over the weekend, a little green Monopoly house fell out the pocket of my black Adidas sweats. I held it up, the plastic still hot to the touch, and amidst the other laundry-doers bustling around me I drifted off, quietly picturing a tiny me and a tiny Summer and an even tinier border collie holding hands and dancing around in a circle. (And no, this wasn’t the day I was drinking in my car.) In that little green Monopoly house we circumambulated what I have come to covet as the ultimate symbol of grown-up status, the modern home altar: a brand new front-load, Energy Star washing machine.

Part of the Deal

I am relatively new to death. My grandfather’s funeral last September was the first that I had ever attended. Those who know me find this fact to be a touch ironic given that I spent two years researching and writing about how others deal with death in the aftermath of violence. Perhaps my lack of personal experience with death is what makes me so interested in the process of mourning. Whatever the root of my intrigue is my intellectualization of mourning is admittedly and undoubtedly my shield against the pain of grief.

Along with tightly holding onto this intellectual shield in the face of death, I tend to protect myself against the tides of grief through years of careful preparation. When I got married I insisted that our wedding gift-CD included the song “Naked as We Came” by Iron & Wine. I thought it important that in the face of marriage we meditate heavily the lyrics, “One of us will die inside these arms. Eyes wide open, naked as we came. One will spread our ashes ’round the yard.” (I was reading too much Heidegger at the time.) When I was a teenager I was sure that my grandmother was not going to live to see my high school graduation. She did. I was sure that she wouldn’t live to see my college graduation. She did that also. And being the stubborn ninety-five year old that she is she has also lived long enough to celebrate two more graduations and to get to know my wife despite my insistences, and the hardening emotional preparations that went along with them, that she wouldn’t make it past my eighteenth, twenty-first, and thirtieth birthday.

I have long been doing the same preparation-for-death work for our adopted Springer Spaniel, Martini. She became part of our family two-and-a-half years ago when we moved to Austin. She came to us like a baby in swaddling clothes left on our doorstep. Martini, then named “Missy,” was dropped off by her foster father and the adoption papers were signed in a hurry. We were looking for a dog that was between two and four. As he hurriedly walked out the door, hoping that we didn’t follow him, Martini’s foster father told us she was “about four.” The first vet that saw her confirmed that she was at least ten. Martini was a survivor of Katrina and of jaw cancer. She was terrified of thunderstorms and of being left alone. Though she wasn’t the dog we were really looking for, we weren’t going to make her the survivor of another abandonment.

As soon as we learned how old she really was I began the work of building my emotional fortress against her inevitable death. In the beginning she was not particularly affectionate, and her initial distance made my labor relatively easy. Summer and I fondly refer to the first time that she got on the couch and actually fell asleep next to us as, “The Night Martini Got Drunk and Slept Around.” She awoke startled, sniffing for the Roofies that must have been in her water bowl. But then we started going on long walks together every morning when I was spending my days writing. She didn’t care that I made her jog the last half mile with me as I ran-danced to Justin Timberlake’s “I’m Brining Sexy Back” (which was my writing mantra at the time). In the afternoons she would sleep with her head on my books. And as time passed we didn’t even have to drug her to get her to cuddle on the couch with us. She was actively ruining my emotional distancing death preparation work.

Over the last six months and especially during her last few weeks, Martini grew slower, weaker, and more disoriented. Meal time was “Fifty First Dates” with her food. She would eat, forget how her head got in the food bowl, and walk away. When we guided her back by her collar, she would open her eyes wide and look up as though she was saying, “Good God, what took you so long to feed me?” On our last attempt at a hike (that is, a 1.5 mile walk on paved “trails”) Martini had to be carried the last ¾ mile. She was completely deaf and almost fully blind. She walked into walls, she got “lost” in the corners of a room, and she had to be carried up and down the stairs. On Wednesday, she let us know that it was time to let her go.

We literally had an appointment with death on Thursday. We arrived at the vet who knew ahead of time why we were there. As soon as we arrived, I had to use the restroom. I have an incredibly inconvenient nervous bladder. I waited in line for what seemed like forever while Summer was in the lobby with Martini. First, a vet tech was scrubbing down. Second, the little boy behind me in line looked as though he was going to burst so I let him go ahead. Ten minutes had passed and I was still waiting, feeling rather sheepish, while Martini was spending her last hour without me. (As an aside – during my grandfather’s funeral I spent a lot of time in the bathroom. Of course the nervous bladder was acting up, but that was a nice excuse for me to hide from all of my family members as I cried in the bathroom stall. I have a thing about crying in public, which is particularly problematic when you are afflicted with what my Aunt refers to as, “emotional incontinence.” I always felt bad about my time in the bathroom at the wake. I felt especially bad that I wasn’t more present for my grandmother. As I stood in line outside of the bathroom in the vet’s office I promised myself that I wouldn’t use my bladder as my emotional armor.) 

When we got into the exam room we spoke with the vet briefly, fiercely fighting back the tears. We paid our bill before the procedure so that we could just leave, as they put it, “without having to talk to anyone.” $50 for the injection and $75 for the cremation. Summer said her goodbyes to Martini and waited in the car while the vet did the final injections. She couldn’t be in the room. I couldn’t stay away. The fortress walls were a useless pile of stones and I just wanted to be with Martini when she passed away.

I always thought the phrase “he/she looked so peaceful,” regarding dead people was sort of lame. A comforting cop-out of sorts. Of course he/she looks peaceful. He/she is currently plasticized without worries about paying bills, cleaning the house, the next presidential election, or say, when they will have to decide to put their dog down. But as I sat on the vet’s floor looking at Martini, it was true. In death she looked satisfied. Her eyes, still slightly open, expressed gratitude. (At least that is what my admittedly anthropomorphic projection onto her saw.)

I stayed with her for a few minutes, kissing her forehead and reminding her how much we loved her. After my last stroke of her head, I returned to Summer in the car. Pia, our two-year old Border Collie rescue, was curled-up on the back-seat. We were sad. I said all of the conventional comforting things that people say because there is nothing to say. Phrases like, “She is with the big bone in the sky” and “She is probably chasing squirrels in heaven.”  The images were comforting and the sound of their utterance was loud enough to down out my more pessimistic realism. In that moment, I needed to believe those things.

Rain was starting to fall on the car windshield as we sat outside of the vet’s office. Between tissue uses Summer insisted that when we got another dog, it had to be a puppy. I argued that there was no guarantee that a younger dog would live more years with us. Death was just part of the deal (note the intellectual defense in action). Summer, the more-willing-to-actually-face-and-be-honest-about-her-emotions-type-of-person replied, “The deal sucks.” She wanted an addendum. “Article 1: no death. Article 2: no pain. Article 3: no sadness. Article 4: only fun.” I jotted down the amendments on the back of the cremation invoice. I asked if she would like me to attach them to Pia’s collar. She suggested, sternly, “No. Put it in a locket.”

We left the vet’s office and did the thing that anyone who owns a dog named Martini would do – we went to a bar. Summer ordered a cosmo martini. I liked that. A nod to Martini’s mod black and white duds and her long luscious ear locks. I ordered a dirty martini, extra dirty. That’s how I’ll remember her. Mud stuck in the fur between her paws, a little bit of crust in her eyes, and her belly wet from drinking in Lady Bird Lake.

We raised a toast to Martini, poured a little sip out for her, and swallowed the mixture of tears and tonic. It was pouring outside now. I commented that it was probably because God was crying. He (or She), like I, was never prepared for this.

When to Sell

I have done a lot of odd things for money. Though I always thought I would be an excellent thief or serial killer thanks to my obsessive attention to detail and nearly photographic memory, I have never done anything illegal for cash. This is primarily because the thought of being sent to jail and serving as a lackey to a larger, tattooed, older woman with bad teeth (as I inevitably would because I do not have the chutzpah to do what it takes to rise to the top of the prison hierarchy) frightens me to death. Instead, I have chosen on several occasions to sell my body and mind in the name of biological and psychological sciences.

You see, my wife and I both have an illness – an addiction to higher education. Our cumulative nine years of graduate school have left us with the equivalent of two small mortgages for the mansions of our minds. While luxurious, these abodes are nestled between the impenetrable fragments of our skulls and are thus (unless we were very very tiny) unfit for physical dwelling. Instead, we pay our loans and move every few years from one 600 – 800 sq. foot apartment to another. Our current abode is a vast 785 sq. foot one bedroom plus a study. In theory, the study could serve as a second bedroom, but instead it serves as off-site storage for the mansions. It seems that the gray matter structures have no room for the bricks (over 600 books and two dozen or so architectural models) that built them. Money and space have always been tight for us.

So in graduate school I participated in any psychological and physical study that paid cash and that I qualified for. I have spent countless hours in psychology labs looking at computer screens, choosing between squares and circles, or fonts, or kittens, or colors, or whatever the experiment du jour had to offer. I have answered dozens of face-to-face questions regarding everything from how I chose which color of socks to wear on a particular day to my relationship with my first fish. As my education grew increasingly costly I stepped up my “selling myself for science” game. For eighteen months while I was working on my masters degree I participated in an HIV vaccine trial where I was injected with a “vaccine” encapsulated in a pigeon cell that was delivered through (what looked like) nine inch long needles that were plunged into both of my thighs every two months. On the off-months when I wasn’t being injected I returned to the clinic for an hour long interview about the most intimate details of my sex life. A year after the study ended I found out that I was injected with the placebo – a sigh of relief. The money I earned in that single study paid for the books that got me through my graduate work at Harvard, about a quarter of the collection that is currently in the “off-site storage.” 

At times of desperation I have contemplated more drastic ways to sell myself for money. In the Harvard Crimson newspaper private couples would often post ads calling for egg donors. They offered between $8,000 and $25,000 for eggs harvested from a Harvard graduate, presumably with the hope that the child would emerge from the womb in a crimson bow-time and sweater vest. As a Harvard graduate student who was strapped for money, I filled out an application on-line, but before I entered the personal interview stage I chickened out (egg pun not fully intended). Though the dollar signs taunted me, I couldn’t imagine mini versions of myself (Harvard geniuses or not) running around without my knowing them. It was my first real test of monetary temptation; the first time that the burning bush (again pun not fully intended) spoke to me and I chose to walk away, keeping my crimson eggs to myself.

Though I carry the number for the local blood plasma donation center in my appointment book I have never used it, despite the fact that each visit yields roughly $25 in cash compensation and that they are currently running an additional $10 bonus special for your second donation. Actually, it has been a long time since I did something more than my job required for money. (In full disclosure, three years ago I did take a job in which I ran garbage routes with the fine trash collectors of the city of Santa Barbara which led, after only a month, to two broken legs – a blog for another time. And I did take a catering gig last summer where I cooked and delivered full meals to a film crew and cast of 12 to 20 people at 1 am for 12 days.) But last week over coffee with an acquaintance I was faced with a trio of financial opportunities that were, well, unusual.

This acquaintance, whose true identity will remain hidden but who I will call Eduardo, serves as a waiter at a restaurant that my wife and I frequently visit. Eduardo asked for our phone number and because he is a friendly man who always seems just a little lonely we assumed he was just looking for a friend. He called on a Wednesday and we got together on a Friday for coffee. When coordinating our little get together he mentioned over the phone to my wife, Summer, that he had a deal for us.

Summer made me promise that I would arrive at the coffee shop before she did, lest she be left alone with Eduardo because she can’t understand very much of his thickly accented English. I was late due to circumstances out of my control (though my wife was sure that I was sabotaging her). When I arrived I joined Summer (who already looked confused and anxious) and Eduardo. He asked us to hear his story. We listened intently. By the conclusion of his story Summer and I were both the recipients of a marriage proposal. You see, Eduardo has a year left on his visa and is desperately looking for a citizen to marry who can, as he says it, “fix his papers.” He explained that he has spent a lot of money in the past on women who promised to follow through on the exchange of cash for a marriage front and marriage license, but all of them never fulfilled their part of the deal. Here we were, six o’clock on a seemingly ordinary Friday evening, both of us faced with the opportunity to marry for money.

Now, as nice as Eduardo is and as much empathy that we had for his story, we knew this was never going to work. First, Summer and I both have been “out” for over a decade. I don’t think that the nice immigration officers would believe that holding positions such as “Division Coordinator for California Marriage Equality” and “President of Advocates” were just markers of a passing phase. After one Google search for either of our names the gig would be up. Still, there was a fleeting moment when I contemplated what it would mean if one of us said yes. “Would Eduardo provide a home for the three of us? Would he live in the basement or the study, and if it was the study would he mess up the alphabetization of my books? And just how many thousands of dollars were we talking?” I halted my silent musings and we politely turned him down.

Eduardo understood. As though he was thanking us for our time and for our willingness to hear him out he put a second proposition on the table. He offered to donate his sperm if we were interested in having children. Now, sperm does cost a bit of money. A vial can run between $100 and $500 dollars. (And though I don’t know for sure, I imagine that a vile of Harvard sperm may cost closer to $1000.) A to-be-mom must also pay a slate of fees for doctor visits, registration, and contributions to the porn fund that aids in the deposit process. Admittedly, the cost to inseminate has been a consistent road-block to starting our family and here, before us, was the offer for free sperm. Again, I momentarily contemplated exactly how much we would save if we took Eduardo’s deal, but when I got to the part of imagining the technicalities of getting and using the free sperm, I closed my eyes, shook my head, and hoped that the mental pictures would fade as quickly as possible. Like the biblical Timothy, we delivered our second denial in the shadow of the cock’s crow. (Okay, I can’t help myself. Pun fully intended).  

Eduardo had one more monetary temptation to throw our way. If we were not interested in his sperm, perhaps we would be interested in taking his eighteen year old niece’s third child (due to be born in June). The child would be free of charge since the niece would have to give him or her up for adoption anyway. Hmmm, free? That would save us approximately $5000 in fertility clinic charges and serve as a nice start to the college fund (which would of course be attached to a clause that the money could not be used for our child to attend Yale). But the reality is there is still some building work to be done on our mental mansions and the physical abode wouldn’t be ready for an additional resident by June. We issued our third denial.

Eduardo thanked us for our time and we told him, though lying, that we would let him know if we could think of anyone who might be willing to take any of his three offers. We awkwardly hugged (what else do you do after such a meeting over coffee) and told him that we would see him soon.

Like weary travelers in a bad adaptation of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, we took the leashes of our unknowing and innocent dogs and crossed the street to our car as quickly as we could. We put the dogs in the back and before I had my leg in the door Summer had the keys in the ignition, the lights on, and the car already in reverse. We agreed that we needed a cocktail to slow the rapidly-firing synapses. Over drinks in the closest bar that we could find she asked for clarification. “Now, I know that I don’t always understand exactly what he is saying but were we just proposed to, then given an offer to have Eduardo be our Baby Daddy, and then handed a coupon for a free child?” “Yes,” I responded. “Yes, on all three counts.”

I admitted that I had fleeting moments of pondering the financial gains each offer held.  My wife did not, nor did she think it was appropriate that I did. “Have we not learned the limits of what we will do for money?” she asked me pointedly.  I said that we had. Then I offered to call the blood plasma donation center first thing in the morning.

(Not so) Idol-Hopeful

I was relieved when I heard that the upper age limit for American Idol auditions was twenty-eight, but that little defender of justice who sits in armor on my shoulder whispered that I should be feeling outrage instead. So I, as any self-respecting over-twenty-eight-something might do, strung together a long rant about the ways that such arbitrary rules discount possible future stars just because they may have a few gray hairs or because they may not know the ins and outs of Emo culture. (By the way, if you do not know what Emo is, count yourself as automatically disqualified for membership in the under-twenty-eight club and therefore also unable to audition.) I put forward arguments such as: “After twenty-eight they must assume that the last whimper of your sex appeal has instantly evaporated;” “After twenty-eight they must think that the voice falls into the dark realm of dirty old man and raspy old lady vocals;” and “After 28 they must think that I, the potential contestant, could not perform with as much flair and drama as the younger idol-hopefuls.” I closed my verbal protest with a pathetic attempt to kick my heel above my head, knocking my glasses to the floor, and straining a hamstring in the process.  

These responses to what appears as an arbitrary and discriminating age limit arose from a sense that I needed to come to a chivalrous defense of the over-twenty-eight population with a swinging sword of critique for American fascinations with a particular brand of youth. They did not stem, as some might think, from an actual desire to audition for American Idol. Truth be told, I can’t carry a tune at all. I dance like you would think a stiff, preppy, generally-unable-to-stop-thinking person would dance. Granted, none of this ever stops me from car dancing to Beyoncé or from belting out the lyrics (singing would be far too generous a term) to Wicked’s “Defying Gravity” as though it was written for me. But I do this dancing and singing in the privacy of my home or my car, accompanied by only my very forgiving dogs and equally patient wife. In fact, I am not one who really likes to be watched. I much prefer that I watch you. If you are a stranger I prefer that you speak more loudly in restaurants so that I can hear your conversations more clearly, and please never glance my way lest you taint my observation study with an actual response to my watching you.

Even given these proclivities towards privacy and enjoying watching others do what they do, two weeks ago I found myself in a long line outside of a Sur La Table in Dallas, Texas waiting to try-out for a new Gordon Ramsey reality cooking show for amateur chefs called Master Chef. The road to my arrival – with my red wine brisket and peppercorn, mushroom, and bacon jacket potato in hand – did not begin with a desire to be on TV. That aspect of reality TV, the whole being on TV bit, made me actually want to throw-up a little into my hand. I was there because the prize of a potential $100,000 and “the opportunity to change your life” was in front of me like a plastic bunny at the dog-track and I was as good as a greyhound, salivating behind the start gates. As I was standing in line, heating what I believed to be a winning brisket atop a Coleman camp stove, I started to talk to the people around me. All of us (each over 28 by the way) felt like we were on the brink of an opportunity to be the “me” that we all thought we could be, but just never had that opportunity to be due to finances, family circumstances, education opportunities, or any other number of factors, real and imagined, that get between us and where we hope to go. 

I didn’t make it to the second round but my wife did. We drove back to Dallas from our home in Austin and waited in the lobby of a hotel for hours before she was called upstairs for her interview. While she was upstairs in front of the cameras I was downstairs, sipping an appletini and chatting with fellow contestants Cocoa and Alfredo. (And no, I did not make up their names, but I can not attest as to whether or not they did.) Cocoa and Alfredo were like caricatures of real human beings, larger than life (outside of reality-TV that is) in their gregarious laughs and their fount of enthusiasm. I knew within moments that they were reality show material and that my wife, who is an excellent cook with a very silly sense of humor but also happens to be quite stable, would likely emerge from the elevators not with a “golden ticket” but feeling like she didn’t “wow” them enough. Sure enough, she arrived in the lobby feeling just that as Cocoa frolicked past her into the elevator, beer in hand. 

As we drove home I wiped the now-dried saliva from the corner of my mouth knowing that the real reality-show greyhounds were yards ahead of me in pursuit of that $100,000 bunny. Oddly, it could have been the effect of the appletinis, I felt okay about it all. Sure, there was disappointment that our dreams of opening a B & B in a quaint east coast town would continue to be delayed. But I felt satisfied first, because I was not Cocoa or Alfredo (though they were perfectly nice people who I wish the best for) and second, because I wasn’t making the three and half hour drive back to Austin with either of them. What I realized standing in that line in Dallas is that while I am constantly tempted by the chance for a big break on shows such as The Apprentice, Top Chef, or Amazing Race I much prefer to be where I am – eavesdropping on strangers in a restaurant, car dancing, and watching anonymously from the furthest seat at the end of the bar.

Thank goodness the age limit for American Idol gives me an excellent excuse to rage in the name of age discrimination and at the same time secretly thank the casting directors for freeing me from the sense that if I only sang, danced, looked better, and had more of an outgoing personality I could make something of myself. I am, at the outset, disqualified because of my age and I find some comfort in the fact that there is at least one closed door of possibility that I don’t need to continue to knock on.

Until I auditioned for Master Chef I never watched American Idol despite the fact that in seasons past office mates have constructed star-charts tracking the progress of the contestants, and that for four months out of each year I feel as though I can not converse in public forums because I do not have a firm enough foundation of cultural knowledge. But after I talked to the people around me who were auditioning for Master Chef I realized that while much of reality-TV features a cast that provides real drama for the audience, just as Cocoa and Alfredo may do, I began to see something inspiring, and also maybe even a little bit sad, about a gathering of hundreds (or in the case of American Idol, thousands) of people who want to change their lives. If you are ever interested in catching a glimpse of the human capacity for resiliency in the face of tough economic conditions, courage to change circumstances, and the desire to continue the pursuit of finding that something or someplace that makes us feel like we have arrived home, go stand in line at a casting for a contest format reality-TV show. Listen to the stories and watch the tides of hope.

I have just one caveat: If you are over twenty-eight, please stay away from American Idol auditions in protest.

First Encounter

January 19, 2010

How does one start a blog? It feels somewhat like starting a new relationship. Me: Single blog, between 1,000 and 2,000 words, sometimes witty, sometimes poignant, overeducated and underemployed. You: Reader, height and weight unknown and unimportant, likely the type that checks several blogs while you are at the office supposedly engaged in important work on the computer, whose most important quality is that you think that I am wise, articulate, and someone who you would be proud to take out drinking with your friends or maybe even take home to Mom and Dad.

My students that I once taught at Cal Poly would likely be shocked that I, of all people, would write a blog as I often ranted against such forms of communication that I understood to fall into the same realm as tweeting, texting, and various other forms of “keeping in touch” which allow you to talk without really having to engage with other human beings. But over time, and thanks to much persistent persuasion from close friends, I have come to understand that such forms of “network” communication do have some value. For instance, my Mother can text me that she is going through my old things from high school that are still in her storage closet and I know instantly that I need to call and insist that she just leave the boxes for me to go through on my next trip for fear that I never destroyed the letters from my first real boyfriend. Or my sister-in-law can post a message on Facebook noting that she is not sure who is more of a child, my brother or my six-year-old niece, and I can offer a single sentence response, “I understand,” and there is at least a small ounce of comfort in that connection. Or, someone I have not thought about in years can post a very unflattering middle school class picture and “tag” me, giving every one of my “friends” and I a much appreciated reminder that we do indeed grow-up and, even more importantly, that we do develop a sense of fashion that resists rat tails, shell necklaces, and pegged jeans. So, in the end, all of this connectivity does seem to have some purpose.

Here we are – you, reader, and me, blogger – and as with most of my relationships that wound up working in the end I think it is important to lay out some clear expectations about intentions and hopes. This is a blog about being thirty and being somewhere, not just in terms of location, but in the sense of wandering where you are have done all of the things that qualify you to claim that you have left “home” but you have not yet found that place – be that in a relationship, with a family, in a career that you love, or that city – that feels like “home.” Over the past six months I have become increasingly struck by how many of my friends who went to the “right” schools, got “proper” jobs, and married the “perfect person” have arrived in their early thirties feeling like something isn’t right. Maybe that something is that the career that they have worked to develop through long, expensive years of graduate school has led to an office position where the best part of the day is tracking Facebook status updates or reading blogs about anyone and anything that takes them away from their everyday work. Maybe the restless discontent stems from struggling with a delayed (or at least that is how it looks to hopeful-to-be-grandparents) start to a family and the beginning of thinking that it might be okay to live without children. Or maybe that unsettled feeling comes from having fallen into what others saw as a perfect relationship and both partners have become weary from the work it takes to continuously keep up that image as the intimate connections between them have faltered or flattened over the past few years. Wherever that quiet discontent that dare not speak its name arises from it seems to have become an epidemic of sorts among us thirtysomethings.

 Now, this is certainly not to suggest that all thirtysomethings feel this sense of restlessness. I have many friends and acquaintances who have managed to make it into their fourth decade without nights laying awake considering their next big move or sleeping and dreaming that the lottery economy will improve and that the “real” life that they were made for could actually begin with those lucky numbers and that big check. There are others I know who have wandered, and struggled in their wandering, but who have found “home,” sometimes through very purposeful and strategic moves in their locations, careers, and relationships, and sometimes through chance meetings or even accidental pregnancies. This blog will be about all of this wandering and all of this finding of that place, or multiple places, that we come to call home. As such, while my particular age and social context will mean that the content here will focus primarily on the stories of thirtysomethings, my hope is that those fortysomethings or twentysomethings or maybe even my grandmother’s peers at ninetysomething will see themselves here.  After all, the human experience of emotional wandering, that sense of “homesickness,” knows nothing of the boundaries of age.

 Now, before you leave our first encounter, I want to get back to that issue of expectations. I will likely write once or twice a week, though I admit at the outset that there are lots of things that I try to do once or twice a week and that I don’t accomplish. Things such as exercising (I am currently at two work-outs in the first eighteen days of the year), reading the morning paper during the week, and flossing. (As an aside – the reason that I do not even contemplate flossing more than twice a week is because I am convinced that floss is a pain-inflicting torture device created by a guild of medieval sadists who today walk around in the guise of dentists but who are secretly, and constantly, worried that Dan Brown will reveal their society’s secrets in his next bestselling novel.) There are all sorts of excuses readily available that I utilize in order to not do these things once or twice a week, and I am sure that I will find those excuses that will also keep me from blogging. But unlike the lie I tell to the dental hygienist about flossing, I really will try to write.

Finally, I should also say at the outset that at the heart of my previous, and still somewhat lingering, resistance to blogging is that I don’t really think that I am so interesting that people will want to read about me. I still think this, which is why this blog won’t really be about me. Any writer and any good student know that all writing is shaped by the person who writes and this blog is of course no different. I will be present all over these pages, in the content of the stories and in the way that the stories are told. This blog is about “me” only in the sense that I hope in writing I gain some clarity as to what I am thinking in my own wanderings around thirtysomewhere. Other than my presence in what is written here there will be a cast of characters, many of them family and friends whose identities I will do my best to conceal. There will undoubtedly be drama. There will be laughter, even if it reveals itself only in my insistence that we maintain the ability to laugh at ourselves. And hopefully, amidst the stories I may tell, there will be you, the reader, height and weight unknown and unimportant, who is likely, as I am, thirtysomewhere.