Looking Forward: Starting Over.

"Bad news,” wrote my friend Natalie, in a g-chat a couple of weeks ago. “Mercury isn’t even in retrograde yet.” We’d had a conversation the day before about the challenges, the kinks and quirks, the general weirdness of the year thus far. We’d speculated that there must be some sort of cosmic explanation for all of it.

Apparently, we were wrong. “What does this mean for us?” I asked.

“Shit hits the fan February 23rd,” she replied.

“Maybe I’ll hibernate,” I wrote back.

---

Two nights later, I met a new friend for drinks at a bar in my neighborhood.

We talked about traveling. Boys. The year ahead. I told her that 2012 had been the hardest year of my life, and that I suspected 2013 wasn’t going to be much easier.

Slowly, over the course of the next couple hours, other friends trickled in, pulled up chairs, joined the conversation.

Lily told us about her new job, selling shoes to Brooklyn toddlers. “Today, a child peed in the teepee at the shop,” she said. “And I haven’t sold a single shoe.”

Jamie recounted a conversation she’d had earlier that night with an ex-boyfriend. “I just don’t love him anymore,” she told us.

“I can’t stop crying,” said Megan.

In the back of the bar, a man played guitar and sang raucous renditions of what sounded like sea shanties. “What is this, a pirate ship?” someone said, nose wrinkled. The crowd at the table next to us stomped their feet, jumped up and down, clapped their hands to the beat. A chair fell backward, hitting the ground with a thud.

“Let’s start over,” someone suggested. “Let’s make tonight New Years Eve."

So at midnight (actually, for honesty’s sake, it was 12:06), we toasted the New Year. It was February 24^th.

“Here’s to a wonderful year,” I shouted.

I thought of something my dad had written once: Life is worth celebrating, Every day probably, but every other day definitely.

Yes, definitely.

We clinked glasses. The pirate sang. Around us, everybody danced.

Looking Forward: Truths.

When I was little, I thought hiccups could be captured in a tiny invisible box. I believed that if I thought hard enough---imagined myself sitting on the box, and nailing it shut, and applying a layer of glue, and locking it tight---they could be smothered, extinguished, conquered. I also believed that the food on my plate had feelings, and would be hurt if I didn’t eat it. And that somewhere in the world, dinosaurs still existed. And that one day, I might grow up to be a mermaid.

---

In last week's post, I mentioned the elementary school I attended in L.A., which included dance as part of its progressive curriculum. In addition to that, we spent a period of time each day discussing problems---things that made us angry or sad, or that troubled us. We would sit in a circle and offer thoughts or advice on whatever issues arose.

Inevitably, as children who attended private school and whose time on Earth hadn’t yet exceeded a decade, our problems tended to skew toward the lightweight. Rebecca pushed me on the blacktop. Joey threw dirt. Shoko put grass in my shoes. (Someone actually brought this one up one day; I still strongly dispute that it ever happened.)

Some incidents, in retrospect, were funny. “Joey showed me his middle finger today,” I remember one girl telling the class. “That means something bad.” She looked at the teacher. “Can I say what it means?”

“Yes, you can say what it means,” said the teacher.

“It means fuck,” said the little girl, her last word a whisper.

But the remark I remember most clearly made an impression for another reason. “I don’t want time to go by,” a little boy said. “Because I don’t want my mom and dad to get older and I don’t want them to die.”

I sat in my place in the circle on the floor, a strange sensation building in the pit of my stomach. It was a thought that had crossed my mind before, but one that was too terrifying to touch. Thinking about it made it a possibility.

The fact that someone else put words to it made it real.

---

I read a poem recently, a sad one. It was called Lies I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently, written by Raul Gutierrez. “Trees talk to each other at night,” reads the first line. “Tiny bears live in drain pipes,” reads another. “If you are very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.”

It continues for a few lines, then ends: “Books get lonely too. / Sadness can be eaten. / I will always be there.”

It made me think of things I believed as a child.

That people, if they were special enough, lived forever. That I could fly. That someday I’d see the entire world. That I’d always be happy.

None of these things are true. And realizing this over time has created a special sort of sadness. But, as a friend pointed out to me today, there are things we know now that we didn’t believe were true as children. For instance, that not being able to draw a tree that looks like a real tree, or a cat that looks like a real cat, or a face that looks like a real face, doesn’t make you a bad artist. That you can be terrible at geometry and chemistry and trigonometry---anything involving numbers, really---and still be smart. That being weird is cool.

That there are worse things in the world than sadness.

Looking Forward: Movement.

We sat in a circle on the first day of ballet class, thirty-or-so adults on the floor. Our teacher was a lovely woman with the sort of soothing presence you’d hope for in an introductory-level dance class meant for grown-ups, and she'd asked each of us to share three things with the group: our name, our level of dance experience, and whether we had any injuries to report. “My name is Shoko,” I said when it was my turn. “I was probably in kindergarten the last time I took a dance class. And my body feels fine.”

Next to me sat a man who must have been in his mid-sixties. He had an angular face, a friendly smile, hair that glinted silver. He introduced himself, telling us he was the proud father of two dancers, now grown.

“Any aches and pains?” the teacher asked.

The man smiled. “I’ve lived a colorful life.”

---

When I was little, I attended a tiny, progressive elementary school in Los Angeles where grades didn’t exist, teachers were called by their first names, and instead of P.E., students were taught dance.

If I remember correctly, it wasn’t any specific sort of dance---it was interpretive. Whatever we wanted it to be. We were told to make shapes with our bodies, to move any way we wished, to feel free.

I knew even then that this was not something that came easily to me.

I remember feeling self-conscious, vulnerable. Like I was sharing something private.

Twenty years down the line, that feeling hasn’t completely faded. Dancing---without having had a drink or two, that is---is an intensely self-conscious experience. “I’m not coordinated,” I tell people when the subject arises. “My body just doesn’t work that way.”

In spite of it all, I signed up for a six-week ballet workshop a few weeks ago with a friend. A difficult year behind me, it seemed like a good decision. It would be a new adventure, a new way of learning to let go.

There’s a poem by Rumi that reads, in part: “Dance, when you’re broken open. / Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. / Dance in the middle of the fighting. / Dance in your blood. / Dance when you’re perfectly free.”

---

We ended our first ballet class with a dance across the floor. First, we practiced moving our feet in the right direction, mimicking the motions of our teacher. We slid and scooted across the room in a halting way, colliding from time to time, the room a tangle of limbs.

We did this twice.

“Now add the arms,” said our instructor. “Do whatever movement comes naturally.”

I swung my arms slowly. I felt stiff, a little robotic. But open, too.

When class was over, I was also a bit sore.

A symptom of a colorful life in the making, I can only hope.

Looking Forward: Tiny Earthquakes.

There were earthquakes in Tokyo the night before I left for Cambodia. It was the summer after I’d graduated college and I planned to spend a month overseas, teaching English to a small group of children at an orphanage in Phnom Penh. My family accompanied me half of the way there, vacationing at my grandparents’ house in Tokyo for a few days before my departure.

We shopped, ate at our favorite noodle shops, strolled the city streets. At night, I slept in my uncle’s childhood bedroom, on a soft mat laden with blankets. I slept soundly there, in a house I knew well from many visits to Japan. It was quiet—very still, even in the middle of the city. But on that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, I lay awake, palms pressed to the ground.

It was shaking.

Always a bit superstitious, I spent the better part of that night, eyes closed but unable to sleep, counting tiny, nearly imperceptible earthquakes. I was afraid.

The next morning, I boarded the plane.

---

Cambodia was, to put things lightly, an adventure. On my first night, I was offered snake, skinned and coiled in a bucket, for dinner. I lived in a very poor neighborhood where few people spoke English, and I was warned never to walk alone. I found myself stranded in a flood one night. On another, I woke to someone trying to break down my guestroom door. Meanwhile, the organization through which I’d arranged the trip was a non-presence.

I was lucky enough to be assigned a roommate, an Australian girl my age whom I loved, but still, I was terrified to be by myself—and, as a result, I almost never was. I felt vulnerable and in danger. Whether I was being unreasonable or blowing things out of proportion, I wasn’t sure. But the truth was, my time in Phnom Penh rattled me. I loved teaching at the orphanage and met wonderful people wherever I went; still, I experienced fear there on a level I hadn’t known possible.

At one point, in a sort of half-delirious state, it occurred to me that perhaps I'd sensed I was in for a hard time before I'd even arrived; that the earthquakes I'd felt in Tokyo were warnings of the trauma to come.

But I went anyway. Afterward, I felt I understood the meaning of the phrase, “lived to tell the tale.”

---

2012, as I’ve written many times, was, for me, a year of challenges. A part of me assumed that 2013 would be less tumultuous, but after a January full of ups and downs, I’m realizing that I may have been mistaken. Something tells me this year is going to test me.

That’s a scary thought. It’s thrilling, too.

Often, the Earth feels unsteady beneath my feet. In a way, I’m sensing tiny earthquakes every day. The challenge is not allowing them the power to paralyze.

---

I still remember shuffling onto the plane in Narita, the morning after my sleepless night. I felt uneasy, shaken, in a way that I couldn’t quite explain—or justify. To distract myself, I concentrated on the movement of my feet, one step at a time. Everything will be okay, I thought, even if it’s not.

I tell myself similar things as I face the coming year.

Breathe deeply. Focus, or try to. Embrace adventure. Keep walking.

Looking Forward: Getting Lost.

When I first moved to New York City five years ago, I lived in a tiny apartment in Morningside Heights, in a bedroom with a single window that looked out onto a brick wall. Because I craved sunlight (a luxury I’d always taken for granted), and because my work-from-home schedule allowed me a certain degree of freedom, I spent most of my days and nights with my then-boyfriend, Ben, at his Columbia University apartment three blocks away. Ben was an exemplary tour guide. We went to jazz clubs in Harlem, used bookstores in the East Village, hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Queens. We spent long afternoons at MoMa, at ICP, in Central Park. A newcomer to the city, I was happy to let him lead the way.

Literally.

At six-foot-five, Ben was an imposing figure. More than that, he was excellent company. And he seemed to know the city inside and out. All I had to do was follow.

Months later, we went our separate ways. Ben moved to Austin. I moved to Brooklyn. My life changed in many ways, but there was one change in particular that stood out.

I got lost, constantly.

I took the wrong trains. The wrong turns. Ended up in strange neighborhoods, thankfully not at the wrong times. Alone, I felt like a tourist in my own city.

Slowly, though—very slowly—I learned. I learned my way around the subway; I learned the closest bus route to my house. I learned where to get the best doughnuts, the best coffee, the best sushi, the best milkshakes. I learned where to get my typewriter repaired; where to escape to find a quiet place to sit. I got to know my neighborhood bodega cats. I got to know my neighbors.

A guided tour, it turns out, is not the same thing as a true discovery.

“To really know a place, you have to get lost in it,” my dad told me. “You can’t be truly comfortable until you’ve been lost.

I can’t claim to know this city inside and out. But what I do know, I know deeply. Now that I’ve been lost in it—very lost, hopelessly so—I feel I’ve earned it as a home.

Five years later, I know where I am.

***

Snow arrived early in 2012. Just a week after Halloween and very shortly after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, an autumn storm blanketed the city in white.

Against my better judgment, I went out that evening anyway, celebrating the release of a local magazine’s newest issue in a cavernous, low-lit bar, feasting on Venezuelan sandwiches and guacamole into the early hours of the morning.

When it was all over, I walked home. More accurately, I stomped. (Stomping, I’ve found, is one way—however inelegant—to avoid slipping on winter-slick sidewalks.)

The night had taken me a half hour from where I’d started, but the snow had stopped, leaving in its wake an immaculate ivory carpet. Though I was alone and it was late, I was happy to stomp my way through it; to have a reason to move; to take in the streets, the buildings, the rooftops—familiar shapes, cloaked in frost.

As I walked, I remembered, suddenly, stepping off a bus on a high school trip to New York. The noise and the activity left me breathless, in a way that frightened me.

There was a time not so long ago, I thought, when all this would have been a mystery to me.

That night, though, on my snowy trek, I felt as comfortable in my surroundings as I’d ever felt anywhere. I felt confident. Even up to my ankles in snow, even in boots a size too large, even lost in a whiskey fog, I felt safe. Sturdy.

And I found my way home, a trail of footprints behind me.

Looking Forward: Storytellers.

Over dinner this week, my sister-in-law (Calla’s mother, and a fellow writer) and I discovered that we share a common fear: the bedtime story. “Tell me a story,” Calla will say on nights when I babysit. She’ll look at me imploringly, tucked in her bed alongside her stuffed warthog and plush pygmy lemur.

This is when the cold sweat begins. “Will you help me tell it?” is my response, every time.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Great. Once there was. . . a banana,” I’ll start, choosing my words haltingly. “A banana named Jim."

Usually, at this point, Calla is staring at me, eagerly awaiting what spellbinding fate might befall an anthropomorphized fruit. “And then what?”

“Hmm. And then. . . and then. . .” I’ll stammer, before inevitably admitting defeat. “You know what? That’s a great question. Why don’t you tell me?”

***

In the tenth grade, I wrote a short story for my English class that was told from the point of view of a man on death row. The same year, I wrote another piece from the perspective of a little boy who heard voices. I followed that with yet another, about an inner city teenager who’d been kicked out of school. (Clearly, at fifteen, I was interested in exploring the darker side of the human experience.)

I received good marks on these stories at the time; still, they’re pieces that embarrass me now---full of vague details and street slang I didn’t know how to use.

These were stories I didn’t know how to tell.

Today, as a writer, I still doubt my story-telling abilities. Essays, I can handle. Interviews are no problem. But a story is a different animal.

I once overheard a college classmate of mine wonder aloud, “do you have to live like a rock star in order to be a good writer?”

At the time, I understood exactly what he meant. We were being told in our workshops to write what we knew. But in order to tell good stories, did this mean we had to live them first?

***

There came a time last summer when, in the midst of a sort of quarter-life crisis, I decided to prioritize adventure above (almost) all other things. Whenever I was invited out---or presented with a new experience, big or small---I resolved to say yes.

As I’ve shared with you at times here, the results of that decision have often come at the expense of comfort. I can’t think of a more tumultuous time in my life, but then again, I can’t think of a period more exhilarating, either.

My friend Megan sent me a quote yesterday morning from Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which reads, in part: “to live. . . is to acquire the words to a story.”

Yes. At the very least, what I’m doing now is collecting stories. “Sometimes,” I told Megan,” I’m so interested in certain emotions that I’ll put myself in situations---even if they’re uncomfortable---just so I’ll know what they feel like.”

If I live them, I’ll be able to write about them. Share them. Use them.

Whether or not this will improve the quality of my bedtime stories remains to be seen.

Looking Forward: Growth.

A couple of months after my niece, Calla, was born, my brother and sister-in-law sent a photo of her on a sheepskin rug, staring straight into the lens with wild, wide green eyes. I was still in New Zealand, living in my front-yard trailer, when the photograph arrived in my email inbox. “She’s switched on,” said my WWOOF host, admiring the shot on my computer screen.

As Calla grew, more photos came. There she was, bundled in sky-blue snow gear. Strapped in a swing at the playground. Setting foot in the ocean for the first time, wobbling on tiny, tubby legs. One video showed her demonstrating a newfound ability to operate the bedroom humidifier with just a touch of her fuzz-covered head.

When I moved to New York in 2009, Calla turned one. As her aunt, babysitter, and---as my sister-in-law once kindly referred to me---her real-life fairy godmother, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of witnessing the numberless spectacular and bewildering transformations that occur in the first few years of life.

“Can you imagine one day we’ll have a real conversation with her?” I remember asking my brother.

Today, three years later, we not only have conversations, but discussions. The baby who once did little more than babble can now ride a scooter, sit through chapter books, make correct use of the word confidant, and identify several obscure varieties of pasta. (Anyone familiar with strozzapreti? She is.)

Calla's a new person every day.

A few weeks ago, she took my hand and pulled me onto her bed, yanking a blanket over our heads. She held a glowing egg-shaped nightlight in her hand. “The grown-ups will never find us here,” she said.

“Am I a grown-up?” I asked her. “How old do you think I am?”

She squinted, lost in thought, and guessed. “Eight?”

---

I ran a Google search recently using the question, “can a person remember being born?”

Apparently, and not surprisingly, the answer in most cases is no. In fact, what I gathered from my search was that for the majority of us, first memories extend no earlier than the age of three---and can occur as late as the age of seven.

It’s unlikely, then, that Calla will remember her first time in the ocean, her penchant for the Milly Molly Mandy book series, our egg-lit conversation in her bed.

She’ll have no recollection of the many drastic metamorphoses that have occurred in the past four years.

I will, though, and I look forward to telling her about them.

I’ll also remember this as a time of significant change for me, as well. The difference is, I can recognize it. And feel it. And think about it. It’s mind-blowing, for lack of a better term, to be conscious of major changes as they’re happening, to feel yourself growing---having new experiences, learning, experimenting, being uncomfortable. I---like my much-younger niece---feel like a new person every day.

It’s kind of like being a child again. I imagine, in wild, stunning ways, it’s a little like being born.

Looking Forward: Solitude.

I landed on the North Island of New Zealand in November 2008. I was alone, except for a mammoth North Face backpack, stuffed to capacity with Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap and two dozen chocolate-chip Clif Bars. I planned to spend the next four weeks by myself, farm-hopping, if you will, as a participant in an organization called WWOOF (“Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms”).

For seven nights, I slept in a trailer on the lawn of a couple in their sixties, who sold produce at local farmers’ markets and ate only raw food. Bedtime came early at this particular household, and I spent hours each night reading by flashlight in my bunk, a hot water bottle nestled at my feet. I felt fragile---emotionally, because the quiet made me nervous, and physically, because I was too unsettled in my new surroundings to stomach the mountains of raw vegetables that were served for dinner each evening.

The next ten days were spent on a small family farm so implausibly lush, I was certain I’d found Tolkien’s Shire. There, I met Jo, a single mother who---on a daily basis---baked bread, practiced yoga, milked goats, trimmed roses, tended an unwieldy flock of chickens, and kept a vegetable garden. She taught me to make pavlova and strawberry jam, clean chicken coops, care for the animals. And at the end of each day, I retired to a cozy cabin in the backyard. I was alone, but exhausted. My body ached in a way that felt satisfying, even pleasurable. I slept soundly.

I ended my trip on Great Barrier Island, where I washed dishes at a local fishing lodge in exchange for a bed and free meals, many of which happened to include lobster. The people there were patient, generous, relaxed. The fishermen---who wore rain slickers and thick white beards, just as I expected fishermen would---took me to sea and taught me to properly cast a line, never batting an eye when I ultimately chose to eat gingersnaps on the boat’s deck rather than participate in the unsavory task of gutting the day’s catch.

One morning before I left, the lodge owners allowed me to take their station wagon to the beach (a terrifying experience, as I’d had no prior experience driving on the left-hand side of the road). When I finally arrived, nauseous and a little shaky, I found the sands deserted, with not a single other beachgoer in sight. And so I spent that afternoon alone, with a book and a sandwich and a sweater to guard against the wind.

I might, at one time, have found this solitude frightening. But on that day I felt adventurous. Like a daring traveler. A wanderer. A pioneer.

Today, as a writer, I spend an inordinate amount of time alone. Depending on my mood and the rhythm of the day, I find this both liberating and lonesome---there are times when I can’t stand the quiet; there are others when it’s nothing short of sublime.

Solitude, I’ve found, is its own kind of wilderness. Becoming familiar with the terrain requires a certain amount of exploration, and a bravery I can’t always find.

But what a pleasure it can be to surrender sometimes---to wander, to get lost, to accept the challenge.

Looking Forward: Happy Homes.

My parents’ garage is a deep and cavernous place, worthy of a treasure map. There are shelves of old dishes; teetering stacks of luggage; Christmas ornaments in cardboard boxes gone slack with age. Propped against one wall is a giant foam-core poster of the Sex Pistols, which I rescued from the curb outside a Hollywood record store when I was in high school. Lining another wall are piles of VHS tapes: Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Disney Sing-Along Songs. In the middle, there’s a stationary bike. An old washer and dryer. A butcher block. And in the back corner, a dining table from my childhood, a set of six wooden chairs, and a loveseat wrapped in plastic, never used.

I learned during my recent trip home for the holidays that these last few items were being saved for me. “So you won’t have an empty house,” my mom explained one night over dinner, “in case you decide to move back to L.A.”

---

My dad once told me a story about arriving in Hawai’i for the first time. Even though he'd never been to the islands before, he felt, to his surprise, as if he was returning home. (My family would later spend seven years living in Honolulu.)

A similar thing happened to me when I moved to Brooklyn, and fell in love with it in a way I’d previously assumed only happened between people. “It’s ‘The One,’” I told a friend shortly after.

Even so, I figured I’d spend a few years in New York City, and eventually return to the West Coast. Los Angeles, after all, has always been home base. It’s where my parents live, and my brother and his growing family, too. Years ago, when it was only one of two cities in which I’d ever lived, I couldn’t imagine building a life anywhere else. Slowly, though, that's starting to change. And I wonder, what do you do when the city you love most is thousands of miles away from so many of the people you love most?

The short answer is, you Skype. You text. You email. But how do these things measure up to conversations in the flesh? Hugging someone hello? Having a seat at family dinners?

I don’t know where I’ll make my home in the future, but I do know---instinctively, and because they’ve told me---that above all, my family wishes for me to be happy and to be living as full a life as possible, wherever I choose. On the flip side, I believe that “home” can be anywhere, as long as you’re with people you love.

When it comes down to it, my time here in New York may comprise just a chapter in my life. Or, maybe, it will be the story of my life.

Time will tell.

---

Last week, the day before I returned to New York, I had a conversation with my parents, about my future, and theirs.

“It doesn’t matter where we end up,” said my mom. “We know how to make a happy home.”

It’s true. We do. Happy homes follow happy people.

The rest, I trust, resolves itself.

Looking Forward: Gifts.

I spent the first seven years of my life in Los Angeles, in a little gray house on a tree-lined street called Cantaloupe Avenue. My memories of living there are hazy, dreamlike.

I remember the rusted jungle gym in the backyard. The smell of chlorine. Lemon trees, and the tiny gray dove that made its home in the rafters near the swimming pool. There were rose bushes that lined our driveway (I’d rip the petals off and run them over with my bike, thinking that, surely, this was how perfume was made), and a mishmash of flora in the garden. Potted plants lined the front porch. One, my favorite, was a single pink flower in a tiny terracotta dish.

Oddly enough, I remember this flower more vividly than most other physical details about that house, though its tenure on the porch couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of weeks. After having admired its impeccable posture, the elegant draping of its petals, and that irresistible rosy flush for what seemed like an eternity, I couldn’t help myself.

I picked it.

I never imagined that it might have been planted in a pot for a reason, or that it may have had weeks or maybe months of life ahead of it yet, or that someone — presumably my mother — had chosen it at a nursery because she loved it, and been caring for it diligently ever since.

With dirt still clinging to its stem, I presented her with my find. “It’s a gift,” I said proudly. “For you.”

“I know where this came from,” she said slowly, turning it over in her hands.

She paused.

Then, she said, “Thank you.”

 ---

I had mixed feelings this month, putting together a gift guide for my blog. After the year I’d had — which was full of challenge and adventure and emotional intensity — it seemed to me that the most meaningful gift to give anyone who mattered would involve not money, but time.

A handmade card as opposed to one that’s pre-written. A song. A meal. Plans to spend time together.

This year, in that way, I suppose I’ve become a kid again.

The purest aspect of a child’s gift-giving — when money isn’t a factor — is simple. I love this, I know it’s special, and I want you to have it because I feel the same is true about you.

And, perhaps ironically, the natural response — thank you — is a gift in kind.

Looking Forward: Girls.

“This might have been a mistake,” I said. My friend Lily, head cocked in sympathy, nodded. “Definitely a mistake.”

It was a cold night, and we’d just met friends at a favorite bar in our neighborhood. Short on cash, I’d ordered the $4 well whiskey, neat. Its smell alone made my eyes water. And I’d been given a generous pour.

“Brave girl,” someone remarked as I held the tumbler to my lips.

“Would you like me to tell you a story, to distract you while you drink that?” said Lily.

“Yes,” I replied. “Please.”

“Okay,” she said. “This is a story about unicorns.”

And she began.

---

People say that when you find true love, you know. Though I’ve experienced this with the opposite sex before, the same phenomenon has occurred---delightfully, consistently, and much more often---in many of my friendships with girls, as well.

For instance, Kimiko, one of my closest childhood friends, shared a bus seat with me on a field trip in the third grade. We debated afterschool snacks, discussed the size and cuteness of our respective pet rabbits, played MASH---and subsequently spent the next seven years together, so close that we considered ourselves one unit (our combined name was Shimiko). When I moved to LA at fifteen, we traded photo albums, and put together a dictionary of terms we’d created over the course of our friendship---code names for crushes, words only the two of us understood.

And that was just it---there was much about the two of us that only we understood. In so many ways, we spoke the same language.

I knew the same was true of Maya, a high school friend and future Brooklyn roommate, when we spent an afternoon in the parking lot at our school, seated on the roof of her car. We were navigating what I remember to be a very complicated situation involving prom dates. My angst about the situation was almost certainly disproportionate to the circumstances at hand; still, she understood.

And when Linda, my roommate all four years of college, spent countless nights in with me while all of our friends went out, I knew I’d made a special kind of friend---one you know you never have to work to impress, one who understands your history as well as they do their own. Already a sister to six, she’s filled that role for me, as well. She’s family, a touchstone. She feels like home.

I met Lily only months ago, late in the summer, in East River Park. She and another college roommate of mine, Megan, were spending an afternoon sitting in the grass, talking, getting sunburns. We’d all recently been through break-ups; we were heavy-hearted. But that gave us something to talk about. And in the weeks and months that followed, I found so much of the happiness I needed in meeting Megan to do work at coffee shops, in going on late-night adventures with Lily. (When she told me the story about unicorns at the bar, I knew she was someone whose quirkiness I understood.)

Though I’m loathe to make a Sex and the City reference here (much internal deliberation happened before I wrote this paragraph), I can’t help but think of a scene that occurs toward series’ end---it’s one that always makes me feel like weeping. In it, Carrie, set to embark on her ill-fated journey to Paris, says to her friends, “What if I never met you?”

---

Megan and I had dinner together just last weekend and reflected on the past few months over steaming bowls of soup. “My year took a turn the day I came to see you in the park,” I said. “You were lonely in the same way I was. You understood.”

You understood.

What a staggering gift, to have friends who say, “I know what you mean.” Who make you laugh. Who appreciate, and relate to, and love  your eccentricities.

This is what it means to know someone.

It’s what it means to understand.

Looking Forward: Valuables.

If your home were on fire, what would you take with you? My roommate, Natalie, and I contemplated this recently in socks and slippers, sprawled in our living room on a rainy weekend afternoon. After establishing that much of what was really valuable to us---travel mementos, yearbooks, hard copies of old photographs---were stowed safely at our parents’ houses, we moved on to what was with us now, as adults, in the little Brooklyn apartment we’ve inhabited for the past two years.

We’d both take our laptops, we decided. Our cameras. Our passports. But what else?

“My signed Strokes album?” Natalie offered.

“My vintage fox collar?” I suggested.

We laughed about this, noting the lack---both surprising and disturbing---of sentimental items in our home. We talked about how lucky we were---that if worst came to worst, nothing of real value would be lost.

Then we wracked our brains for more---surely there must be something we were forgetting.

But there wasn’t.

--

Things haven’t always been this way, though.

“Your room looks like a museum,” my friend Maya said to me once. “I’m afraid to touch anything in it."

She was referring to my high school bedroom, where the pillows on my bed were always arranged just so; where there was always a stack of magazines on my nightstand, perfectly straightened; where I had old album covers lining my shelves, as if they were for sale in a record store.

What I remember most about that room, though, wasn’t its obsessive order, but the items that populated it---items I loved, items that represented who I was at that time. There was an electric guitar, seldom used but much-admired. A vintage Who poster, covered in creases from years of display. And a record player, of course, a gift from my godparents.

My college bedroom contained stacks of creative writing papers, stored in boxes under my bed; souvenirs from my trip to India; an entire wall of Polaroids.

Accumulating these things took time. And I exhibited them carefully, almost as if they were items in a shrine. At various points in time, they were things I couldn’t imagine living without.

---

Today, in my new home, in my new city, I’m working (however slowly) on building a new collection of treasures. As time passes, I add to it here and there---photo booth pictures taped to the wall, frayed notepads stacked on my desk, cards from friends propped against picture frames.

Little by little, my home here is developing its story. It’s a happy work in progress.

Still, I wonder, would I scramble to take it all with me if I had to leave? Thinking it over as I write this, I realize that none of these items (or any of the belongings I prized in the past) are as significant as the experiences they commemorate---and that the most important things I’ve collected over the years aren’t things, they’re memories.

That’s a comforting thought.

Slowly, surely, I’m curating a new museum of my own here in my little apartment. There are things I love in it---things I can hold in my hands---but its most substantial collection is also its most valuable. And it won’t ever burn, won’t ever fall apart, won’t ever be lost.

Looking Forward: What I Need.

I ate Thanksgiving dinner this year perched on an ottoman, the kind that’s hollow on the inside and meant to be filled with throw blankets and extra cushion covers. This one, much to my glee, contained my roommate’s collection of high school CDs – The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Strokes, and, best of all, a blink-182 cassette tape---the glory of which was revealed after I toppled off the ottoman’s lopsided lid while attempting to pass a tray of bread across the table. I wasn’t the only one who occupied improvised seating. Five-foot-tall Linda, who I met my first day of college, balanced on a disproportionately tall barstool; Lily and Megan, who dressed up as rats with me this Halloween, shared a wooden bench. My roommate Natalie’s brother, Andrew, and his friend, Dave---who I’d met for the first time that day---found seats on folding chairs borrowed from my brother; and Charlie, one of my oldest family friends, sat on a restaurant-style leather chair that Natalie had lugged home from her mother’s apartment in Bensonhurst.

To accommodate our many guests, we placed an old desk---which normally holds turntables and a hodgepodge of vinyl records---at the end of our dining table (mismatched tablecloths covered the dings and scratches). A lack of proper silverware forced us to get creative, using spatulas as serving spoons, ladles as ice cream scoops. And the food. There were two stuffings. Six pies. Enough cranberry sauce to feed a football team. This is what happens, I learned, when a group of fourteen collaborates on dinner.

It was the first Thanksgiving I’ve ever hosted (or co-hosted, as it were), and the first I’ve spent away from family. With our ever-fluctuating guest list, disorganized menu, and relative lack of space, I wondered beforehand whether the night would end up feeling like a real Thanksgiving.

But, as you probably can guess, it did.

My dad mentioned to me today that he can’t think of a past Thanksgiving or Christmas or birthday that wasn’t anything other than wonderful. Getting in the spirit of celebration---with family and friends and food---always makes those days special.

All of these things were there last week, of course.

And there was more. A candlelit apartment in a city I love. Great music. New friends, and ones I know I’ll keep for the rest of my life. I’ve realized this year, more than ever, that they’ve become family to me.

After dinner, we pushed the tables aside and arranged our chairs in the living room. “Everyone say what they’re thankful for,” someone suggested. Most everyone named family and friends, but there were more inventive contributions, too: 24-hour bodegas, neighborhood juice bars, bike rides through Brooklyn. (For the record, blog friends, one of the things I named was you.)

But Warren, another college friend in attendance, kept it simple and said it best: “I’m thankful to have what I need.”

I am, too. And I'm thankful to know that what I need isn't complicated, isn't out-of-reach. It's here.

Looking Forward: Giving Thanks.

It was a warm day at the Brooklyn Flea. Shoppers showed their shoulders, and drank watermelon agua frescas on ice; perused beer crates filled with records that smelled of dust and squeezed un-socked feet into vintage shoes several sizes too small. Summer was on its way. It would be my first in New York City. “I need to find an air conditioner for my room,” I said to my housemate, Maya, who’d accompanied me. “But it needs to be a cheap one,” I added, “because I’m broke.”

Not ten minutes passed before a familiar face materialized in the crowd---a friend of my family’s whose wife was expecting. “I’m clearing space in our apartment for the baby,” he told me after we’d said hello. “Getting rid of tons of stuff. Know anyone who needs an AC?”

Later, on the way home, I remarked that the city’s demand for constant movement---subway stairs, mad dashes for the bus, long walks cross-town---made my body ache. “I wonder if there’s a yoga studio near our apartment?” I asked Maya, casting sideward glances around our desolate, warehouse-ridden block.

A woman passed to our left, holding a stack of papers in her hand. “Coupons for free yoga?”

---

There’s no elegant way to put what I’m about to say.

For much of my life, things have more or less fallen into my lap.

It’s almost embarrassing to admit, though I can certainly claim very little credit for the way things have happened in my life. My friends call it Shoko luck, and it’s something I’ve always been reluctant to acknowledge, for fear of completely jinxing it---whatever it is. It’s happened on a large scale (jobs, travel), and in smaller instances, as well (free yoga in graffiti-bathed Bushwick). “I’m just lucky, I guess,” has forever been my sheepish explanation.

This year, though, things have been different. They've been hard. They've fallen apart. I’ve had my own (admittedly benign) version of a quarter-life crisis. I’ve experienced anxiety on levels I hadn’t previously known were possible. Nothing's come easily, or fallen out of the sky,  or shown up on my doorstep wrapped in ribbon.

Life feels changed. But not in a bad way.

As I mentioned recently on my blog (and in many instances here), I’ve been experiencing it all, beauty and terror. I’m embracing it and loving it and hating it all at the same time. Writing about all of this on the Equals Record has been terrifying---but ultimately more rewarding than I could ever have anticipated. (By the way, that’s thanks entirely to you, wonderful readers.)

Equally unexpected? The fact that, curiously, mysteriously, I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

This---knowing this---makes me lucky. Vastly so.

For that---and many, many other things, too---I give thanks.

Looking Forward: Free.

My dad left Glencoe, Illinois in 1960 to attend Antioch, a small liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He was eighteen. Boyish, with hair cropped neatly above his ears. My grandparents accompanied him on his first day and helped him move in, unpacking his belongings from Nixon-stickered suitcases. Months later, he returned to Glencoe for Christmas vacation with his hair creeping to his shoulders. He wore a Peruvian cape with a gigantic winged collar, which caused him to resemble what he calls “a stoned, South American Dracula.” A neighbor who spotted him walking down the street called him a communist. (My dad remembers him as the most liberal man on the block.)

My grandmother cried. But my grandfather---whose stern countenance belied a love of race cars and a fondness for eccentricity---reacted differently. In him, my dad recalls detecting---faintly, secretly---a quiet glimmer of pride.

---

Twenty-five years later, I celebrated my thirteenth birthday. I woke up that morning feeling weighted with purpose. You’re not a child anymore, I thought to myself as I lay between sheets printed with happy-faced clouds.

“I’m going to be the best teenager in the world,” I told my parents, hardly able to imagine that I’d ever succumb to the hormonal turbulence I’d heard was in store for me.

And looking back, I made good on that promise---for the most part, anyway. While I may not have been the best teenager on the planet, I certainly must have been among the tamest. I (hardly) touched alcohol, and never laid a finger on a drug. I didn’t date til my senior year. I never uttered a swear word, and never once fought with my brother or my parents (people never believe that last one, but it’s true).

The funniest part about all of this is that my parents---who have always supported me in every decision I’ve made---did nothing to discourage me from doing the things I thought “bad” teenagers did. They told me they understood the temptation to experiment, and that there was nothing I could do that would ever make them love me less. Their only hope, they said, was that I would be safe. Everything in moderation.

Clearly, their tolerance and sensitivity were wasted on me.

But then I got older. And there came a point when trying to do everything well became impossible. Inevitably, there were job rejections. Failed relationships. Situations I wished I’d handled differently.

But I learned (slowly, the hard way) that life is infinitely more interesting---and much more fun---when it's allowed to be messy, embarrassing, complicated, noisy.  And with high school and college behind me, it's become less about doing things perfectly and more about doing things, period. Doing them, and feeling them, and thinking about them, and learning from them.

I no longer aspire to be perfect. And I think the people who know me best---my parents included---are happy for me. I’m learning to let myself live life with a full range of experiences. This process could maybe be referred to as rebellion. More accurately, though, I think it’s just openness.

The mother of one of my high school classmates published a note to her son in the senior pages of our yearbook which read, “Be free, and enjoy.”

I understand what she meant, and I’m doing that now. I think my grandfather would be proud.

Looking Forward: Looking Back.

Somewhere in a closet at my parent’s house is a journal I kept as a child. It’s orange. It has gold pages. There’s a painting of a cat on the cover. I don’t remember much of what’s written in it, save for the fact that I assigned each day a letter grade, a decision inspired by a book I’d read by Judy Blume. Days when friends came over, or when I managed to sit next to the older girls at summer camp, or any day on which a birthday party occurred received an ‘A.’ Bad weather, chocolate milk shortages at lunchtime, or having to accompany a parent on bank- or insurance-related errands merited a ‘C,’ or worse. Really bad days (missed soccer goals, botched trips to the zoo) were accompanied by a drawing, barely discernible, of a hand with the thumb pointing downward.

As must be the case with most children who like to write, I was given countless journals as gifts over the years. For whatever reason, this one was the only one I ever used.

Years later, in high school, I filled two large, spiral-bound books with what I referred to as my thoughts on “reality, rebellion, and rock ‘n’ roll.” I wrote extravagant, long-winded essays – all by hand, a feat I can hardly fathom now – on art, and music, and the meaning of life. I cataloged regrets, made lists of goals, and — because I was, in the end, a teenager — diligently made note of each and every movement made by the floppy-haired boy who sat behind me in math. (Taped to one page of the journal was a tiny balled-up clump of paper he threw in class one day, intending to hit the back of a friend’s head. It landed on my desk instead and I saved it, convinced its altered course was a sign.)

I found these journals — the cat one, and the two from high school — a couple of years ago as I packed up my room before moving to New York.

I read through each.

The one with the cat cover, filled with chicken-scratch entries that made me smile, went back on the shelf, where it remains today. The other two, whose pretentious ramblings I could barely get through without vomiting, went into the shredder.

 ---

I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a group of MFA students about how hard — and how painfully embarrassing — it can be to read old work. I’m not sure what I was thinking as I destroyed page after page of those spiral-bound books, but at the time, I felt that the many hours I’d spent recording my thoughts were less important than the possibility of someone finding them. And judging them. And thinking that the words on these pages represented me.

I realize now that those journals were like marks on a growth chart. That I needed to go through certain phases in order to get better. That attempting to “cover my footprints” was unnecessary. But I’m still not immune to the urge to hide work I’m not proud of anymore.

However, now that so much of my writing is public, I no longer have the luxury of being able to rip up my work if I decide later that I don’t like it. The thought of this sometimes makes me uncomfortable, but the solution’s clear: my only choice is to write as honestly as I can. Then, there’s nothing to regret.

In college, I attempted to write a story about an artist in diary form. It contained two parts: one was a journal he wrote for his eyes only, and the other was one he wrote with an audience in mind, one he hoped people would find after he died.

I never finished the story, because I couldn’t keep track of the two voices. I can only hope that as a writer, I never have that dilemma myself.

The challenge ahead is to create a single voice; for better or for worse, an honest one, my own.

Looking Forward: Traces.

I spent my last year of college living in the front room of a purple and yellow Victorian house not far from downtown Santa Cruz. Six of us lived upstairs, six or so more lived below. The house was old, rickety. It was terribly insulated (I remember laying in my bed one winter morning, almost in tears because I had to get out from under the covers). The bathtub didn’t drain properly and made strange, regurgitation sounds at random, often in the middle of the night. My bedroom had gray carpeting with bits of gum (not mine) stuck in its fibers. I loved that house.

“I’m in the big purple Victorian near the high school,” I’d tell people when asked where I lived.

The following winter, after graduation, I returned to Santa Cruz to visit a friend who’d stayed behind to complete a Master’s program. Of course, I made a point to drive past the purple and yellow house.

To my horror, it was army green.

I haven’t been back to Santa Cruz since.

---

There are places in my life---and by places, I mean actual locations---that hold so much emotional charge that I can barely stand to think about them. Missing them hurts too much.

Santa Cruz is the perfect example. And it’s not just the city itself that I miss. I miss the purple house. I miss the East Field overlooking the ocean, where I lay in the grass on one of my first nights at school, stargazing with a group of perfect strangers. I miss the classroom where I attended creative writing workshops. I miss a certain stretch of road along Westcliff Drive, where I stood on a rock one windy afternoon, watching otters in the surf with the first boy I ever loved.

Santa Cruz was mine then. But part of growing up is leaving things behind.

Santa Cruz doesn’t belong to me anymore, I thought as I drove away from the army green monstrosity that was my home. It’s moved on without me.

But while the houses we grew up in, the schools we attended, and the cities we lived in may no longer be ours simply by virtue of the fact that we’re no longer physically there, I think we leave traces of ourselves behind in places we love. And in that way, they’re never lost.

A piece of me is still in Santa Cruz, sitting on the stoop at the purple house, spying on otters, stargazing in the grass.

Thinking about all of this hurts, but it’s also a reminder to enjoy where I am---and what I’m doing---now.

Because I know one day I’ll miss this place in the same way, too.

Looking Forward: A Story of Survival.

In kindergarten, I announced to my friends and family that I was “a woman of destiny” who spoke two languages: English and “cat.” (My teachers, at one point, had to separate me from my best friend for excluding others when speaking cat.) As my grade school education continued, my pastimes evolved. I taught myself to bake bread, filling our freezer with numberless misshapen loaves of rye. On weekends, I read the newspaper while eating radishes and raw onions. I wore mismatched socks. I wrote, illustrated, and performed a short story in which the starring character was a pair of underwear owned by an aging rock star named Steve. The underwear was a character of interest because it possessed the ability to sprout Greek gods from its elastic waistband.

In short, I was a quirky child. And proud of it. “I’m weird!” I proclaimed to my family one day in the car.

“‘Weird’ has such negative connotations,” my dad told me. “There are better words to use than that. You could say ‘unusual’ instead.”

“I’m strange!” I offered.

He paused. “How about ‘unique’?”

---

I don’t remember the exact moment when my feelings about being “unique” or “unusual” changed, but they did---as I suspect they do with many people---around the time I entered junior high.

I began wearing an inordinate amount of gray. I spent many, many hours wondering what it meant to be cool, or pretty, or smart. I suddenly became shy, to such a degree that I forgot what it was like to be anything else. (In other words, gone were the days of personifying magical undergarments.)

I assumed this was who I was. It was years---ten, at least---before I remembered that it wasn’t.

While cat language, raw onions, and mismatched socks are no longer fixtures in my life, a certain quirkiness---and a bottomless affection for all things weird---has remained. My favorite part about working in a creative field is that I’m allowed the freedom to play, to seek out adventure, to let my imagination run wild. It’s what I enjoyed most about life as a child, and it’s what I enjoy most about life as an adult.

As the saying goes, “the creative adult is the child who survived.”

There’s a picture of me somewhere, at age seven or eight, walking my pet rabbit (who I’d named after a long-deceased Hawaiian queen) on a purple leash. I’m wearing bright yellow bike shorts and a giant pink bow on top of my head, and I’m standing in full view of traffic on the lawn in front of my house.

I look ridiculous. But, also, completely at ease. And very happy.

That part of me---the rabbit walker, the storyteller, the fearless wearer of neon-colored athletic gear---still exists, at least in spirit. And I'm grateful that it does.

I'm all the braver, bolder, weirder---and happier---for it.

Looking Forward: Hello, Neighbor.

It was a Friday night. My friend Ben was visiting from out of town, and we’d made plans to go out to eat in my neighborhood. As we walked, I listed dinner options---Thai, Korean, Italian, Japanese---but it wasn’t long before I realized I’d lost my audience. Half a block behind me, a wide-eyed Ben stood transfixed in front of the window of a neighborhood barbershop, one I’d passed many times before but to which I’d never paid much attention. “Let’s go here,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, incredulous.

“Here,” he said. “Let’s go here. They’re watching the Pacquiao fight. Let’s join them.” Then, in response to my blank stare: “Pacquiao’s a boxer.”

Still several yards down the street, I proceeded to list the thousand-and-one reasons I thought this was a crazy idea. It would be rude, I insisted, to assume that this group wanted guests---judging from the music and the laughter that was coming from the shop, they seemed to be having a wonderful time as it was, without us. We weren’t invited, we’d never met---therefore we’d be intruding. And, I huffed, it was getting late. I was starving.

“We can do whatever you want after the fight, I promise,” Ben said. “Please can we do this? It’ll be fun. These people are your neighbors.” He paused. “Afterward, it’s your call, I swear. Anything you want. We can eat ice cream and watch ‘Father of the Bride’ if that’s what sounds good to you.”

Ten minutes later, I found myself seated on a bench in the front of the barbershop, in the center of a flurry of activity. Men placed bets in Spanish, swiveling in leather barber chairs. Couples salsa-danced to music on an old boombox in the back corner. Beer bottles were opened with cans of hairspray. Ben had joined some sort of raucous conversation with a cluster of Pacquiao fans; meanwhile, an old man pacing the front of the shop graciously attempted to explain to me the complexities of boxing. A girl in the corner about my age offered me a shy smile, a gesture of camaraderie.

“I told you this would be fun,” said Ben.

He was right. It was.

That was almost a year ago. I’ve passed the shop many times since then and have peeked in on occasion, but the barbers’ backs are often turned, or they’re too focused on their work to notice passersby in the street. Last week, however, I ran into the owner on the sidewalk outside a local bodega two blocks from my apartment.

I gave a cautious wave, thinking he might not recognize me; instead, I was met with a giant hug and an ear-to-ear smile. Despite our language barrier, we exchanged pleasantries: we were doing well, enjoying life, working hard as usual. Before saying goodbye, I told him I’d stop by again soon to watch another fight, punching the air awkwardly in a poor attempt to mime boxing. “Yes, yes,” he replied, holding me at arm’s length. Then he did something I’ll never forget.

“Look at you,” he said, beaming, “You’re wonderful.”

All my life, the cities I’ve lived in have felt like temporary homes. Growing up, my family moved back and forth between Los Angeles and Honolulu, and I knew that Santa Cruz, where I lived for four years in college, wasn’t a city I’d remain in after graduation. Now, though, for the first time, I’m beginning to get a sense of what it might feel like to be a part of a community. To settle in. To make a place my own.

And I’m realizing I don’t just want to exist as part of my neighborhood---I want to know it. More importantly, I want to know the people I share it with---and not just the ones whose lives look like mine. It makes me so happy to be able to say hello every day to the man across the street who feeds the pigeons every morning, to the bearded bartender next door, to the crew of barbers down the street, and the dreadlocked tattoo artist around the corner.

Two years ago, when I lived deep in a hipster-dominated pocket of Bushwick, someone plastered a sign over a chainlink fence that read, you are not your neighborhood.

Perhaps not. But aren’t neighborhoods largely a reflection of the men and women and children---the barbers, bartenders, artists, hippies, hipsters, and everything in between---who populate them?

We may only know each other well enough to smile and wave and say hello, but this makes us more than strangers.

This makes us neighbors. And together, we are our neighborhood.

Looking Forward: Great Loves

I saw The Rolling Stones live for the first time at age eleven. Certain details, to this day, remain vivid: the crowd rising as the lights dimmed. The heat of a pyrotechnic explosion at the beginning of “Sympathy for the Devil.” The ground beneath my feet, sticky with beer.

One bit in particular stands out above the rest, however.

Returning home later that night, I was greeted on the front porch by sleepy-eyed parents. Buzzing, high on color and flash bulbs and drumbeats and leather jackets, I hopped back and forth in my tennis shoes and blithely declared, “I’m in love!”

My parents smiled. Music was a part of their history. I imagine it meant a lot for them to know it would be a part of mine, as well.

“I’m in love,” I repeated, “with Keith Richards.”

I referenced this moment once as part of a free-writing exercise in a college creative writing course. The prompt? Tell us about your first love.

The class laughed when I read my response, which was, of course, completely understandable.

But what I’d written was also the truth. I’d fallen in love.

To be clear, the object of my affection was not really Keith Richards (though he does still occupy a special place in my heart). I’d fallen in love with music---more specifically, rock and roll. The music of my parents’ generation. To employ half a cliché, it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship---and over a decade later, we’re still very happy together.

 Not all meaningful relationships occur between people. Family members, friends, and romances aside, some of the greatest loves of my life have been places, experiences, interests, activities. After all, what constitutes a great love? Is it heart-stopping? All-consuming? Is it deep, complicated, emotional, electrifying?

I’ve certainly experienced music in this way. Towns, cities, and neighborhoods, too: Tokyo comes to mind; so does the dusty, cacophonous stretch of street that was my home for a month in India. And writing? Don’t even get me started. It’s been the greatest love/hate relationship of my life.

These are things I’ve loved so intensely that they’ve not only become a part of my life, but a part of me. Along with a hodgepodge of other experiences, memories, destinations, and, of course people, they add depth, shape, color, meaning. They’re building blocks. Puzzle pieces.

They're not just a part of my story. In many ways, they are the story.