I thought I was just changing the sheets

Ya think about changing your sheets. Whether you do it as a disciplined thing or you wait until the sheets peel themselves off your bed and beg you PERMA PRESS ME, STAT, you are so glad when change comes. The clean sheets feel so crisp and fresh. But then the cycle repeats itself and you are rolling around in bed wishing the Snuggle bear would just do you a favor and toss you some new linens. Change happens again, exchanging the dirties for the cleans.

The thing about moving from Boston to Tennessee for me was that I naively thought I was just changing a set of sheets. It was time. The city living, I was ready to wash ourselves clean of the endless traffic, the population density, the high priced everything, the pollution. And so we did. We not only changed the sheets, we moved the whole bed and caboodle to the South wherein we were no closer to family and were now without friends. The soft scent of the new sheets wore off quickly as we battled real estate woes back in Boston for well over the first year.

Had we not experienced what we believed was a very specific calling to change our sheets at the appointed time and to come live with some new ones in an appointed place, I think the experience would have been much more fraught with doubt and fear.

And now, here we are. We have changed so much more than our sheets. My children pull bricks from their driveway to find potato bug colonies, they sing sabbath school songs in the car, they know about cherry limeade at Sonic, they chase butterflies on our acreage like a couple of Smurfs for crying out loud. They are Southerners. They have no concrete memories of the urbane streets we strolled everyday in their former city, splashing in the Frog Pond on the Boston Common, riding the T from Shawmut Station to Harvard Square.

These memories are becoming faint for me, too, like illustrations of someone else's enchanted life who was able to do the unthinkable: walk to get a chai latte on her way to work.

I thought I was only changing the sheets, you see. I thought I got to retain all the things I still liked about my life as I traded the excesses of the city for the simple pleasures of the country.

Not so. I just exchanged all the maladies and woes of my former geography for a new set in my new geography.

I am still uncomfortable in the South. I am still the weird girl in social circles. I am still too direct in most settings, and totally uninterested in pleasantries. I am intense, honest, generous, clumsy, and self-deprecating. I have a flair for brightly colored fabrics. I am a product of a Midwestern upbringing, a MidAtlantic education, and a New England professionalism. I cannot disinherit these sheets that have wrapped me up for twirtysomething years. I can only clean them and make them presentable.

My one comfort, other than the amazing Mr. Loverpants who should win a best supporting role in the play about my yammering, is the promise from Psalm 46:

God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.

Can I get a li'l 'Bless her heart' from y'all?

Studio 4109

I got to do something fun last night. Epically fun by my weekend standards (see also: will I rearrange the pantry? Or will it be my sock drawer again?). I got to host an SNL-type show on campus. With a bunch of sweet, talented little cupcakes, who are also full-time college students.

Ah, 'twas so good to my soul.

Something about being back with the thespian-types. Goofy and spontaneous-like. I love the camaraderie, the encouragement, where the only competition is who gets to make the biggest blooper in front of the biggest audience.

I used to think all those things that people think about people who do theatre: how they're all shallow narcissists who can't connect with their own identity so they have to borrow ones that someone else wrote.

But the business of theater, the actual getting-down-to-the-studs exercise of performing live on stage with a bunch of other flawed humans, is one of the most edifying experiences. Rather than putting on someone else for a little while, one grows more into himself and herself. Certain unexpecteds emerge, certain trills in voices, certain resistances to making ugly faces, and one learns and grows and trusts a great deal.

I hearted last night a whole bunch.

photocredit Studio 4109

15 Year HS Reunion - In absentia

My old man texted me that I should come home this coming weekend since it's my 15 year high school reunion. That made me sad on a whole lot of levels, not least because I wish I could go "home" and see my parents more regularly. And also, because my plans for this weekend most likely include drawing a lot of robot princesses, reading beat report assignments, or stalking preying mantises in our front yard. I made some really lovely friends in high school, so I'm sad to miss the reunion. Because social media has killed the need for an actual catch-up, I think reunions are less about comparing notes about what you have done in the years since you graduated, and more about the layers you have shed in the interim.

For example, the person I was in high school was basically a shell of a teenager with a deep sadness that she stuffed way down, masked by a bright smile and a constant busy-ness that would distract her from the sadness.

So, in lieu of my physical presence, here I am 15 years later.

And here are 15 things I am no longer:

1. I am no longer a person who thinks the Pope is the boss of the applesauce.

2. I no longer weigh 83 lbs.

3. I no longer think an L.L. Bean barn coat is the height of fashion.

4. I no longer fall asleep teary-eyed listening to Tori Amos' "Little Earthquakes" on my cassette walkman.

5. I no longer subscribe to the National Right-to-Life newsletter.

6. I no longer travel by RTA bus to get home.

7. I no longer spend my Friday nights standing on metal bleachers at Lakewood McKinley stadium.

8. I no longer wring my hands so my knuckles are completely white when I stand next to a 16 year-old boy.

9. I no longer think it is okay for me to not have bangs.

10. I no longer pray the rosary once/week.

11. I no longer am a dues-paying member of Kiwanis International.

12. I no longer use the word "random" to describe pretty much everything.

13. I no longer go without makeup.

14. I no longer study or read things that do not interest me. Like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example.

15. I no longer own these shoes.

Wishing my Magnifi-sisters a really happy reunion this weekend!