I've Been Ready

I wasn't tall enough to stand up in the deep end of Bay Pool. Therefore, I wasn't allowed to swim in the deep end. Unless, of course, I passed the swimming test. Seeing as I would be spending most days a week at that municipal pool with the rest of my much taller counterparts of Glenview Daycare Center, I was not going to miss out. I was going to be there in the deep end, jumping for shiny pennies and finishing their Marcos with my Polos. So I took the swim test. And I failed so bad, I was practically circling the drain. So I practiced like an Olympian - in the 3 feet section, of course - and stroked that water like the dickens. Then, I tried again. My second time, we called the hunky guard over during rest period. He was bronzed and hairy and looked too old to be guarding at a municipal pool. He told me to swim to the middle of the pool and turn around (b-b-but! how do I turn around if there's no wall to push off of?!?!?) and come back to him. I pushed off the wall and carved a line down that deep end like it was the dead sea and I was Moses. Somehow, I managed to turn myself around without my lungs completely filling with water. Combining my nerves and fear and a total loss of my bearings, I swam doggy-style back to that wall like I was clammering to come ashore on Normandy. It was my D-Day and when I was done, I nearly died at the cement wall. I looked up and saw the caveman of a guard nod his head. He gave me a red plastic badge that I was to safety pin to my suit all summer long. I was now officially certified for deep end cannonballing. Geronomo! I've always been a little bit unsatisfied with my lot in life when it came to the timing of things. I always wanted to advance to the next level of play when the present one got boring. I was never a particularly jealous kid. I just didn't like that feeling, like I was always catching up. And if you give yourself a head start, you can't be always gaining on the rest, right?

The first day that I would begin at the Catholic School was in the middle of the first semester. My family had moved and so I was once again starting the first day of first grade. Only at a new school with new kids and a new outfit. I woke that morning and looked at my new uniform hanging from the hanger on my closet. I was in a new house, so did that mean that my parents would still wake me for school like they did at the old house? I put on the new plaid jumper. It felt pretty comfortable, even though I had unwittingly pulled it on backwards. I walked into my parents bedroom. Gah! I had seen cartoons where this happened. My parents had slept in! On my first say of school! Good heavens, how could they be trusted!? I would simply have to make my lunch myself that morning. But how to make a lunch? I started to panic, thinking about my lonely lunchbox, about the empty Smurfette thermos - what did I fill that with, again? I would have to wake my parents! I waited for the creaking of the floorboards in their room to wake my mother who slept like a lid on a garbage can in a tornado. She looked up and groaned. My father woke up and looked at me and covered his face. I only know now that he was trying to cover his laughter because he has since then told me the story of the morning that I began first grade at St. Raphael School and how I came into their room at 3:30 in the morning. With my uniform on backwards. Ready for school.

I wasn't born ready. I've just always convinced myself that I was. Ready. For the next level of play. The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I taught myself to type without looking at the keyboard, filling out a spreadsheet of all of the colleges I wanted to visit between now and when I went to college. When I got accepted to college, I wanted to go register for classes the next day. By the end of my freshman year of college, I had all the brochures stacked neatly for my junior year abroad.

I had asked my sister and best friend to be my bridesmaids before I had a ring. I planned our wedding around law school orientation before I had gotten accepted.

Then, I started thinking about actually getting married. And actually going to law school. And all of the preparation gave way to a complete state of paralysis.

I'm always planning and preparing. I'm always suiting up into uniform and, yet, I don't even know how to pack my own lunch. So why? Why am I always ready to swim in the deep end, when I can't even stand there tippy-toed?

I think it's, again, because I don't want to be left behind. And you can't be left behind if you're always ahead of the curve. I just wish I knew how to live in the present, to gather up a fistful of roses and actually smell them before I am making lists of who's going to receive them. I don't know where I get my fast forward reflex. My mother is of the present; she is the original laidback gal who enjoys her friends and family as they are. My father is of the past; his politics are completely reactionary and he recalls his own personal history like an A & E Biographer.

So now, I sit here, always a little dazed, always a little on the verge of tears. I want the condo. I want the baby. I want the next level of play. But what am I missing by spending my time wanting? And what if I find that what's around the curve is just a lonely place where I wait for everyone else to catch up, to wake up? What if I'm the only one doggy-paddling here in the deep end?

Woooooooh!

For those fond readers who check this site daily and are crestfallen to find that I have not posted any new, fresh jams, or even recycled anything stale and completly pro forma, please consider joining my "update list" which will both increase the You Have Mail! blips from your inbox and decrease your daily disappointments from the desk of kendraspondence.

To enlist, just look to the left sidebar here, see? Down there at the bottom? Enter your e-mail address in the spot below where it says: "join my Notify List and get email when I update my site:"

Then wooh!

Ahem, I said, go "Wooooh!" and you'll be transported to exciting places out in cyberspace...

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Oh, and here's a picture of what I look like when I'm coming up with new, fresh jams:

25 Fascinating Facts About My Twenties

1.) I have had more jobs since graduating from college than both of my parents have had in their whole lives. This is a remarkable lot since I have only been out of college for four years, and am a fairly monogamous person in other aspects of my life. This is also a ridiculous lot considering the fact that I have never been fired from any of these jobs like one might expect from a serial jobber.

2.) I only watched "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" for the first time this month.

3.) I cried extremely hard while scrunched up in fetal position on my 26th birthday. I was very depressed about turning 26 years-old.

4.) I have never smoked a cigar although I have attempted to do so twice in my twenties.

5.) I am married but sometimes still wake up at bleary-eyed hours of the night and am struck by the fact that there is a man sleeping in my bed. I have had to remind myself who this is, how he got here, and that it is okay, he is supposed to be here. In my bed. Lying next to me.

6.) I have barfed more after consuming Coffee Coolatas than alcoholic beverages in my twenties. One would think that I would subsequently drink less Coffee Coolatas for this reason, but I have subsquently abstained from most alcoholic beverages.

7.) I am very proud to own a life insurance policy. At age 23, I earned my license to sell life insurance in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I never endeavored to sell a life insurance policy, and my license has now lapsed without renewal. The fact that I was licensed to broker life insurance policies indicates that most chimps, apes, and other primates could pass the exam (maybe even hoofed creatures, as well - the exam only require pecking at keys on a keyboard). I do not know if this fact is more amusing than it is depressing, or just plain absurd.

8.) I have learned many Korean words in my twenties and am told that my pronunciation is above-average.

9.) Yesterday, I held a baby who was less than 12 hours-old.

10.) In the past three years, I have lost a grandparent and a stepgrandparent.

11.) I have visited five foreign countries in my twenties. Chronologically, they are: Haiti, China, Canada, England, France.

12.) I have gotten caught speeding twice in my twenties, and both times I had a radar detector in full operation.

13.) I give thanks for discovering the following products in my twenties: Underoos from American Eagle, Chai Tea in packets from Oregon Tea, White Tea Skin Guardian from Origins, Organic Granola from Harvest Coop, and Dansko clogs.

14.) I got re-baptized shortly before I turned 24. The preparation for baptism was one of the most blessed and intense times of my life, but the actual dunking was slightly terrifying.

15.) I have never missed a chance to vote in any election during my twenties. While I live in a predominantly black neighborhood, most of the pollsters do not expect that I am on my way to vote, however, and rarely solicit me as I head to the voting booth.

16.) I have not volunteered my time for worthy organizations as much as I did in my teens. I would like to change this in the second half of my twenties.

17.) The most fun I have had in one weekend during my twenties is a superlative shared by two trips. Trip #1: To Philadelphia whereby my now-husband John, best friends Spas and Walley, made merry and ate a lot of soft pretzels and wooder-ice. Trip #2: To NYC whereby my then-roommate Erin and I sang and danced very hard (at the expense of sleep) with Woody, Ellis, and Mao (at the expense of their dayjobs).

18.) I can truly say that I have never felt the intensity of my love for my husband as much as I did on our wedding day, but I can attest that my love has grown for him since that day.

19.) My friend Michael sometimes salutes the fact that I waited until marriage to do the "hibbidy-dibbidy." I think this is endlessly funny.

20.) I had no cavities until the age of 23 when I was told that I needed to get 11 fillings. I naively proceeded to turn over my molars to the D.D.S of Doom and failed to get a second opinion. This may be considered one of the Great Regrets of my Twenties.

21.) I think my mother and my sister are still the most beautiful women that I know. My sister is also in her twenties, and my mother is most definitely not.

22.) The thing about my twenties that my father boasts about most is that I attended a writing geek conference in the Hamptons with Roger Rosenblatt. Who is Roger Rosenblatt? He taught at the writing geek conference (though he was not my instructor) and he is someone that my father will expect you to know when he boasts about how I met Roger Rosenblatt at a writing geek conference in my twenties.

23.) I still wear my orthodontic retainers, over 10 years after having them made. This is not outlandish, of course, it's not like I wear them every night. They do, however, glow in the dark. In case I lose them in the throws of passion.

24.) I have lost one cellphone and another I have dropped in the middle of an intersection which was tragically pasted by a sportwagon. I have upgraded at least two of my phones. All of my phones have been called Oprah because I often conduct talkshow-like interviews on them with my family and friends.

25.) The two decisions in my life that have netted me the most satisfaction in my twenties were my decision to get married (both the timing and the person) and to launch my calligraphy business.