True Confessions

When you’re a child, there are certain rights of passage that are considered building blocks to adulthood. Moments that are anticipated, celebrated and memorialized as the milestones they are.

Yet as an adult, experience provides a type of x-ray lense through which to view the real formative moments of our youth. Ones that shaped us, leaving us impacted for decades, despite there being no pomp and circumstance to mark that they occurred.

An Ode to the Out of Office

Vacations. Holidays. The moments we seemingly build our lives around, escapes from the ordinary, underscoring what it means to depart. Proceeded by a sense of anticipation, in the days before our long-awaited time off, our bodies begin to taste the exhale, excitement building as we get ourselves situated to check out.

This might mean putting a temporary stop on the mail. Making arrangements to ensure our pets are fed. And for those in the working world, many moons ago vacation-prep was also synonymous with turning on the ultimate sign of freedom:

The out of office auto response.

Down to the Corner

Somewhere in the midst of the haze of the pandemic – back when days, weeks and months blurred together to form a moment in time – my parents decided to sell my childhood home. It was an emotional endeavor, one that involved sorting through over 40 years’ worth of memories that had been shoved into every nook and cranny of the house.

When I was summoned to the basement to sort through the pile of my stuff that remained despite me not living under that roof for nearly 15 years, I was dismayed by how much I had accumulated. Overwhelmed, I took it home, only to move it all again a year later when my husband and I ourselves relocated, never properly examining the contents that threatened to explode the Rubbermaid bins. 

Playing it Small

In a world where you can be anything, be kind.” It’s one of those easily memorable, effective, hanging-on-a-coffee-shop-wall quotes, that has become so ubiquitous that a google search for its author returns multiple results.

Its appeal, no doubt, is in the inarguable validity of its message. Yet its own introductory phrase – in a world where you can be anything – is what, to me, seems to carry additional weight at a time when hobbies can turn into side hustles, and leaving your mark is only an Instagram account or Etsy shop away.  

Then and Now

On March 2nd, 2001 my freshman-in-college self was on a quick break between dance classes when I stopped back at my dorm to refuel. The timing proved serendipitous, because it was during this one-hour window that I got the news that my sister had gone into labor and that I should try to get home.

The call came through on a landline, as my first cell phone was still over a year away. And in the midst of my excitement, I still recall consulting my paper trifold schedule to determine how quickly I could catch a train out of Grand Central to CT.

Anywhere but Here

It’s one of those memories that’s so imbedded in my mind’s eye that I remember what I was wearing. My outfit, of course, meticulously planned and executed, was a critical piece of the mosaic of that day.

And so was my makeup. At fifteen years old, the fact that I had recently been granted permission to wear mascara and clear lip gloss was more than a rite of passage. It was a desperately craved form of expression, yes, but moreover, it felt like a gateway to the future me.

Ignorance – or Bliss?

It’s a custom we undergo nearly every evening: My husband showers while I partake in a likely too-lengthy skincare routine. We share the bathroom, in one of those under-the-radar moments that speaks to the intimacy of a relationship.

The unglamorous ones that, in hindsight, make it achingly clear that you are sharing your life with someone else.

Making Music

For a significant chapter of my life, running was my outlet of choice. Pre-dawn, feet making music against the pavement, I would settle into the monotony of a rhythm that swallowed me whole.

I felt both everything and nothing while I was running. Mind lost in thought, it was assumed my body would defy the odds. The more extreme the conditions, the better test of my merit.   

Darkness. Coldness. Exhaustion. These were the running partners that challenged my soul.