2015 in Retrospect

Happy New Year!  As to my lateness…all I have to say is yikes.  In my defense, though, I have spent the past two weeks on holiday, so I’m really only three weeks or so late.  In any case, here is my usual runthrough of the previous year.

January began with a bout of responsibility.  I arranged a formal family portrait with siblings in three different states, hosted a dinner with friends (that this dinner consisted of mac and cheese does not, in my opinion, diminish the maturity of this act), and even visited a doctor for a long overdue checkup.  February followed in a rush of snow, effectively wiping out that responsibility as I spent a good portion of it at home in my pajamas, glad that I didn’t have to go to work.  In March I was sociable, having a sushi picnic with an old friend (it was rather cold, but we managed), lunch with another, and many, many pots of tea shared with others.

April was the first notable date, as I set off with a friend into New York City.  I’d never been, and it really was a treat to go and see it.  We hit the highlights: Times Square (we tried to find one another there at one point, and let me tell you, Waldo would be right at home in that place), the Empire State building (102 floors of standing in line), the Met (that’s the museum, not the opera, unfortunately), Central Park (briefly; it was cold), bagels (the BEST food that we had the whole trip, I promise you), the Statue of Liberty (though we failed to plan ahead and so could only wave at her from a boat), and even Broadway (checked Les Mis off my bucket list!  Though I am so sure I will go again).  Through it all I had an irascible redhead trailing me, teaching me first that it’s a good idea to discuss what exactly each member of the party is interested in seeing, and second that it’s all right to split up occasionally, especially if you are both responsible adults and capable of making your way around a strange place alone.  (Then again, that might have been called into doubt with the two of us.)  All in all, it was one of those places where even as I went through, I was compiling a list of things I will want to see when I go back, as I certainly will.

I have to add one more note to April: two weeks after my return from NYC, I had the amazing chance to go and see Jane Goodall speak.  One of the most well-known people to come to Hollins since my attendance there, she packed two buildings to standing-room-only.  I was absolutely starstruck: she’s a wonderful lady and such an inspiration.  One for the grandkids, someday.

May was busy, as it usually is, with weddings and graduations.  Fortunately, they didn’t happen all in the same weekend, as was the case the year I graduated from college.  I attended my friend Sarah’s wedding the weekend before the graduations at Elon and Hollins Universities.  Those two did happen the same weekend, but on different days, so I managed to make it to both, though it was a lot of driving.  I enjoyed both ceremonies, though.  Graduations always make me think about what I would talk about, if I someday get to the point where people might want my advice.  I haven’t come up with anything good yet, to be honest.

June’s item of note was an old friend walking into the restaurant with her parents, completely unaware that I worked there.  We both screamed aloud at sight of one another and made a bit of a scene, but I hope that most humans wouldn’t mind that kind of scene too much.  It was lovely to see her—she used to be my shadow, and now she’s grown up into a beautiful young lady.  Towards the end of the month, I took on a long-term housesitting job, which was actually rather enjoyable.  The first night in someone else’s house is always difficult, even a little creepy—you feel like an unwelcome addition to the place, and the sensation of not belonging is very marked.  But once you get used to being in the new place, it can actually be quite novel and refreshing.

Starting in July, I began to take on a bit more responsibility at work, moving up into a part-time management position.  This involved a trip out of town to take a ten-hour certification course in food safety (a thrilling subject, to be sure, though I’d recommend whoever takes such a course to have a strong stomach).  The trip was eventful in some of the worst ways and none of the best.  Trouble with the wifi meant that only half of the class could test at a time, and I was not in the first class.  Then, on the way home, there was a vicious storm, and I’m fairly certain I thought I was going to die.  Thankfully, I didn’t, but I’d be grateful never to have to repeat the journey.

August took me in a new direction, as my roommate Kathryn and I prepared to move out of our apartment (affectionately dubbed Tookbank).  We wanted to find a house to rent, for more space and more privacy, and while we had a bit of trouble at first, we managed to find a small place not far from where we were, but in a much quieter area.  We took most of September to accomplish the move, which was expensive, but so worth it.  Now we are comfortably settled in a little white house we call the Southern March, so that we can be the hermits of the same.

The other notable event of September was the first party I have ever helped to plan.  It was a very special party—every guest was assigned a character, and these characters were given a murder to solve.  I helped write the “script” for the characters, and I was responsible for supervising the role play, which culminated in a daring rescue and a proposal which was happily accepted.  It was a blast, and now I have another wedding to attend this coming year.

October and November were filled with settling into the new house, which seemed to take forever even after all of our things were in the same place.  Putting up shelves, hanging pictures, transferring internet services and figuring out gas heating…  The house didn’t really become a home, however, until after the arrival of a motherless kitten whom we decided to name Calypso. 

I did have one distraction from playing house in a new commitment to the Roanoke Symphony Chorus, a volunteer choir attached to the local orchestra, which really is an impressive group.  It was such a pleasure to be part of a choir again—I hadn’t been in a real choir since graduation.  Our performances all went well, and I am back again this spring.

December always lends itself to Christmas, which was filled with the usual—family, food, and idle days.  Thanks to a bit of confusion in my schedule, I had six days at home rather than four, which was a pleasure.  My sister and her boyfriend came down from New York, my brother was up from South Carolina, and we were all relatively civil to one another.  In all seriousness, though, it was a beautiful holiday and a lovely year. 

That being said, 2016 is the year I turn twenty-six, which just so happens to be my lucky number.  I have high hopes for this year, and I intend to go out and get it.  Wish me luck!

Make Some Music

Just over a week ago, I had a privilege that is not found in the modern-day.  Maybe a few hundred years ago, it was normal for a lady to have musicians playing a concert just for her, close enough that she could touch them.  That kind of intimacy is impractical today, and more than impractically expensive.  I was lucky, though—I didn’t have to pay a dime.

Of course, there were some other people at my private concert.  When the Roanoke Symphony Chorus and attending string quintet performed at Calvary Baptist Church on November 21^st, the house was full.  But I wasn’t a member of the audience.  I was in the front row of the choir, seating within feet of the cellist.  It really was the best seat of the house, and I imagined that the music was for only me. 

Music has always been a huge part of my life.  I’ve been singing since I was a little off-key toddler who only knew two lines of a song, and I’ve been in choirs for almost as long.  In the past few years, however, I’ve been unable to sing in a large group, and I’d almost forgotten what a blessing it can be.  Almost.

It wasn’t just the performance of the quintet that stunned me, although they were exquisitely talented, all of them.  It was the full performance—the way many voices can become one, the way the struggle for weeks with the not-quite-perfect becomes something transcendent in performance.  Music can put you in your place in the best way possible: the self is forgotten, and the sound connects you with everyone else, because this appreciation is something we can all share.  This experience, the true beginning of my holiday season, reminded me that the very best way to love music is to participate in the making of it.

Throwback Tuesday?

It’s interesting to me how people become friends.  There are people I’ve spoken to any number of times, of whose lives I know intimate details, and yet I wouldn’t think to text them on a day when I’m alone and wanting to talk.  Then there are people who I haven’t seen for years, and yet I know if I were to call them in the middle of the night, they would be delighted to hear from me. So where and when do we cross that line into friendship?  Sometimes it’s a strange beginning.  Allow me to share the memory of the moment when one of my strongest friendships was formed.

September 14, 2008

My roommate and I were viciously attacked the other night.  We fought an epic battle and won a difficult victory.  It began when we heard an ominous buzzing from somewhere close by.  You may not consider a buzz to be very ominous, but I promise it can be.  What sound do you think the German bombers made during the battle of London?  And the creature responsible for the buzz was certainly ominous.  It vaguely resembled a hornet, but it was as long as my little finger and a threatening orange-brown.  

Upon sighting it, Taylor and I immediately took action: we shrieked and fled from our chairs to the other side of the room.  The creature was unafraid, even scornful—it circled us as if we were furniture, telling us that we were no threat.  Our normal weapons against such invaders—sandals, mostly—would not have phased this monster, so Taylor and I armed ourselves with the very most dangerous equipment we possessed: sneakers.  

We chased the beast, but it refused to land, dodging Taylor’s projectile with a sneer.  It was clever, landing only among our valuables, which we were unwilling to destroy for the sake of victory.  At last we struck him.  The first blow was mine, and my blinds still bear the scar, but still the creature refused to back down.  For a moment the terrible buzz ceased, and cautiously the two of us searched for the body, wishing to be absolutely certain.  

Then Taylor screamed in terror and leapt back as the creature hurtled from its hiding place to come at us again.  I batted it away, and Taylor fell upon it in fury, crushing it several times.  With the body of our enemy broken on the floor, Taylor and I celebrated with the awful shudders of disgusted women and went to wash our shoes.

A simple incident, despite the overdramatic prose of an eighteen-year-old writer.  But it was enough.  After that day, Taylor and I went from cordial strangers cohabiting the same space to confidants and comfort, an essential piece that made a temporary place into a home.  Small wonder that I now look back on that insect with some fondness—though I certainly wouldn’t like to meet another one.

The Things We Carefully Pack

The past week has been occupied with an onerous chore that seems to have no end: moving.  My roommate and I have been hauling several car-loads full of furniture, boxes of books, and random odds and ends from a second-floor apartment to a house.  There is no better exercise to teach one just how much stuff one has.  My clothes alone took up five large suitcases, and that’s not including the pieces I used as padding for fragile knickknacks.  I wouldn’t consider myself a hoarder, by any means, but our culture teaches us to surround ourselves with things.

Now, I could argue that I need most of these objects.  My clothes of course are necessary, as well as the twenty-five pairs of shoes I own.  Without my (large) desk, where would I sit to work?  Without my journals from the past twelve years, how would I remember my own development as a writer?  And of course I can’t throw away that file of old work—someone might be interested in it when I become famous one day.  That book of recipes I’ve copied by hand will someday be a family heirloom, though I certainly don’t plan on learning to cook any better than I do now.  Okay, yes, that stuffed yellow camel doesn’t fulfill any purpose to make my life better, but I won him in my first year of college, and isn’t he cute?

You get the idea.  We often make excuses for our things, because we get strangely attached to them.  Most often, though, our stuff is valued either because of its connection to the past, or its hope for the future, sometimes both.  Chairs that belonged to my grandmother, a fan that I bought on my first trip abroad, glasses given to me by my best friend—all of these things somehow make me feel less alone.  They remind me of people who love me, or pieces of myself that I might have forgotten.

I am lucky in that most of the things I own do have these associations tied to them.  They make me happy, and that is a perfect excuse to make the trouble to move them seven miles down the road.  You don’t really have too much stuff until you look around at what surrounds you and realize that most of it has no meaning, none of those fond shadows of memories attached.  When you own to possess, and not to appreciate, that is when you should think about cutting back.

Look around.  How many of the things you look at make you think of someone else, or of something that happened to you or others?  How many of your things have purpose to them, and how many are just taking up space in your room?

Why I Need Feminism: Sword For My Fight

The other day, I was having something of an argument with a guy at work. I don’t remember how we got onto the topic, but at one point he looked at me with profound suspicion, asking, “Are you a feminist?”  When I told him yes, he threw back his head and made a very loud noise of exasperation.  

I’m getting used to this reaction.  Feminism has a very bad name, among men and women alike.  This distresses me, because it shows me just how far we still have to go.  But I’m proud to be a feminist, and that’s not just the strength of my education at a women’s college talking.  Feminism is vitally necessary in this world.

Now, I don’t intend this post—or any other, for that matter—to be an attack against the men in my life.  I got the impression that that was my coworker’s real objection to the feminist viewpoint; he told me more than once that “not all men are like that.”  I know that very well, and if I ever come across as accusing, I apologize.  But the fact is, not all men have to be like that for one of them to kill me in an alley someday.

Yikes—that escalated quickly, didn’t it?  But that’s the reason that feminism is so important.  Violence against women is all too acceptable, and that’s what it comes down to.  The sexist comments, the disrespect—that’s all bad, too.  But it’s part of a system that enables more dangerous cruelty.

I read a line this morning that stopped me in my tracks.  “They’re girls,” said one of the characters in the novel to another.  “They were born in danger, and they will live their lives in that condition, regardless of circumstance.” (An Echo in the Bone, Gabaldon, p.228)  Now, this conversation was set in the late 1700s, but it chilled me that it still has the ring of truth to it, almost two and a half centuries later.  Every woman in this world grows up aware of the danger around her.  A girl learns, even if she is never consciously taught, that she has to keep her head down, that she shouldn’t make men angry, that she should be careful what she says and does.  She learns to restrict her wardrobe for her own safety.  She learns not to make eye contact with men on the street, and to avoid groups of them that she doesn’t know.  I’ve been in that position.  A few moments of unwanted conversation with a strange man has the power to terrify. 

Of course, in the book, the other character—who is a man—responds by pointing out that the world is dangerous for men, too.  And that is true.  It’s also true—you have to admit that it is true—that women are in more danger from other people than men are.  But yes, we are all at risk out there.

The quest of mankind, as a whole, is to work towards a greater peace.  We must, as a species, learn to be kind rather than cruel, to be understanding rather than close-minded, to be curious rather than insular.  We must learn to not only accept our diversity, but rather embrace it.  And I firmly believe that we are working towards that end, little by little, and someday we will reach it.  We’re a seething, chaotic mass, and there will always be some of us reaching back for the days of casual violence, but I have hope—no, I have certainty—that those of us who look upward and onward will win the day.  On that day, no one—man or woman—will walk out of their home with even a thought that they might come to harm at the hands of another human.  On that day, we will have no enemies.

But it will take time.  We’re moving in baby steps, not always in the right direction, stumbling, sometimes falling.  All we can do is take what tools we have at our disposal and make what small difference we can.

Feminism is one of those tools.  It is something that can chip away at the massive obstacles and help us get closer to the larger goal.  If I can over time show a few men—or women, even—how important feminism is, then I have made a tiny bit of progress, and that is worth something. 

I define feminism as the acknowledgment of the need for greater respect between the sexes.  It is the awareness that we are all human, and that we as humans can be better than what we are.  It is the acceptance that there is a fight going on out there, a fight that happens in the mind and in the soul, the most important fight we’ve ever gone into.  It is for that fight that I arm myself, every day, with kindness, patience, and determination.  It is the fight for our brighter future, and if we’re going to win, we need everyone to be on the same side, men and women alike. 

Mind Over Matter

Back in the spring, I spotted something that intrigued me.  This happens often—I’m easily intrigued.  But often with such things, I make a note of the idea, or tear that particular page out of that magazine, and then never think about it again.  This, however, has stuck with me.  It was an article I found about a lingerie company, Panache, which had done a campaign entitled “Modelledby Role Models.”  The campaign brought to light six women, all with impressive accomplishments, and used them to showcase Panache’s lingerie.

It was the unusual nature of this that caught my attention.  We’ve come to expect lingerie models to be perfect: long slender limbs, skin airbrushed to a bright glow, hair perfectly coiffed and face made up and suitably sultry.  There are a few companies beginning to move away from that, but for now, that is the majority of the ads that I see.  (Not that I go looking for that kind of thing.) 

Naturally, being a feminist and approving of anything that moves away from the objectification of female bodies and the upholding of an unrealistic ideal, I clicked the link.  When I clicked over, however, I had a little voice in my head saying, they’re not going to seem pretty to me at first.  Much as I liked the idea, I knew that part of my brain was going to look for the cellulite, the lines, the stray hairs, the rolls.  Just because a woman is smart and strong, doesn’t mean she’s beautiful.

Yet looking back through it now, I realize again what I realized then: I was wrong.  These women are beautiful, and I say that without reservation, without needing to muffle that voice of judgment in my head. 

What I’m wondering is, how much of this conclusion comes out of what I know about these women?  Is that voice of judgment silenced by the admiration I have for their work and their vision?  Or is that their passion and success somehow make them beautiful?  You may have come across this phenomenon in your life: you meet someone, and you look them up and down and think, meh, they’re all right.  But as you get to know them, their attraction becomes real, even physical.  Or maybe it happens in reverse, where you initially find someone very attractive, but as soon as they open their mouth…

We like to think of mind and body as separate things, but the fact is, they really aren’t.  We are all stuck in the body we were given, and it’s very clear from all the body-image struggles I’ve witnessed that our bodies have influence on our minds.  It’s nice to know that it works the other way, too.

I Am Displeased

Being an alumna of a women’s college, there are any number of things in society that I can complain about.  Inequality is rampant, and I’ve been well trained to notice it.  This week, my greatest annoyance is with women’s clothing.

Don’t get me wrong: I love clothing.  There’s just something wonderful about finding that feels good, looks good, and makes me believe I can do anything, from the first moment I put it on.  The only problem is, this feeling is unjustly rare.  The industry seems to making it as hard as possible to find that perfect fit—in more ways than one.

Looks nice, right.  But wait...

Let’s start with sizing.  Why on earth isn’t there a universal sizing that all makers of apparel must use?  Some companies have numbers, but the same numbers between companies do not equal the same size.  I wear anything from 8 to 12 in pants.  Then there are those companies who use S, M, L, and from there add X’s as needed.  This is problematic because I am a small woman (5’0”), but I wear a DD cup, so I’m never sure whether to wear a small or a large.  Will the small be too tight?  Will the large look like a sack? 

While I’m on the subject of breasts, why is nearly every neckline I find low enough to be borderline inappropriate?  I have probably a dozen shirts that are scoop-necked, because most other shirts I find with more conservative necklines are hideous.  It often comes down to a choice between a cute shirt, or not having to worry every time I bend over. 

A few days ago, I was in a bit of a hurry, so I bought two new shirts without trying them on.  They were simple business shirts, one solid, one patterned, both very nice.  However, when I got them home and tried them on, I found a two-inch slit at the breast, for no reason at all.  This on a shirt whose neckline is already four inches below my collarbone, putting the slit squarely above my cleavage.  And I would swear that this shirt was intended to be worn at work.  How is this appropriate? 

What is this nonsense?

And oh yes, heaven forbid that I suggest trying to work in some of the things I’ve worn in my life.  Or indeed, do anything at all.  So much of the clothing I wear to look “nice” is so impractical, either by the way it fits, or the stifling fabric it uses, or the difficulties that go along with cleaning it.  There are some things in my closet that have never been washed.  Don’t judge me, I’m sure you’ve done it too.

I need an entirely new paragraph to mention pockets.  The one reason I chose my current phone when I upgraded was because it was the smallest one, and had the best chance of fitting in my pocket.  Even on my jeans, though, there is now a worn rectangle with rounded edges over my right pocket, because the fit is so tight.  And yesterday, I put on a new pair of dress pants and realized I hadn’t yet cut open the pocket.  I did so, and put my hand into the pocket, only to be stopped at the second knuckle.  Not even two inches.  I ask you—what is that going to hold?  People wonder why women have such large purses—it’s because we don’t have pockets to carry things! 

I wonder sometimes if designers know anything about women at all.  Do they know that there are women beyond New York and Los Angeles who are not six feet tall and 118 pounds?  Do they know that some of us have to do more than walk down the catwalk and back?  Can they understand that we would like clothing that will not only make us look good, but feel good?  Is it so strange to think that clothing should help you accomplish what you want to do for the day?

This rant is now over.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.