To breathe at all is bliss;
the treachery of love is made tangible by the bold infractions of our wild-winded hearts.
I think all they ever wanted from us
was “perhaps,”
Yet here we are,
Churning up the melting pot dregs when we kick up our feet
and pressing them curiously to our lips,
Making love in libraries and music in our minds,
Indulging in sticky-fingered truth,
Raging with open palms against the bitterness we inherit,
“Asking for it,”
Love us
Love us
Love us.
So many things passed without noting – the end of my first serious relationship. The end of slumber parties. The end of being the first to wake up Christmas morning. The end of hating mushrooms and lettuce. The end of nose picking (thank god). The end of overalls embellished with farm animals (though that’s one I can see coming back someday soon…). The end of a horse obsession. The end of “five more bites” and my daddy singing me to sleep at night. The end of public school. The end of bedtime.
It isn’t all endings, of course. In the last ten years I left and returned to Alaska. I learned to cook, drive, sew, knit, use a credit card, bathe a dog, flip a breaker, insulate windows, can food, hit on someone without creeping them out (OK, sort of), mourn a loss, do yoga, live on my own. I met someone I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with – I didn’t (whew). I graduated from high school. I had my first “real” job. I applied to the school of my dreams and didn’t even get wait-listed, and ended up exactly where I was supposed to be in spite of that. I made best friends, and lost them. I found religion and lost that, too. I befriended my parents. I befriended myself.
It feels as though I am being given a gift by time and the modern calendar. By marking the beginning of a new decade at this point in my life, it’s as though I am being permitted to close a door behind me. Not locking it, but containing all of the pieces and lessons and inspirations of that last growing period, so I can make the best of this one. The learning never stops, of course, but maybe I can use this fresh start of sorts to be more the person I want to be, to be happier, to become more whole.
Then again, maybe I can just work on keeping up with laundry and dishes and homework and work work and working a little more me-time, family-time and dream-time in around the edges. I’ve been feeling so tied-down lately, it’s good to remember not only how much I’ve grown up, but how young I am and how much I have both behind and ahead of me, how lucky I am to know the people I do and be the places I am.
Man, I’m looking forward to the next ten years.
Where I’m from, women fix their own bicycles and talk about placentas at the dinner table. Where I’m from, you’re from where you were last and we don’t shave our legs (except maybe Friday nights). Where I’m from, women swim naked and make sweet tea in Mason jars too big to wrap my what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up sized hands around, dancing in purple leather shoes and carrying casserole dishes full of guilt and love from our house to yours every time someone dies or gets married. Where I’m from, mothers have the last word and sweet peas have the ayes the moment they poke their heads around the wire corners of the habitats our mothers built for sweet peas but caught children and rabbits and butterflies and tincan phones, too, like they knew they would. Where I’m from fingers are sticky July to September and bandaids don’t come off until you promise not to scratch and the leaves turn bike-crash-scab burgundy and start to catch you on the nose on your way home from school. Where I’m from, Mirriam-Webster is an inevitable dinner-guest when Elijah’s out and we celebrate as many holidays as possible, because who knows what religion Aunt What’s-Her-Bucket is this year and wouldn’t it be nice to just leave these lights up all year round? Where I grew up, growing up is less important than swimming naked and sweet peas and mothers because it’s better to be a good person with bad habits than end up grown up and straight up and absolutely perfect and absolutely mediocre. 
Where I’m from, I learned to be a woman on my hands and knees in the garden and on ladders painting houses and under hoods and over fences and inside books and without ribbons and protesting on Main St. and preferring boldly incorrect to comfortably complacent. Where I’m from, women fix their own bicycles and talk about placentas at the dinner table.
Goodnight, Irene 