Tulip Buds: 23 and Counting

As of today, there are 23 tulip buds poking their way up through the dirt under my three front windows.

I have been counting daily.

My son, too, has been hunting for evidence of sprouts. Each new one that emerges meets with a shout of “I found another one!” He also has a favorite – it’s the tall one in this picture. So far it’s been the tallest all along, and now it’s about 4 inches high.

For a while, the count remained in the single digits, and it seemed as if there was nothing that was sprouting under the master bedroom window, the site of our first bed, created with our haphazard, “just toss the bulbs in any old way” strategy. I figured perhaps we’d be down to 2 tulip beds, but even that would have heralded success.

But wouldn’t you know it – the tiniest yellow-green tip pointed its way upward (and, yes, I knelt on the ground and brushed the top layer of soil off because I couldn’t stand not knowing any longer if our efforts would fail us). So there you have it.

I was in the midst of my “woo-hoo’s” and victory dance just when the neighbors were getting into their car.

“We’re gonna have tulips!” I preened.

My neighbors are master gardeners with leveled landscaping throughout their back yard. Bless them, they smiled at me and let me keep my delight.

So, it seems we are going to have tulips this spring.

If 23 are above ground now, I can hardly imagine what will actually bloom in whatever season is the right one for them to flower. Watch for my complete victory dance when the first one opens.

Outside the Bakery

Picture this:
A French Patisserie with floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides of its distressed wooden front door, with a view to gleaming cases of sun-touched, butter-kissed breads, croissants, pastries, some with jam, some with sugary/buttery/vanilla-enhanced cream cheese that manages to be smooth and creamy and not-too-sweet, tarts with fruit slices or berries atop lemony custard, baguettes in straw bins, a rack against the far wall with loaves light and dark, soft and hard crusts, some flour-dusted, others buffed to a shine with egg wash, baskets of rolls and bread knots, a large black cappuccino maker against the back wall, white ceramic mugs sturdy enough to hold a latte or hot dark cocoa and plates not quite big enough for whatever delectable, doughy, bready, buttery, flaky, just-right treat that fills your deepest hunger. You crave not only the flavor of the bakery items, but the way just being in the shop fills all your senses, fills the places in your soul that you sometimes forget are unfilled, and your whole being seems to recalibrate. You are right there, up at the counter, beginning your choice - which aroma, which vision, which color/flavor/texture plays more seductively with your senses, and the moment of choice, marking the beginning of a delicate waiting period – how much longer it may be before the mouth-watering morsel is in your possession – and how you will savor this moment. You’ll breathe it in, observe the line and color as if you were appreciating a fine painting, feel the weight and airiness of the treat in your hand, pull at one end slowly to remove the first bite. This foreplay is essential, as foreplay always is, to your pleasure, and you will not rush this treat. You will succumb to the whole-body pleasure release that an indulgence such as this offers. And you will delight in knowing that you can return, sample another treat, pull apart another doughy handful, inhale again the yeasty pleasure of this inner sanctum.

Now picture this:
You are standing outside the bakery, watching what is happening inside. People enter, make their selections; some eat there, others take their treats home in pink boxes and to-go cups. You want to go in, you believe you belong there. But others are inside, and you’re not. Some seem at ease, with the sense that there is no other place to be. Others are there so casually it’s as if it doesn’t even matter to them that they are there. Someone has taken your chocolate-drizzled croissant, and is engulfed in the rapture that should be yours. Someone else is devouring a marzipan puff pastry, but is eating it all wrong – big, fast bites, followed by guzzled gulps of plain coffee. The pastry is gone in three enormous bites. You feel outrage that this perfect taste sensation was wasted on someone who wolfed it down like a dog inhaling kibble. There was no chance of any part of it lingering on, let alone activating, the taste buds. You are suddenly weary. All the joy that is squandered in that shop – oh, how you would appreciate it if only you were allowed in. But somehow you know that you will never be let in. This is a shop that others will enjoy, many getting it just right, others buzzing through so quickly they will miss out completely on what is possible, but at least they had a chance. You don’t.

When I went through the melancholy of my misunderstood and lonely youth, I felt like an outsider, and imagined myself, nose pressed against the window of a bakery shop, prohibited from entry. I was convinced I was never going to gain access to the life that others seemed to take for granted, the one of happiness and joy and abundant sensual pleasure. Even as a youngster, I consoled myself with language and metaphor.

Over the years, and with the kind of relentlessness that can turn out in your favor if directed correctly, I have somehow created a life that feels as rich as my fantasy Patisserie. My bakery/life is filled with my own favorite treats, and nary a concoction that doesn’t appeal to me - there isn’t a pizza bagel, quiche Lorraine, or olive bread in sight. So it was a surprise to feel myself recently whooshed out the door, feet planted back in front of the windows. I had somehow recreated this early feeling, and was bumbling through my present-day routine as if it were happening again.

In hindsight, I think there is something in the present life bakery that I don’t like. But it’s not a pastry; it’s an occasional customer who takes over a table, stays for too long and stacks the table with a laptop and newspapers and a blackberry, wears a hands-free device and takes too many calls in such a small place, generates an energy that makes others want to be more than a few tables away, but the place just isn’t that big. I can’t ask this person to leave, as there is technically no law or rule being broken. Others sit at tables with laptops or iPads or are plugged in to MP4 players, some talk or laugh too loudly, some loiter over a day-old pastry and drip coffee that together won’t make a dent in this baker’s overhead, but none cast a feel like this occasional customer. I have come to dread the sight and sound of this person, who seems to take over the bakery for no reason at all, especially as he doesn’t seem to enjoy anything he’s ever ordered.

But a passing unpleasantry and the presence of one person who temporarily disrupts my equilibrium should not be enough to expel me from my bakery. This time, it was me who was keeping me out – it probably was that way, too, as a child, but kids don’t understand that their way of adapting to what they don’t like insures that it keeps happening. In younger years, I could catalog the injustice of - oh, here you can fill in the blanks – my family, my schoolmates, my town, my part of the country, ever-larger concentric circles of influence, right up to and including God. There was something at work here, keeping me out.

Thankfully, at some point during this gloomy redux, I remembered that I have been here before, in my old, youthful place on the other side of the window, looking in. There is no injustice, just the reality that sometimes someone comes in to my shop and makes it unpleasant for me. The injustice, perhaps, is that I presumed I’d be immune from unwanted experiences, that once I was granted entry into that fragrant Eden there would be nothing unpleasant. My mistake here, not to anticipate that part of the bakery experience all along was to encounter a crabby customer, or a late delivery, or burst pipes, or a burnt or unrisen batch that would have to be thrown out. I seem to have expected only bliss upon entry to the joyous life I longed for; I didn’t count on how a full and rich life requires joy and sorrow, loved ones and less-than-loved ones, and it is this mix that helps us appreciate the exquisiteness of surrounding ourselves with the people we enjoy most. With very little exception, my time in this little shop is exactly what I hoped was possible in this life. I remember all the savory moments I’ve had, the delectable, unrushed sensual joys and the occasional quick, ravenous, shovel-full bites.

I am not sentenced to live outside of the life I want, peering in. All I have to do is open the door and walk right back in. Head right up to the counter, with gratitude for the baker who has designed my favorite treats, and partake of one right here, right now.

Wintry Thoughts of . . . Tulips

Although it’s January, and should be too early for thoughts to turn to spring, my eyes caught sight of a planter, rather desolate in location (back stairs to an office building, concrete steps, leading out to a grocery-store/Starbucks style alleyway), with a nondescript tree, and, at its base, small green shoots poking out of the dirt. I’m assuming they’re daffodils, maybe crocus, one of the first spring flowers to bloom around here, but it could be tulips. I still have studded snow tires on my car, the temperature has been dipping in to the upper 30’s, and it’s still dark at 4-something in the afternoon. Spring really ought not to be blooming. But tell that to the shoots.

It got me wondering about my tulips, and whether they’re going to come up. I did something very different for my birthday this past year. A good friend had given me a handful of colorful tulip bulbs, in part as a memory of a day-trip to a tulip festival the prior spring. We took our kids out of school and headed out to spend a day in farm country, which is a fine way to just plain get out of town. So when asked what I wanted for my birthday, an idea emerged – I wanted to plant these tulips, using them as the basis of a tulip garden, to go under the front windows of our house. This is the first time that I’ve requested a gift of service, as I also wanted my son and husband to plant them with me. I don’t know what got in to me – I’m not a gardener. The only other time I’ve planted flowers was about 5 years ago, when I’d moved into a new place, and it really needed something to make it more homey. I planted tulips along the front gate, and when they bloomed I was ecstatic. I didn’t fertilize, didn’t turn the soil, and to this day I’m not sure what I was supposed to do to the flowers after they bloomed – I didn’t do anything, and many of them bloomed again the following year. After that, I did still less, and it’s not surprising that when I go by this place, there are no longer any tulips.

I researched tulips in my favorite color scheme (purple and white), and I came up with great stately names such as the Triumph, Purple Star, Blue Diamond, Purple Prince and the Negrita. Some so darkly hued as to be almost black, like the Queen of the Night, some more toward blue, some with reddish tones, some like mauve. I was in a Crayola color paradise, and spent a few days imagining the rich wave of color that would come from this kind of purple glory, punctuated by white. I made lists of these tulips, and thought I was being like a master gardener – researching tulips that would bloom early, mid and late season, so that I’d have something that changed and morphed within one bed of tulips.

My birthday weekend, I went to the nearest garden store and showed them my list. They were not impressed with my master gardener plans. In fact, not a single tulip from my list was in their wall-sized bulb display. I’d have to order bulbs online, or choose from among their selection, which was sizeable, but mostly filled with red, orange, pink and yellow bulbs, as apparently purple is less popular. I should have known. Then they wanted to know what tools we had for planting, what soil we were using, what mulch, what fertilizer, what would we use to drop the bulbs. I was crestfallen, as my little project took on dimensions of a suburban remodel. My husband was overwhelmed, and quickly losing interest in this outing. My son was not able to sustain his enthusiasm as I brooded and considered and to-ed and fro-ed from one bulb bin to the next, unable to contain my own disappointment at having to choose among second-tier, poorly named bulbs.

We got the bulbs, dirt, mulch and who knows what else we purchased that day home, and no one was in the mood to plant them. I’d now managed to choose a birthday present that seemed like it would cause nothing but grief. So I waited a few days, and then perkily suggested that we get started. This, of course, meant that my muscular husband was going to have to dig up old, unhealthy dirt, which always looks easy but of course actually creates callouses, back strain, frustration, and, if you're particularly lucky, marital conflict.

My son came to the task with the cleanest energy – he was excited about doing something physical, creating this garden, and loved the parts where we could throw the bulbs in the dirt (oops, we learned later, they were supposed to be placed with the tips facing upward – so the last 2 feet of the bed might come up because we actually had those ones facing the right way). He was eager to participate in something new, to use a spade with all his might, even though all his might didn’t really move much dirt, and happy to be sharing something that was making me happy. I love this age, filled with such raw generosity like this. I don’t remember having this much willingness to put in sweat equity for a gift for my parents, so I get that this is really something to treasure.

I didn’t consider the sun/shade conditions of where to plant, as I wanted the tulips under our windows. So under our windows is where we began. And we completed the task. We dug, we mixed dirt with fertilizer, we placed bulbs, we covered them over with dirt. We watered. We felt that sense of accomplishment that comes after doing something that’s become ridiculously more difficult and involved than anyone bargained for. The conflictual moments faded to the background as the success and sense of pulling together took center stage. There was no denying it, we’d planted a tulip garden.

Yesterday, after glimpsing the sprouts in the sad tree planter, my son and I went looking at our tulip beds. We have two sprouts. We planted about 70 bulbs (I got carried away with the inferior-named bulbs and figured 5 or 10 of each color wasn’t really that much, especially under three windows. . .). I don’t know what will happen with the other 68 – maybe only two were early bloomers? Maybe only 2 were planted with their tips up? Maybe only 2 survived our rough winter under ice and snow, now water-drenched with not much possibility of drying up before Spring should actually arrive.

But two sprouts we have, and winter is still going strong. Two sprouts from inelegantly named tulips. And if these are the only two that make it, this is still my favorite birthday present, possibly ever. Every time I enter or leave the house, I am now searching for these bulbs to push through. I’m rooting for them the way others are rooting for football teams in the playoffs. I want them to make it. Two sprouts already is evidence, proof that the efforts we make as a family pay off, create something meaningful, turn us into people who can do things outside our usual ways. My son is excited about the two sprouts, and has looked closely across the length of the beds. He’s invested in this project, not quite like I am, but clearly his involvement was not mere compliance. They’re his tulips, too. We will watch and wait for these blooms, and already I have talked about replanting next year, turning this year’s efforts into our “test garden” so that whatever will come up (or won’t) will be part of the success of our efforts, because we can use that information to create a more lush, vibrant garden next year. I’ve even promised myself to research what I’m supposed to do after they bloom (cut them down or leave them) so that they might even bloom again next year.

I have an unfailing pull to create legacies with my family. I want meals around the table, annual photos at the hokey photo place in the mall, and now, something that lives only because the three of us put time, sweat and love in to it. I’m enjoying the possibility of tulips because of the endless treasure of their willingness to participate in my schemes. This year, it was tulips. Next year? I’m not sure. But knowing me, I’ll have something that pulls me, and them, toward creating something meaningful.

Making Tikis in the Classroom

I was back in my son’s classroom, in an after-school effort to help the kids build Tikis as part of their study of Easter Island. His school has an amazing program where the whole school studies one continent a year, each classroom focusing on one country. This culminates in giant classroom projects, a school-wide evening of presentations, song, dance, costumes, food, pen pal letters, and every possible form of learning about different countries as part of the continent. If you stay in the school for 5 years, you’ll have learned something about all 5 major continents.

When I was in elementary school, I learned the names of the continents, but my education predated the current pedagogy of multiculturalism. I didn’t learn anything about Polynesian peoples, and on top of that, I didn’t learn much about volcanoes. So when the information came home that this year’s country of study was Easter Island, I was humbled by ignorance. I did much better when he was in kindergarten, and we got off to a fabulous start studying Europe. I could fake my way through the study of Austria based on the little bit I knew, the role of Vienna and Freud in psychology, my patchy memory of the lyrics to Edelweiss and, of course, one year’s attendance at the Sound of Music sing-along. But there’s nothing for me to fake about Easter Island, so I’ve just had to go out and learn it myself (and hound my son for details of what he’s learned).

Lesson one: I’ve been calling them tikis, when in fact, they should be called moai.

Lesson two: It’s an island, but it’s really the top of a volcano. I don’t even know enough about geography (geology?) to know what that means, but my son tells me the place is tree-less and now, in our 21st century mindset he’s being taught that humans willingly deforest the planet, and this unchecked human greed-run-amok turned the island into a desolate, cannibalistic society that has vanished but for the 70 feet stone statues to gods we in the Western world don’t acknowledge. So he’s being taught politically correct history, which I guess will be evened out by my persistent chirping of, “No Tiki, no laundry.” I can’t help myself.

Something I came across that my son hasn’t yet: the statue-toppling era, where all of the moai that had been erected were toppled face down, necks broken, supposedly part of deadly tribal rivalry. An historic precursor to cow tipping in the Midwest, no doubt, although this might not be a complete parallel.

Anyway, this year it’s Easter Island for us, thus it’s no surprise that the kids are making Tikis. Kids designed them, and parents were invited in to help transfer the 2-dimensional drawing ideas onto four feet high, 10” diameter tubes, which will later be covered over in papier mâché, then painted. What fun it is to scrunch up newspaper and pull long pieces of masking tape and “supervise” a small group of 9 and 10 year olds as they laugh their way through the work. Our Tiki’s eyes were lopsided, the mouth crooked and slightly off center, and its feet were mismatched. This, despite the teacher’s clear instructions that balance was the key to a good Tiki.

It was a treat to laugh with my son’s friends, to share with his new best buddy (this year it’s a girl – hmmmm) the old standby, “you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.” To watch them struggle to tear masking tape, to witness their difficulty translating 2- to 3- dimensions. To see them wander off in conversation, to offer up sincere praise to the teacher for his work on a Tiki (“Good job, Mr. ______”). To watch my son’s young friend bend over in giggles, clap her hands, jump on one foot, pure emotions coursing freely through her body, and to experience her building a relationship with me as a triangle point in her friendship with my son. She offered me her leftover carrots from lunch (yes, I actually asked the kids if they had any snacks since it turns out I still get hungry in the after-school snack hour), and was pleased that if I ate them, she could then tell her Mom she’d finished them. I left one for her, and told her that she should finish it, that way when she told her Mom she had some carrots, it would be true. “Don’t lie to your Mother, even about carrots,” I offered, and she happily munched the last one.

She turned to me at one point and said, “Your hair is . . . curly!”

“You just noticed?!” I replied, with mock seriousness.

She couldn’t stop giggling. Then she turned it into a gender/power game, by not telling my son what it was she had just noticed about me – this became her secret, her temporary hold over him. He could barely contain his frustration at being left out of her inner circle where he had just been reveling. He was begging her to tell him, begging me to tell him. After a few minutes where she clearly was not going to relent, I took pity on him and told him, out of her earshot. As soon as his hunger to know subsided, she flipped position and eagerly told him that she just noticed his Mom has curly hair – she was now without her powerful hold over him, and returned to offering up the gift of sharing, restoring the security of their bond.

In capturing this moment, I have built my own Tiki: a small, digital shrine to the beauty and wonder of childhood, a testament to my deeply stirred belief and faith in the presence of powers so much larger than me. I offer it up for any and all to see, and here it will remain until something/someone comes along and topples the world of written blogs.

Kids in Motion

I helped my son’s teacher at school today, during a math test, and it was the loveliest hour I’ve had in weeks. Oh, the variations on a theme, like Pachelbel’s Canon, only in place of 3 violins and continuo basso, there were 23 bodies in motion, with accompanying paper, pencils, and plastic rulers. And contrary to the Canon's perfectly paced melodic additions, there was no slow building to a harmonic crescendo, but more of a steady variation of tempo, instruments and random sounds.

Feet tapped, stomped and shuffled under desks. Rulers were bent, tapped against heads, pressed against foreheads, chewed, scraped back and forth between teeth, held in the mouth, twirled in the air. Fingers were in mouths, between teeth, twirling hair, rubbing eyes, up one person’s nose. Pencils were in all the same places, as well as being tapped on the desk and under it, on restless legs. Some kids were still munching on an unfinished late morning snack. One’s head was bent so low over the paper her nose was almost to the desk. Scratch paper was crumpled, thrown on the floor. Pencils pinged when they fell to the floor. Glasses were taken off and put back on. Chairs scratched as the kids moved forward and backward in them. Hands (arms, whole sides of bodies, really) were raised as a call, the low murmur of the teacher helping kids read the question was the melodic response. My own shoes clicked on the linoleum floor as I went to different parts of the room to grade papers, check homework assignments, head out to copy the crossword puzzle that will come home as next week’s homework.

Despite the fidgeting and rhythmic movements, the room felt peaceful and purposeful. This teacher inspires kids to work hard, and even the ones who tend to struggle academically were engrossed in the test, regardless of how their bodies and test materials took flight. I was in the presence of young brains and young bodies hard at work. It was a joyous symphony. Twenty-three variations of the worst physical habits – any one of which is sure to be addressed all over town at tonight’s dinner table by parents who are horrified when they witness these socially inappropriate mannerisms. But tonight, when my son chews on his pencil or rubs the dry skin of his lips or starts to bounce a leg when reading, I’ll remember it’s not so unusual.

What it must take to socialize all this movement out of ourselves. Yet I wonder what we lose by binding the unbound energy in the exquisite variations of bodies and objects in motion.

Mistaken Identity

I think I met a friend for breakfast at a gay bar. I thought it was a breakfast joint - a simple Italian restaurant that also served breakfast. I’ve been part of a couple for a long time, so I’d forgotten that some breakfast joints are actually places to hang out to stave off a hangover or do something to advance the prospects of a previous night’s drinking. When I go out for breakfast, I’m wishing for an inventive egg dish, and secretly longing for a flaky, buttery biscuit. That’s it. I’m not masking any sexual longings, not nursing a hangover, and certainly not wondering if the person I went home with last night is going to last past breakfast. It’s a done deal – he is. I’m so far out of the bar scene, gay or straight, that I was astonished to find myself in one.

I met up with a friend who I don’t see that often, so we picked a place near where she had to take her dog, Lou, in to the vet. At least she had to take the dog in three weeks back, when we made the plans. Although Lou was apparently much better by now, we couldn’t come up with any other idea of where to go, she’d already map-quested it, so on with our plan. The place was miles from our city’s queer neighborhood (our city is so liberal that we have moved beyond gay and have a fully out and politicized LGBT community), and even farther from the up-and-coming queer area, which is where many older, moneyed folks now live, as the former area is more urban and young and hip, and apparently midlife happens to everyone, and once it does, you just want to live somewhere away from flashing neon lights and the smell of stale beer on the sidewalk.

I got to the restaurant just a few minutes before my friend, and in walking past the front, noticed that all the window tables had men at them. Only men. Once I came inside, I saw a few tables with middle-aged (or even in their 60’s) men and women. And a full bar. But no one was sitting at it. The friendly, older proprietress greeted me warmly, told me I could sit anywhere I wanted, and I chose the last remaining window table, so it was guy pair, guy pair, me, guy pair, guy pair. The food on the other tables looked promising – substantial omelets and crispy hash browns, the sign of a good kitchen. The woman asked me if I wanted coffee; I asked for a split orange/pineapple juice, and off I was on my way to a terrific breakfast. The glass arrived – a pint glass filled to the rim.

When my friend came, we started chatting, which is basically what we do. We barely finish the “hello,” almost throw the menus down, and get to the real purpose of the meeting – to dish. And dish we do.

The blue-eyed waiter, who I assume is the owner’s son, came by and my friend ordered cranberry juice. “Do you want vodka in it?” he asked. “No, I’m good,” replied my friend. She cocked her head and looked at me, trying to decipher if she had just heard what I had heard, and how odd it was.

“Did you see his eyes?” I asked. “They’re so blue. Too blue.”

He came back for our order, and this time my friend could see his eyes. Yup, those were blue. Aegean sea blue. Cerulean blue. You can name it whatever color you want to name it, just don’t for a minute think that it’s the kind of blue that occurs naturally in eyes.

We ordered, we dished, he brought our food, we marveled at it, we dug in, dishing the whole time. Turns out there are some people with whom I’ll happily talk with my mouth full, manners be damned in the service of girl talk. With just morsels left on our plates, the waiter came back, sat on the banquette next to my friend, looked directly at me, and asked if there was anything else we needed for a spot? If not, he’d like to go have a bong hit.

He was holding a lighter and a cigarette. It was my turn to cock my head. I thought I heard him say he was going to go have a bong hit. These are not the usual words that flow through my auditory neural pathway, so I was a bit slow to respond, but I think I muttered something about us being fine. My friend, however, was even slower than me. Stunned silence, it turns out. She had misheard him, thinking he said he wanted to go out and “bond.”

Just for a moment, I imagined my friend and I sneaking out back for a bong hit, returning to our table and ordering pint-glasses full of vodka-soaked fruit juices. But I could just have easily imagined that I snuck out in a satin gown, holding a Cruella deVille quellazaire, wearing above-the-elbow black silk gloves. Not me. I'm the kind of person who looks up the right word for a long, elegant cigarette holder - I care much too much about everything to fit either fantasy. I order from the menu as if its listings are mere suggestions – so my egg-white only vegetarian omelet (skip the cheddar, add smoked salmon) was on the way. I don’t want vodka in the morning, and I haven’t even thought of bong hits since I was in college, where I was pretty square anyway. ‘Hooka’ never quite appealed to me. I didn’t like watching people inhale so deeply that their cheeks sunk in like a kid doing a bad impression of a fish, their lips sucked forward through a glass tube.

But the waiter saw us through his own eyes. Perhaps to him we looked like every other girl couple to stumble in for a weekend breakfast. We were, after all, in his breakfast joint. He works there every day. He must serve spiked breakfast beverages to a lot of people who are not starting their day, but continuing their previous night. People who want beverages in a pint glass that just hours ago held beer. People who would happily join him in a bong hit if he asked them. If we’re sitting there, at his table, ordering his Mom’s breakfast, the odds were quite high, in his world, that we partook of everything.

I’d like to come back for breakfast again, and I'd know now to expect the feel of a morning-after queer-friendly bar. They did a great job with the eggs, and the whole meal was yummy. The proprietress clearly loves to feed people. I’d enjoy this blue-contact-wearing bong-smoking, booze-pushing waiter again, because I almost never encounter someone whose assumptions of the way the world works are so radically different than mine. And it's even rarer for someone to mistake me so grandly for someone I’m not. And sometimes a girl's just got to go trolling for a biscuit.

Home Movies

The other day I was watching some home movies. If I stop my tale here, I’m likely to evoke the typical heart-warming experience: family members gathered around to re-create their shared past. The laughter at seeing old styles of clothes, hairdos, eyeglasses; the deep welcoming of the old/wildly young version of ourselves and our loved ones; the awe at seeing today’s grown-ups toddling then running then hopping then twirling and refusing to do what they’re asked because someone’s filming; the mystification of how much time has passed since our once-young selves were smug and all-knowing; the wistfulness for the lost bits of youth and beauty which memory doesn’t preserve quite as well as the videos do; and perhaps even the sadness at revisiting relatives who have since passed away.

But my tale is about watching someone else’s home movies. I only know these people as adults, and some of them I’ve only met in their late life. We have few shared experiences, and not a single one from a time when our pasts overlapped, let alone being captured on video. There’s no one who looks like me in any frame, no old furniture that reminds me of my grandparents’ home, no cute bits with my old dog, no funny shots of me or the dance costumes my Mom sewed or my brother's little league uniforms, it’s not my bedspread under the feet of the jumping kids, there’s no bad wood paneling in the family room. My family, my parents, my grandparents, our memories, our stories, our life . . . absent.

Even though I knew I wasn’t in these videos, knew I was watching as a way to be a good sport and join the family as they were doing this important part of their family celebration, I was surprised at how sad I felt. How much of an outsider I am to this group to whom I usually think I now belong. Fragments of jealousy, but I’m not sure of what I was jealous. I didn’t want or miss the times in these movies, as they were never mine. Nothing in my life is absent just because I watched other peoples’ memories unfold.

Home videos are usually reserved for relatives. With others, we encounter their past through stories; it’s in the recounting of history that a newcomer begins to participate. Not participate in the memory, as that’s impossible. But participate in knowing a person through the way the story is told, the reflections made about the story with the new person, the way we choose which bits of our history to share and when, based on how we think it will enhance a relationship or understanding now. By sharing a story, I join an “us” with my friend; by watching passively as moments of another’s life unfold on a screen, I remain a “them” and cannot cross the divide.

Perhaps this was just a moment of heightened existential isolation. Two people on a date have totally different experiences (until they create one story about it and then share that story and keep their individual experiences separately tucked away). Eyewitness testimony shows us that no one event is experienced the same way by more than one person. Our sensory data are different, the meaning we attribute to it is different, and even the emotional aspect of the experience differs. Usually, watching home videos creates a powerful sense of belonging - we belonged to one another then, and we belong to one another now – and creates another memory to be woven into the tapestry of the family unit.

I was quiet, a bit withdrawn, during the movies, and careful not to sully the experience for others. I felt torn from my past, but also torn from the present. I wasn’t part of the “we belong to each other” moments, and no one even knew how to invite me in – they were so clearly nourished by the experience they didn’t (and probably now, couldn’t) imagine that their need to belong pressed me to the outside.

Driving home, I still felt out of sorts. I was re-entering my life, but from a very far distance travelled. I was across a divide that I usually forget exists. But by writing to the reader, some of whom are dear friends, I will cross the divide and weave this story into one I can share. I will belong to my friends and share my experience with them, and they’ll share their stories with a similar theme (maybe not exactly about home movies, but some time when they’ve been isolated and alone at a moment when no one else noticed), and I’ll be back from the brink of existential separation, back again in the warm hub of belonging to the people in my life.