Year 1: I was
sitting at the computer desk in my bedroom in my first Chicago apartment, which
was the bottom floor of a two-story house in Lakeview. Earlier that day I had
stepped on three spring-loaded mousetraps—thankfully with my shoes on—that
lined our laundry closet. The traps were the most recent in a long line of
attempts by our landlord to handle a mouse infestation on his own, without
calling an exterminator. I turned around to see a mouse calmly wandering around
the floor of my bedroom. It was the middle of the day and broad daylight. The
mouse stopped to look at me briefly, and then unabashedly continued his
explorations with no evidence of fear or trepidation. I thought glumly that I
was certain I’d be living with mice for the next few months, but at least
they’d likely be less disruptive than my human roommates.
Year 2: I was
paging through the thick packet of materials sent to me by the U.S. Peace
Corps. I had been invited to teach for 27 months in a rural area in Kenya. I
read all the information and testimonials. I looked at all the amazing photos.
I told myself over and over and over again that I could do it. I could. I
could. I could. But all the while I knew, deep down, that badly as I wanted to want to go, I did not really want
to go, and ultimately I wouldn’t. And I hated myself for that.
Year 3: I was
sitting at a large table in a conference-turned-lunch room at my first
post-graduate-school job. I was eating hummus, crackers, and an apple. A
colleague looked at me and said, “I stopped eating Triscuits when I saw how
many calories are in them.” I tried to laugh the comment off, but she
continued, “Seriously. Have you ever looked? You should look.” This conversation
made me irrationally angry. I left the lunch table and went immediately to rant
about the incident to another female coworker. She looked at me bewilderedly
and nodded through the story, not sure how to react. Later she told me that was
the first time I had ever spoken to her directly. Now she’s one of my closest
friends. Somehow, through a calorie-shaming incident, a friendship was born.
Will wonders never cease?
Year 4: I was
reluctantly dialing my apartment building’s maintenance manager to tell him my
toilet was clogged. AGAIN. I’d had many, many problems with the appliances and
plumbing in my 18 months of living in the apartment. As if that wasn’t annoying
enough, every call and visit from the maintenance guy felt like a nightmare. He
was condescending and rude. He treated any request, no matter how legitimate,
as a huge inconvenience. I steeled myself as the phone rang, wondering what his
reaction would be this time. “Damnit,” he said. “I am on my way to Indiana.” I
said I was sorry, hating myself for apologizing but not knowing what else to
say. He stormed in 30 minutes later. “It’s always the girls,” he growled at me.
“You’re always dropping your lotion caps in the damn toilet.” I narrowed my
eyes. “I keep the lid closed when I’m not using it, actually,” I said. “My cat
likes to sit there while I brush my teeth and get ready in the morning.” He
rolled his eyes and tossed down the industrial plunger he was using. “Next time,
fix it yourself,” he said, and left, slamming the door behind him.
Year 5: I had
just moved in to my new downtown apartment, feeling outrageously happy to be
living in such a nice building. A friend and I were kneeling on the living room
floor, assembling an end table, when we heard a booming sound. I looked out the
window and my eyes got as big as saucers. “Oh my gosh!” I said. “What? What is
it?” my friend replied, slightly concerned. “I can see the fireworks from my window!” I exclaimed. She turned
around to look out the window and smiled ruefully. She was a teacher at a
Chicago public school at the time, and said, “Sad, really, how when we hear
booming, you think of fireworks but I think of gunfire.”
Year 6: Three
days after learning that my friend had been suddenly killed in a car accident,
I arrived back at my apartment. It was December 27. My Christmas tree was still
up, and I stared at it, wondering why it hadn’t fallen apart at the moment when
Stephen died. “Eat,” I thought. “I should eat something.” I pulled an apple out
of the refrigerator, but I just stared at that, too. Why hadn’t it instantly
gone rotten when Stephen died? Why was everything so whole, so unaffected, so
normal? Why wasn’t everything in the world collapsing in on itself the way that
I was?
Year 7: I stood
in the start corral for the Chicago Half Marathon, my first long-distance race
after limping through my first marathon the year before. It was 9/11/11, the
tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, and the field was awash with red,
white, and blue. I was full of trepidation until the moment my corral started
its slow shuffle to the start line. Then, it felt like I was in a scene in a
movie where the superhero shows up just in time to defeat the villain. You know
the scene, right? The slow-motion walk with some threatening-yet-inspiring music
playing in the background? I was the superhero, and I was coming to kick that
race’s ass.
Year 8: I was
sitting in a first grade classroom, watching a 6-year-old use counters to figure
out different combinations of 10 apples, some red and some green. She was
placing the counters, which were red on one side and green on the other, onto a
grid with 10 spaces on it. After she filled up the grid, she counted the number
of counters with green facing up and the number of counters with red facing up,
and quickly realized that she had already found that combination. She looked at
her grid for a moment, and then grinned as she flipped one counter over, giving
her a new combination. I was excited as I watched this, sure that she had just
made a breakthrough and would quickly and systematically find all the
possibilities by flipping over one counter at a time. However, her next move
was to start removing all the counters from her grid. “Wait!” I said. “You know
how you just flipped one over? Do you think you could do that again to find
another combination?” She looked at me witheringly and shook her head. “No,”
she said flatly, removing all the counters from her grid with one swipe of her
hand.
Year 9: I was
struggling through an 18-mile training run. I was all alone because I had a
sinus infection that was bad enough for me to skip the group training run the
day before. The infection was certainly still raging as of when I woke up that
morning, but slightly better than the day before, so I had decided to give it a
shot. The drainage from my sinuses was making me outrageously nauseated, and I
was rationing the few tissues I had brought with me. It was abject misery. I
don’t remember big sections of the run, or even the moment I finished. I only
remember the misery, and the hour or two afterward when I confusedly tried to
convince myself that I had actually completed the run. “I did that?” I thought.
“Me? Who runs 18 miles with a sinus infection?” I was running the marathon that
year in honor of Stephen. I wish I could tell you I felt him that day, but
truthfully I didn’t. I wonder now if it was just that I was too was too focused
on my own misery, or whether he bailed because it was stupid of me to even attempt
it. Both seem equally likely.
Year 10: At 9pm
on a Wednesday evening, I walked into a familiar bar. The hostess waved me back
to the table where my friends sat. Just as I sat down, the waiter came to
deliver a giant BLT that my friends had preordered for me. They cheered at my
arrival, immediately enlisting my help to answer the trivia questions they were
working on. Earlier that day, I had left a close friend’s house in Florida,
having spent a few days helping her out after back surgery. She made no secret
of how grateful she was that I came and how sad she was to see me go. As I sat
at that table, I thought about how lucky I was to spend time with, in one day,
a friend who was so sorry to see me leave and friends who were so happy to see
me arrive.
