Being

It feels like the beginning again. The house is covered with a thin layer of sand from daily trips to the beach. When I make my coffee or tea before work, I no longer have to stumble around in the dark. My toenails are painted, my face freckled and tanned. Even the smells are the same: my skin like sunscreen and salt, the terrace like detergent from clothes drying in the sun. My mind is tricked by my senses, and I wake up to the alarm clock easily and go to school with energy—I feel like I did when I first got here, when everything was new. And yet, when I think about this year, I can't believe how much has happened, how much I've learned, how different my life is. The Sufi poet Rumi wrote, "Flow down and down in always/widening rings of being" and that's what this year reminds me of. The end feels like the beginning, except now I have a slew of new knowledge and experiences.

More than anything, I've learned about who I am, which has been a difficult thing to do. For me, it's always hard to find the balance between learning from the people around me and remaining myself. This year has been no different, since I so admire my friends here.

My friend Cory is candid and bold and seems to fear nothing; from her I've learned to let go, to speak my opinions and not be so afraid of offending. Almost paradoxically, I've learned from Maddie, my friend and roommate, the virtue of being quiet. When we have conversations, sometimes she nods and says nothing, and I can tell she's taking it in rather than feeling the need to fill the space with more words. And in the mornings, while I ramble on, she's content to drink her tea and look out the window; maybe she's just sleepy, but she seems, for those few minutes, at peace (and I've found that sometimes the two are really quite similar). Marie, more than anyone I know at our age, knows who she is. She is self-conscious of nothing, laughs at herself, and is unwilling to change her character for anyone. From her, I've learned the most important lesson: that who I am is valuable intrinsically—that even when I make the most horrendous mistakes in Spanish after studying it for half my life, or say really dumb things in my native language, or accidentally offend people, I am a good person, someone who is loved by lots of people.

I keep thinking back to Rumi's poem, of how perfect that image is. To me, it captures what seems like an oxymoron, the idea that we should know who we are while also improving things about ourselves. But Rumi's line explains it to me: grow, but keep your shape. So here I am, coming close to the end of an incredibly challenging year, and I'm content to say that my ring of being has widened a lot, but retained its form. I'm learning from the people around me, but I'm also realizing that there are things about me that will never change—and I don't want them to. I'm me. And lately, that feels pretty good.





















(Cory, Marie, Maddie, me... we still can't figure out who took this picture)

On turning 23

A year ago, I compiled some of my writings from lots of genres to make a statement about my life view, about the things that are most important to me. My theme was essentially this:

"My life is about living for the relationships that surround me. They bring me joy and peace more than anything else; and, to me, these relationships, these loves, are sacred."

The summer before I moved to Spain, my life was a reflection of that statement. I lived in a small town with good friends; most mornings we'd gather on my porch for people watching, coffee drinking, and news reading. I talked to my mom everyday and she'd give me all the updates on the family: Lauren and the kids are visiting Liz in Grand Rapids; Grandpa has a cold again; Kristin might get promoted at work this month. When I was excited or sad or sick, I had people there to listen and understand, people I had known for years, who could tell that when I said, "I'm fine," I really meant, "I feel like crap, but I should suck it up." Certainly there were imperfect things in my life, but I knew my place in it all—I knew my role as a friend, as a daughter, as a sister, as a person.

And then, five months after I wrote my life view, I moved an ocean away from all of my closest relationships to live in a foreign country. One month after that, my mother, the heart of my family, the most influential person in my life, passed away. After that, I didn't know my own life for a while—and I kept wondering if I really even knew myself. Maybe I had put such importance on relationships because I'd been blessed with good ones—and if those were suddenly warped and distanced and taken away, who was I on my own?

Well, my 23rd birthday just rolled around, and I realized that, despite all the changes of the past year, I still find myself deeply invested in the relationships, new and old, in my life. Last Saturday night, I came down to the kitchen and found my roommate making me birthday cookies; they spelled out "Feliz Cumple Dani"—a thoughtful combination of an American treat with Spanish flair. A little later, the rest of our friends showed up with food and wine, prepared for an all nighter to celebrate with me. Two days later, on my actual birthday, every time I opened my email, I'd received another dozen well wishes from people all around the world: my family in Michigan, an ex-boyfriend in Iraq, college friends in Chicago, even acquaintances from middle school I hadn't talked to in years. Even though it was a melancholy day for me, I was cheered by the goodness of all those people.

The fact is, my life is different now, and along with that, my relationships are different: with my family, as we adjust to a new dynamic without my mom; with God, as I try to figure out how and why and when he intervenes in my life; with my friends, as we build and maintain friendships despite distance, despite plans and locations changing every few months. Sometimes these changes in my life seem radical and overwhelming, but I've realized that my connections with people are still vibrant and loving and comforting. They still bring me the peace and joy that make me who I am.

Comfort

Most mornings, I see one of my students and her mom on my tram ride to school. "Good morning, Aitana," I say to her, smiling as she shyly plops into a seat nearby. "Buenos días," I say to her mother. The whole ride, Aitana smiles and laughs and shows me all of the things she knows. "Pink," she'll say, pointing to the flower on her shirt. "Sunny," she'll say, pointing out the window. She is happy and loving and beautiful.

But when we get to school, everything changes. While all of my 3-year-olds like to test the limits of what they can get away with, Aitana stubbornly does whatever she wants whenever she wants. Every day, Isabel and I sit the class down to listen to a story and work on vocabulary; but, like clockwork, Aitana refuses—instead she plays with puzzles, or runs in circles, or eats the fake food in the kitchen. We wait and wait, but Aitana doesn't come. We ask nicely. We demand. We bribe. But the girl does not budge. So then, though I hate doing it, I take her hand by force and gently tug her behind me to the hallway, where she sits in punishment crying for 5 minutes. Oh, if she would only listen! I just want to smile at this lovely girl and teach her things and coo encouraging words about how smart she is. Instead, I have to take her grudgingly to a place where she is unhappy and lonely. 

So, why am I telling you this? Because I've come to the realization that I'm just like Aitana.

People often ask how my year in Spain is going, and I always reply by saying, "I'm learning a lot of things I never thought I'd learn." This is the truest thing I could possibly say about this year. I'm learning wonderful things, like how to be a teacher, how to integrate myself into a foreign culture, how to love children more than I ever thought I would. However, I'm also learning obnoxious things, like patience and independence and grace when I don't get my way (oh, the horror!). Despite the stretching these things require, I try to take them in stride, because I know that they're valuable lessons to learn. But there's one lesson about which I've found myself acting just like Aitana, pouting and dragging my feet to avoid it: learning to be more self-relient.

It's not that I don't like a little bit of time to myself. I just prefer to be with other people most of the time; and, when I'm going through something, I like to go through it with good friends. I've been blessed with people in my life who have helped with any struggle I've had, so I'm used to being able to rely on others—which, really, is a remarkable blessing in itself. I always thought this was fine, healthy even. This year, however, I've been forced to deal with a lot of really big things alone. Though I've made amazing friends here who are very supportive, I've discovered that what I'm going through—living abroad, dealing with my mother's death—is a deeply personal experience, one that I have to get through by myself.

Trust me, this is not a realization I've come to easily. Every time I have a hard day or something bad happens, I pout and try to get someone else to make me feel better—but it rarely works, for one reason or another: Skype isn't working, or my sister doesn't quite know what to say, or my Spanish isn't good enough to really convey how I'm feeling. This has happened to me so many times, that I now know what I'm supposed to do: learn how to comfort myself, of course; learn how to make myself happy; learn how to utilize the support of my friends and family but be able to pull myself up.

Truthfully, though, I am just like my little unhappy student. It's like there's this big voice—God or whatever it is that you believe in—trying to teach me something valuable, if I'll just listen. But I'm not quite ready to be told what to do, and so I look the other way, cross my arms angrily, and cry for a while. But I tell Aitana the same thing every day, hoping that she'll catch on so she can stay in the class with her friends and be more engaged and happy. And I think that the same will happen to me: if I try to adhere to this lesson about trusting myself, maybe I'll end up happier and more enlightened in the end.

But I am stubborn stubborn and this is still very hard for me. I have such good people in my life and sometimes I think that they are brilliant and gracious enough to solve all of my problems for me. For encouragement, I keep reading my new favorite Story People story (www.storypeople.com if you don't know what I'm talking about):

"There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling rain & remember it is enough to be taken care of by myself."

Sometimes it's nice to be taken care of by others, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But sometimes I need those drops of comfort when no one is available but myself.

Attitude

I've never understood the fascination with celebrating the new year. Of course, I love the excuse to gather with friends for a fun night of cocktail dresses, classy drinks, and charming noisemakers; but I've never understood the significance of celebrating a new beginning—who wants that? Who wants to start fresh when you have all of that interesting baggage to color your life? To me, it seemed like the best kind of accessory: I could always shove all those little mistakes and things gone wrong in my life into a cute metaphorical handbag, and then carry it stylishly with me into the new year.

This year, things changed; all those little negatives plus the one giant thing gone wrong in my life were too heavy and ugly to take with me. So, as New Year's Eve approached, I looked forward to it, finally understanding the longing for a fresh start. I said "Happy New Year!" with enthusiasm, and then I took a deep breath, expecting relief, maybe even hope. But I didn't feel it, not really—because I didn't just want to erase last year, serenely letting it fall into my past: I wanted to obliterate it. Despite wishing for a happier year ahead, I was and am hanging onto my intense anger towards the past year.

In the book The Catcher in the Rye, Holden goes through a couple of emotionally traumatic events when he's young, which then color his attitude towards the adult world. Because of this, he lets himself get away with disliking almost everyone and everything. Despite how unreasonable that may sound in summary, anyone who's read the book knows how easy it is to relate to Holden's I'm-better-off-alone-than-with-any-of-you-crumbums attitude. In fact, his criticisms are often so poignantly accurate, it's hard not to laugh and wish you had noticed first.

However, what Holden fails to do is acknowledge any of the good stuff. While most of us are annoyed by life sometimes, Holden is annoyed constantly—which is how we end up with a hopelessly bitter narrator who is has to "take it easy" and talk to a psychotherapist regularly. Holden adopts criticism as his attitude towards life.

It's very easy for me to look back at this past year with a critical eye; but I need to make sure I don't dwell on criticism so much that it becomes my outlook. So as not to end up like our aforementioned lovable but insane narrator, I have to recognize the good in last year. 2009 was the year of my mother's death. Because of this, sometimes I feel just as isolated and full of resentment as Holden. But 2009 was also the year that I graduated from college. It was the year that I deepened some of the best friendships of my life, the year that I moved to Spain. It was the that year my baby girl cousin was born.

Right now it's hard for me to feel that the good outshines the bad; but I'm acknowledging it. I'm trying to keep an attitude towards life that will allow me to eventually let my anger fade.

Words

As a reader/writer, I know that every word counts—which is why, I think, I'm so self-conscious about the things I say. I'm continually re-enacting conversations in my head, replaying my words, often cringing at how they clash. Mostly, I wonder about how other people will interpret who I am: will they read me the right way? With the words that I've given them, will they understand the things about me that I want them to understand?

But, as a human being, breathing and living off the written page, I've recently come to realize that, in real life, maybe the specific words aren't as important. I've realized this because I now live in Spain and speak in Spanish a lot, which means that my words are a jumbled mess much of the time. Yet somehow, there are people here who understand me—and not just my poorly constructed sentences. They understand my heart. They get it, the things that motivate me, the things that make me happy or sad.

A couple weeks ago, I gave a gift to my principal, Elia, a lovely human being, for her hospitality at the beginning of my time here. She hugged me and said, "Te quiero"—I love you. Isabel, a good friend and co-worker, cried with me when I broke down on my first day back to school after my mom's death. Consuelo, my roommate, invited me home to her village last weekend, introducing me to not only her parents and sister, but also her cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandfather. By the end of the weekend, I felt like I was a part of them, happily cozying up for a nap in the living room, her dad snoring on the other couch.

Ultimately, what I want people to understand about me is that I am a trustworthy person with kind intentions. I want them to know that I value education and creativity and community. I'm learning that all of these things can be conveyed with imperfect words. The people here with whom I've built relationships, they love me and feel with me and invite me into their family lives. They understand the most important things about me.

Jack, my legendary poetry prof, always says: we are not writers, we are just people who write. As a writer, I've been trained to think that every word matters.  But I need to remember that, above all, I am a person.

                           with Consu at our Thanksgiving fiesta

                               with Isa at Thanksgiving

Home

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the delay in posting anything new.  As most of you know, my mom passed away suddenly a few weeks ago, so that's taken quite a toll on me—not only in how I've been able to use my time (hence not writing anything), but also in how I've been able to use my brain (again, the reason I haven't been writing).

So, I don't have anything incredibly insightful to say about what I'm learning now that I'm back in Spain, but I'll be sure to let you know when that brain of mine starts working like it used to, if that ever happens.  In the meantime, there is one thing I'd like to share: the piece I wrote for my mom's funeral.  Please know that it is rough and imperfect and sappy and probably poorly punctuated.  But it's what I have.

I want to start by saying, It’s good to be home. 

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been teaching abroad in Spain for the past two months—something my mom was endlessly proud of.  I think it made her happy that we shared the same love of traveling, the same love of discovering a new culture.  It made her happy that I was strong enough to do things like that—just like she was.  But I know the value of coming home—another thing I learned from my mom.  Because despite all of her amazing travels, my mom always valued home above everything else.

For mothers’ day this year, my sister and I got my mom this print with a really lovely, unique sketch and a beautiful little poem that read:

“There is no one who comes here that does not know this is a true map of the world, with you there in the center, making home for us all.” 

And it’s so true.  Wherever my mom was, was home.  She brought it with her.  And she held us all together there. 

One year when I was really little, we went skiing at Treetops up in Gaylord over Christmas.  I remember being so worried, continually asking, “Mom, how will Santa find us if we’re not at home?”  And she would just say to me, “Don’t worry, honey, he’ll find us.”  And he did, of course.  I can’t imagine how she fit all of those presents into the trunk along with all of our luggage and ski gear, but on Christmas morning we had a huge celebration, just like every year.  She always spoiled us on Christmas morning, a tradition that only worsened as we got older.  I’d say to her, “Mom!  We really don’t need all of this stuff.”  And she’d say, “But you girls have worked so hard this year.”  That was my mom—always making us feel as loved as humanly possible.

A lot of my close friends say the same about my mom: they, too, always felt at home with us.  A lot of them remember the Johnson Thanksgiving dinner.  Every year we had Thanksgiving in Detroit with my mom’s family.  But then the weekend after Thanksgiving, my mom would host a second dinner at our house for the Johnsons and for close friends.  My mom would spend days preparing—grocery shopping, digging around for her mom’s old recipes, cooking, baking—even remembering things like what foods to buy for which friends would be attending this year.  And the cool thing was that my sister and I also got to invite our close friends.  So all of us would spend the night eating and watching football and talking and laughing.  It was always a night to be remembered, a night of having fun and spending time with good people.  Everyone felt comfortable, loved, at peace.  My mom created that. 

When I moved to Spain in September, she didn’t just drive me to the airport and say, “Have a good time!”  She came to Spain with me, of course, to see me off and to get me settled.  She wouldn’t have it any other way.  I was very stressed the day that she and my dad were supposed to head back: a lot of things had changed at the last minute, and suddenly I had had to be in a new city for a new teaching placement, and I couldn’t get a hold of the people I needed to get a hold of.  I was in tears more than once, not having any idea where I was even going to be staying that night, or for the following weeks until I found an apartment.  But my mom held it all together, making all the right decisions, calming me down.  And when we finally figured out where I needed to go, she hugged me and smiled as I breathed deeply.  She and my dad drove me up to my school, and helped me haul up my three giant suitcases.  The principal of the school, a kind, smiling woman, greeted us and hugged me right away.  She said to me, “Do you have somewhere to stay yet?”  And when I said no, she said.  “Good.  You’re staying with me.”  It was only then—after my mom had seen me safely delivered into the hands of someone who would take care of me—that my mom let down her guard.  She hugged me and started to cry a little and told me to send her an email later that day.  And then she and my dad left, and that was the last time I saw her.   

But really, she was with me in Spain.  We emailed back and forth every day, and video chatted all the time.  She was always there to comfort me when I’d had a hard day or to help me with all the problems I had as I tried to get settled in a new country.  She searched online for apartments for me, filling my inbox with listings until I’d found a place.  And I missed her, of course, but she was such a constant presence in my life that I never once felt homesick.  I just think that’s amazing:  22-years-old, the baby of my house, living in a country where I barely speak the language, and every day blindsided by some new challenge—and yet never once felt homesick.  Because my mom was there for me through all of it, and because she is my home.  Because in the true map of the world, she is at the center of everything, making home for me, for my whole family. 

I want to close by reading a poem I wrote about my mom back in April.  I never shared it with her, but I know she’s hearing it now. 

You're writing out of your soul space

My soul space is your hand,

twisting braids in my hair,

tracing your fingers on the nape of my neck. My head

is on your lap, my body

curled on one side, tucked

into a lower case h.

I look at the coffee

table and tell you

it's good to be home

it's good to be here, in this

living room with burgundy sofas,

with two furry cats who like

to cuddle. It's good

to be home.

Pictures

My kids!  I know some of them are crying... don't worry, they just miss their moms and dads.  I promise I'm nice to them :)

My cute green house... did I mention I live across the street from the beach??