Minimally Eschew

I believe in the reckless optimism of Leslie Knope and soothing my soul by watching Parks and Rec on repeat for hours at a time. Letting the pure joy it radiates warm me to the bone.

I believe in learning from the people around me. From their lived experience. In learning from perspectives different from my own. In acknowledging the gaps in my own knowledge.

I believe in sunsets and ocean spray. In sand that has taken permanent residence in the carpets of my car.

I believe in scalding hot bubble baths and good books and wrinkled toes and fingers. In playlists curated by people who love you and soaps that smell like lemon.

I believe in text message affirmations and crying over skype. In phone calls and Facebook chats. In emails with links to YouTube videos of adorable animals and in snapchat selfies a hundred times a day.

I believe in action. In marches and in protest. In boycotts and in the undervalued work of educating others. I believe in walking the walk, in all the ways I can.

I believe in looking at pictures of turtles at least once a day.

I believe in the song “Let’s Dance to Joy Division” and the power of pop punk and aggressive air guitar.

I believe in my religion and the comfort it brings me. Faith can be a complicated thing but even on the days when I question, I never stop believing in my community and my people.

I believe in the power of women. Now, more than ever. In their strength and their fortitude.

I believe in self care through baking banana bread. And M&M cookies. And snickerdoodles and lemon bars. In kneading away stress and showing up to the office with Tupperware containers full of treats.

I believe in snuggly blankets and fuzzy socks. In coziness and comfort.

I believe in myself and I believe in the people around me.

I believe in listening.

I believe that the whole world is a narrow bridge, and that the main thing is not to be afraid.

I believe in pretty dresses and bright lipstick. In allowing myself small acts of beauty when the whole world feels ugly.

I believe, as the wise Albus Dumbledore once said, that “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

I believe in being the light. In shining my brightest and inviting others to radiate their joy and their love and their happiness. In giving what I can. In burning my brightest, even when the days feel dark. .

I believe that it’s time to go to work. To get up in the morning and fight for the people and ideas you believe in. To fight with love and to fight with words and to fight with legislation. To fight in town hall meetings and Facebook debates. To change minds and change hearts and change the dialogue.

I believe that change is possible.

This is my summer scrapbook.

I talk all the time about life being made up of moments and of stories and about how I want to remember all of it, and how the way that I’m able to do that is through what I write. Committing moments to paper helps cement them in my mind and in my memory. It makes the silly moments feel sincere, the sincere moments feel true, and it helps me feel a little bit more like I have a grasp on the time I’ve lived through.

So this is my summer 2016 scrapbook. It’s a few moments—not all of them of course, and not even all the important ones, and some that are profoundly unimportant but make me smile—from this summer that I want to make sure live on for me, and maybe give you a picture of my life at camp.

So here they are.

The very first day when I got off the train at JFK airport at noon and my phone was on 10% battery and I had woken up 8 hours earlier. I didn’t care at all, because it took me about two minutes to find friends I hadn’t seen in a year and immediately feel better and more relaxed and just a good kind of different.

The very last day when I had to leave earlier than the busses and I walked around the dining hall and hugged a lot of people and cried on a lot of people’s shirts and felt every human emotion in the span of 20 minutes.

The time I had a really hard day and I feel asleep on the main lawn and woke up as the boys in bunk 20 were trying to dogpile on top of me without waking me up.

The time two of my staff members dyed the tips of my hair red and purple in the art room at 11:00 on a Friday night, using a dye kit we bought at Walmart, the sink we use to rinse the paintbrushes and a towel that someone had used to clean up tye-dye spills.

The day off where we ate a lot of weird, delicious pub food and watched the world’s worst spy movie in an almost empty theatre and laughed so hard we missed half of the dialogue and 80% of the plot.

The notes I got every Shabbat from campers and staff. They are now securely tucked away in an envelope so I can look at them during the hard days this year.

The time during staff week when we laid on the ground in bunk 12 and played “two truths and a lie.” We tried to do impressions of each other’s accents, playing games that only work in the kind of setting that you find at camp—one that’s open and one that’s comfortable and one that’s not afraid to be a little bit ridiculous.

The first time I ever got on the inflatables in the lake and I bounced on the trampoline, which managed to be both terrifying and exhilarating.

The day I scored a run in softball and got all my arrows in to the target at archery.

The time a couple of the girls in bunk eight tickled me so hard that I fell to the floor in the middle of the dining hall.

The unit talent shows where I got to watch my kids shine in all kinds of wonderful and ridiculous ways. The skits and the songs and the gymnastics. The magic acts and the comedy. That synchronized cup flipping thing.

The 5-minute check in with one of my staff members that lasted an hour and a half.

The time the lower camp unit heads held up a meeting because we got too distracted talking about our favorite crock-pot recipes.

The time we did karaoke in the beit am and one of the bunks did the most depressing song I have ever heard in my entire life and took turns shouting the words in to the microphone.

Watching Hillary Clinton give her speech after she passed the delegate threshold with women that I admire. Eating ice cream and talking and crying a little more then I’m proud to admit.

The time I made eye contact with one of my staff members in the middle of bunk six and both of us started laughing so hard that we had to go to opposite sides of the bunk to cool down.

So. Many. Hugs

The night off where we got ice cream and I ran in to an old friend who I hadn’t seen in about a dozen years and we sat on the side of the street and caught up on our lives and tossed chocolate chips at each other.

The weird stories we’d tell at unit staff meetings on Sunday mornings.

Campfires and song sessions and tug of war. Sports and friendship bracelets and cookout lunches. Firefly at the lake. Gaga in the rec hall. Fight song and color war and trip day. Singing prayers before bed at night and leading services as a unit on Saturday. Cold showers and not enough showers, and that day that none of the showers worked on girl’s row. Disney breakfast and superhero costumes for evening program. Movies and trivia games and stargazing on the lake field. So many people that I love.

The ongoing feeling of joy and of confusion and overwhelmingly of sheer dumb luck, at how happy I was to be here and to get to do this, with these people, in this place.

I have thousands of stories. I suppose they are not important in the grand scheme of things, but they are all important to me. I don’t labor under the illusion that just because I want to note a moment that moment is notable. But this is my blog and these are my words and I’m writing them now so I can read them later and remember how good things were. And of course they were hard and of course they were weird and of course not every day was a good day, but overwhelmingly, I’m just happy I got to spend my days the way I spent them.

This is my summer scrapbook.

I’m ready to turn the page to what comes next.

At the end of last summer I sat in a fake leather chair in an office at Bowie State and tried to convince a woman whose entire job was to worry about student’s course loads to just ignore mine. I wanted to graduate in May. It would mean huge course loads and lots of weird schedules and spending all of my time buried in text books, but I wanted to graduate in May.

So now it’s May.

I’m not walking at graduation. Don’t expect to see a picture of me in a cap and gown. I guess they’ll mail me my diploma eventually, but for now what I have is a little box on the college website with the heading ‘Graduation Status.’ Today that status changed from ‘Pending’ to ‘Approved.’

So I guess this is it.

It feels really anti-climatic.

My journey through college hasn’t really been a straight line from point A to point B. There were pit stops in New York and Chicago. There was more then one school and more then one major, before I figured out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. College wasn’t easy. And I know that people like to paint the rosiest possible pictures of their lives (myself included) but I struggled to get to this point, to that stupid little box on my computer screen telling me that my graduation has been approved. So I want to celebrate it. I want to show my pride. But I kind of don’t know how.

I guess that’s why I’m writing this.

So here’s my goalpost. Here is my finish line. Here is the point where I can say I’m done. I made it.

A couple nights ago my family had a celebration. We went to a restaurant and sat around a giant table and ate some really good food. My grandparents gave me cards and my cousins gave me hugs. My dad gave a toast that was three sentences long that almost made me cry. It was so nice to be surrounded by so many people I love.

I’m not sure exactly what is coming next. Camp, in a few weeks, then essentially a giant question mark. I’m applying for things and interviewing and making choices, but nothing is definite yet. It’s scary to have my entire future feel like an unknown.

If this blog post seems a little all-over-the-board, that's because my brain feels a little all-over-the-board right now. I feel pride and I feel anxiety. I feel accomplished, and also afraid.

But I also feel like that isn’t enough of a reason to ignore the point that I’m at now. I worked hard to get here. I’m going to take a moment to reflect and to take my victory lap.

Thanks for all the love and support—always, but this year even more so.

It’s been hard.

But I did it.

I feel weird reading the things I wrote then I was 20. The prose is too showy and the words are too long, and my abuse of commas was somehow even worse than it is today. It embarrasses me to read those words, but it’s possible I’m embarrassed more by the person I was when I put those words down on those pages.

I turn 24 tomorrow. It’s not a big deal, except for in the ways that it is. I’ll spend all day in class and then come home and make dinner. I’ll do my homework and waste time scrolling through twitter. It’ll be just another Tuesday.

I’m the kind of person who likes to mark occasions. I like to lavish people with attention. Weird care packages and homemade cards, texts just to say ‘hi’ and emails with links that remind me of them. I feel my best when I’m showing people that I care.

I can’t bring myself to care about this birthday. It feels like a hurdle, to be honest, something I have to get past—get through—to get to the other side. To get to 24 and graduation and whatever comes after whatever it is I am doing right now.

Exactly one year ago, on the night before my 23^rd birthday, I wrote a blog post about the gifts I had found during year 22. It holds true, I think. When I read it over I smile and nod. I feel grateful for those moments and those people and those feelings that were so real as I was feeling them.

This year has had it’s share of gifts, but two of them matter more than all the rest.

The first gift is work.

Just nose to the grindstone, head in the books, work. This has been a year of accomplishing the things I need to accomplish. I graduate in 90 days, having squeezed three semesters worth of classes in to two semesters. I’ve taken stupidly easy pre-reqs and stupidly hard graduate seminars. I’ve had a lot of meetings with my advisor, sitting on opposite sides of her desk as we plan out my path. I’ve had a lot of homework—readings and essays and earth science labs that lasted for 4 hours on Wednesday mornings. It kind of stinks, truthfully. But it’s what I need to do and so I’m doing it.

The other gift is a little cheesier. Sorry.

This year, more than any, has shown me what a gift it is to have people. This year, at least the parts of it I’ve spent in Maryland, have been very isolated. Suburban life is weird and strange and I’ve spent a lot of time being very very thankful that when I get home at the end of the day I have people I can count on to be only a skype call away. Distance is hard, but knowing that there are people out there that care about me makes it a little easier to slog through whatever is being slung my way each day. I’m grateful for the gift of affection. Shown in phone calls I get from friends in far off places and in facebook messages from the other side of the world. I’m thankful for the people who send me links on twitter and for every time my brother emails me weird memes. I’m thankful for my parents who watch weird sitcoms and don’t complain when I sit in the room with them and ignore them in favor of my textbooks. I’m thankful for every little bit of love that I receive.

I hope I’m not embarrassed to read this four years from now. I hope the things in my life that I consider gifts are things that I will continue to value. I hope my work ethic doesn’t putter out and my love for others stays strong. I hope I have enough love and affection in my life that even to remark on it in such simple terms seems quaint. I know I’ll be disappointed in my comma abuse (I always am) but I hope the words I’m writing now will still feel true.

I turn 24 tomorrow.

I knew exactly what 23 was going to hold—school, camp, a home in Maryland and sustaining my relationships via internet connection. 24 is up in the air. 24 feels like a mystery. For once, I don’t know what comes next. But whatever it is, and wherever this year takes me, I’m ready. And even if I wasn’t, time passes anyway.

Lots of love.

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I Believe

Summer Scrapbook

Finish Line

The Year That Was and The Year That Will Be