“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.” ~Anäis Nin
My friends LB and Mah have bought a house together. Normally, I’d frown upon boyfriend and girlfriend shacking up and think of all apocalyptic type problems that could arise just to make sure they’ve thought of everything, but in this case, I teared up a little while looking at photos of their adorable red door adorned home. For my first visit to their house, they emailed to say that a friend of Mah’s sister would be visiting so she would be joining us for dinner. Great! I thought. I made sure to have both the crackberry and the cell phone handy. The crackberry just in case any unforeseen circumstances should arise, like she tried to have a conversation with me and I was unable to come up with an adequate response to make me come off both smart and funny. Lest you think that I never worry about these things, it is in fact at the top of my mind when meeting new people: That thing that we’re all worried about; what if they don’t like me? Though more importantly on a rainy evening: Does Aveda offer a product to beat the shit out of my hair and into submission? Never fear of course, for in I walk and there’s Margot. She wants to talk politics and blogging and makes up a fun game called “Posing with wine glasses”. She thinks that Yellow Tail Shiraz is the greatest thing produced from God’s green earth and has more creativity in her tiny self than I will ever have. In the end, after a night of sitting too close to the television and doing color commentary on the debate; she hugs me with two arms. I tell her that when I’m in Chicago again, I’ll give her a call. She tells me that when I come to Chicago, I’m staying with her. She also says “You’re fierce! I don’t understand why boys aren’t running after you”. It makes me hug her harder.
I’m attending my third Sleep is for the Weak signing. I cannot help but exclaim that I have very talented and pretty friends and I’d like to buy many of them a pony. I’m chatting with Amy and Tracey and standing at the back wall, sipping coffee when Hilary walks in. She looks at us, including me, just standing there possibly biting my cuticles and rolling my eyes; and says that she’s nervous. I remove my thumb from my mouth so that I can give a full on WTF look. Why be nervous? She’s nervous that she’s standing here in front of the three of us (keep in mind that it’s not even my book. I’m just standing there enjoying the coffee and how nicely my new sweater coat fits and perhaps I’ll get one in black) and she doesn’t know what to say and she almost didn’t come in (Me: mmmm, cuticle. Tasty, tasty cuticle). Tracey and Amy ask her name and this time I remove my index finger long enough to say “Oh yeah! You commented on my site today”. I bust out the crackberry (I told you it comes in handy) and sho’ ‘nuf there’s Hilary’s comment. Later she joins me on the back wall and now I’m all nervous trying to come up with some sort of nonchalant conversation as if I’m good at small talk. In my head a constant loop of “oh my god, but you’re so fucking cool” going through my head. I spend twenty minutes staring at her and plotting a way to get her to join me at Vapiano the next time I’m in town. I’ll probably come off as needy and utterly uncool via email and vapid and she’ll hate me but perhaps I’ll try. Later at dinner, Tracey and I turn to each other and express our love of Hilary. It’s official: We’d like to adopt her.
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I’ve known Rita for a few years but mostly tangentially. We know the same people and work together and yet we’ve never had an actual conversation. I assure you that it has nothing to do with oil and water personalities but that at BlogHer – when we usually see each other – it’s so easy to get swooped up in the tide and the next thing you know it’s all over, you’re back at the shore, dripping wet, thinking “What the FUCK was that? Did anything happen?” So we’ve just never really chatted. She’s in DC for the reading of the book that she has labored over for the past three years. It makes me most envious that she was able to see a project through for that long while I find my ability to sit through a 120 minute movie comparable to running a marathon. I commend her. While at dinner I find out that she’s hilarious. And not a simple chuckle but the kind of hilarity that forces my cheeks to hurt and my head to throw back during fits of laughter. She tells these stories with her full body and facial expressions. First a story that forces me sides to ache as my shoulders go up and down in my silent laughing thing and then one that is heartbreaking. I request that she writes more. I wonder why I’ve never really talked to her before. Then I realize it’s probably because I spend too much time worrying about whether or not someone will like me and gnawing on my cuticles rather than actually allowing words to come out of my mouth. Perhaps I’ll work on that.
One day in November
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.” ~Anne Lamott
Once someone told me that “you can’t spin hope”. And I quoted it for months with a snicker. ‘Hope’ isn’t part of the party platform. I’ve read the party platform and next to ‘improving public education’ it doesn’t say ‘dream big’ with little unicorns and a heart instead of a dot above the lowercase i. I find myself to be a generally cynical person and pragmatic. The glass is never half full or half empty it’s just a glass with water for me to quench my thirst. Which is why when ‘hope’ was used as a catalyst for people to throw their cautions to the wind and vote for ‘change’, I scoffed and guffawed and remained a non-believer.
There was no push or drive during the last two years, I was just going through the motions of electing a President whose platform most aligned with my ideals. That is until last night when my coworker, Ben, a man old enough to think that he would never see the Berlin Wall come down, started to tell me a story that I had been dying to hear. I was already for the The Drama when out of the corner of my eye I saw something that made me stop everything. It’s rare that I’m at a loss for words or that when something exciting or monumental happens that I’m not shouting from the rooftops. I turned to Ben and politely said to him, “Barack Obama is the President”. He just stared back at me and said “Wait. What?”
“I think that Barack Obama is the President”.
He stopped the story that I was so dying to hear to turn around and look at the television screen with me. You know those moments that are forever etched in your mind? Those moments when you remember exactly how you were standing, which way the moon was facing and the color of the chipped nail polish on your fingers? Those moments? It’s just that…it isn’t everyday that I stand in a room full of people, put my head down and my hands on my knees and feel everything inside of me collapse and then cry. Two minutes later Ben went back to telling me the story and I stopped him to say, “Yeah, whatever you’re going to say is going to be boring as shit compared to this”. But he told me anyway.
I called my father later and he was far too quiet than usual. Not the normal banter and telling me that I’m adopted but he was quiet and thoughtful. If you grow up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, you can never really prepare yourself for raising children in the suburbs of Upstate NY. You probably don’t envision your black son and daughter discussing political science and supply side economics and the LSATS and their white peers as if they were common place. And you sure as shit don’t ever bring yourself to really push your mind to pursue the possibility of a black man living in the White House.
But you hope. I hope for a lot of things. That my check clears or that a pair of perfect shoes are available in my size or that one day I’ll be able to fit into my favorite dress again. I hope that the Giants win this weekend and I hope there’s more wine. I’m neither sentimental nor idealistic, but yeah, sometimes I hope. We all hope every single day because it’s what gets us up in the morning: That hope that things will be better or just as good as the day before. That hope that whatever we are working towards – either alone or as a people – will go well and get better. It’s just that on any given day we don’t realize how much we hope because we never outwardly say it because it’s just a little too trite and rainbows and kittens to say that you spend your days hoping. Though I think it’s human nature and catching to see one person be optimistic and so it’s hard to avoid that drug of good feeling.
So would you like to know what my first thoughts were last night? After the tears and my father. It was of my friends, Leah and Simon, and then of every other parent I know that has young children. But Leah and Simon especially because they’re having a baby in six weeks and their baby will never know of anything different than having a black president it will be natural to him and forever be a grip on my heart and something that I remember vaguely thinking about. Just as it will always be baffling to my father that Garrett and I have always experienced integration (its ups and its harsh, harsh downs) as it’s always been natural to us but a grip on his heart.
There are these little tiny babies who will always think of this – what just happened – as ordinary. And they will have that luxury and life because one day in November several million of us chose to lean on the idea of hope a little more than we had in days, weeks and months prior. It was one day in November when we said we could and so we did. We hoped and then we changed.