29: a reflection and forecast

SPOILER ALERT: For those of you lucky enough to be younger than your late 20s, shit gets real. Don’t read if you don’t want to ruin it for yourself. For those of you already in your late 20s and older, well, you’ll know what I mean.

There was a lot of crying this year. Not that I wasn’t warned. One friend said, “You know it’s your Saturn return, right?” I, being only a Sunday-paper-horoscope-and comics-reader, didn’t know. I’d never heard of this phenomenon before. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “It’s when Saturn returns to the same point in the sky that it occupied when you were born.”

OK, what?

Apparently, this is a very sensitive time in a person’s life that my friend described as being turned upside down and shook. Real hard. To oversimplify, some stuff (habits, personality traits, beliefs, dreams, etc.) sticks, but everything else gets trashed, like some kind of astrological menstruation. And man, do you feel it, like a painfully conscious death.

*       *       *

When I was about 7, my family vacationed at the Jersey shore with my cousins, aunt, and uncle. I was in Heaven. One evening, we were going for a walk on the beach, as was the end-of-the-day tradition. I loved that part of vacation days, when the heat is still trapped in the sand, but you need a sweater. We’d feed the gulls, have kite fights, and run from the encroaching tide. But on that night, I stopped at the end of the driveway as the group continued on.

My aunt noticed I’d fallen behind and asked, “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to go?”

I said “Yes, I do…but I can’t.” I was tearful, and she looked concerned.

“Why,” she asked.

“Because…I have growing pains.”

And it was true. My arms and legs ached, and it hurt to move them sometimes. Whenever I complained about this to my mom, she’d say “It’s just growing pains.” And they’d fade and I’d get taller, and when they’d return, they weren’t so frightening because I understood what they were for, that this had to happen. That I needed to grow.

*       *       *

This year was the emotional equivalent of growing pains. Yet I don’t think I got emotionally taller. Instead, it was like going through puberty, the first day of kindergarten, and being punished for something your brother did all at the same time: confusing, torturous, and just downright not fair. But the frustrating part was that nothing was outwardly happening to me, which made me feel even worse—and a little crazy.

I’d tear up over situations as benign as someone making fun of me for being pale. I’d run to the bathroom sporadically during work and sit Indian-style on the toilet with the lid down, until I could pull it together. It was overly sentimental and dramatic scenes from bad movies: slumping against the tile wall in the shower and finishing washing in the water that pooled beneath me. It was a melodrama to the most pathetic degree, and I felt like a marionette whose strings were constantly plucked and pulled by pure emotion. Then along comes 29, like the relief of dusk to a bad day.

Not that it ends here. If Saturn is in fact wreaking havoc in her path, she supposedly won’t be done until I’m 30. And then what?

Part of what hit me so hard was the realization that technically I am happier than I ever have been: I’m independent, living in the city of my choice. I’m extremely happy in my personal relationships. I not only have a job, but one that enables me to do more or less what I love. Yet, I am not ecstatic.

I am socked in by the monotony of day-to-day living. I am uncertain of myself. I am terrified that I am not doing something right. It comes down to the fear that this is as good as it gets. And while it is good, and I’m thankful for my life most days, it’s still a struggle. The older I get, the less I seem to understand the human condition, but the more enmeshed in it I become. When comes wisdom?

*       *       *

By the time my mother was 29, she was married with a two-year-old (me), a house, and another kid on the way. I have not known her to be anything but happy, gracious, and pulled together at all times. And here I am, just one extremely overgrown fetus wanting to crawl back into the comforting void of the womb.

Every paycheck feels like it came from a birthday card, and I still think of it in terms of how many pieces of penny candy I can buy. Before the next one arrives, thankfully more frequently than annually, I am genuinely mystified by what happened to the last. And I think to myself in my mother’s voice: “Well, you shouldn’t have spent it all on candy.” Although, my mom would never actually say that—she loves candy.

There’s no neat little moral to wrap this up. I’m sorry. I’d love to Mr. Rogers-assure you that everything is wonderful, you are special, and the world is magical. You are of course, and it is. But that’s just one side of it. And I guess that’s the takeaway if there is one. Just as we breathe, whatever life is expands and contracts. It shivers and quakes. It will rise and fall in time.

Maybe getting older simply means coming to understand that growing pains hurt, but they’re for something. And as excruciating as it can be at times, you are growing.

The 38 Geary: Back of the Bus

Geary Boulevard is a major east-west thoroughfare in San Francisco, California, beginning downtown at Market Street…Geary Boulevard terminates near Sutro Heights Park at 48th Avenue, close to the Cliff House, above Ocean Beach at the Pacific Ocean.

*          *          *

A girl with long, black-tipped fingernails scratches a group of lottery tickets. Occasionally, she smiles.

A kid (I say “kid,” but he’s what? early 20s?) wears a lanyard with four photos of a kid (“kid”) that looks like him around his neck, like some kind of scapular. At one point, the thing flips over. On the back it says “RIP, Lil Effie.”

A woman with dirty fingernails sits next to me. She is half-falling asleep in a heroin haze. Her eyelids are pulled by an invisible weight and her head droops forward and forward and…Her friends get on a few stops later and she momentarily lapses into consciousness. They’re an old street couple (you can tell) and they’re fighting over a bottle of vodka between hello’s.

The man wears no shirt (that’s a start) and his underwear hangs out of his pants. He must be 70–or perhaps he’s a fast and hard-livin’ 45. It’s hard to tell. The old woman, his “partner,” yells at him for ripping the plastic bag full of crap she’s holding. He retorts with an accusation that she’s “the WORST alcoholic of ALL!”

For a moment, this public display of domestic trouble subsides when the friend, the woman next to me asks, “Whatchu got–meth? Heroin?”

But the old couple continues to bicker, ignoring her. They’re like children. “She’s bein’ mean!” the old man whines to the doped-up lady at my side.

“Don’t fiiiight,” she pleads between nods, like a child afraid her parents are going to divorce. “Come on. It’s OK–you can’t ALWAYS get along,” she says as snaps to. “Me and him have been fighting for hours, right hon?” she motions towards a tall, toothless man who got on the bus with her, stinking of weed.

He nods his head solemnly and corrects her. “Days.”

She turns back towards the old couple, her hands open in supplication. “Days!” she repeats.

The man is still nodding. “Weeks,” he says.

“Weeks,” she repeats softly, quietly to her hands.

The 38 Geary: Dirge Limited

Geary Boulevard is a major east-west thoroughfare in San Francisco, California, beginning downtown at Market Street…Geary Boulevard terminates near Sutro Heights Park at 48th Avenue, close to the Cliff House, above Ocean Beach at the Pacific Ocean.

*      *      *

The bus is reticent. People are worn: they sit and stare ahead. Eye makeup runs, as it will at the end of a long day. Text messages are returned, voice messages checked.

A man quietly talks on the phone in a foreign accent. He mutters barely audible “BOOLshit’s!” at the window.

An old man pulls a pan flute out of his bag and starts playing a tune that fits the mood of the passengers, low and quiet, like a moan.

The “boolshit” man raises his voice and I hear the words “soap opera” that sound like “zoop up-er-ah” (French? I wonder).

The music dies and I realize that the man has left. Another old man sits in his place, his glass eye staring in my direction.

The 38 Geary: Oh the places

Geary Boulevard (designated as Geary Street east of Van Ness Avenue) is a major east-west thoroughfare in San Francisco, California, beginning downtown at Market Street…Geary Boulevard terminates near Sutro Heights Park at 48th Avenue, close to the Cliff House, above Ocean Beach at the Pacific Ocean.

*     *     *

A woman with an over-sized backpack enters the bus from the middle door. She starts walking towards the back, then turns around and pauses as if she’s forgotten something, or has just entered a room for she-can’t-remember-what.

“Where you going,” a voice from the front  of the bus asks. It’s the man who got on with her. He wears an over-sized jacket, and I wonder what they’re both trying to conceal.

She pivots. Her eyes are glassy, far away.

“I don’t know,” she replies.

“Anywhere.”

Mother’s day 2012

On days I spend alone, I barely talk.

I say to the cashier at the grocery store: “I bet you sold a lot of flowers today.”

“Yep,” he says.

Sometimes I say something out loud just to test my voice.

I go to the park with some fruit and iced coffee and read short stories and write them.

I lay out a blanket and watch low clouds quickly move together and break apart.

I think of the Terrence Malick film, The Tree of Life.

I think of my Nana and my Grandma and wonder if my mom is sad today.

I think of all those who have lost their mothers, and those who have lost children.

I listen to a father trying to talk his child down from a tree he’d climbed, like a cat.

“Dad, I’m scared. I don’t want to die,” the boy whimpers.

“You won’t,” the dad lies.

I watch a couple I thought were father and daughter kiss.

I hear a man talking angrily to his mother on the phone. “Not now! Not now, Mom!” When he hangs up, he exclaims to the woman he’s with: “She wanted to discuss my father’s life insurance policy!”

I see an old man on a bench with a hardcover book balanced in his lap crack open a tallboy of ale.

I watch a crow fly from roof to roof with a piece of toast in its beak, before settling atop a brick chimney to eat.

I hear people call their dogs in vain when the animals start sniffing other people’s picnics.

Boats lull in the harbor, palms sway, and the haze lifts from the hills.

And when she says hello, my voice nearly cracks as I say “Hi, mom.”

I am not

I am not the type of girl who wears blouses.

A friend’s wife was over. She used to be a buyer at a nicer-than-average secondhand clothing store in L.A. and after a few drinks, I sheepishly admitted that some of my clothes, like the babydoll dress I was wearing, were from 7th and 8th grade.

I am 28.

I couldn’t read her expression: it either could have been a mix of horrified disgust or impressed amazement. I mean, it doesn’t get thriftier than that. Still, it probably wasn’t the latter.

I was warmly half a bottle of wine deep, and any remaining soberness was barely gripping onto self-censored reasoning (“We don’t tell people these things,” it promptly scolded), but it was too late. The scales already had been tipped towards that “I don’t care/it’ll be fiiine” sheer veil of confidence that appears around the time your lips begin to grow that crimson crust. I knew I should have gotten rid of these things years ago. As in yeeeeears.

The reason for my resistance wasn’t sentimental, but stemmed from the same practical gene that guides my brother’s response to receiving a new shirt as a gift from my mother (“Thanks, but I already have a shirt. I don’t need another one”): if it still fits and isn’t ripped or tattered, why get rid of it? Why buy more? I am clothed. My clothes are comfortable. What else is there to it? Even so, the female side of me that cares what other females think of me (I may hate shopping and am not into fashion, but I swear I’m a member of your sex, ladies. Can we still hang out?) wanted a second opinion.

The next thing I knew, I was shuffling into the other room, saying “Can I just ask you…” and rustling through a mountain of clothing for a few exemplary specimens to show her. I emerged with a plaid jumper-type shirt that used to be a knee-length dress (which I used to wear with brown Maryjanes–hello, late ’90s), a cardigan with metal clasps instead of buttons, a paisley skirt, and other dated and well-worn items.

“Are these really that bad? Should I keep them–or could I sell them?” I handed the pile over and my guest graciously went through it, gently casting each article of clothing into a “Probably Not” or “Maybe” pile. There was no “Yes, Definitely” pile. As we neared the end of my selections, I started to grow embarrassed. I used to embrace my aloof fashion sense. I valued picking appropriate words to express myself over choosing the perfect-colored handbag for my skin tone or the season. But suddenly, I just felt pathetic.

When she was finished, she padded her evaluation with a sweet and generous “I mean, I don’t know. You can try to sell this stuff–they might take it. It really depends…” After a pause and my garbled attempt at a self-deprecating defense, she gave me a humane look, like a parent telling a child that it’s time to put the old, smelly, arthritic family dog to sleep, and said, “Maybe it’s time to get some new clothes.”

On my way home from work a few weeks later, after I’d weeded my closet a few times and dropped just as many bags off at the Goodwill (no, the higher-end secondhand shop didn’t take a single item), I stepped into a clothing store and casually started browsing. I picked a pretty, goldenrod-colored blouse from a rack and held it up to my chest. “This looks like something someone my age would wear,” I thought. It was lightweight and modern and within my price range. I quickly shrugged off my coat, flung my bag to the floor, and pulled the blouse over my head.

A well-dressed older woman sifting through a nearby rack stopped and said “Well, that’s one way to do it!” I spun around and quickly realized that I have no shopping etiquette.

“Yeah, I don’t have much patience for the whole dressing room thing,” I said. She stepped out from behind the rack to examine the blouse.

“Oh! Pretty color,” she gushed.

“Yeah?” I was unsure. It sounded like the kind of thing one woman disingenuously says to another to be polite. I looked down at my outfit and stepped in front of the mirror. I did a half-turn, checking the sides and the back. It seemed to fit at least. ”My sister would probably tell me I can’t wear this color because of my hair color or my complexion, that it will make me look sick or something. She knows all those fashion rules.”

The woman shrugged. “I think it looks nice on you. But it’s up to you. Your opinion is the only one that really matters,” she said and then went back to shopping.

I gave myself one last glance as a properly dressed 28-year-old, pulled the blouse over my head, arranged it on the hanger, and wordlessly left the store.

Phillip and the raincloud

When my brother was 10, he drew a cartoon series called Phillip and the Raincloud. Each drawing contained a wah-wah scene with the detail of a page out of The Busy World of Richard Scarry. It was about a guy named Phillip who couldn’t ditch a raincloud that was following him around. The thing is, it wasn’t just a pregnant gray cloud threatening to rain and blocking Phillip’s sun. It was full-on constantly pouring. And as dour as this sounds, it was somehow hilarious.

It all starts when the raincloud follows Phillip to work one day. Inside the office, it persists. One drawing shows Phillip trying to carry on as usual, ignoring it. He’s sitting at his desk, clearly annoyed as he tries to sharpen his pencils amidst the pouring rain. A folded umbrella and a baseball cap rest on a coat rack in the background.

One drawing shows a baffled and sad-faced Phillip (and the incessant raincloud) in the foreground, his co-workers holding coffee mugs and wearing disgusted faces in the background. You really feel for the guy. He can’t get a moment to himself with this raincloud business and now people are avoiding him. He tries disguises, wearing hats, fake moustaches, and a wig. He takes up smoking. He tries fighting it. He tries everything. But nothing works.

The thing that bugs him the most is that he doesn’t know why it’s following him. It just sort of appeared out of nowhere one day and now he can’t get rid of it. And you get the frustrating sense of “Come on, man!” in every drawing. “Give me a break.” I don’t know if Phillip ever resolved the issue with the rain cloud, but one would have to assume that it relented eventually.

I mean, it can’t rain forever.