A letter

Dear January 1, 2011,

The 364 days following you have a lot to live up to. I have spent nearly 24 other years full of joy and beauty and grace and mercy and love and wonder and blessings. I have spent countless hours nestled in the sand and good books and the love of my family, feeling God and the world wash over me and wrap around me and I know what happiness is about. Just this last year, a hundred little blossoms in my life bloomed, for better and for worse. But mostly for better.

The prospects of things to come are enough to make my heart and mind do back flips every time I think of them. I have little inklings of where I will go and what I will do, and a hundred million emotions to go along with the inklings, mostly fear and excitement and a couple different kinds of bittersweet. But they are merely inklings and the real prospect of 2011 for me is all the wild, unruly, boundless uncertainty of it. The 364 days to come, dear January 1, hold a lot of responsibility in that boundless uncertainty.

I wrote once that 2010 would be either the best or the worst year of my life. It was neither. That was a frivolous, theatrical remark to make to begin with, and entirely impossible to quantify (though quantification is not nearly as relevant as it is sometimes supposed to be). But 2010 was beautiful and surprising and the grave fears with which I started it out were alleviated. 2010 was remarkable and unremarkable, as the best years are, and, what’s more important I love it with the fullness of my heart. This, too, places high expectations on the 364 days to come (large shoes to fill and all that).

Besides all this, the world is tens of billions of years old, and the pressure a single year must have to make a difference in the whole huge vastness of it must be rather daunting. Nor am I the only living thing placing a hundred million conscious and subconscious bets on the coming year (even excluding all the new year’s resolutions pertaining to exercise or weight loss). I don’t envy you the universe’s demands, 2011, although I suspect that they are linked exponentially to the greatness of your potential.

And I have no particular words of encouragement. Certainly the year is more adept at its own success than I. So long as it is reckless and upright and paradoxical, it must succeed magnificently and as for the amount of work we will all put it through, well that is the nature of its existence and I extend no pity. Like people, 2011 is entitled to nothing. Life is for living.

But this letter is to you, January 1, 2011. (Because perhaps the writing of a letter to an entire year is too intimidating for me.) But also because – if I may be so presumptuous – there are things I wish for you. Small day. Small moment. Things that are more within my realm than the hugeness of this whole year which will, ultimately, do-with-me-as-it-will.

Here are the things I want to tell you:

Wiggle your toes, January 1. Wiggle your toes in the Milky Way or in the Nile, or in some small, obscure, marshmallow cloud or creek somewhere and indulge in just being you.

The grave responsibilities of the world are not yours, though you play a hand in them. Play your hand with grace, but don’t let it weigh down your heart. The smallest of things – even one 365th of a whole – can make an enormous difference. Make that difference, but have faith that others will make a difference too.

You can be a sleepy day, January 1. With the whole year ahead. Be sleepy and gentle and soft, but also kind and generous and wonderful for you are setting this year’s stage, you are planting the year’s wildflowers, you are making the first impression.

Though you are small and fleeting, flourish, dear day. Be gusty and charming and confident. Don’t shy from challenge or sadness or change or other things-which-make-us-grow. Learn everything you can and if you must err (and you must), err toward sensibility before apathy and credulity before mistrust.

In truth, these are things I wish for you and me, both, January 1. And all “the good ones,” whatever corners and grand moments they occupy this year. It is nothing like the wisdom of the mountains or the ubiquity of the wind. It has neither the wit nor the timelessness of the writer-I-hope-to-be. It is, January 1, merely-me to merely-you.

With Love,

R.E.A.

P.S. Please write back.

It’s Christmastime and I don’t want to be like those people in the parking lots at the mall

I am an angry driver. I know this because, for example, the other day I spent ten minutes parked in a parking lot writing down how I feel about turn signals. This is what I wrote:

“Turn signals are not optional. They’re a part of driving – or at least driving-as-we-know-it. If you’re the type of person who drives, you don’t just randomly get to be the type of person who doesn't use your turn signal. There’s a reason we don’t give six year olds driver’s licenses, besides the fact that their feet won’t reach the peddles. A car is a piece of heavy machinery that, without competent supervision, can drive over a cliff at 100 miles per hour, or ricochet around corners without warning the life-loving humans in the general vicinity.

“Putting on your turn signal should practically be a reflex. Like turning the lock before running out the front door, or shutting the toilet lid before you flush. Not doing it should feel more conspicuous than doing it.

“I understand that there are situations where a turn signal is not necessary – driving up the 15, for example, between Nowhere and Barstow, when you haven’t seen another car in 157 miles. But seeing as how the last time I drove around Long Beach without seeing another car for 157 miles was...never, I don’t understand why turn signals are so scarce around here.”

I also know I am an angry driver because I am only half kidding when I say I’m going to attach a light-up neon sign to my bumper that blinks the word MERGE in enormous letters every time someone fails to merge properly, a fairly simple task that a surprisingly large percentage of the driving population apparently never learned.

Every time I am stuck in traffic I am not only annoyed, I begin contemplating the dangers of overpopulation and considering the possibilities of launching the worst of the drivers around me into orbit around some other planet, not only relieving the traffic, but also relieving the human race on earth of a portion of its stupid gene. The only way to refocus my brain to anything less homicidal is to roll down my windows and start singing “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” at the top of my lungs. I’m serious. I do all of these things.

I know my spontaneous anger at random drivers is (at least sometimes) irrational. I know I make driving mistakes all the time and have no way to communicate my apology to the person in the other car who is probably contemplating the possibility of launching me into orbit, or something much worse. Somehow I can’t seem to give anyone else who’s driving the benefit of the doubt. If you see my glaring, glazed-over face and my angry white knuckles death-gripped to the wheel, I am probably in the process of summoning the wrath of karma from wherever it resides in my dark mind down upon your head and - assuming karma even remotely listens to me, which I’m pretty sure it does not - you had better hope that you have done something in your life akin to saving starving orphans, as this is your only chance of redemption.

Anyway, the point is that I’m trying to be a less angry driver. I like driving. I like listening to my music loud and rolling my windows down and blasting the heater on my feet so my toes don’t freeze off (which, between the months of September and May they are consistently at the risk of doing). I like being lost and passing through places I never knew or cared existed and suddenly finding that I do care. It’s not the driving that I dislike. It’s the other drivers. And if I get right down to the root of the problem, it’s not even the other drivers themselves, the mothers-fathers-sisters-brothers-aunts-uncles-friends who are driving down the road. It’s the shameless, spineless, vast rudeness of the other drivers that really gets me.

I’ll be honest, when I first realized I had a problem, I considered alternatives to the obvious learn-how-to-manage-your-rage solution. For several months, I decided to try using my horn as a signal of my aggravation, not only in times of danger, but also when the driver in the other car was obviously a moron and needed to be taken down a peg or two. I realized this was a bad solution for two reasons. One, I never think to use the horn until it is too late, even in situations that are actually dangerous and where the horn could really come in handy. Somehow, I am unable to locate the great, giant anywhere-in-the-middle of my wheel and pound down on it quickly enough to make any sense. Come to think of it, perhaps I should get my reflexes or hand/eye coordination checked out by a doctor, as I can see how this could be detrimental in other aspects of my life. Second, the situations in which I contemplated using the horn began to get out of control. There are many, many let’s-walk-out-into-oncoming-traffic-with-our-two-strollers-and-fifteen-kid pedestrians I really wouldn't mind scaring the dumb out of instead of politely slowing down to a halt to accommodate their stupidity. The same is true for some bikers, skateboarders, and police cars...you can see how the idea was becoming more and more dangerous.

The thing is, I’m never actually rude to other people in traffic. I don’t believe in that stuff. I’m just blood-boiling mad by the time I finally get home and I’m really not thinking very kind thoughts about my neighbors either. In fact, I’m generally thinking that a planet with no such thing as neighbors – or any kind of people – might not be a bad idea. I've lived in suburbs my entire life and somehow I am still not even remotely used to how darn many people are here. We’re seriously like ants, teeming all over the earth, except we’re bigger, more colorful, and less organized. It’s not like road rage is my first hint that I should be living somewhere in the middle of 60,000 acres in Wyoming where my only company is the people I don’t wave off my property with a shotgun. And I don’t count PCH in any of my complaining here because I’m pretty sure I could drive 60,000 miles on PCH – people or no people – and not feel upset about it. It’s just that driving bumper to bumper down the street with obscene quantities of retail stores on either side of the road is pretty much the height of depressing. It’s so easy to begin contemplating all the numberless gorgeous places in the world that you've ever been, or never been and only dreamt about. And that way lies insanity.

But here’s the thing, it’s Christmastime, and, as you may have heard me mention before, I really don’t want to be like all those people in the parking lots at the mall. Besides which, I haven’t yet received a memo from God or the universe letting me know when the opportunity to squat on 60,000 acres in the middle of Wyoming may come my way, which means that, for the time being at least, suburbs are my fate. Seal Beach Boulevard, Tustin Avenue, Freeways 405, and 22, all the wonderful people of Southern California, these are my routes and driving buddies on the current road trip of my life. And since I have neither the power – nor probably, when all is said and done, the heart – to really send all these people into orbit around another planet, there are really only a couple things left for me to do if I have any chance of keeping my sanity through 2011: toss the map in the back seat, roll down the windows, turn up the heat, and hit play...”Santa Monica Freeeeewaaaaaaaaaaay, sometimes makes a country girl, bluuuuuuuue...”

-R.E.A.

Home is the most important place in the world

One time when I was driving past IKEA, they had a giant sign stretched across their even more giant, blue building that said: “HOME IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE IN THE WORLD.” Now, I have to confess that IKEA, as a store, pretty much gives me the creeps. Not because I have any silly hang-ups about mass produced furniture. And, in fact, their random sections of rugs and wine glasses and things really delight me if I have to be at the store to begin with. It’s just, have you ever noticed how it’s set up like this huge, life-sized maze? Like those terrible mirror mazes at fairs except that instead of running into yourself you run into furniture. And I don’t care how cheap or how delicious it is, there is something off about a giant furniture store serving breakfast in its own personal furniture cafe. It’s like it’s trying to be its own self-sustaining microcosm. Weird.

But the sign struck a chord with me. It’s trite, I know, and, in this case, an advertising gimmick. But yet it is so, so true. Harry Emerson Fosdick (who, incidentally, I think I would have disagreed with on a lot of things, but who I wholeheartedly agree with here) said, “He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.” He was talking about home in the bigger sense. A home nation. But it’s the same gist. Most of us can name hundreds of places we would love to jet off to. Tropical islands and quaint mountain towns, exotic forests and five-star resorts. Many of us could even name several “places-we’d-live-if-we-didn’t-live-here.” But there is something about “home” that is distinct from its setting, its place on the map or in a country. There is something about “home” that is so much more important than how beautiful, or un-beautiful it is. Home has a tighter hold on our heartstrings even than that delightful place we most want to visit. At least it does for me.

Last week, my family moved out of what has been our home for the past 12 years. It’s funny how different a house looks when it doesn’t have you in it anymore. The family room, without our couches and tables looked bigger than normal. But my sweet, sunny bedroom with the marzipan walls seemed smaller somehow. The last 22 years of my life, indeed all my remembered life, save for a few select memories, I lived in that neighborhood, that town, that community. Standing in our empty family room, feeling the home all around me, I realized how well it knows me. There, under that roof, I figured out how to be who I am now. And I learned how to be happy on my own account. That house has seen pretty much every emotion I have ever had. And I love it.

Our new house is a dream come true for many reasons. And it’sbecoming home. But the transition from “just another house” to “the most important place in the world” is a gradual one. Though it sounds ridiculous, I miss the ocean. (Now 20 instead of 5 miles away). The little town we left along the shoreline is pretty much my idea of perfection here and I miss its Main Street and its familiarness and its sea smell and its proximity to other things that I know and love. I even miss the silly things like my bank and post office and Trader Joe’s and library. Here there are also banks and post offices and Trader Joe’s’ and libraries, but they are not part of my home yet. Maybe most of all I miss the jostling, gentle, sunshiney, fresh-aired, certain feeling of being there and belonging there.

Have you ever watched the final episode of “Friends?” Because everything in life has a “Friends” moment, I will tell you about it here (For those of you who are six years behind the times and still care, this is a spoiler alert. Better to be safe than the jerk who spoils the ending). Monica and Chandler (yes, I will talk about the characters as if you already know who they are because, if you don’t, you should go learn as soon as possible) are leaving the city (New York) to live in a suburb just outside to raise their newly adopted babies. It’s 30 minutes away (I did some smart mapquesting to get that info, by the way) and all the other friends are staying in the city. It’s not like they’ll never see each other again, or even like they won’t see each other often. It’s not like anybody died. In fact, everybody has happy things going on in their lives at the series finale. And yet, at the end of that episode, when they all lay their keys on the kitchen counter and walk out of the apartment for the last time, my heart breaks every time. Because that fake little plywood apartment with the funky colored walls and a hole in one side for the studio audience is home - the most important place in the world - and they are leaving it, and so must we.

The older I get, the more torn apart I feel. The people I love are strewn about the world. The places I love are hundreds of miles apart. Sometimes the things I want and the things I need are in two different places. Indeed, sometimes two things I want or two things I need are in different places from each other. Happiness is here and there and all over, and yet sadness too is perennial.

I love this new place. I really do; I’m not just saying it to try to convince you, or myself. I love that we watched it grow into what it is right now, with us inside. I love it for how hard my parents have worked on it and because it has a gorgeous big backyard where Mom can garden. I love that it means good things for my family. I love that some of my favorite people – and animals – in the world are here with me. I love the hardwood floors. I love that right now I am sitting here listening to the rain come down outside and the record player playing Christmas music. And those are the things that homes are made of. So I’m not worried. My problem, it seems, isn’t that I feel homeless, it’s that I have too many homes. And yet, with my heart here, full to bursting in all its confusion and joy, I wonder if that’s really a problem at all.

-R.E.A.

In recognition of National Library Month

In recognition of National Library Month (or something like that) the UC Davis School of Medicine library served free coffee, tea, and - depending on how long after they set them out on the table you got there - cookies. Now, really quickly before I go on, I’d like to clear my conscience, and my record. I did indulge in both tea and cookie, even though I have never contributed anything to the UC Davis School of Medicine, financially or otherwise, and in fact even used up some of their toilet paper and soap in the bathroom. It is my – and my conscience’s – hope that Jason’s tuition over the next four years will pay for my celebration of National Library Month. If your conscience tells you otherwise, please don’t let me know, because I have a guilty suspicion that I wouldn’t care. That tea and cookie were delicious!

But matters of the conscience are really not what this entry is about. This entry is concerned with the much more philosophical topic of cookies. And stickers, a little bit. But mostly cookies. Cookies and stickers have something very relevant in common. It’s relevant because it has to do with joy. And with the simplest kind of pleasures. Cookies and stickers are alike because nobody, young or old, can resist them. I watched people as they walked past the coffee-tea-cookie table set up in the library. Coffee and tea were, for most, uninteresting. Coffee and tea are easy to come by. Most of them had had at least eight cups already that morning and many were carrying with them thermoses full of cups nine and ten. But then their eyes would catch the plate of cookies and, without fail, their step slowed. A hesitance came into their conviction that they needed to get over to that table and start studying right away. Cookies had been introduced into their feeble day. Seven out of ten made the unstudious decision to grab one and carried it with ceremony and relish to their study table. The other three, who made the more somber decision to pass by, still could not remove their eyes from the plate of cookies until doing so would require turning around and walking away backwards. One, after passing the table twice, came back and took one after all. This room full of diligent aspiring doctors and nurses, people who got 35s on their MCATs and, in a couple years, will be saving lives, could not resist a measley plate of cookies. (Ah, how beautiful it is to be human!)

Now students are notoriously starving. I’ve known people to sit through hours of boring presentations about things they do not now and never will care the least bit about just for a free sandwich of questionable cheese and day-old bread. Who am I kidding? I’ve done it myself. More than once. Free food is like extra credit in the game of life. And students know all about extra credit, in and out of the classroom. So maybe you think a bunch of graduate students rejoicing over a plate of cookies is no great indicator of the cookies’ power. But let me tell you about the doctor who came in.

Middle aged, balding Indian man with serious glasses. Tall, wearing nice slacks and a tie and a white coat. The long kind, that goes below your knees and shows you’re the real deal. A physician. A seasoned one, by the looks of him. He came in and went straight to one of the low shelves in front. He knew where he was going and what he was looking for. He pulled out a ginormous encyclopedia-like book and opened it up, thumbing confidently through the pages. He pulled out another, then another. He spread out four or five doctor-reference books across the low shelves and pored over them, running his fingers up and down the pages. This guy had something on his mind.

I don’t know when he noticed the cookies. I was busy writing, or contemplating life, or brushing cookie crumbs off my shirt. All I know is that I looked up to see the doctor striding across the floor to the cookie table (no offense to the coffee and tea, but let’s face it, they were merely supplements; the table belonged to the cookies). The encyclopedias were shut, lined up neatly atop the shelf. The doctor was at the plate of cookies. He started with coffee, but his eyes were on the cookies the whole time, contemplating. Everyone knows how they like their coffee without thinking about it. You ask a man how he takes his coffee and he’ll tell you like reflex. Black. Cream. Sugar. But cookies are a little more complicated. Even if you’re certain of your preference. Even if you’re a chocolate chip or an oatmeal raisin or a sugar person, there’s always that ooey gooey chocolate dusted one whose name you’re not sure of but who looks scrumptious in all its mysterious glory. His hands were pouring coffee, but his eyes were on the cookies. (He’s a doctor, he has skills).

Actually, to be really honest, his eyes were on the cookies except for the few brief moments they were on the creamer. (He was a cream, no sugar man). It was that questionable, non-dairy dry stuff whose origins nobody really understands. He didn’t believe it was creamer. He asked another doctor standing nearby – who, incidentally, was munching on a cookie – about it. She assured him it was cream. He was convinced it must be some sort of off-whitish powdery sugar. I don’t think he ended up using it. You can call a shoe an apple until you’re blue in the face, but at the end of the day, it still tastes like shoe. Personally, I think it’s when you question the validity of the creamer, instead of just pouring in whatever you see and scarfing it down, that you know you’ve transitioned from being a student to being a physician. (People tell me there are other ways of telling, but I think that must be the clearest).

But even the physician had nothing on the wiles of the cookie. After the creamer episode, he picked one. With relish and ceremony, just like the students. He sat down to enjoy the National Library Month celebration, but the information he needed from the encyclopedias must have been too pressing. After a few sips, he tossed the coffee and got up. Still munching his cookie, he strolled back to the bookshelves and diligently went back to work, heedless of the cookie crumbs that settling into the book bindings. (He’s a doctor, he doesn’t have to care about cookie crumbs). It doesn’t matter who you are. Young or old, thick or thin, seasoned professional or starving student, there is something wonderful about cookies.

Have you ever seen children at Trader Joe’s or Wal-Mart or somewhere when the cashier or greeter gives them a sticker? One puny, monochromatic, half-a-cent sticker. Have you watched their faces light up? Next time, don’t. Instead, look at the child’s parent. Though parents are just a bystander in the delightful giving and receiving of stickers process, their faces reveal their own personal delight. And parents know that sometimes, if it’s a good day, the sticker becomes theirs after all, clinging to a purse or cell phone after the child has melted away into peaceful slumber. It’s not just a reaction to seeing their child happy. I’m convinced that it’s the sticker itself that brings a twinkle to a parent’s eye. Give the child a lollypop and the parent will likely become concerned about grown-up things, like stickiness and cavities more than with their child’s delight. But give the child a sticker and the parent can’t help but smile. With age and wisdom, a parent may forget the cherry-watermelon-raspberry jubilee of flavor in a sucker, but somehow, as with cookies, we never forget the simple wonderfulness of stickers.

No child ever got spoiled by having too many stickers. They’re not destructive like markers can be. The worst case is nothing a little goo-gone can’t fix. Stick ‘em on virtually any surface and after a good day’s work, they’ll peel right off again. Price tags will not. Price tags are not real stickers. Smiley faces are real stickers. And Lisa Frank kittens, and hologram dolphins and frogs, and sometimes letters that spell out your name in different colors. R-o-y-a. Or y-o-R-a if you get too excited and accidentally stick them on wrong.

But I don’t think parents like stickers just because they’re less destructive to the furniture and a child’s mental well-being. I think parents like stickers because they are irresistible. Have you ever noticed how excited people get over the “I Voted” stickers at the polling place? The love of stickers is totally non-partisan. You might vote “yes” and I might vote “no,” but we share solidarity in that small inexplicable burst of joy we get over that little waving flag sticker. The polls are the one place where stickers are for grown-ups, not for kids. I know people who vote just to get the sticker. I don’t condone it, but I don’t blame them either. I secretly suspect people who vote absentee of some small thread of lunacy simply because they knowingly forfeit their flag sticker rights.

Cookies and stickers. There's something magical there. I don't get it, but I feel it. Simple pleasures. Small joys. It's nothing to write home about, but it works on almost everyone. Maybe not profound, just some dough or gluey bits of paper. But it makes me think about what the world's made up of. Something from nothing. Some creativity making for a whole medley of small joys.

-R.E.A.

Oh, let me tell you about the ocean today

Oh, let me tell you about the ocean today. The way it leapt choppy and turquoise in the strong wind. Valiant. Each wave an unsung hero. The way it mingled without mingling with the periwinkle sky hung with charming clouds oblivious. The way the wind unyielding blew the stock still sand into low dust clouds and the palms’ fronds crashed raucously like youth unconquerable, and poppies bobbed and bowed as though it were only a friendly breeze. The way the ocean spray became the air and the whole beautiful golden day was washed in unruly joy.

-R.E.A.