Bigger Standing Alone

Friday made me turn 30.
It snuck up on me while I slept.
Don’t quite know how I feel about the new decade. What I thought I’d be doing when I turned 30 is vastly different than the expectations of even 3 years ago. I thought I’d be married or at least thinking about it. 30 sounds bigger when it stands alone.
And so it was that I rented a 12-passenger van and filled it to the brim with some of the women who have loved me so well over this rocky and rough past year. Noticeably absent were Leslie (family vacation) and Katherine M, who is about to have a baby at any moment and was thus excused. I was grateful to have the group that we had: Tammy, Katherine B, Amy, Betsy, Emily, Robin & Tara. I asked my friend Wes to be our driver and he jumped for joy. What a great sport he was to handle a van that was not only full of women, but full of women who were celebrating a birthday with wine & cheese and loud, sing-a-long tunes.
Every woman came with their game faces on and the night did not disappoint. We were loud, we were laughing, we were talking over each other and we were supportive. Women who may not have known each other prior become friends. It was a community experience, which is my favorite part of any holiday. I don’t really like things to be about me (at least holidays) and it felt like it was a memorable experience for all involved.

The day had been threatening rain but the storms skirted around us, creating a halo. Above us was only stars. I felt bigger.

Six Thin Strings

I got my first guitar for my 15th birthday.

My dad had just moved out of the farmhouse where he lived after he and my mother had split and was looking for houses within our school district. I’d started playing two years earlier and had learned on my mother’s classical guitar and my father’s acoustic Guild that he owned due to an unpaid debt. Both my parents play (though not much and not particularly well) and I had been begging for a guitar of my own since I first started. Being one of five children meant this just wasn’t happening, so imagine my surprise when my reward for sticking with a hobby for two years was to get one of my own.

It was a Yamaha FG-401 and dad splurged on getting me a hard shell case.

It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was going to get me my first Grammy and the folk-rock chick status that would have the whole world at my feet. Or it would allow the guy I had a crush on who played guitar to see my skills and fall madly in love with me, instead of what actually happened, which is me teaching my good friend to play guitar and she using that feature to have him fall madly in love with her and then get married and have two lovely and amazing children and continue to be two amazing people. Whatevs, totally part of the guitar plan.

So guitar became my friend. More than my friend, it was the way for me to express myself. I wrote well over one hundred songs. I wrote songs about EVERYTHING. And everyone. I’d say 98 of them are terrible. Guitar was the way I got comfortable in front of people, pulled me out of the shy bubble I’d lived in up to then. When Natalie found out I played, I was pushed to the front of middle school YL club (or Wyld Life) every other week to lead songs. The very first night of college I ended up playing guitar in the hallway while my new floormates sang along to ‘Closer to Fine.’ It was like a scene straight out of ‘Felicity’ but on happy pills and with less Scott Foley sad puppy eyes.

Over the years I’ve collected a few more guitars. I have three of them in my house now, with another in storage. That old FG-401 is still with me, though I haven’t played it in years. What guitar means to me has morphed. It isn’t the primary way I express myself anymore; somewhere along the way I discovered my own voice. I still play and still very much enjoy the process. I even write the occasional song (still terrible). But I never knew when I got that first guitar 15 years ago how much of an impact it would have on getting me out of me.


(I've been playing this song quite a bit lately. I forgot how good it is)

Long Have I Known A Glory In It All

Camping brings gusto to life.
I feel most at home in the woods, setting a camp, tending fire. To do lists fade to become the essentials, of food, of water, of warmth and light, of shelter and company. Abstraction abates. This weekend was time away, a few days spent an hour and 2200’ vertically from home.
I organized the trip, not because it was near my birthday (though it was), but because it seemed a good weekend to get away. I’m not big on self-promoting birthdays. I’m ok either having them be small or having others think of something. I believe it is a time for others to love on you should they want to, not a time for you to demand attention from them.
And so it was we found ourselves at the top of Max Patch on Saturday evening. The sky was mottled with hiccups of summer storms that divinely passed us by. Max Patch is a place where it seems as if the divine breathes; where earth and sky are more intimate with each other. The grass was tall and damp and we spent the afternoon barefoot. I feel that being barefoot like that allows some magic from the earth to seep up through me, some ancient affirmation to creep in and whisper.
Ian and Tammy had graciously brought an obscenely large bottle of champagne for a mountain top toast. I love giving toasts; I love public speaking so this should be no surprise. But I was bested.
My dear friends, who love me for reasons I don’t quite understand, gave toasts to me.
They told me they loved me, they affirmed me in ways I so needed but couldn’t express. I am still humbled and shocked by it. I know I am a liked person, but I often forget to realize that those I love also love me. It was the best gift I could have been given, that elusive present of light, life, love, community, sky, joy, grace, breath, food, touch and future, found in the damp grass atop a mountain.
Thank you thank you thank you, dear friends.

[My birthday was amazing—thank you for all the calls and notes and emails!!! And thanks to my dear roommate Katie for the volume 1 soundtrack to Glee and to my dad for my new fly rod and reel. Something very funny about re-spooling a fly reel while listening to the soundtrack to a sugary show about a high school glee club. Then I went out to Thirsty Monk for drinks with Katherine, Robin, Caroline, Tara and Margarita. What gracious and audacious and impressive ladies.]

Without Time to Rise

I had to go back through some old posts to make sure I'm not re-writing one. Blog is now 6 years old, so happy birthday blog. You should be in first grade now. Here's a hat. And a pink plastic pony. And a new composition book.

The other night one of my oldest friends called and after lamenting the Redskins loss we got to talking about more personal things. Once again I'm reminded how much we need witnesses to our lives, eyes to see the truths and beauties where we don't see them. My friend points them out as if they are these glaringly obvious notions, which of course to me they aren't. Maybe it's just that I don't see them and need to be reminded that others do. It changes my days.

I'm a tinkerer. I love projects. I love woodworking, renovations, baking, writing, projects. I tinker partly because it has such a clear conclusion: finish. Make the creation become created. Make the parts into something whole. Feel like I did something. I made bread the other day and while I was working the dough all its metaphors came out. Sometimes I need to knead. To work out those wrinkles, to sum up the parts better, to allow whatever is growing the time to grow, to become warm from the yeast and expand as it should. I don't want my creations to look like communion bread, baked without time to rise, baked with fleeing in mind. I want a living loaf.

Birfday

I just had the greatest birthday party ever.

It was perfect; it was hilarious, the weather basically held out, the food was terrific, the people were amazing, it was just rapturous. We played lawn games (Cups may be a new favorite lawn game, thanks for introducing that Andy), we drank beer, we ate a lot of food (except when it's my party I feel like I never actually eat because I'm distracted by the people, which is a problem when combined with drinking) we laughed, people got to meet each other—all I could have wanted and more. I did get this disgustingly giant bruise on my right forearm that makes it look like I could be the start of some Lifetime Movie but let it be known it is from a frisbee. I'm kind of self-conscious to go out in public with it.
A big thanks to all of you who stopped by; it means so much to me to have the people I care about all in the same area. Thank you Rita for the awesome French Press, which my hungover butt definitely used this morning. I am going to be enjoying that for a long time. Thanks friends for all the cards, treats, jokes, everything. Last year's birthday was severely lacking in company, hope and joy. This year more than made up for it. I am blessed to have you in my life.

Go Sho'ty

Today is my blog's 5th birthday. Happy birthday, blog. I'm gonna buy you a pony.
And by pony I mean those tiny bottles of Rolling Rock beer.
Way to exist before blogs were cool!
Way to document the past five years exclusively through my eyes!
Way to survive something like 5 name changes!
Way to only post 34 times in all of 2003! That was a good year to skip!
Remember that fun weekend we had, blog? Of course you do, you have documented it for me!
You sure do deserve that pony, blog.
Or at the very least, a silly hat.