Congrats, Grads and Once-Grads

June again. Here are my thoughts.

What follows is a list disguised as an essay. Or maybe it’s better to consider this poetry. But if you’re one of those folks who finds poetry dumb or scary, then for you we’ll call this prose. You could also think of this as a collection. Or show-and-tell. I use a bunch of pictures.

I’ve been working on more formal essays with actual, defined opinions, but I’m putting them temporarily on hold. Dartmouth graduation is this weekend, and I wanted to write something relevant and reflective and fun (for me). Also, my big-britches essays require a lot more editorial effort because I try really really really hard to not sound stupid.

Mono, strep throat, one bad haircut, two bad haircuts, ricotta cheese. But from the beginning:

Cap and gown, mosquito bites. Beer-tasting, banh mis, brothers, mothers, boxes, brunches. Rain, sleeplessness, speech about tennis and something. Barbecuing and trying not to cry.

On the plane, the window seat next to my parents. I am young again, falling asleep against my mother’s arm, asking for a snack. Beginnings, ends, arrivings. The merge onto I-580 still frightens me. My parents’ parched front lawn still hurts my toes and feels like home. Other time capsules: my unused prom dress haunting the closet, the view of the bay that peaks out between the hills and startles with its glittery diorama.

Brisbane. Aunt Joy with her mattress on the floor, her mini trampoline. Her round cheeks, her soft white hair. She is giggly and a little bit difficult. She glows in the sun. She shows us her bed in the community garden. She is 81, and talking to her is always a lecture on the right way to live. I have some of her in me.

Her tour of her childhood neighborhood feels urgent, like the stories itch to imprint before they fade. She stops at the parking lot for the Catholic Mission. She tells us something important about that patch of concrete.

What did she say? I can’t remember. I only know her tone: serious, warm. The words went with her. A month later she died. A lady I loved.

Here is a farmstand. A disruption in a pattern of hypnotic, orderly fruit trees.

Warm air in California’s flat middle section. Daisy buys a boysenberry pie, I buy cherry. Fat flies. The way that driving through the California Central Valley makes time pass in one long, straight geometry.

And the Sierra. I feel nostalgic in the hot, dry dirt. Monique, who drives fast and speaks in story. Who lives so vividly that you feel it as a gravity. There is nothing to not talk about. We trade long voice memos. I listen like my favorite podcast. I eat it up like shakshuka.

In the middle of the night, like little girls, Daisy and I promise to grow old and hilarious with each other. The spiders we killed in that tent, the oatmeal with almonds and honey. When we leave home we become each other’s mothers.

Snakes, inch worms, Fourth of July.

A few days later, Won, drowning in the Connecticut. The river that now feels like a liar. The driftwood caught in the dock, suddenly grotesque.

So I swim at the pond, alone. Underwater, I catch glimpses of the loon. I feel like I am seeing something I’m not meant to see. I wonder how much is too much to fear.

And on. Long days, warm nights. Water dripping from the ceiling, fruit flies. Nice to get to know you, Elliot. Nice to see you again, heat. Humidity. Sunburn. Sweat. Homemade pesto. Daisy, massaging the cheese into the oil into the garlic into the basil. This is how you do it, she says, and I believe her. I want her to never stop talking.

School buses lying in wait. Yellow rectangle, blue sky. Losing an earring, my favorite earring. Mourning only for a moment because I am grown. Warren Fair, rain on the bouncy house, barefoot children in drenched, too-big T-shirts. The smell of asphalt after a storm.

Kissing a boy by the rope swing. Our feet in the water. Fish nibbling at our toes.

Keelia, walking barefoot to Mink Brook. Sleeping outside on the patio chair: better to hear the ocean, better to feel the night on her face. She looks good in a jean jumpsuit. You know she’ll never let herself live an inch less. We chat, urgent and easy. We will die talking. We wear each other’s dresses to go dancing.

Then: Green River, Utah. Brown water, tightened straps, temporary tattoos, patterned cliffs. Drifting. I fall asleep to the feeling of being towed by the current. Bats silhouette the sky. My lips swell and peel. Sand and nowhere. Zanna is gorgeous in a straw hat. She lives easy and I take notes. I talk too much and I can tell. I fly Southwest, and one of my checked bags is two Crocs, tied together with the luggage tag.

Sleep.

New Hampshire is still green and I’m thankful for it. Small talk with Ava, an acquaintance. I overshare, as usual.

Twenty-two. Keelia gives me a heart-shaped candle and Ulla and I split one very orange cocktail, one very purple one. Fog, bell peppers, farmers market, yarn. Soups, beans, letting thicken, letting simmer, letting sit and stew. Politics. Podcast. I cry at work, just once.

And Quinn; a friendship forged by argument. Brown dog everywhere, a blur. Magic eight ball tattoo. Cognitive Science major; another head-cracker.

And at work, transcription. I spend hours each day with Lady Jane Franklin’s handwriting. She’s 150 years dead but I am intimate with the way she draws her “a”s, the way she crosses her “t”s. I live in other people’s files. I sort through other people’s family photos. I think about whether I believe in the existence of a soul. I fucking hate my new hair. I stare at the mirror for a long time. I track my flaws as though this will tame them. It doesn’t, duh. I eat my vegetables. I watch the spider in the corner of the shower.

Cats, Christmas. Leeza is even more beautiful. Anatomy of her childhood bedroom. We cut paper snowflakes out of used flashcards. She reads from her elementary school journal. She translates my polite greeting into Russian for her grandmother. We eat fancy chocolates. We go to bed late.

San Francisco, corduroys, someone offers to pay my BART fare, I decline. Ava and I eat pork buns and walk forever. We talk: brothers, best friends. This city that is usually gray is blue for her. Don’t get used to it, I tell her. You must have spooked the clouds. I want to kiss her when we are sitting on the rocks, by the water, but I don’t. Instead I save myself from a parking ticket.

New Years thinking of Ava. Champagne, view of the bay, the fireworks a fizz over downtown San Francisco.

Saul’s for breakfast. I order what the people I love tell me to order. It’s delicious and we talk about high school. We tell each other what we couldn’t say back then. We see our old history teacher dining with her wife. This pint-sized city, this hilly homecoking. Ms. L has a new baby, back home with the sitter. Time is passing, roads are cracking. We form a book club.

Flight home, driveway. Garlic. Slipping on ice. Fingers numb, feathers escaping winter jackets. New Hampshire again, with Ava, walking to work. Windows defrosting, back injury, bread. The days are short and I am happy. I watch the pot boil. I wait for the snow to melt. I move slow. I overthink. I track the green as it reveals itself. Each morning Ava brings the coffee to the bed and we tumble toward the day, we stumble in the dark.

Then, in less than the time it takes to tie my shoes: spring’s curtain call. I retrieve the fan from the closet. At night it hums and turns its head, cooling our exposed ankles. The birds scream at the morning’s coming. The crickets pull the night shut.

At 3pm I am crashing, 6pm and I am roasting butternut squash, 9pm I am rewatching the Big Bang Theory. Feeding milk to my kefir grains, which are alive, and because of that fact I treat them with a tenderness I don’t offer my yogurt. Sun. Rain. Umbrella again. Beets staining my fingers pink, blueberries shocking them purple. Sandwiches on focaccia. Ava’s farmer’s tan. Provincetown. Sea shell, drag queen.

Today, right now. Over here, at this counter, actually. Here’s your kid-sized, soft-serve maple creamie in a cake cone, sir. Tip well, ‘cuz in two weeks I’m out a job.

This moment of June, overcast skies. Flowers, pomp, circumstance, streamers. A balloon escapes this year’s barbecue, rises with that welcome breeze and floats far from Dartmouth. Why the rush?

Wednesday, and I’m wearing Ulla’s clothes, her three percussive necklaces. I hold them to my chest when I dance. I get my fingers stuck in her crochet top. Someone asks if we are sisters. Why correct them?

I write this on the bench in front of Parkhurst. It’s a Parrish thing, probably. That side of the hyphen—we submerge ourselves halfway in the moment and then we scatter ourselves everywhere else. It’s a compliment and curse.

I type this on my phone, with my thumbs. Ulla’s bracelet heavy on my wrist. The beginning of a warm night. The end of a good, tired day.

Thoughts.