When Our Dead Disappear

“Hand me the ice scraper,” I asked my son as I knelt over my father’s gravestone. Using a sharp piece of plastic from the dollar bins, I chipped off the ice and snow that covered what was left of my father’s earthly presence. The boys each laid a flower on his stone and we spent a moment staring down at a man they remember little and I remember intimately. It’s been almost 11 years since his passing and we’re pausing to visit him before we drive home after a Thanksgiving weekend visiting my mother and the home my parents and I once shared.

I paused to take a picture. It’s a beautiful late winter morning in Missoula, MT. Dad is interred at the top of a hill where he’d have an excellent view of Mt. Sentinel and the entire Missoula Valley if only he’d sit up. Perhaps it’s best he doesn’t.

“I checked on Dad. He’s still in the same place we left him,” I wrote in a text to my siblings with the pictures attached. Everyone loves a little dark humor. My dad did too, until his final years. When we were children, the Tooth Fairy would leave us a rhyming poem along with a toy in exchange for our tooth. Dad was the author of those poems, and Mother did the penmanship. The last poem I received from the Tooth Fairy was when I was 22 and my wisdom teeth were removed. Dad e-mailed it to my then-boyfriend who slipped it under my pillow as I drooled in my drugged sleep.

Decades later, Dad had a testicle removed due to his cancer. Riffing on what I thought was established tradition whenever a body part was removed, I wrote him a rhyming poem from the Testicle Fairy and left him some candy.

He was not amused.

Apparently here’s a fine line between dark and tacky that I have yet to appreciate. I still think it was funny but maybe someone should check in with me when my body parts get lopped off and see how I feel then.

The boys returned to the warm car and my Chucks crunched on the snow as I walked to a cluster of columbaria across the cemetery where interred were the cremains of a college friend who died 30 years ago. As I approached, I noted the same faded and weathered nylon flowers left by others, the same neat array of markers organized in perfect lines with perfect space. I went to a familiar location only to find…a blank spot.

His marker was gone.

I circled the four columbaria with the only logical thought, that I had shockingly misremembered his location. Like an accountant reading a spreadsheet, my eyes carefully scanned each column and row of each side of every columbarium. His name wasn’t listed. I scrabbled in the snow with the toe of my Chucks looking for a marker that might have fallen off, but there was none. I repeated these actions a second and then a third time.

He was truly not there.

Before I made it back to the car, I left a ridiculous voice mail with the cemetery staff. “Hi, I’m calling to check on one of your…” What do I call an interred dead person? Guest? Corpse? Box o’ ashes? “…residents. He’s not where I last saw him. You know what I mean. Please call me back.”

This gnawed at me the 12-hour drive home. We have so many mechanisms to not lose things. We put AirTags in our luggage and leashes on our pets and toddlers. We pay for barcoded stickers when we ship packages and install cameras at our own homes. We leverage the habit of putting our shoes and keys in the same place every time we enter the house so we don’t have to look for them later. If there’s one thing in life we should be able to count on, it’s that once we plant our dead, their location should not change.

Monday brought some answers. “Your friend’s ashes were disinterred and relocated. Normally this happens at family request but we do not have any information to share. Please call his family.”

Trying to contact my friend’s family effort occupied my morning. Do you know what it’s like to try to find a landline phone number for an 84-yr-old widowed woman who had probably remarried and I’d last seen 30 years ago when I was 14? I played Six Degrees of My Friend’s Mother trying to find acquaintances who knew acquaintances only to learn that a surprising number of middle-aged people from my adolescence are now dead. Apparently they all got older while I stayed the same.

Mid-day a lead paid off and my phone lit up with a Montana area code. “Hello?” said a slightly creaky voice. “I’m calling you back. Are you looking for my son?”

I’m not a weeper but I choked as I introduced myself. “Hi-this-is-Timberly-and-I-knew-your-son-30-years-ago-and-I’ve-visited-his-grave-all-these-years-but-this-weekend-he-was-gone-and-can-you-please-tell-me-where-he-is?”

No, that doesn’t sound crazy at all.

She remembered me, or said she did and we talked for the better part of an hour. Apparently 1992 was an eventful year for her. After the death of her son, she remarried as I’d remembered and she had 30 happy years with her second husband until he died recently. He was entitled to eternal rest in a veteran’s cemetery. Thanks to my friend’s time in the Army before college, he had the same privilege, so she had him relocated to be next to her husband. Her actions felt familiar to me but I couldn’t place the feeling until writing this now. My friend’s mother is nesting, but the end-of-life version. Instead of what pregnant women do before they birth, she is preparing for her resting place with her family.

She asked what life had brought me in this time.

“I graduated and went to graduate school in Arizona for music. Then I married and got another master’s degree in business. We had two children who are now 16 and 18. My dad died a few years ago and my husband and I divorced but we just visited Missoula for Thanksgiving to see my mom who’s still there.”

Fewer than 60 words summarize the last 30 years of my life. It seemed like I should have more to show for myself.

It occurs to me that at 44, I’m now more than old enough to be the mother of my friend as I knew him in 1992. Yet when I think about him, I’m emotionally an ungainly teenager with the effusive grief of someone who lost a wonderful friend in a tragic way. I’m also adult enough to realize that inextricably bound in this grief is a host of related sadness: My dad’s death, challenging family relationships, a rootless and awkward childhood with few friends. My friend’s death isn’t only the loss of his life but representative of unfulfilled possibility, both for him and, separately, for me.

We ended with her giving me the address for the cemetery where I can find my friend. Next time I visit Missoula, I will look for him and take flowers as I have periodically for decades. When his mother’s plaque joins his, I’ll bring flowers for her, too.

And I’ll tell you one more thing: I am doubling down on keeping track of my dad from this point forward.

A Folsom to Sacramento Playlist

So I just ran a marathon. Aside from the fact it represented a goal for me (being the 20th and I wanted to run 20), running a marathon isn't a huge deal if you're healthy and you're prepared to spend more time training than sleeping, drinking, or a host of other activities you probably enjoy.

It was a lot of work to get to 20 and not just because of the physical effort. If you're someone who is internally critical of yourself, it's difficult to spend time on a course surrounded by a bevy of individuals who are younger, faster, stronger, more fit, thinner than you or with better war stories. By the way, if by chance the runner is older, heavier, weaker, or less physically able than you, you often feel even worse about your performance. (I'm particularly looking at you, amazing runners who are geriatric, blind, missing limbs, pregnant, or recovering from major surgery.)

This weekend was hugely important to me for a lot of reasons, but among them because this was the first marathon where I tried hard (to a point) and then just let it be. I've spent four years running as a tool to control and process through the challenges of my personal life: my father's illness and death, my volunteer roles, my career, my mother's loneliness, my marriage, and being a mother myself. There's a lot of mental energy that goes into that, not to mention the physical energy required to run 26.2 miles before a sweeper gets you (in addition to processing constant other "runner-to-me" comparison).

The Silly Selfie Battle

"Mommy, let's take a picture!" my youngest child yells.
"That's fine, baby, but make sure I'm not in it."
"Come on," he whines, drawing out the last word in a huff of exhalation.
"Okay, fine," as I acquiesce, knowing full well that once we've taken the picture of ourselves, I'll go into the camera app and delete it.
[whrrp] is the sound the app makes as it deletes the photo. And, like that, the picture is gone. With it, a memory.

In this picture I'm the slightly

more girly version of SNL's Pat.

I don't know when I started to hate pictures but it's been decades. I posed for my fair amount of photographs as a kid for my father who counted "photographer" as one of many of his careers in life. In every picture after age 12 months or so, what I see is a kid with dimpled knees, dimpled thighs, dimpled cheeks, and a round belly and bad hair painstakingly curled and ratted by my mother with a hot iron, hair spray, and ribboned plastic barrettes.

When I think of myself as a child, this is who I see.

Driving Fast and Turning Back

The Moth is a locally-held story-telling event. A story-teller has 5 minutes to tell his or her story which must be true and told well from memory (no prompts or notes), Ten are randomly selected each night to share. I have always put my name in, no matter how unprepared I've been, but my name has never been pulled from the hat yet.

I'm not complaining. This could be a blessing. If nothing else, it's forced me to think through a few memories and put them into story form. "On Hugging" was sketched out on the theme of Feelings for The Moth but it never got on stage. This one below was sketched out for the theme of Fast Lane (which only loosely applies since the only thing fast about either story is that it involved driving above the speed limit on the highway) but I won't be able to attend to try and pitch it.

-------

When I was five or six, the teenaged daughter of a family friend gave me a stuffed bear. It wasn’t particularly cute and it was funny looking. I didn’t love it at first but it looked sad and like it needed a friend so I became attached to it over time and it became my favorite stuffed toy throughout childhood.

On Hugging

I don’t like hugs.

It’s nothing about the hugger, nothing that anyone should take personally. I just don’t like hugging.

I don’t think most people appreciate how much interpersonal skill goes into giving and receiving hugs. What if one of you is sweaty? What if one of you is stinky? How long is a hug supposed to last? What if the hug is misunderstood as a gesture of sexual interest? What if I’m hugging a man and he gets an erection? Am I allowed to notice? Where do the arms go? Do I put them around the neck if someone is taller? Do I wrap them around the back and do a full frontal? Most importantly, consider what I look like. I’m a short woman with larger-than-most boobs. This is really the crux of the situation.

You Think It's Misogyny. Really It's Being Polite.

Every once in a while I skim through my social media feed and see posts shared by well-intentioned, strong, independent women warning us about the misogyny wherever we look. Men opening doors for women! Men being expected to pick up the tab! Men taking up space! Most recently my feed was hit with share after share of “16 Instances of Micro-Misogyny that Prove Patriarchy Is Everywhere!”

Here’s the deal: I don’t think hardly any of these constitute examples of micro-misogyny or hatred of women. Maybe they’re relics of an older time, maybe they’re just efforts at politeness, or maybe they’re examples of individual displays of rudeness but with all the real issues in the world (Iraq War 3, gun control, health care) is this really something that needs to even register on your irritation radar?

Running Your Wallet into the Twilight Zone

Flickr Commons

You're about to run through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind and endurance. A journey over roads and trails and past trees and parks whose boundaries are that of imagination. There’s a mile marker up ahead that announces you have entered the Twilight Zone…of Running.

Now that you’ve entered the Twilight Zone of Running, allow me to be your pacer in this adventure, particularly its least talked about aspect: the expense. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of a runner’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.

Don't Take Your Guns to Town...Or at Least Not to Chipotle

Flickr Commons / Ghost Soldier

It’s started to happen: Crazy liberals using a social media campaign have forced Chipotle restaurants to discourage guns in their restaurants. This follows less a year after Starbucks made a statement to the same effect.  While those crazy liberals claim that guns have no place in family establishments and this is only good sense, I call it what it is: nonsense.  I shouldn’t have to choose between enjoying my civil rights and enjoying a good cheap dinner. And here's what a lot of people forget: If it becomes illegal for God-fearing citizens to wear their weapons while eating their burritos, then only criminals will eat burritos.

Chipotle is southwestern Mexican style cuisine. What is more southwestern than guns? Have you all forgotten the OK Corral? Tombstone? The Alamo? Guns are an integral part of the southwest’s history, just like trendy, bland, quick-serve Mexican food. You can’t separate one from the other!

Where does it end, I ask you? I tell you, friends, that I fear an avalanche of restaurants will begin the difficult, painful, and unnecessary separation of food and weaponry. Who will be the next to separate weapons from the enjoyment of fine cuisine?

·       Will Benihana keep law-abiding patrons from enjoying sushi while wielding their katanas?

·       Is Red Lobster going to stop customers from exercising their freedom of speech by bringing their tridents to dinner?

·       Will Sizzler prohibit white-hot branding irons under the guise of preventing damage to their naugahyde seats?

·       Is P.F. Chang’s going to pat down hungry guests at the door and remove their daos and halberds before allowing people to have lettuce wraps?

These are dark days, my law-abiding, Constitutional fundamentalist friends. Eleven score and eighteen years ago, our Founding Fathers foresaw the need for every private citizen to have the right to own their own assault rifle and semi-automatic pistol in order to fight the tyranny of government intent on giving its citizens roads, schools, and healthcare. We are so close to losing the rights that great leaders like Donald Trump, the Nuge, and Cliven Bundy have fought for us to have throughout the years.

This is an issue that should concern every citizen. Remember the poem:

First they mandated emissions and pollution control standards, and I did not stop them
because my vehicle was grandfathered in.

Then they forced people to buy healthcare, and I did not stop them
because I was already covered and wasn’t forced to buy it.

Then they Then they came for the rightfully-owned guns, and I did not speak out
because I was not a gun-owner.

Then they came to take away all my other Constitutional rights, and no one could defend me
because they took our guns.

Now, I’m going to go exercise my God-given Second Amendment rights and take my sharpened hunting boomerang to Outback Steakhouse for dinner tonight. You can never be too careful.

9 Literature Classics Rebooted as Memes

Forget judging a book by its cover, most prospective readers won’t get beyond a title. Publishers know this which is why Random House, Penguin Books, Harper Collins, Barnes & Noble are engaging in an effort to reboot once-famous classics with titles that share the spirit of the most popular internet memes. 

 

1.   This Old Lady Taught a Young Man a Lesson about Love He’ll Never Forget – Great Expectations

People went crazy for the teenager who took his grandmother to prom. You don’t need to tell them that this story is about the soul-crushing experience one young man had after falling in love with someone too broken to return his affections. Let them find out on their own.

2.    How I Met Our Mother – Oedipus Rex

With a little less hilarity but just as great a story, Penguin Books will release the re-titled Oedipus Red at the same time that 20^th Century Fox releases the collectors’ edition of all nine seasons of that semi-popular TV show of a similar name.

3.   8 Words That’ll Change How You Feel about Relationships – Gone with the Wind

Frankly, my dear, I don’t…want to spoil the ending. You’ll just have to read the book.

4.   Middle Schoolers Need a Dictionary to Read this Book…Do You? – A Series of Unfortunate Events

Some adults turn up their noses at children’s fiction but those same noses love the challenge of seeing who’s smarter than a 5^th grader. Are you?

 

5.   123 Times You Saw the Hand of God but May Not Have Realized It - The Bible

This tagline makes The Bible into a spiritual seek-and-find. Can you find the 123 miraculous manifestations of the Almighty in the world’s most popular book? Rumor has it that in addition to including a special insert of the Ten Commandments in replica stone, Barnes & Noble is also partnering with Parker Brothers to include a bingo card so that locating the miracles can be an entertaining party game!

6.   20 Shockingly Honest Confessions – Madame Bovary

With stories ripped straight from TMZ, this novel is Lindsey Lohan, the Kardashians, and Juan Pablo all in one.

7.   What This Adonis Has in His Closet Will Surprise You – The Picture of Dorian Grey

This gorgeous young man has more in his closet than attire.

8.   Home Decorating Drove This Woman Crazy! – The Yellow Wallpaper

Crazy home decorating isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s left HGTV on for too long, but home decorating that makes you crazy? That’s the exclusive province of Charlotte Gilman.

9.   This Little Girl Fell Down a Hole – Open Here to See What Happens Next! – Alice in Wonderland

We could tell you what happens next, but that would just be…mad, wouldn’t it?

  

Why I Hope My Kids Are Gay...And You Should, Too

Photo: Purple Sherbet Photography/
Flickr Commons

Earlier today I was at the tire store getting a new set of four nearby a couple toddlers role playing a scene from Disney’s Frozen while their mother and granddad watched. I smiled at the mom.

“My kids love Frozen, too.”

“Yeah, my girls are crazy for it. They pretend to be princesses all the time.”

“That’s sweet. My boys are all about the songs. I swear they have the entire soundtrack memorized.”

“How old are your boys?”

“They’ll be 8 and 10 this summer.”

The granddad, a leathery guy from Malta, bustled in. “Boys? Watching a girly movie?”

“Eh, my kids like the music and sidekicks. They think the princesses are pretty.”

Granddad brushed his whiskers and shook his head. “You’re gonna make those boys gay. You don’t think it now. You think it’s okay but this is how it starts. My sister, she has a gay son and it started this way.”

True Tips for Women about Running

A little less than three years ago I started running “by accident.” A membership to a runner’s group was included in something I purchased. I didn’t want to use it so I tried to resell it – and no one else wanted it either. Being the cheap bastard I am, I decided to join the runner’s group. Ten half marathons and thirteen full marathons later, I’m still running. It’s not because I love it, exactly, and it’s certainly not because I’m good at it (whatever that means). It’s mainly because everyone needs something to “do” and right now, this is what I do.

At 36 I’m a little south still of middle-age (mainly because I plan to live to 100 although I reserve the right to push that date around a bit). I feel I’m somewhat representative of a certain group of women: a little south of middle-aged, professional, enjoys physical activity, some discretionary income. Consequently, there is a ton of advice that is sent to me and my running sisters: what to wear, what to expect, how to act, how to look. That’s all great but I’m here to tell you not a lot of that matters. If you’re going to run, here’s the God’s honest truth about what you need to know.

Timberly’s Totally Transparent Top Ten Tplaylist [The T Is Silent]

Yesterday I ran a marathon which really means that I stumbled through it at my typically glacial pace. The bad news about being a slow runner is I’m on the course forever: it’s cold, it’s exhausting, and it’s occasionally a smidgeon demoralizing. The good news is I get plenty of time to make it through a good chunk of my iPod library. Coming in at a couple thousand tunes, my running playlist has plenty of variety: Beatles, Alabama Shakes, Flipron, AC/DC, ZZ Top, Metallica, Johnny Cash, Mika, and, yes, even a little (very little) Pitbull.

It’s this variety that made it surprising that in the five hours I was out on the course that I discovered that I have six songs about cellophane. Who knew that this transparent product was so popular? No longer merely the stuff of leftover dinners or frustrated horny housewives who have shrink-wrapped themselves trying to surprise their disinterested husbands, cellophane is practically de rigueur.

Healing and the 5 Golden Rules of Health

“But I’m not sick, Daddy. I just can’t breathe.”

“That’s still like being sick, honey. Your body probably doesn’t want you to breathe something that’s bad for you.”

"But it's allergies! How can plants be bad for me?"

"Your body knows what’s best for it. It's an amazing machine. It has evolved throughout thousands of years to care for and heal itself. Don’t fight it.”

Year after year, allergy season after season, that conversation repeated.

Dad and Mother were parents who flouted conventional science and treatment options, favoring instead unproven faith or non-chemical cures. With enough faith or time, they believed that God or the big Juju in the ether or nature would heal the affliction.

The Dating Profile That Should Never Be

First, a disclosure. I have never been in the dating market.  When I was 16 and again at 19 I was asked out on dates and both felt so awkward and weird that I turned the (two) guys down flat. (Sorry, guys.) I met my husband at 18 (through a chat room) and we dated long distance for a couple years before moving in with each other. Questions of who pays, what to wear, and whether it's tacky to have condoms available (just in case!) have never occurred to me. Fun fact: Outside of baseball, I have no idea what second and third base are.

So when I got the idea to write a little piece for fun, I had to do some research which meant creating accounts on dating sites. (“No, really, honey! Those accounts are for research!”)

Erotica for a Real Woman

It was a dark and stormy evening. Jennifer watched the drops of water hit the window in an apparently random array. She blew a puff of warm air against the glass and attempted to draw shapes, constellations, letters, anything between the drops but nothing appeared. Jennifer wiped the glass clean with her folded napkin, inhaled deeply, and settled into the center of her seat. It was 6:28.

She liked 6:30. It was the perfect time for a first date, the hands of her watch aligning perfectly. Noon was also a good time but lunch dates were difficult to accommodate and other times such as 3:15 or 7:45 were too oddly timed and they didn’t quite line up the same way. No, 6:30 was best.

Montana Skies

This weekend, I'm visiting my folks in Montana, a place that to many is synonymous with fly-fishing, hiking, ranchers, whiskey-drinkin' tobacco-chewin' locals, and, for those of us who know our Big Sky Conference football, home of the University of Montana Grizzlies (GO GRIZ!). To some, Montana possesses a certain as-yet untarnished purity that is difficult to find in more cosmopolitan areas. One need only watch movies like "A River Runs Through It", "The Horse Whisperer", and "The Patriot" to get a good idea of some of the brilliant natural resources existing here. Certainly, it's the sprawling openness that attracted my parents, refugees of master-planned communities, strip malls, and the press of surburban humanity, to relocate here some 20-ish years ago.

But what most people see by day can be found in many places throughout the region: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, northern California, northern Nevada, and probably, albeit with different foliage, in many of the great communities that litter the midwest and eastern coast. What is really quite special, and less common, is the nighttime skies.

To be fair, I'm not a huge fan of Montana. I lived here for six-ish years as an adolescent/young adult, moved away when it made sense, and never looked back. While I enjoy returning "home" to see family, friends, and old haunts, I'm never so nostalgic that I want to actually live here or even relive my time here.

But every time I return, I pause for a few moments in the solemnity of the night to ponder the nighttime skies above. Always ensuring that the surrounding lights are out, and the evening is clear of any sound not native to the peaceful outdoors, I stand alone in a dark field and look above, suspecting that this is as close as I will ever get to feeling the all-encompassing vastness of space.

Looking around, it seems that there are so many stars that the untrained eye cannot pick out a single constellation. The abundance of stardust is so consuming that it dilutes the brighter stars that have an easier time standing out in a less effusive sky in a more light-polluted area. With no small glimmer of sacriligious humor, I reflect that the dusting of white against the obsidian sky looks to me like God has a dandruff problem, where the star lights are little scalp cells resting on his dark winter sweater. I find this to be not too far-fetched an explanation for their origin. In fact, isn't in the Chinese whose mythology claims that the night sky is actually a bowl turned over with the stars being holes punched through to the outer light of the universe?

Regardless of the myth you find most appealing, it really is something quite special and increasingly rare. Visit and experience it yourself if you can. The dazzling darkness and pinpricks of light blanket one in wonder

Why We'll Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

Recently, I took my boys out for exercise in the neighborhood. They rode their bicycles, I ran next to them. They're 5 and 7 years old, so for now my legs and their wheels go about the same pace. I enjoy it while I can.

We bicycled home, twilight impending and the dew starting to settle on fields around us. My younger son, irritated with his bicycle as he tried to ride without training wheels, uttered a mewl of frustration as he came to a sudden stop. "Ugh!" he cried. "If I don't go faster on my bike, the zombies will get me!"

How to Get Small Children Awake, Fed, Dressed, and Out the Door for School in Less than 20 Minutes without Yelling or Freaking Out

I have no flipping idea.

To My Sister on the Eve of Her 29th Birthday

I don't specifically remember bringing my newborn sister home from the hospital. But, I remember how life was different afterward.

My dad took me to the local drug store the night she was born. "Pick any toy you want," he said, "as long as it's under five dollars." I picked up a Barbie, the first brand new one I'd ever touched before. Her legs didn't bend at the knees and she was shoeless, but her hair was nylon fiber smooth and her pink dress was simple and lovely. "Can I have this one?" I asked. Dad nodded. This was the only Barbie I'd ever own and it was all thanks to her being born.

I remember loving this mewling, wrinkly thing bundled in cotton onesies who came home some slightly chilled Phoenix autumn evening. I loved her not because she was oh-so-adorably like my dolls but because she needed me. Mother was in college, Dad slept all day and burned the midnight oil. I gave her bottles of glucose water when Mother was gone, I changed her diapers. When Mother vacuumed it made my sister scream because it hurt her fragile eardrums so I rocked her and sang "Stille Nacht" until she calmed down.

Her needing me when we were little is what made being around her possible even when she got more of our mother's time, when she was preferred by our grandmother, when she so clearly was a prettier chid. During countless roadtrips, I would entertain her in the backseat of the car, manufacturing an invisible friend named "Middle" who would make her laugh. When she'd get spanked for crying (which was often), I would plead with our father on her behalf, furious at the injustice of punishing a child for crying because she was being punished. And I needed her, too. I authored many a stage play that needed pint-sized actors. Without her, I would've had to be content with only dolls.

When we were younger and I would try to emphasize the difference between us and my greater maturity, I would say that we're 'almost five years apart.' She would correct me with, 'no, we're almost four years apart.' Now that she's on the cusp of 29, our positions are reversed as I try to point out close I am to her age. She's still quick to correct me, this time pointing out that we're almost five years apart, making her that much younger. Such are the competitive vanities of sisters.

About 12 years ago, she wrote me a letter when she was 17 and had just been initiated into the same sorority. I was too embarrassed to read it all the way through then and I am now, too. Not because any part of it is inappropriate but because my then-17-year-old sister reveals her effusive, bare emotions with her "Anne of Green Gables" melodramatic style. Her letter reminds me too much of my 17-year-old self and how much I used to care (or let people see that I cared) before I wrapped myself in my own little shell.

The 20s are a rough time. It's when the childhood rubber hits the road of adulthood, when you have to actually put into action all those things you dreamed about doing and hope they yield the expected results. Sometimes they don't. Turning 29 is when a person may reasonably look back on their 'youth' and reflect on what one has or has not accomplished. It can be sobering. Competitiveness aside, I feel like I can relate, a few years ago having written about going through a little taste of something similar when I turned 30.

The last few years have been hard on my sister for reasons we share, the last 12 months particularly so. My guess is that this makes turning 29 into a certain indignity for her, insult added to injury. But, I refuse to offer her pity (it's beneath both her dignity and mine) and compassion makes it sound like I'm giving her my blessing to compromise on her goals, which is the last thing I would want for her. Getting older doesn't require compromise, but it does demand acceptance.

Over the years, I've seen my little sister become very much like me -- or at least the me I might've been except for a couple key differences in our life paths. There's nothing wrong with that and I defend all of her choices. But just like parents hope for their children to have better lives than they had, I wish I could help give her a more uplifting outlook. After all, depending on how you reckon the passage of time, I'm either almost five or just over four years older than she is and I have a certain perspective to offer.

So here's what I've learned in the last few years since I turned 29:

You don't stop feeling lonely or out of place. You just realize that it's how life will be for you and you become okay with that.

Right now at this moment you are the best looking you will ever be. Delight in that.

The only ones with you from the very beginning who will be able to relate to you in the end are your siblings, for better or for worse. Keep in touch with all of them.

Smile more. It's the only sure-fire way to look younger.

Worry less. Whatever it is you're going through now, next year it will matter less. Five years from now, it won't matter at all.

Call home. They need you, even if they don't say it. You need them, even if you won't admit it. I promise you that someday you'll wish you'd connected with them more.

Let it go (whatever 'it' is for you at any given moment).

I won't promise your 30s will be easy. But I do think they will be easier. Trust your big sister on this one.

Also, don't forget to call me in 10 years. I'll give you a preview of your 40s.

Crushes of the Well-Read Mind

It's time I admit it. In spite of my (tenuous) claim on adulthood, I nearly always am crushing in a way that could make a 13-year-old slap her forehead in shame. I'm a woman who rarely gives a hug except under duress. Yet dignity, marriage, professionalism, famed reservedness, and ice queen demeanor is regularly thrown out the window for the objects of my fascination.

The fact is, I crush on philosophers the way your neighbor's pre-teen daughter crushes on Justin Bieber. No, wait. I crush on philosophers the way your neighbor's pre-teen daughter crushes on Justin Bieber if Bieber were also the hot high school star quarterback.

Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing about C.S. Lewis' chrome dome that turns me on (I save that for Jason Statham or Edward Norton from "American History X" sans tattoos). Voltaire is a bit old for me (although I have nothing against old, providing they're living). Ayn Rand is a woman (nominally, by the looks of her photographs, but I still don't swing that way, desert island scenario notwithstanding). But I have a sometimes passion for these thought-leaders that approaches a Texan politician's love for Jesus. (Speaking of Jesus, he had some good ideas going for him, too...)

Going back a couple decades, there was my flush-faced love for the Greeks. Sadly, even if I had been interested in deceased early Mediterranean philosophers romantically, I would've been the wrong gender anyway (minus Sappho, a poetess who doesn't count). But none of this kept me from reading many of the treatises, plays, analytics, and rhetoric authored by Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus, and Socrates.

The thing is, there's nothing wrong with reading it. But there's everything wrong with a 14-year-old entering into a conversation like this:

Person A: So I saw Joe last night with Danielle. Does he know you two don't get along?
Person B: What the fuck?? That pig! He oughtta know that I hate her!
Me: Maybe Joe was just being nice. You know, Socrates would probably advocate for assuming positive intent. He believed no one would knowingly do bad things.
[cricket] [silence]

I'd like to think in the intervening 20-some years I've learned, but really, I haven't. Which is why I met a sorority sister for (liquid) dinner a couple weeks ago and we had this conversation:

Her: I think it's safe to say we're fairly liberal Catholics.
Me: What does that mean?
Her: Well, we don't necessarily believe in a literal heaven or hell or that souls exist in the way a lot of very spiritual people may believe they exist.
Me: Oh, I totally get you! In fact, I was reading this book by Julian Barnes a few months ago who I think has some similarities to Kirkegaard in how he writes about the possibility of an afterlife.

Fortunately, this sister has a nerd beacon that'd be as bright as mine if she didn't have a bubbly personality and years on dance team to mask it. She gets me. But that's just luck. Normally this would be an opportunity for my guest to gesture to the server, "more drink, please! And fast!" On the other hand, maybe she had prearranged a more discreet signal and I just didn't notice it.

Most recently I have been all about Chuck Klosterman. Okay, even die-hard fans of Cee-Kay must admit that he falls a far cry shy of being a philosopher. Let's go with "pop culture analyst with a specialized following." Klosterman (whose entire bibliography I've read save one) expounds on my generation's pop culture with references that require me to keep Google open nearby. This is all material I should know but I don't because playing Michael Jackson or acknowledging existence of the Smurfs in my parents' house was a capital offense. Klosterman synthesizes a couple decades of music and pop culture with a certain baldly gritty anti-savoir faire that is deeply appealing to me.

But the real gift that Klosterman brings to my literary table is that he's so fricking normal. I can parrot his opinions and it's immediate connection with another. Death, life, soul, morality, existence, principles of reality - those are limited appeal niches that won't get me invited back to any cocktail parties unless they're attended by Mr. Peanut and Rich Uncle Pennybags. But Klosterman and low culture (hey, that's what *he* calls it so it must be okay!) allow me to capture a little of the cool kid appeal. It's allowed me to instead have conversations like this:

Person A: Did you catch what happened in "Glee" last night? I can't believe it!
Person B: Oh, I know. Pretty heavy-handed, don't you think? When did TV become like that?
Me: I was reading Chuck Klosterman's essay about "Saved by the Bell," remember that? He addressed how the purpose of TV shows is to re-state the preferred moral reality so viewers can feel reassured.

See how I did that? I'm still irritating, but I'm relatable. There are lots of places the conversation can go from here: Was Mark-Paul Gosselaar or Mario Lopez cuter? Can you believe how Elizabeth Berkeley destroyed her career? What current show is closest to Saved by the Bell? But, everyone will have something to offer. No need to fear silence.

Now, I don't totally fool myself. Quoting writers I'm crushing on, however contemporary they may be, isn't exactly 'school-moms-drinking-wine-over-pedicures' conversation. But it's a whole lot closer than where I was. Moving from existentialism to Bon Jovi lyrics is a huge improvement.

I'm not dating Justin Bieber the quarterback by any stretch. But maybe Klosterman at least helps me be the quirky cute little sister of the almost-popular wide receiver.