Never Walked In High Heels

This week I’ve been reading about an old friend and her family history. In recent months this author has become a substitute grandmother, filling me in with all sorts of wisdom, platitudes, and calming truths that I was never given. She tells in her books about her own family, how her great grandmother was the daughter of the ambassador to Spain, and grew up in the Spanish courts. How her parents were reporters, following news stories wherever they could in the days of WWI. They were citizens, soldiers, and those who enlisted bravely. Women who knew how to use a sword and run a house at the same time.

And then there’s my family. We’re from mid-America, poor, and relatively suburban. Well, not really suburban I suppose, though it seems particularly uneventful to me. I’m pretty sure that a member of the family or two had a run in with the law. We have no heirlooms that I know of. My grandparent’s basement is legendary for holding things but nothing really of any value. And they know that most people when they grow up and become independent adults, they choose to become close to their family. They leave for a while and then return, settling down and starting a family of their own. But doing that was never really in my mind when I embarked on adulthood.

They say that a family is equal to your roots and that having such people in your life will guide you as well as make you grow tall and strong. But, what if the roots you come from don’t run particularly deep? Or you don’t necessarily want to go in the direction that they’re going? What then? To what extent is blood thicker than water? And does this really mean anything? Are you necessarily bound to any family just because your genetic code is similar in some way?

In college, I was the only girl in my dormitory who didn’t come from what could easily be termed as “old money.” Lots of girls had monograms engraved on their tote bags or jackets with family shields pinned on them; their emblems and symbols, histories and romances ran deep. So deep that it was nearly legendary. And then there was me. It wasn’t uncomfortable so much as it was surprising that people even existed who treasured their bloodline so much. All of this (…?), the weight of standing on your ancestor’s shoulders seemed to be the only way to get anywhere in a new southern society.

For those of us who lack an ancient family tree that’s knotted and crooked in some places, although strong and formidable, if we don’t have such roots, do we stand alone? My family can be considered small and when I am away from them in the United Kingdom, holidays can be rough. It is during this time that everyone goes to their family. But, after several years I have learned that a family is made, created almost, rather than genetically passed down. I find myself in the UK with people who are closer to me than cousins and young women who have become my sisters within the past several years. Because like any transplant, we go down, digging our own roots and holding on to whatever we possibly can. Once we’re a little bit stable, we reach out and make our own new family.

“Is it easier if you are disabled from the beginning?” she asks me on the phone. My friend has been sick for months and she recently had to break down to get a handicapped parking badge. Not the red ones which are temporary, but a blue one. This unknown medical condition is going to be hers for quite some time. Maybe even forever.

“No, it isn’t.” At first I can’t explain why having a disability from the day you are born isn’t any easier. It’s a question that a lot of therapists have asked me. Kind of like, do you think it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Do you think it’s better to have walked and then lost the ability rather than to never have the ability in the first place? And yes, I do, actually. Being a child with a physical disability is one of the worst things you can imagine. You don’t play on playgrounds or get to bake cookies like everyone else. You sit and watch and are more or less at the mercy of people deciding to be your friend rather than making your own.

When we are kids, regardless of abilities or not, the fact is, we have no idea what we’re signing up for in life. Even in high school we think, go to college, get married, get a job, everything will run smoothly. What we don’t realize is that human bodies fail. All of them. Fail us, and what we want them to do, eventually. My mother used to say the minute we are born we begin to die (she’s normally a very cheerful woman) and while mentally you realize that’s true, you don’t feel the impact of it until you are much older and your body does begin to break down and fail.

My sophomore year at university, all of us saw my friend’s body simply revolt against her. For days she couldn’t get out of bed and see past three feet in front of her face. She would recover, and then relapse, and then recover and then relapse, each recovery time being shorter and the relapse time being longer. Now she is married and is trying to figure out life as a legally named disabled person.

In the past few years watching her, I have begun to see my other friends, who are as young as I am, have their bodies revolt and receive permanent conditions that they never dreamed of getting at this age. It’s forced me to wonder what will happen twenty-five years down the line when I really watch them age, watch them not be able to climb a set of stairs as quickly as they used to, or even after an accident that leaves them paralyzed. What to tell them when they ask me if it’s easier to be disabled from the beginning? What to say when they need advice and they want to be told that they will be able to rehabilitate themselves and life will be as easy as it once was. For that matter, why do I think I’m wiser and above further ailment simply because I’m disabled to begin with? My condition, if you don’t take care of yourself, means that you will age faster. Arthritis has a higher risk of setting in at a very young age, and there’s little to stop the aging process even if you’re disabled to begin with. Your body will break down even more.

We are at a friend’s wedding, and a week after getting her handicapped placard, my old university friend is feeling well enough to join us for the bridal shower and help us get ready in the bride’s chamber. The day is full of joy and life, everything that a wedding ought to be. She follows me around, helping me open doors when I can’t manage them and the flowers, making sure my dress is on straight, walking with me to the bathroom and constantly holding my hand. She will not let me go. In the bathroom stall I am unable to lock the door and she offers to hold it closed. She is bending down and a thought suddenly occurs to me, “Don’t make yourself pass out with your head below your knees.” She immediately sits on the floor, realizing that this is a distinct possibility for her.

“I guess I wouldn’t be very helpful to you in England anymore.” I hear the small voice on the other side of the bathroom stall and it breaks my heart realizing how much has changed and how much her world has been limited recently. The thing is, I wouldn’t say that she would not be of help to me. Friends, regardless of their physical ability, true friends, are always helpful along the way, in ways that are unique to them and the temporal bodies they occupy.

The dog is nervous because he sees a suitcase on my bed. It’s fully packed and my last remaining hours of visiting my family in Vegas are quickly coming to a close, and I look forward to getting on the big plane that will take me back to London where my work is. Getting ready to board a plane is always a slightly surreal experience. Mom ties my shoes and brushes my hair before pulling it back in a tight braid so it will not be in my way during the flight. Dad comes home from his job at the office to make me lunch and feed it to me as a sort of last meal. These are the rituals I take to board the exact same plane over and over to get to the exact same place at the exact same gate, take the exact same road back to my flat, and even plop down on my bed before undoing the shoes that Mom tied, the hair she braided, and realizing that my last real meal was yesterday with my father. Travelling this route works like a machine. Many cogs put it together to create something that you would never suspect would happen unless you looked at the bigger vehicle.

When most people who I knew from my childhood hear that I currently live and work full time in London, they are in shock. Ex-teachers, therapists, family friends, relatives, immediately begin peppering my mom with questions about how I survive in a foreign country so far away. The fact that we share a common language doesn’t seem to make any difference with regards to me being a foreigner. How does she eat? Who ties her shoes? Who washes her hair? And to tell the truth, this reaction, although on one level understandable, on a certain level is surprising. The more I think about it the more I wonder what they are expecting me to make of my life? It seems too obvious that I’m meant to be in London doing what I’m doing. After all it was their influence from a young age that taught me not to fear the world but embrace it and explore all the corners of the world I could possibly get to.

At first, when I announced that I was headed to England immediately after graduating from university, I was in a way lauded. “Everyone should take a year off and put some maturity under their belt,” they told me. I could still see the fear in their eyes but understood that there was more than this. Several of them did exactly that after their graduation, joining the Peace Corps to live in a remote part of the world and visit a place where they could lend a helping hand. One teacher from high school even encouraged me, saying in an email, “You are entering your wandering years… Don’t let the careerist itching common to our breed start to itch at you. The 20’s are a searching time… Look at this time as the fruit of your ancestors’ hard work. You owe them the best.” Below is a quote from John Adams in a letter to Abigail, as if such a quote was proof of the wandering years he suggested. But, at my age, the gap year between college and real life should have ended several years ago and the fact that I received a degree in London just recently, points to roots that are slowly beginning to grow away from home, raising the eyebrows of so many.

But why is the fact that I’m still in England so shocking? As I mentioned earlier, I was raised around individuals who came to America from foreign places to pursue their own dreams. I am as much the Brazilian woman who taught me to dress myself as I am the fact that I still need magnetic buttons to close my coat. I am made up of the European woman who taught me to speak and suggested to my mother that someday I would not just master English but other languages as well. I am the Hungarian woman who came to our summer camp every year in order to serve children with a disability, and I am also made up of the Canadian atheist who went into the mission fields of Mexico with me not for claiming what I believed but realizing that I should be able to proclaim it myself. These individuals,  as far as they came,  a piece of themselves was given to me as well as making the woman I am today. Part of being who they were was the love of travel and adventure. That’s where my love of the same travel and adventure came from.

I always feel a bit nostalgic as I untie my shoes once I’m back in my flat. I immediately miss whoever tied them last, wanting to keep them tied as a sort of keepsake. But, I know that the person who did so did not raise me to sit still and cling to loved ones in one place. The people who brought me up taught me to explore,  even despite all the potential difficulties that may come of it. I am thankful for the person who tied my shoes last, realizing the irony of not being able to tie one’s own shoes but yet flying halfway around the world. I am in communion with the person who will tie my shoes in London, living life where we are in the present moment, and I wonder who will tie my shoes when I become restless and seek to travel again?

I’m an opinionated woman. I don’t mean to be going for the understatement of the year here or anything, but the fact is I spend a lot of time thinking and even forming my own conclusions. Public transportation is particularly good for this exercise as it allows me to observe, think and refine whenever there is little else to do.

So I was really surprised when during a conversation with a close friend I said, “I actually don’t care” in the middle of the debate. I try to think of everything in my spare time, but when he asked me about a major ethical issue, I just couldn’t be bothered. It wasn’t that I couldn’t come up with an opinion if I thought hard enough—of course I could—I just wasn’t sure that it was worth my effort.

I have a friend who doesn’t know the first thing about politics, several of them actually. Oddly enough, most of them are human aid workers—reviving people who are dying, rescuing people from floods or avalanches, going in where the rest of us barely dare to pray. I don’t consider myself as the same classification as those friends, but it’s interesting. Outside of naming our new President (and possibly our Vice President) they are completely lost in a political conversation. Ask them about some act in Russia, which turn orphans out of orphanages at 15 and they can tell you exactly who passed it, when, and why, as well as subsequent acts which resulted thereof.

I think the reason why they don’t follow politics is that my friends are too busy fixing things that the politicians in armchairs talk about changing as they smoke on cigars and go out to fancy dinners. The human service acts, which my friends undertake are the equivalent of feeding prisoners of war while the rest of us are talking about strategy. We like to believe in America that our vote is actively changing something, but the truth is that it isn’t. It’s like how some people believe that paying taxes is actually charity—there’s nothing charitable about voting. It’s not some humanitarian act. Humanitarian acts don’t come from a government legislator, they come from actively getting up out of your house and encountering the world face to face, which means not being home to watch the cable news shows, and in this way, my friends being clueless about politics isn’t really an issue.

Not everyone can move the middle of Siberia in order to make the world a better place. I realize that of course, and so it is up to those of us who do have time to follow politics and care about it, to ensure that the America my friends come home to when they need a break from saving the world, it is a country they can be proud of & in. This is the place of voting and taxes. It is not however, human aid work.

After this conversation, I put myself to a challenge. If I don’t have an opinion on something, I don’t give one, that’s okay too. My friends and I are passionate people—wanting to see the world change in a huge variety of ways. However, when you care deeply about many things you cannot afford the energy to superficially care about what everyone else thinks of as being important. In my mind some issues are more important than others, and the issues I don’t think are important need to be left to someone who is passionate about those issues because in the end, who knows if there’s anyone else passionate about mine.

So I’m at a bar in London. It’s one of those weird meetings where it might be considered a first date or it might be just a friend get together. I’m watching for signs very carefully. We sit down. We order. Then he immediately rips into my country, starts shredding issues of the day, utterly destroying certain individuals, and I disagree with him 100%. Within exactly 7 minutes of taking our seats he is permanently off my list of potential partners.

It’s a massive open female pitfall that women everywhere are facing—well, women with open minds. The problem is not that he disagrees with my opinions; my best friends and I disagree all the time—that keeps the relationship interesting. No, the problem is that I have now sat here for some time and he doesn’t even ask my opinion. He just assumes that I agree with him, and with that given, he can make the boldest, most blatant statements without any encouragement from me.

It’s now 20 minutes and I think I’ve spoken a total of 15 seconds. This is not a good way to start an evening, let alone a potential romantic relationship.

Here’s something that guys need to understand. Perhaps it is only this way in my little mind, but it is important nonetheless. When you offer to go out on a date with me, you have centuries full of chauvinist pigs dragging your tail backwards. I just think of all the women over the centuries and generations who got married only to discover that her opinion didn’t matter to their spouses. The polite disagreements eventually turned to sirens when she learned after 15 or 20 years that what she thought didn’t matter. I’m not saying that every long-term relationship ends up like this, but several of them did and still do, and I don’t want to fall victim to that. So I am going to watch you on first dates, and on subsequent outings to see if you do care about my opinion and if you can tolerate disagreements. I know that in any long-term relationship people change, but each person must feel like they married the better individual. Without even asking if I have an opinion, you’ve proven to me that I don’t matter.

Sadly, I think it’s becoming more and more common on the dating field. Especially with the political expectations being what they are, everyone suddenly has an opinion, and the dinner table has become and appropriate place to spout it out. Maybe it’s because I’m often slow to speak, but in the past 2 months I’ve ruled out 5 guys that I could have liked because they never asked me what I thought. Are you interested in yourself or me? I can handle disagreement—that actually means more to me than you agreeing with me all the time. I can’t be comfortable though, in a relationship where there needs to be 100% assumed agreement—where I’m always walking on eggshells, and where I’m not free to be myself. I actually feel more paralyzed when I regularly agree with you than I do when we go our separate ways and can each then turn to the other at the end of the evening and say, you’re nuts but I love you for it.

The evening admittedly lasted longer than I should have let it. He is a good friend, and I wanted to catch up with his life, not on the British opinion of Washington politics. I kept the conversation going hoping to get the former, but all I got was the latter. At the end of the night, we pushed in our chairs and agreed to meet with a group of friends in the following week. He is a great companion, followed by dear inspiration and creative spirit, when he isn’t spouting off politically, and I keep him around for those qualities. Not because I agree with him, or he agrees with me. All I could tell is that for a long-term romantic relationship, this wasn’t going to work. As we came to the door we noted that it was raining outside. He offered me his coat, and I told him “No thank you, I always carry and umbrella in my handbag.”

I should have recognized it was a sign when the sermon that morning was on paradigm shifts. The idea of God throwing our world into chaos in order to bring us closer to his visions, echoed in our ears as we decided to go spend the rest of the Sunday in Lake Norman. It wasn’t my first Sunday with the Hillis Family including all ten of their children and incredibly energetic parents. Due to the loss of a biological son a few years ago, the Hillis’ opened up their home to adopt, two children from Russia, and then another one came, and then two more, and then three more, all having their own personalities and problems as well as past histories that could confuse even the most dedicated case workers. What makes them special is that every single member of the family is ready to gather what life throws at them and make the drama the best it can possibly be. They have become a family in the most mature sense of the word.

That Sunday one of us said, “I thought this morning how much I wanted to see a miracle,” and as it turned out one of us would be baptized by the mother, Susan. We spent the day on JetSkis and playing in the water, and enjoying each other as we said goodbye to summer.

Then that night we received the phone call. The parents had returned home with half of the children so that they could go back to school, and I was on my way back to Las Vegas when Christie got the call at 4am, she instantly thought something was wrong. The Hillis’ house in Georgia was being flooded by rain as her mother spoke into the phone. Flood water kept rising and it had hit the first floor of the Hillis’ house and was steadily seeping into the second. The boys of the family all lived downstairs and were the first to wake up when the pressure from the water had built up so that all the windows and doors burst open and water came rushing in. When I got off the phone with Christie telling me the news, all I could think was how could this happen to such good people.

I used to think the life of faith was supposed to be easy. You just held onto the belief that no matter what, all things work together for good. For many, this is the definition of faith. I buy into this, say my prayers at night, and somehow there will be a happy ending. But even if you adopt 8, or 10, or 20 Russian children, it doesn’t mean that you’re covered for any of the disasters that can sideswipe you. “It’s all just stuff,” Christie said. And of course, she was right. It is all. Just. stuff. The difference is when it’s your stuff and it’s what you’ve been dependent on. The Hillis’ have never had a lavish lifestyle, what they have they need is what they have, little more. All of a sudden that “stuff” can seem vital when it is taken away. Then the faithful seem to be permanently living in the Land of the Fucked, where nothing goes the way it should to and you have to be ready for what the rain water brings. However, living in the Land of the Fucked also allows us to call things exactly what they are , so that stuff can be let go of because we need all the power and the ability to cling to the truth rather when we live in a world that teaches us to clutch “stuff” under the guise of calling it security.

In one weekend we saw the many things that water can bring, from healing and recovery, to devastation. When I was little, I found myself clutching to safety at the edge of any pool I went into—even when I had a life jacket wrapped around me. I started to say when I went swimming, but the truth is when you’re clutching at the wall you’re not swimming at all. It’s more of a holding on and not noticing anything else. And in this way we miss what the water brings to us until one day, even after we’ve tried so hard to beat it, the water changes our lives, and we have to—if we haven’t already—learn to swim.

To learn more about the Hillis Family, please visit: http://www.rebuildthehillishouse.webs.com/

I’m guessing its rare for most people to have a complete stranger come up to them and be informed that their old home was the perfect spot for skinny dipping. Add to that situation that I was at a wedding when I was informed of this fact and you may get some clue of just how bizarre my life actually is. But maybe I should back up a little bit.

My last year of college I lived on Lake Norman, foreshadowing my obsession with living on water in subsequent years.  We were surrounded by docks and walkways which made for amazing spring evenings and nighttime strolls spent battling bug bites. It was from the back porch that I wrote my thesis and various plays which were desperate to be born. And it was just the beginning of November when my friend Cristi and I discovered that the dock which lead from the back door of my apartment to the middle of the lake not only looked creepy because all of it’s lights were burned out, but also made the perfect place for skinny dipping,

Now I figure if peer pressure can be blamed for kids taking on drug use or drinking alcohol, there must be somewhere in the book that says you can blame it for suddenly finding yourself swimming naked in a lake at midnight just four weeks before Christmas. Our terry cloth bathrobes left in a pile on the planked wood while each of the five of us girls did our best to slip silently into the cold autumn water without giving sign of the icy shock. Our still changing figures cast shadows in the night as we discovered curves and lines we never knew we had. A waist which was still hidden under baby fat last summer, breasts we still crossed our arms to hide, all the insecurities of a teenager were still held up in defense and eventually had to be stripped away through a combination of proximity to other people and water which was so cold, it was violent.

Many of us girls hit puberty at ten or twelve and we look like women long before we feel like it. By college the rest of the world expected me to act like a woman and I had no idea what that was. Refusing to look down when we got into the shower, we hid under t-shirts and basketball shorts or, on some evenings, under the dock in a huddle, as a man with dog walked by. Most people assume that for young women, body image issues stem from a lack of self esteem or a fear of being ugly. I don’t remember it like that. I think my issues came from immaturity. I looked like a woman. I had all the equipment. Problem was, I was still a nineteen year old kid who thought jumping in the lake after Thanksgiving totally naked was a great idea.

This summer I found myself walking around the quays in my part of London most days. The unusually beautiful weather this year meant that I could walk around in a sundress and pretty sandals rather than pulling on some awkward combination of sensible but comfy outfit. Going along the quay one afternoon I noticed that I sat a little taller and greeted the men in the boatyard more confidently all the way around. I felt the breeze in between my thighs, a strong energy sliding down my spine and radiating through my hips. I suddenly wanted a pair of hands around my waist and someone who was as confident as I was to talk with.

Within five minutes I had met a man fishing off the dock and he and I were digging for worms. My sandals had been kicked off and I was eyeing his cooler full of orange soda. So much for being a woman.

At the wedding this weekend I looked from the stranger, who, at some point in time had jumped naked off my back dock, to Cristi in her white dress and veil. It may have been her day but I still needed an explanation.

“I don’t know. You must’ve been at an audition or something. Heck if I know, I did it all the time without you.”

“Cristi, I can’t have random people jumping naked off my dock. Do you know how much trouble-“

“Oh grow up,” said the new wife.

Girls don’t grow up in a consistent and straight line. Somewhere between the age we feel like, the age we actually are, and the age the world expects us to act, there is us, afraid to look down and see that our bodies seem much more confident than we are in them. And there are always women’s voices coming from the shadows of the banks. Strong voices of sensual women promise all the treasures and secrets of being a women. Many girls instantly jump in, desperately trying to grow up way too fast and taste the mysteries which tempt men and women alike. Others hide under the dock, afraid to let go into unknown waters. They do not know if they can swim or survive.

More often than not there are young women who jumped in naked just to be silly, only to realize later that nobody had a map of the lake. We get dangerously close to the sirens at times and then we flee to take refuge underneath the dock. There are entire days spent back and forth, restless and trapped in one’s foolishly mature body.

And there are days when we get closer to the bank than we can ever remember. And actually, we are quite comfortable just listening; we all know we are going grow up someday, but none of us know how to pass through the deep waters directly.

In university I would debate with my friend Mark about gender roles endlessly. Neither of us really fit into the common classifications for our sex. I was the one who was always looking for logic and reason, numbers and proofs. He was always ready to live by faith. When I would come home from four AM crew practice I would see him piling flowers into his car for the nursing home he volunteered at.We would drive by and I would honk the horn, making him slam his head on the top of the car before he looked out and waved at me. By that time, I was already to our dorm with my sweaty shirt stripped of and showing my sports bra.

From first hand experience I can say he was the best feeder on campus, and when in our junior year an incoming male freshman had a severe disability, Mark was first in line to offer to be a care taker. That’s what made me think of him this weekend.

While on a flight home I saw a family with an older son with cerebral palsy. Given that the son looked about eighteen years old I wasn’t surprised to see his father carry him on-board. But then for the next eleven hours it was the men of the family (particularly his father) which never left his side, helping him eat, adjust his iPod, or help him to the toilet.

Now maybe this behavior doesn’t seem odd to you, if not…then you are, admittedly, a much more progressive person than I am. Even though I have been lucky enough to have a wonderful relationship with my dad, growing up it is the mothers who I have always seen take their children to therapy, making the sacrifices needed to make sure her disabled child gets proper care.

What is it about a male taking care of someone else that doesn’t seem effeminate or out of place? If the qualities of nurturing and giving peace are qualities which we usually attribute to women, why do I look to the men of my life who offer the same gifts as the most masculine men I know? My mother often speaks of the male nurses she worked amongst with more reverence than any doctor. Their ability to lift fallen patients, provide calm in emergencies, and work the least desirable shifts have always shaped my image of what a man ought to be.

If a man is made by his strength, then his efforts and put others before himself is an act full of effort. If it is  muscle which is the defining characteristic of masculinity, then that muscle is only worth its use to serve others. And if it is gentleness that is somehow a feminine quality, undesirable by ‘real men,’ perhaps it is because the power which it takes to be gentle and supportive requires a unique combination which is beyond the reach of most every man.

Like so many other qualities, the most masculine thing is a man who never needs to question his masculinity. Because giving someone relief takes the same form of building a house or clearing a forest. It takes seeing what needs to be done, doing it, and not expecting anything in return.

I always thought Mark and I made a good team because he and I balanced each other out. I thought I was the male to his female. Now that I miss him, I’ve reevaluated my judgment. He is one of the best men I know as his particular brand of masculinity is one that made football players look sheepish as they ran by us on the quad.

              Getting off the airplane, I could feel my hair frizz instantly. This was my third time zone in five days. I had been from London to Las Vegas to Charlotte, which meant that I had traveled eight thousand miles and then half way backwards to get to where I wanted to be. I mean, my college town wasn’t particularly high on my list of vacation destinations, but like most places I travel to, I had work to do. In the next few weeks, there were three weddings, a baptismal service, four new babies to be introduced to, massive amounts of research to be done via the college’s inter library loan system, and an inbox full of people to see. All I could think about was how stupid I was not to bring a straightener.

              Last spring I went with my mom to a different small town in the south. Riding through its hills, she would point out to me things that had changed or places where people used to live with the enthusiasm or informative sense of a tour guide. She was grasping at straws and knew it, despite my feigned attempts at intelligent questions. I felt no connection to this place. The town was fully hers but it never would be mine. And this fact made my mother desperate.

              My parents moved my senior year of college from Chicago to Las Vegas, making it impossible to come home to the big city again. A year before they moved, I had made up my mind to live in London post graduation so the fact that they were moving had relatively little impact on me. Life moved on fast, and it went even faster when I was twenty.

              Now when I visit ‘home’ in Las Vegas, it doesn’t feel particularly familiar. It’s very relaxing, escaping the desert heat with the pool in our backyard or watching the palm trees sway gently in the sky. But nothing about it brings back any sort of nostalgia. It’s all new and in mint condition. And quite honestly, other than having my parents out there, I feel more like a foreigner in Las Vegas than I ever do in London.

              So I’ve been priding myself on being a wayfarer for several years now. I keep picking up and moving every time a better opportunity hits. My exercise in Spartan living which began my first year of college has turned into a festival of non commitment, always waiting for the most impressive option.

              Stepping off the plane this time, no one was there to greet me. Due to my disability the person picking me up from the airport is usually allowed past security and through to the gate. One of my best friends from college, whom I hadn’t seen for three years, was nowhere to be found. And so I stopped, and sat, and listened to the raw twangs and drawls. The air had a weight in my nose and lungs which balanced in familiar places from the humidity. And there was this musky smell I had forgotten about which went through places even as public as an airport. The humid summer air made my hair frizz.

              And there they were, my friends. Two of them came as a surprise. We figured out later that, between the three of us, we had traveled enough miles in three years to go fully around the equator over fourteen times in the past three years. And despite having months of not speaking and not having any way to catch up, nothing had changed. We were different people who still fit together around the exact same edges even after the picture on the puzzle changed. Like family, we were inseparable even after three years of growing up in the real world. Blood and genetics didn’t bind people as much as passions and knowing each other did.

              Very unexpectedly, I found myself at home. And everything about it was exactly how it should’ve been.

For my birthday this year my neighbors gave me the most amazing orchid. As I look at it on my dining table I can count over twenty blooms facing the world. It’s something pretty and alive greeting me every morning when I come downstairs.

Naturally, when I received it I did what I was raised to do as a child. I wrote each of the parties who chipped in to buy it a separate thank you note. Granted, the fact that I managed to get them all done in a timely manner was an impressive feat for me. But they were done and out by the end of that weekend.

And then I started getting thank yous for the thank you notes.

So I started to ask around, thinking that maybe there was some cultural difference between the US and UK about the writing of thank you notes which I had missed over the past several years. These responses weren’t just a casual ‘thanks,’ they were ‘thank yous’ followed by a recalling of what it was like to receive a letter in a mailbox. They were heartfelt and meant something.

Which depressed me in a way that I wasn’t expecting. When did a common thank you note begin to carry so much weight? Have people just started to settle for thank you texts and emails?

For me the act of writing a thank you note is an exercise of living in and even understanding the moment. It examines something you’ve been given allowing the  understanding of what it adds to your life, be it something graceful for the dining room table, or that box of chocolate you have been looking forward to all day. There are some gifts I get where I sit down and think “what the heck (this is always a weak choice for the replacment of mild expletives, either use them or replace them entirely) am I going to say about this one.” And so I sit it on my desk and look at it.  Then I start to think about the person who gave it to me. Usually by this point I’ve come up with something to fill a 3×5 note card with my terrible quadriplegic handwriting.

It’s another one of those mother myths that I’m learning is actually true. Thank you notes apparently mean a lot to the people who get them. These days they mean more than ever. Mom was right all along.

These notes weren’t even hand written, which is why I find it so surprising that they got a reaction at all. But then I think about the Christmas cards I’ve written the past few years. They too, have caused quite the stir. In a world of text messaging and the iphone, where we all essentially have all our friends in our handbag, people still love getting an envelope in the mail hand addressed to them. And when it comes to a thank you note, people still need to feel appreciated.

Perhaps it is a sign of our highly materialistic nature, that we get something as a gift and don’t seek to understand the greater value of it with our own lives. Maybe we’ve gotten to a state where text messaging as the only form of communication is enough to sustain a relationship. But if finding a personal note in one’s mailbox is surprising I can’t help but wonder what we do expect from our relationships, and how much time we’re willing to have them take.